Cenk Uygur, Matt Taibbi, Why isn't Wall Street in jail?

MIT chart tracking millions of items shows much higher inflation than CPI

Federal Reserve ultimate protector of the banking class – Fed Reserve sends a thank you to American middle class and world for bailing out the banks with a gift of inflation. MIT chart tracking millions of items shows much higher inflation than CPI.

"The Federal Reserve has one clear mandate. That mandate involves protecting the biggest investment and commercial banks on Wall Street at the expense of the American people."

Bringing Home 150 Troops From Afghanistan Would Fix Wisconsin's Budget "Crisis"

Robert Greenwald: Bringing Home 150 Troops From Afghanistan Would Fix Wisconsin's Budget "Crisis"

"Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker is using phony budget projections to manufacture a staged "fiscal emergency" in his state so that he can whack programs and political opponents, but even his fake "emergency" pales in comparison to the cost of the Afghanistan War to his state. In fact, the U.S. would only have to bring home 151 troops from Afghanistan to save more money than Walker's ridiculous union-busting plan. Better yet, ending the Afghanistan War altogether would save taxpayers in Wisconsin $1.7 billion this year alone, more than ten times the amount "saved" in Walker's attack on state employee rights."

This should put into perspective for you how expensive military interventionism is compared with social programs.

BBC - Dead in the Water - The Attack on the USS Liberty 1of7

Israel sinks U.S. Ship

Here's the Current "Auditor" of the Fed...Totally Clueless

Janitors in Helmsley Building Pay Higher Tax Rates Than Millionaire Residents

TaxProf Blog: Janitors in Helmsley Building Pay Higher Tax Rates Than Millionaire Residents

"Martin A. Sullivan looks at IRS Statistics of Income Division data showing that the effective tax rate for filers listing the Helmsley building as their address is less than 15%."

Liberals, listen carefully...the complex tax code, filled with credits and loopholes, disproportionally hurts poor people!  Rich people can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to find these loopholes, poor people cannot.
Republicans, RICH PEOPLE THAT YOU ARGUE AS BEING "UNFAIRLY" OVERTAXED IS A FALSE!

Where Are the Handcuffs for Wall Street? The Dylan Ratigan Show

Dylan Ratigan is one of the few that gets what's going on and has the guts to speak up about it.

Iceland Continues to Show America How Capitalism and Democracy Work

Iceland President Blocks $5 Billion Icesave Bailout: "The People Should Decide" - Home - The Daily Bail

"Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson refused to sign a $5 billion accord struck in December with the U.K. and Netherlands to repay foreign depositor losses and said the bill must instead be put to a referendum."

America is NOT a capitalist, free-market democracy. Iceland's example is making this easy to see by sharp contrast. So, what IS America? It's cronism run by bankers and corporations. (Image is protest at Iceland's President's house.)

Fed New Accounting Change Means its Impossible for the Fed to go Bankrupt

Fed New Accounting Change Means its Impossible for the Fed to go Bankrupt! :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

"Back in early January, the Federal Reserve made an obscure announcement in its weekly report. It appeared to be an inconsequential accounting change in the treatment of earnings, and was sold as a step toward greater transparency.

The change was buried in such jargon that it took weeks for the financial bloggers to fully digest what had happened — the new move made it effectively impossible for the Fed to go bankrupt! In this article I'll explain the rule change and speculate on the Fed's motives."

The system is rigged against you.  The 4th Estate (the media) is not informing you of important changes anymore, they are telling you about the Kardashians.

Spill Children: The Untold Story of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster (Part 1)

Obama’s $3.7 Trillion Budget Calls for Military Spending Increases and Deep Cuts to Social Service Programs

Obama’s $3.7 Trillion Budget Calls for Military Spending Increases and Deep Cuts to Social Service Programs

"President Obama has unveiled a budget plan seeking to trim the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating some 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education, while increasing military spending and funding for the construction of nuclear power plants."

Liberals, where's your president?  This looks more like Bush III, than any liberal ideas you seemingly uphold.

Number of Prisoners Per Capita: 1st place is U S: 715 per 100,000

# 1 United States: 715 per 100,000 people
# 2 Russia: 584 per 100,000 people
# 3 Belarus: 554 per 100,000 people
# 4 Palau: 523 per 100,000 people
# 5 Belize: 459 per 100,000 people
# 6 Suriname: 437 per 100,000 people
# 7 Dominica: 420 per 100,000 people

Prisoners per capita (most recent) by country

"We're spreading freedom around the world!"

Number of Prisoners: 1st place is America: 2,019,234

# 1 United States: 2,019,234 prisoners
# 2 China: 1,549,000 prisoners
# 3 Russia: 846,967 prisoners
# 4 India: 313,635 prisoners
# 5 Brazil: 308,304 prisoners
# 6 Thailand: 213,815 prisoners
# 7 Ukraine: 198,386 prisoners

Prisoners by country. Definition, graph and map.

"They hate us for our freedoms."

How The First Gulf War Was Started

Government Waste: 20 Of The Craziest Things That The U.S. Government Is Spending Money On

Government Waste: 20 Of The Craziest Things That The U.S. Government Is Spending Money On

#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the "poetry" is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.

#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use. This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.

#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Total Cost Of Wars Exceeds $2.5 Trillion - No Worries! US Media 'Fluff' Numbing Nation, Robbing Next Generation

Lemonaid - The Essence of Bailouts

Chris Whalen With Dylan Ratigan: Which Banks & How Much - Surprises From Bernanke's Forced Disclosure

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hamilton & Jefferson Discuss The Founding Of The United States Treasury (Video From HBO Series John Adams)

41 Facts On The History Of U.S. Central Banking

41 Facts On The History Of U.S. Central Banking - Home - The Daily Bail

#16 In 1816, another central bank was created. The Second Bank of the United States was established and was given a 20 year charter.

#17 Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1828, was determined to end the power of the central bankers over the United States.

#18 In fact, in 1832, Andrew Jackson's re-election slogan was "JACKSON and NO BANK!"

#19 On July 10th, 1832 President Jackson said the following about the danger of a central bank....

"It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners... is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country? ... Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence... would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy."

#20 In 1835, President Jackson completely paid off the U.S. national debt. He is the only U.S. president that has ever been able to accomplish this.

#21 President Jackson vetoed the attempt to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1836.

Ask Yourself This About the Fed...

From the Cato Institute:
"...If you are skeptical about abolishing the Fed, just consider the following question: "Would those who voted for the Fed in 1913 have done so if they had known that:

1. After having a 125-year period of relatively stable money when the dollar was still close to its value in 1790, the dollar would be worth less than 5 cents at the end of the century?

2. The longest and severest depression the country had ever experienced would occur a mere 20 years after the creation of the Fed and that the Fed had a major responsibility for the disaster?

3. And the number of bank failures would increase and not decrease?

The answer clearly would have been "no." Why are we keeping a failed institution?..."

NY Times: Rep. Ron Paul, G.O.P. Loner, Comes In From Cold

Rep. Ron Paul, G.O.P. Loner, Comes In From Cold - NYTimes.com

"If there is vindication here, Mr. Paul says, it is for Austrian economic theory — an anti-Keynesian model that many mainstream economists consider radical and dismiss as magical thinking.

The theory argues that markets operate properly only when they are unfettered by government regulation and intervention. It holds that the government should not have a central bank or dictate economic or monetary policy. Once the government begins any economic planning, such thinking goes, it ends up making all the economic decisions for its citizens, essentially enslaving them."

He's being let in from the cold because he's been right, and everyone else has been wrong.  "Wow, a non-corrupt, principled politician!  What a novelty!"

The Left Hopping on Board the Ron Paul Bandwagon? NPR & The Nation Shower Down Praise

The Nation: Ron Paul's Fight For Transparency : NPR

The congressman is right to make that point, as he is when he argues that:

"State secrecy is anathema to a free society. Why exactly should Americans be prevented from knowing what their government is doing in their name? In a free society we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, however, we are in big trouble. The truth is that our foreign spying, meddling and outright military intervention in the post–World War II era has made us less secure, not more, and we have lost countless lives and spent trillions of dollars for our trouble. Too often it's the official government lies that have given us endless and illegal wars resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and casualties."

The Rise of Ron Paul

Fed Critics Go Mainstream

Watch Jon Stewart's Takedown Of Ben Bernanke's 'Not Printing Money' Claims

Watch Jon Stewart's Takedown Of Ben Bernanke's 'Not Printing Money' Claims

"There's nothing funnier to 99% of America than Ben Bernanke's claim that he's not printing money.

Especially when, thanks to the Jon Stewart, you see Ben's latest 60 Minutes interview juxtaposed against another 60 Minutes interview when the Chairman said he was printing money -- the difference between now and then being that the Fed was buying corporate assets and now it's buying government bonds."

The Purpose of Wikileaks

Majority of Americans Say Fed Should Be Reined In or Abolished, Poll Shows

Majority of Americans Say Fed Should Be Reined In or Abolished, Poll Shows - Bloomberg

"A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a poll shows."

Daniel Ellsberg of The Pentagon Papers Praising Ron Paul

Ron Paul on Wikileaks

Clinton aide's idea: Let Iraq shoot down U.S. plane...A new book says a cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American airman as a pretext for war

Clinton aide's idea: Let Iraq shoot down U.S. plane - War Room - Salon.com

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can ...” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

What this cabinet member suggested to Gen. Shelton is called a "false flag" attack. It is not a conspiracy theory, it is a commonly-used tactic to emotionally move an electorate in a direction you want to move them.  There is a long list of documented cases of these being used, if you want to do a Google search for "false flag."  In this instance, notice the off-the-cuff suggestion to kill Americans. Notice the casual use of scheming to manipulate the American public, and the lengths he was willing to go to make it happen.

Doesn't knowledge of this change the way you read news stories and events?  Understanding how these people think, and the lengths they are willing to go, aren't you forced to look through a more skeptical lens at events as they are reported?

The Fed's Magic Money-Printing Machine, Act 2 - Matt Taibbi

The Fed's Magic Money-Printing Machine, Act 2 -- RollingStone.com

It’s amazing, given the attention the Tea Party allegedly is paying to
government waste and government spending, that there hasn’t been more
controversy about the now-seemingly-inevitable arrival of “QE2” – a
second massive round of money-printing cooked up by the Fed to prop up
both the government and certain sectors of the economy. A more overtly
anticapitalist and oligarchical pattern of behavior than the Fed’s
“Quantitative Easing” program could not possibly be imagined, but the
country is strangely silent on the issue. (bold and underline mine)

The Fed is the problem.  Matt Taibbi sums it up perfectly.

Google Plans Alternative Inflation Index Using Web Data

Economy - Google Plans Alternative Inflation Index Using Web Data - CNBC

chief economist, Hal Varian, highlights how economic data can be gathered far more rapidly using online sources. The official Consumer Price Index data are collected by hand from shops, and only published monthly with a time lag of several weeks.

Private enterprise doing something we've all been told only the government can provide.

U.S. apologizes for Guatemala STD experiments

U.S. apologizes for STD experiments in Guatemala - relationships - TODAYshow.com

U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago.

Again, if I had suggested that the U.S. government was medically-experimenting on people, you would have called me a conspiracy theorist.  Don't stories like this make you read stories about U.S. policy with more skepticism?  I don't see how it wouldn't have that effect, but so many people still seem to think, "Well, they would never do something like that!"

U.N. Report finds Israel "summarily executed" U.S. citizen on flotilla

U.N. Report finds Israel "summarily executed" U.S. citizen on flotilla - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Last week, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a comprehensive report detailing its findings regarding the May, 2010, Israeli attack on the six-ship flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Israel-blockaded Gaza. The report has been largely ignored in the American media despite the fact (or, more accurately: because) it found that much of the Israeli force used "was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers"; that "at least six of the killings can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions"; and that Israel violated numerous international human rights conventions, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions (see p. 38, para. 172).

Let me suggest that if this same report had come out about Iran, it would be running 24 hours a day on Fox News, and demands of an immediate trillion-dollar war would be thrust upon Washington.

Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists'

Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists' - Derek Thompson - Technology - The Atlantic

"The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists" to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. "It's shocking how the system actually works."

The image you have in your mind of Washington politicians as dutiful servants of their electorate is a fantasy.  When are you going to realize that?

Walter Cronkite: Conspracy Theorist!

Cronkite: Osama bin Laden c/o Karl Rove?

CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.

Army embeds active-duty PSYOPS soldiers at local TV stations

Army embeds active-duty PSYOPS soldiers at local TV stations | The Upshot Yahoo! News - Yahoo! News

The U.S. Army has used local television stations in the U.S. as training posts for some of its psychological-operations personnel, The Upshot has learned. Since at least 2001, both WRAL, a CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., and WTOC, a CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., have regularly hosted active-duty soldiers from the Army's 4th Psychological Operations group as part of the Army's Training With Industry program. Training With Industry is designed to offer career soldiers a chance to pick up skills through internships and fellowships with private businesses. The PSYOPS soldiers used WRAL and WTOC to learn broadcasting and communications expertise that they could apply in their mission, as the Army describes it, of "influenc[ing] the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign audiences."

If I had suggested to you that some of American media is in collusion with spy elements of the U.S., you'd have laughed at me and called me a conspiracy theorist.

Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU

A Voice In The Wilderness: Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU

It's almost a done deal. We are about to see herbal preparations disappear, and the ability of herbalists to prescribe them will also be lost.

Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011—less than eight months from now—virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union.

Regulations, especially now with the corporate-government cronyism in full swing, are nothing more than one industry trying to hurt their competitors. How is making herbs ILLEGAL in the EU helping citizens?  Come on people, wake up.

Killing Each Taliban Soldier Costs $50 Million

poorrichard's blog: Killing Each Taliban Soldier Costs $50 Million

The Pentagon will not tell the public what it costs to locate, target and kill a single Taliban soldier because the price-tag is so scandalously high that it makes the Taliban appear to be Super-Soldiers. As set out in this article, the estimated cost to kill each Taliban is as high as $100 million, with a conservative estimate being $50 million. A public discussion should be taking place in the United States regarding whether the Taliban have become too expensive an enemy to defeat.