The American People Are Angry
The American people are angry. They are angry that they are being forced to live through the worst recession in our lifetimes -- with sky-high unemployment, with millions of people losing their homes and their life savings. They are angry that they will not have a decent retirement, that they can't afford to send their children to college, that they can't afford health insurance and that, in some cases, they can't even buy the food they need to adequately feed their families.
They are angry because they know that this recession was not caused by the middle class and working families of this country. It was not caused by the teachers, firefighters and police officers and their unions who are under attack all over the country. It was not caused by construction workers, factory workers, nurses or childcare workers.
This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And, what makes people furious is that Wall Street still has not learned its lessons. Instead of investing in the job-creating productive economy providing affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses, the CEOs of the largest financial institutions in this country have created the largest gambling casino in the history of the world.
Four years ago, after spending billions of dollars to successfully fight for the deregulation of Wall Street, the CEOs of the big banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and the others -- went on a losing streak. The enormous bets they made on worthless, complex, and exotic financial instruments went bad, and they stuck the American people with the bill.
Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. But it was not just the $700 billion that Congress approved through the TARP program. As a result of an independent audit that I requested in the Dodd-Frank bill by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in virtually zero-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, large corporations, foreign central banks throughout the world, and some of the wealthiest people in this country.
And, instead of using this money to provide affordable loans to small businesses, instead of putting this money back into the job-creating productive economy, what have they done? They have gone back to their days of running the largest gambling casino in the world. In other words, they have learned nothing.
The American people are angry because they see the great middle class of this country collapsing, poverty increasing and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grow wider. They are angry because they see this great country, which so many of our veterans fought for and died for, becoming an oligarchy -- a nation where our economic and political life are controlled by a handful of billionaire families.
In the United States today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since the 1920s. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of America -- 150 million people.
Today, the six heirs to the Walmart fortune own as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent.
Today, the top 1 percent own 40 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns 2 percent.
Incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of all Americans own just 0.3 percent of the wealth of the country.
According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for middle class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. That's the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle class family.
The distribution of income is even worse. If you can believe it, the last study on this subject showed that in 2010, 93 percent of all new income created from the previous year went to the top one percent, while the bottom 99 percent of people had the privilege of enjoying the remaining 7 percent. In other words, the rich are getting much richer while almost everyone else is falling behind.
Not only is this inequality of wealth and income morally grotesque, it is bad economic policy. If working families are deeply in debt, and have little or no income to spend on goods and services, how can we expand the economy and create the millions of jobs we desperately need? There is a limit as to how many yachts, mansions, limos and fancy jewelry the super-rich can buy. We need to put income into the hands of working families.
A lot of my friends in the Senate talk a whole lot about our $15.8 trillion national debt and our $1.3 trillion deficit. In fact, deficit reduction is a very serious issue and will be one of the major issues of this campaign. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues forget to discuss how we got into this deficit situation in the first place, and how we went from a healthy surplus under President Clinton to record-breaking deficits under Bush.
When we talk about the national debt and the deficit, let us never forget that the current deficit was primarily caused by Bush's unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine that! President Bush and his deficit hawks forgot to pay for two wars which will end up costing us trillions of dollars. It just plain slipped their minds. On top of that, for the first time in American history Bush and his Republican friends decided, during a war, to give out huge tax breaks -- including massive benefits for millionaires and billionaires. Even more importantly, the deficit is the result of a major decline in federal tax revenue because of the high unemployment and business losses that we are experiencing as a result of this recession -- caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street. Revenue as a percentage of GDP, at 15.2 percent, is the lowest in more than 60 years.
Despite the causes of the deficit, our Republican (and some Democratic) friends have decided that the best way forward toward deficit reduction is to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, food stamps and virtually every other programs of importance to low and moderate income families. We must not allow that to happen.
If we are serious about dealing with the deficit and creating jobs in America, the wealthy are going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes. We also have to end the massive tax loopholes and subsidies that exist for major corporations. (In that regard, Rep. Keith Ellison from Minnesota and I recently introduced legislation that would end all tax breaks and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry). At a time when the United States now spends more money on defense than the rest of the world combined, we also have to cut back on military spending.
Yes, we should deal with the deficit. But not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor!
Most importantly, when we talk about what's happening in America, we have to address the unemployment crisis in this country which now finds 23 million Americans without jobs or who are under-employed. And we know how to do that.
We know that the fastest way to create decent-paying jobs is rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail, airports, water systems, wastewater plants, deteriorating schools, etc.) We also know that we can create a great deal of employment by transforming our energy system away from foreign oil and coal and into energy efficiency and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geo-thermal, bio-mass and other clean technologies. We also know that, as our country fights fierce global competition, it is absurd to be laying-off educators and making college unaffordable.
While we continue to do everything we can during the next six months to defeat Republican right-wing extremism, it is also important that we never lose sight of the progressive vision that we are fighting for. If we don't know where we want to go, it will be impossible to get there. Some of the issues that I intend to raise are the following:
Not only must we resist cuts in Social Security, we must lift the cap on taxing higher incomes so that Social Security will be strong for the next 75 years.
Not only must we oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, we must see health care as a right of all and continue the fight for a Medicare for All Single Payer health care system.
Not only must we oppose placing the burden of deficit reduction on the backs of working families, we must demand a progressive tax system in which the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.
Not only must we oppose cuts in unemployment compensation, we must fight for a jobs program that creates the many millions of jobs our country desperately needs.
Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so that American products, not jobs, are our number one export.
And, not only must we vigorously oppose the war against women, we must fight to end all forms of discrimination and prejudice in this country.
The struggle we are engaged in right now is of pivotal importance for this country. Whether we win or lose will determine the future of America. That struggle is not just for our lives but, more importantly, it is for our children and our grandchildren.
Despair is not an option. I know people get angry, I know they get frustrated, I know they get disgusted. But we don't have the right to give up and turn our backs on our children and grandchildren.
Our job is to simply bring to fruition what the overwhelming majority of the American people want. They want an economy that works for the middle class and working families and not just for the rich. They want everybody in this country to have health care as a right. They want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They want to move away from these gross inequalities in income and wealth.
We have the people behind us. They have the money. And at the end of the day, the people will be stronger than the money.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SenSanders
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Mr. Sanders;
"The struggle we are engaged in right now is of pivotal importance for this country. Whether we win or lose will determine the future of America. That struggle is not just for our lives but, more importantly, it is for our children and our grandchildren.
Despair is not an option. I know people get angry, I know they get frustrated, I know they get disgusted. But we don't have the right to give up and turn our backs on our children and grandchildren.
Our job is to simply bring to fruition what the overwhelming majority of the American people want. They want an economy that works for the middle class and working families and not just for the rich. They want everybody in this country to have health care as a right. They want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They want to move away from these gross inequalities in income and wealth.
We have the people behind us. They have the money. And at the end of the day, the people will be stronger than the money."
Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance, The Bankers Who Broke the World, discusses the parallels between the Great Depression and the Financial Crisis of today at The American Academy of Berlin.
I concur heartily with Mr. Ahamed on the primary causes of the bubble and collapse, especially with regard to the enormous policy errors of the Greenspan Fed.
But I always find it annoying that the conscious, widespread fraud that was promoted by Wall Street, both in 1929 and in the most recent crisis, is rarely discussed as the major corrupting influence that distorted both economic and monetary policy and the real economy.
I cannot speak to the 1920s, but there is little doubt in my mind that there was a concerted effort to game and corrupt the financial system that gained a major momentum in the 1990s, and that culminated in the financial collapse and economic malaise and instability that is plaguing the world today.
One needs look at the actions of Messrs. Greenspan, Rubin, and Weil, and the political administrations during Clinton and Bush and Obama, to begin to penetrate the veil of secrecy.
The only mania and madness of the people was in trusting the words of demagogues and conmen, and their associated supporters and enablers. And even today people continue to mouth their false slogans and fatal prescriptions.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained growth and recovery.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but didn't that cunning rogue Chief Justice John Roberts pour a jug of Karo syrup into the gas tank of America's twelve trillion cylinder engine? Or, put another way (forgive the metaphor juke), didn't he just give President Obama enough rope to hang himself? Out to dry, that is. Roberts must know exactly what he is doing: prompting x-million young and/or poor voters to an election year tea party tax revolt. The Obama health care reform will henceforth be defined as a tax against people too economically strapped to buy health insurance - in other words, a gross injustice, courtesy of Obama.
Or call it a poison pill. Obama gets to brag that the heart of his 2700-page reform package stands - at the expense of the very people it was designed to protect. Forget about the niceties regarding the interstate commerce clause and other chatter points. This was all about Chief Justice Roberts interfering in a presidential election in a most mischievous way. He might as well have just heated up a branding iron that spelled out T-A-X and applied it to Mr. Obama's forehead.
Of course, with or without the so-called reform, the American health care system remains a hostage racket. When you are sick, you will do anything to get better, and the system knows it. You will sign onto any agreement to keep yourself alive, even if the health care system ends up taking your house and your children's educations. It is a well-established fact that the chief cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is unpayable medical bills on the part of people who have health insurance. It is considered bad manners to inquire of a surgeon what his fee might be for a life-saving operation. Anyway, you don't want to know because it will be a figure with no anchor in the reality of hours spent or services rendered. Ditto the folks who run the hospital, where there is no reality-based relationship between things dispensed and prices charged. It's simple racketeering and true health care reform would be the vigorous application of Department of Justice attorneys on the doctors, pharma companies, insurers, hospitals, and HMOs who are engaged in routine, systematic swindling. But the truth is, we don't want to remove the swindle and the grift, we just want to find some way to get the American public to pay for their own shakedown.
Before you get too exercised over the multiple idiocies and injustices of the current American medical situation just reflect for a moment that the whole creaking system cannot possibly survive no matter what the Supreme Court might have ruled or whatever Obama sought to accomplish. The US economic system is about to blow up. The banking sector has been kept technically alive on the life-support of accounting fraud since 2008, but that artful racket is coming to an end because sooner or later the abstraction called "money" must make truthful representations of itself in relation to reality, or else people cease to accept its claims of value. Without a functioning banking system none of the rackets organized into US health care can continue.
The eventual destination of health care, like everything else in society categorically, is a much smaller, more modest, more local scale of operation. We'll be lucky if the people with medical expertise can reorganize the wreckage of the system into something resembling small local clinics with all the costly and pernicious racketeering bureaucracy peeled off it. The insurance companies will be in the elephants' graveyard of failed institutions. Let's hope the doctors and their support staff remember to wash their hands.
Up here, medical is all free, but you sometimes have to push hard to get the other government benefits, otherwise you are denied. Seemsa they have a score of beurocrats whose sole job is to find reasons to deny benefits.
No shortage of doctors up here, mot of whom are good, or at least half of them! Still, Western medicine is all about selling you addictive medicines, not curing.
I have great sympathy for the situation in USA and pray for your soon emancipation. We love your honesty, Mother Parvati Devi maharani. ( maharani is a term of endearment used in speaking to a brahmaness sometimes, maharajah for a male. )
THEY’RE NOT LAUGHING ANYMORE
A remarkable blog, www.dailystaghunt.com, reviewed recordings of Fed Open Market Committee meetings between 2000 and 2006 and, interestingly, noted the frequency of laughter during meetings, observing: The number of recorded laughs actually increased in frequency from 2000 to 2006. In 2001, the FOMC erupted into laughter 16.5 times per meeting on average. In 2003, it was over 19. In 2005, 27. And then in 2006, the FOMC burst into laughter nearly 44 times per meeting!
As the 2007/2008 financial crisis grew closer, central bankers grew increasingly relaxed and confident; believing their extremely low 1 % interest rates had worked; that they had survived the collapse of the greatest speculative bubble in the US since the 1920s—the collapse of the 2000 dot.com bubble—and all was well.
But those in attendance, Greenspan, Bernanke, Fisher, Mishkin, Krozner et. al., were wrong. Their fatally flawed solution to the collapse of the dot.com bubble, low 1 % interest rates, had given birth to an even more dangerous bubble, the 2002-2006 US real estate bubble, the largest speculative bubble in the world whose collapse would bring down the world economy in 2007/2008.
Of course, this wasn’t known in 2006. In 2006, central bankers were still laughing.
Frequency of laughter during FOMC meetings
Year Average laughs per meeting
2000 16.5
2001 15.375
2002 21.625
2003 19.25
2004 23.125
2005 27.25
2006 43.875
Data on the frequency of laughter at FOMC meetings after 2006 is not yet available. But it can be assumed the frequency subsided after the massive global credit contraction in August 2007 and after the collapse of world markets in 2008.
Note: the possibility that FOMC laughter remained high or actually increased after 2006 is far too macabre to consider. We do, however, await additional data before passing judgment.
Michael Connelly
The first article I wrote and posted on this blog was in August 2009 and it was titled “The Truth About the Health Care Bills.” It was based on my reading of the original 1100 pages of H.R. 3299 that was the first of the proposed bills. Based on what I read in that bill and other proposals I made a number of predictions about what would happen if the bill passed. I was immediately viscously attacked by those on the left who believe freedom of speech is only allowed if you agree with them.
I received death threats, was called every name in the book, and people claimed that I was lying about being an attorney and a Constitutional Law Instructor. The group “Media Matters” funded by George Soros went berserk as did some other left wing so called “fact check” groups that never really disputed the facts I presented, but challenged my opinions.
In any case, the law that finally passed was 2700 pages long and in most respects is worse than the original. It is now being enforced and the horror is unfolding. I have therefore reposted by original article below and made comments in bold black to illustrate how, unfortunately, most of the things I predicted are now reality.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HEALTHCARE BILLS
Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.
To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved,(Various panels made up of bureaucrats appointed by the Obama administration will decide health care expenditures under Medicare, and decide what patients will receive specific types of care. They will also choose the doctors and hospitals that can be used by each patient. This is a direct interference with the doctor patient relationship and is clearly rationing.)free health care for illegal immigrants, (millions of dollars have been appropriated to set up clinics in certain states to provide free medical treatment for immigrants. However, employees of the clinics are prohibited from asking patients about their legal status.) free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.(Doctors and nurses are not yet being forced to perform abortions, but religious institutions are being forced to finance free contraception, and abortion inducing morning after pills, despite the fact that this violates their religious beliefs and is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. The next step will certainly be mandating that Catholic hospitals and others provide full abortion services.)
The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. (Although the so called “public option” was removed from the final version of the health care bill it is still alive and well in the minds of most proponents of the legislation. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the mainstream news media all assured Americans that under Obamacare health care costs and insurance premiums would decline. The exact opposite is true. Health care costs continue to rise and so do insurance premiums. Small businesses can’t afford to provide insurance for their employees and the employees can’t afford it on their own. In addition, insurance companies are being forced to provide benefits that will ultimately force many of them to price themselves out of business.) All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled. (Under the provisions of Obamacare some 138 new Federal agencies or committees have been established to make many of the decisions on your health care that were previously made by you and your physician. The most heinous of the provisions in the law in this area places a tax on artificial limbs including those being provided to elderly veterans, and our troops that have wounded fighting for our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Veterans Administration will not pay the tax so these heroes and their families will have to pick up the tab. The same is not true for illegal aliens. They can get them at taxpayer expense.)
However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.
The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care. (Ironically, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the individual mandate portion of the law passed by Congress was not constitutionally permissible under either the commerce clause or the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution. However, using some bizarre reasoning five Justices found it Constitutional under the taxing power of Congress. They ignored the Constitutional requirement that all tax laws must originate in the House of Representatives, while the final version of Obamacare originated in the Senate. The bottom line is that Congress passed a piece of legislation without reading it and it gave Obama and the Executive Branch the power to make over 4,000 decisions on every aspect of health care without any Congressional approval or oversight.)
This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration to of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. (This is all in the process of being implemented under the rules and regulations being adopted as a result of the law.) All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.
If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law. (When this original article was written the penalty for not complying with the original mandate was styled as a tax. Then to quell some of the overwhelming opposition to the proposed law, it became a penalty or a fine. Now the Supreme Court has ruled that it is in fact a tax. I personally don’t care what it is called, or what the five Justices on the Supreme Court say, it is still unconstitutional.)
So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control. (The only victory in the Obamacare court challenge for those who support the Constitution came when the Court ruled that the federal government could not compel the states to put millions of people on the Medicaid rolls without any way to finance it. This was a victory for the 10th Amendment, but what about we the people and our rights under the 9th and 10th Amendments? Apparently those don’t exist any longer.)
I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable. (This paragraph is self explanatory and I stand by it.)
For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
And another to the Bill of Rights: www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.
Michael Connelly
mrobertc@hotmail.com
www.michaelconnelly.jigsy.com
www.constitution.jigsy.com
The story you read below has been banned in the United States of America and has also been removed from it's original source at the Russian website Pravda. It was written by retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Sellin PHD. More about the author of this story can be found at www.familysecuritymatters.org/authors/detail/lawrence-sellin.
The solution for the United States is not to elect more "good" people to government because they are quickly co-opted and compromised by the corrupt political system.
It may sound cynical, but the solution is to make it politically advantageous for bad people to do the right thing.
It is not now politically advantageous for either the Democrat or the Republican Party to tell the truth about Barack Obama; that he is an illegal President and very likely a felon, who has a forged birth certificate, a forged Selective Service registration and is using a Social Security Number not issued to him.
Both parties are steadfastly protecting Obama to protect their investment in the corrupt political status quo.
The formula is simple. To keep themselves permanently in office, members of Congress collect taxes nationwide, they then use the proceeds to repay wealthy financiers with tax loopholes or government loans and buy constituent votes through local tax-funded projects.
The American people have given Congress a credit card with no limit. Rather than themselves being financially penalized for their largesse, members of Congress simply pass the debt along to ordinary Americans and future generations, while they enrich themselves through the power granted them to spend our money.
The larger the federal government, the greater the number of opportunities arise for politicians to benefit from the scam.
Is anyone surprised that 50% of Congress members are millionaires compared to the 1% millionaires in the United States as a whole?
Both Democrats and Republican recognize that exposing Obama will lead to a bloodbath of revelations about their complicity to undermine the Constitution and flout the rule of law, which would jeopardize their comfortable lifestyles. The truth would generate genuine outrage among the American people.
Even a Republican Presidential candidate, explaining the conspiracy of silence about Obama, once indicated off-camera that the issue runs much deeper than people realize.
That is why discussion of Obama's ineligibility and his alleged crimes is suppressed by politicians and the mainstream media. They all have too much to lose.
As part of their effort to undermine the rights granted by the Constitution, Congress has actively pursued legislation to limit free speech.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In February 2012, the Republican-led US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of House Resolution 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 or more aptly dubbed the "First Amendment Rights Eradication Act", which makes free speech a felony under certain circumstances.
H.R. 347, which has been signed into law by Barack Obama, will allow the government to bring charges to protesters, demonstrators and activists at political events and other outings across America.
It is no longer possible to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Our elected officials not only ignore the voice of the people, but they are now taking steps to silence that voice.
Abraham Lincoln said that the American people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
The time has come for mass public action by ordinary Americans against those who are perverting the Constitution.
Exposing Obama before the November election will shake the entire corrupt political system to its core and create a window of opportunity for the American people to take back control of their government.
Post the following in every public area in the country:
"Barack Obama, an illegal President, a stolen Social Security Number, a forged birth certificate, a forged Selective Service registration."
Force the corrupt politicians to do the right thing. Force them to tell the truth.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership". He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com
Source: LINK`http`webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/13-07-2012/121651-obama_corrup...`webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LINK
MANESAR, India (Reuters) - Indian police were searching on Thursday for 3,000 people they want to detain after one person was killed and scores injured in a riot at a car factory in the north of the country.
Hundreds of police have secured the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, arresting 88 people after property was smashed and parts of the factory set on fire during Wednesday's violence, police said.
Labor unrest at the factory, where the union has accused India's biggest car manufacturer of anti-worker and anti-union activities, cost the company more than $500 million in lost production in 2011.
Wednesday's violence flared after a disciplinary incident against one employee. Company officials say workers began to attack senior management during discussions, while the workers' union said its representatives were attacked first.
"The police have taken charge of the premises," Maruti Suzuki spokesman Puneet Dhawan said. "One body was recovered from the premises. It is charred beyond recognition."
A human resources manager at the plant is missing and his family has been flown in to identify the body, said Maheshwar Dayal, deputy commissioner of police in Gurgaon, the nearest major city to Manesar.
A Maruti source, who declined to be identified, confirmed that a human resources manager was missing.
"We have created a special investigative team to look for the leaders of the riot. We will make more arrests soon," Dayal said.
Ei Mochizuki, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Suzuki Motor Corp , which controls the Indian carmaker, said one local employee had died and two Japanese employees had been hospitalized after the unrest.
The factory, which can make 550,000 vehicles a year and accounts for around a third of Maruti's total output, would remain closed on Thursday, the company said.
Shares in the carmaker, which saw its sales fall 11 percent in the fiscal year to March, partly due to the protracted labor strikes, fell as much as 9.4 percent on Thursday.
MURDER CHARGES
Iron rods and other sharp tools lay scattered outside the factory gate on Thursday, next to a burned out security building, as 1,200 police officers secured the site, around 40 km (25 miles) south of New Delhi.
Fifty management personnel and 9 police officers were injured during the clashes, Dayal said.
Those arrested could be charged with murder, attempt to murder and arson, said K.K. Sindhu, commissioner of police in Gurgaon.
Maruti and the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) said the violence stemmed from a disciplinary incident involving one employee.
"To resolve the issue amicably, members of the senior management met the union. During the talks, the workers attacked the members of the senior management, executives and managers," Maruti said in a statement late on Wednesday.
MSWU president Ram Meher accused the company of "anti-worker and anti-union activities" in a statement on Thursday.
"The gates were closed by the security on behest of the management and the bouncers brutally attacked the workers with sharp weapons and arms," Ram Meher said in the statement.
"They, joined by some of the managerial staff and police later, beat up a number of workers who have had to be hospitalized with serious injuries. The bouncers, who are anti-social elements on hire, also destroyed company property and set fire to a portion of the factory," Meher said.
The union is keen to talk with the company and government officials to resolve the dispute, Meher added.
Late last year, Maruti brokered a deal with workers that ended weeks of strikes and protests which cut into sales and market share.
"This incident shows that the management have also not learned anything from the last three strikes ... in 2011," D.L. Sachdev, national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress, told reporters.
Charan Lal Sharma, labor minister for the state of Haryana, where the factory is located, told ET Now television channel that he was travelling to the site to discuss the issue.
(Writing and reporting by Henry Foy in MUMBAI; Additional reporting by Kentaro Sugiyama in TOKYO; Editing by Tony Munroe and Daniel Magnowski)