Paul Ryan, Republican Bubble Boy

It's official, Paul Ryan is Mitt Romney's running mate...which means it is time to give the man some much needed closer scrutiny, and what soon becomes apparent, is the man has spent almost his entire adult life in a bubble, a bubble that sees himself, his wife and children living off the largesse of the American taxpayer, while talking about taking away the various social programs that we have earned over the course of our own life times.

As example, Paul has been a Congressman since before he reached the age of 30...his twelve plus years in the House of Representatives will see him collecting a pension in excess of $80,000 a year on the day he would become the Vice President of the United States (this would be in addition to his salary as the VP) should Romney get elected in November.  Additionally, his kids would be insured at the expense of the American taxpayer until they reached the age of 26, while he and his wife are guaranteed PREMIUM HEALTHCARE compliments of the United States taxpayers for the rest of their lives.

Paul Ryan is a bubble boy because he has never really held a job in the private sector.  Sure some might argue that his mentor-ship at the feet of Jack Kemp while working for his Washington DC think tank should count as a real job, but fact is he was at that think tank being groomed to be a politician, was at that think tank to develop his close intimate ties with the lobbyist on K Street.  Which should cause every American to ask a few questions.

Is Paul Ryan really ready to step in and be President of the United States if God forbid something were to happen to Mitt Romney...the answer to this question is a resounding NO in bold capital letters.  He has no real world experience, has never been anything but a politician ready, willing and able to sell himself out to the highest bidders on K Street...proof of this can be found by comparing his campaign donations to his voting record will a Congressman.  As example his Economic Plan for America calls for cutting social service programs to the nation's lower and middle class citizens while at the same time rewarding his handlers (Wall Street and K Street deep pockets) who earn over 2 million dollars a year with a $250,000 a year reduction in their taxes.

His complete lack of understanding of, and compassion for average Americans can be seen in his readiness he exhibits to basically do away with Medicare, and scale back Social Security payments to average Americans...benefits mind you that we have paid for with deductions every week out of our paychecks...he seems to care less that he and Congress should be prosecuted for malfeasance for so mismanaging the funds over a period of decades, routinely stealing money from the Social Security Fund to use in other areas.   

Perhaps if he wants to scale back these programs, he should start with his and his fellow representatives perks...IE, once elected into the House of Representatives, these politicians qualify for a guaranteed retirement pension of at least $42,000 beginning the day after they leave office after only FIVE YEARS ON THE JOB!...in Ryans case, with his time in the House of Representatives, his pension will be in excess of $80,000 and will be paid to him for the rest of his life starting at around the age of 43!  After only 12 years in Washington DC he is guaranteed top of the line health insurance for the rest of his life regardless of what does or does not happen with Obamacare after the first of the year.

You wonder why Mitt Romney chose Ryan...they are two peas in a pod, two bubble boys living in a world that has nothing to do with living the live of an average American, two bubble boys incapable of understanding the plight of the common man.    One has to ask, "Are these really the kinds of men we want leading America, being the two most powerful men in the world?

America...World's Largest Banana Republic

A bold statement and declaration, and to help make the point, let us first put forth some definitions which make the case.

A banana republic is a politically unstable country that economically depends upon the exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals), and usually features a classed society — a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy, the rich elites of business, politics, and the military

Plutocracy (from Ancient Greek πλοῦτος, ploutos, meaning "wealth", and κράτος, kratos, meaning "power, dominion, rule") is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.

Game, set and match, but let us delve further into the subject of America as a Banana Republic.  This year, we have a Presidential Election where most Americans votes do not really count.  Here in New York it seems a foregone conclusion that our state will be put into the Blue Column, and so neither candidate for the highest position in the country spends scarce time here, the time they do spend here spent in closed, invite only fund raising events for the uber rich elite, those who can afford to buy a seat at the table.  Rich elites of politics seems to personify Mitt Romney whose personal wealth exceeds $250 million dollars, over $200 million of it accumulated in offshore accounts where he pays almost nothing in taxes.  Obama is poor by Mitt Romney's standards, and yet he has already been bought and paid for by the wealthy ruling class (just look at how much he and Romney have raised from the uber rich for their campaign coffers)...one has to ask the question, "Why even bother voting when we have no real voice?"

Fox News, CNN, MSNBC...does not matter which network you choose to watch, when it comes to our American system of government, the announcers are admitting that the system has been rigged for decades to benefit those in the wealthy ruling class, breaking news out almost every day admitting the simple truth that the American lower and middle class are being gamed.  JP Morgan lost over $5 Billion dollars of the average Americans investments so far this year while the banking and investment lobbyist spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Washington, telling our elected officials that regulation of their industry is bad for (drum roll please) THE UBER RICH.  

American Exports...for the most part America no longer has what could be called a true industrial infrastructure, the rich having convinced us that it is in our best interest to shop jobs overseas so that they can produce and sell us CHEAPER MORE AFFORDABLE GOODS...curious here, if we have no jobs, if our wages are stagnant and/or depressed because there are no longer any good paying jobs, does the price of the goods being offered to us really matter, and if we are not producing goods, have we not placed our nation in a position of having exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals)...NATURAL GAS, the last one of which is supposed to make us energy independent, and yet being exported to places like China and India.

Obama and the Democrats proposed keeping Bush Era tax cuts in place for 98 percent of Americans, while rolling back the tax cuts for the UBER RICH supposed job creators.  Curious...the rich may create jobs, but isn't it through the hard work and sweat of the average Main Street American that wealth is created, yet distributed unfairly?  Republicans oppose this roll back of taxes on the uber rich, claiming that the rich pay more than their fair share of taxes already, the richest ten percent carrying about 45 percent of the tax burden of our nation...that argument SOUNDS PRETTY CONVINCING on the surface, but lets examine it further.

For starters, Americans control/own 27 percent of the ENTIRE World's wealth....wealth being defined as actual assets one owns, such as property, natural resources, tangible property and liquid cash assets and other financial instruments.  Fold Canada into the mix and these two North American nations control just about 35 percent of the world's wealth.  The 27 percent of the world's true wealth held by America is not distributed fairly...as example, from 1990 to 2005 (adjusted for inflation) saw the average CEO's salary increase by 300 percent, while in that same time period the production worker's salary rose by only 4.3 percent here in America.

Median compensation for CEO's in all industries as of early 2010 is $3.9 million; it's $10.6 million for the companies listed in Standard and Poor's 500, and $19.8 million for the companies listed in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. Since the median worker's pay is about $36,000, then you can quickly calculate that CEOs in general make 100 times as much as the workers, that CEO's of S&P 500 firms make almost 300 times as much, and that CEOs at the Dow-Jones companies make 550 times as much.

The richest ONE PERCENT of Americans own 35 percent of America's total wealth, which means that one percent also owns almost nine percent of the ENTIRE World's wealth.  If you take the top ten percent of Americans wealthy and elite, they own/control over 80 percent of America's total net worth/wealth and yet collectively only pay about 65 percent of the taxes collected by the IRS.  If your group through a rigged system controls/owns 80 percent of America's wealth, should not your group be paying 80 percent of ALL TAXES COLLECTED?  In a fair system the answer is yes, but sadly America no longer has a fair system, tragically we now live in a Banana Republic where most of us have been reduced to serfdom, barely subsisting on the meager wages paid by those in the top ten percent as they work ever harder at owning more and more of the pie, even if to do so means rigging the system in a way that allows them to steal what little wealth the lower and middle class have managed to accumulate.

What can we do about it?

1.  Strengthen unions...say what you want about unions, but they fight to protect workers rights, fight to see that average Americans in the work force get a fair day's pay (living wage) for a hard day's work.  The Republicans and Wall Street elite want to make unions obsolete, sent the way of the Dodo bird, and if Main Street Americans allow that to happen, we truly will become slaves of THE MAN.

2.  Work toward creating additional political parties here in America so that we can force Washington to seek compromise and consensus between dispirited groups.  Almost an impossible task since the Democrats and Republicans have passed over 2500 laws that throw road blocks up in the path of any group trying to become a third political party.

3.  Stop electing the uber rich to office.  Wealthy people will never represent the best interests of the majority, but instead will pass laws that protect their wealth, and the wealth of their friends who have curried favor by purchasing it through generous donations to the campaign coffers of those willing to do their bidding at the peril of the majority.

4.  Stop supporting and electing both Democrats and Republicans.   Recruit and support for office people like yourselves...the owner of your local mom and pop store, your small town garage owner (rather than the guy who owns the large dealership), or a working mother who struggles every day to put food on the table for her children.  In short, even if you have to do a write in vote, start electing AVERAGE AMERICANS into office locally, statewide, and to national office.  When we elect AVERAGE AMERICANS, average Americans in office will actually begin again doing the People's BUSINESS.

5.  Take our voices out into the streets...yes, am talking about exercising our First Amendment Rights, not in small handfuls, but in groups of a hundred thousand or more. As long as we remain meek,  as long as we remain silent, huddled in our homes afraid to speak, our lot will not change, business as usual on Wall Street, and on Capital Hill will continue on as the rich get richer, and the American Middle Class is destroyed.

6.  Band together, and support your small local merchants rather than spending what little money you have in the large chain stores such as Walmart, Sam's Club or the large Mega Malls.  Fact is, money SPENT LOCALLY stays local. 

Occupy Movement Gaining Momentum As National Anger Grows

With marching orders from Federal Government (Homeland Security) Police Forces in cities across America stepped forward using fear tactics, and out right brutality tried to crush the "Occupy Movement" here in America. Tear gas, rubber bullets, billy clubs and percussion bombs were the call of the day as camps were ransacked, protesters forcefully evicted, many of them wrongfully arrested for doing nothing more than exercising their "First Amendment" right to freedom of speech, their right to demand redress. Local ordinances and laws meant to control or coral society used to supersede our federally protected rights.

Sure, local government succeeded in evicting these protesters from parks across the land, but as the shutting down of major ports on the west coast this week have shown, these cities, their police intimidation tactics have failed in crushing, even killing the Occupy Movement. The paper of our nation's capital, the Washington Post, reported on the success of the movement, stated for all of our elected officials to see the undeniable fact that protesters were successful in shutting down various ports including shipping terminals in Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon and Longview, Washington. The timing of these actions could not have been more perfect as Time Magazine this week announced that Protesters" were their choice for "Person of the Year".

America is becoming a powder keg, the tactics of local police departments (under orders from local government) are driving protesters to take steps to protect themselves, yet the press wants to use these attempts at self protection and paint them and the protesters here in America as militant actions, and militant groups. What is one supposed to do when they believe in their cause, and find themselves faced with overwhelming force...police on horses swinging billy clubs, police in riot gear shooting tear gas, rubber bullets and god knows what else into the crowd of peaceful protesters.

It has been reported that some of this weeks protests did not remain peaceful, news sources reporting that some protesters threw bags of paint, lighted flares and debris at the police who were attacking them...asking the obvious question here, what did the police hurl at these PEACEFUL PROTESTERS? More importantly, where is our Armed Forces? Are they not charged with protecting the rights (Freedom of Speech) of American Citizens? We applauded the Egyptian Military early this year when they protected citizens against "Local Policemen Gone Wild" yet are content watching our own policemen here in America use those same out of control tactics, are content to let the press put out government orchestrated propaganda, rather than accurately reporting ALL SIDES OF THIS IMPORTANT STORY.

The Vietnam War protests were a grassroots movement that fermented and grew over a period of years, finally reaching maturity during the 1968 Presidential Elections. The same dissatisfaction that fed that movement has been growing here in America since 2007 when, under George W. Bush and the Republicans our economy crashed. Four years now have passed, four years where 7.5 million illegal aliens have been allowed to keep their jobs and depress American lower and middle class wages. Four years where the one percent have grown ever richer while 16 million Americans remain under employed or out of work as jobs continue to be shipped overseas. Four years where America allows China to flood our nation with cheap inferior goods while our factories continue to close. Four years since Main Street taxes were used to bail out Wall Street fat cats while average citizens lost their homes or saw their mortgages under water after the real estate market collapsed.

Anger is rising like the wave of a Tsunami, and more and more citizens are saying enough as Washington DC goes about politics as usual. Local police can try to stamp out protesters, but Time Magazine's person of the year choice says it all. The Occupy Movement is growing, becoming stronger, and the 2012 Elections may be remembered for something other than who our next president will be.

Factoid of The Day

This Thanksgiving week was the worst on Wall Street since 1932. (Note*-This horrid week on Wall Street had nothing to do with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The thieves on Wall Street did it all on their own.)