40 Questions That AMERICANS Should be ASKING Right NOW

40 Hard Questions That Americans Should Be Asking Right Now

http://theeconomicchttp://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/40-hard-questions-that-the-american-people-should-be-asking-right-nowollapseblog.



If you spend much time watching the mainstream news, then you know how incredibly vapid it can be. It is amazing how they can spend so much time saying next to nothing. There seems to be a huge reluctance to tackle the tough issues and the hard questions. Perhaps I should be thankful for this, because if the mainstream media was doing their job properly, there would not be a need for the alternative media. Once upon a time, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the dissemination of news in the United States, but that has changed.

Thankfully, the Internet in the United States is free and open (at least for now) and people that are hungry for the truth can go searching for it. Today, an increasing number of Americans want to understand why our economy is dying and why our national debt is skyrocketing. An increasing number of Americans are deeply frustrated with what is going on in Washington D.C. and they are alarmed that we seem to get closer to becoming a totalitarian police state with each passing year.

People want real answers about our foreign policy, about our corrupt politicians, about our corrupt financial system, about our shocking moral decline and about the increasing instability that we are seeing all over the world, and they are not getting those answers from the mainstream media.

If the mainstream media will not do it, then those of us in the alternative media will be glad to tackle the tough issues. The following are 40 hard questions that the American people should be asking right now....

#1 If Iran tries to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, what will that do to the price of oil and what will that do to the global economy?

#2 If Iran tries to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, will the United States respond by launching a military strike on Iran?

#3 Why is the Federal Reserve bailing out Europe? And why are so few members of Congress objecting to this?

#4 The U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of incompetence that is absolutely mind blowing. So what possible justification is there for allowing the Federal Reserve to continue to issue our currency and run our economy?

#5 Why does the euro keep dropping like a rock? Is this a sign that Europe is heading for a major recession?

#6 Why are European banks parking record-setting amounts of cash at the European Central Bank? Is this evidence that banks don't want to lend to one another and that we are on the verge of a massive credit crunch?

#7 If the European financial system is going to be just fine, then why is the UK government preparing feverishly for the collapse of the euro?

#8 What did the head of the IMF mean when she recently said that we could soon see conditions "reminiscent of the 1930s depression"?

#9 How in the world can Mitt Romney say with a straight face that the individual health insurance mandate that he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts was based on "conservative principles"? Wouldn't that make the individual mandate in Obamacare "conservative" as well?

#10 If the one thing that almost everyone in the Republican Party seems to agree on is that Obamacare is bad, then why is the candidate that created the plan that much of Obamacare was based upon leading in so many of the polls?

#11 What did Mitt Romney mean when he stated that he wants “to eliminate some of the differences, repeal the bad, and keep the good” in Obamacare?

#12 If no Republican candidate is able to accumulate at least 50 percent of the delegates by the time the Republican convention rolls around, will that mean that the Republicans will have a brokered convention that will enable the Republican establishment to pick whoever they want as the nominee?

#13 Why are middle class families being taxed into oblivion while the big oil companies receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks a year from the federal government?

#14 Why have we allowed the "too big to fail" banks to become even larger?

#15 Why has the United States had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976?

#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs. How in the world could we allow that to happen?

#17 If the United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, then why don't our politicians do something about it?

#18 If you can believe it, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have permanently closed down since 2001. So exactly what does that say about our economy?

#19 Why was the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall made in China? Wasn't there anyone in America that could make it?

#20 If low income jobs now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States, then how are we going to continue to have a vibrant middle class?

#21 Why do the poor just keep getting poorer in the United States today?

#22 How can the Obama administration be talking about an "economic recovery" when 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty?

#23 Why has the number of new cars sold in the U.S. declined by about 50 percent since 1985?

#24 How can we say that we have a successful national energy policy when the average American household will spend a whopping $4,155 on gasoline by the end of this year?

#25 Why does it take gigantic mountains of money to get a college education in America today? According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark in early 2012. Isn't there something very wrong about that?

#26 Why do about a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who don’t pay their bills to be put in jail?

#27 If it costs tens of billions of dollars to take care of all of the illegal immigrants that are already in this country, why did the Obama administration go around Congress and grant "backdoor amnesty" to the vast majority of them? Won't that just encourage millions more to come in illegally?

#28 Why are gun sales setting new all-time records in America right now?

#29 Why are very elderly women being strip-searched by TSA agents at U.S. airports? Does that really keep us any safer?

#30 The last words of Steve Jobs were "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." What did he mean by that?

#31 How in the world did scientists in Europe decide that it was a good idea for them to create a new "killer bird flu" that is very easy to pass from human to human?

#32 If our founding fathers intended to set up a limited central government, then why does the federal government just continue to get bigger and bigger?

#33 Are we on the verge of an absolutely devastating retirement crisis? On January 1st, 2011 the very first of the Baby Boomers started to reach the age of 65. Now more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be turning 65 every single day for the next two decades. So where in the world are we going to get all the money we need to pay them the retirement benefits that we have promised them?

#34 If the federal government stopped all borrowing today and began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the U.S. national debt. So does anyone out there actually still believe that the U.S. national debt will be paid off someday?

#35 If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are an all-time record 46 million Americans now on food stamps?

#36 How can we say that we have the greatest economy on earth when we have a child poverty rate that is more than twice as high as France and one out of every four American children is on food stamps?

#37 Since 1964, the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House of Representatives has never fallen below 85 percent. So are the American people really that stupid that they would keep sending the exact same Congress critters back to Washington D.C. over and over and over?

#38 What does it say about our society that nearly one-third of all Americans are arrested by the time they reach the age of 23?

#39 Why do so many of our politicians think that it is a good idea to allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens on American soil and indefinitely detain them without a trial?

#40 A new bill being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would give the U.S. government power to shut down any website that is determined to "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. Many believe that the language of the new law is so vague that it would allow the government to permanently shut down any website that even links very briefly to "infringing material".

Prominent websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would be constantly in danger of being given a "death penalty". The American people need to ask their members of Congress this question: Do you plan to vote for SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act)? If the answer is yes, that is a clear indication that you should never cast a single vote for that member of Congress ever again.

40 Questions That AMERICANS Should be ASKING Right NOW

Gardening for the Survivalist

Gardening for the Survivalist

U.S. Army prepares to invade U.S.

U.S. Army prepares to invade U.S.

An Arabic Christmas Carol (Byzantine Hymn of the Nativity)

An Arabic Christmas Carol (Byzantine Hymn of the Nativity)

qualia and other wildlife: the next military dictatorship

qualia and other wildlife: the next military dictatorship

qualia and other wildlife: the next military dictatorship

The Police State and Occupy Wall Street | MichaelMoore.com

The Police State and Occupy Wall Street | MichaelMoore.com

The Police State and Occupy Wall Street

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 11:53 pm

(Photo by Adam Lempel)
We Don’t Live In a Free Society:
I wrote an article over a month ago exposing the Obama administration’s crackdown on civil liberties. The piece begins with the assertion that “the United States is still the freest country in the world.” I was curious to see how readers would react. A number of people commented that such a statement is so delusional that they had to stop reading. At the time I thought they were perhaps overreacting. But after witnessing the state’s crackdown on Occupy Wall Street it has become clear that they were right. We do not live in a free society.
Perhaps the most basic right in a democracy is, to quote the Constitution, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” If we cannot do this we don’t live in a real democracy. I’ve been aware that our democracy is a sham for some time. Prior to Occupy Wall Street I understood that our government has been completely hijacked by corporate interests, rendering the political process pure theatre. I had also been familiar with the fact that the state has cracked down on demonstrators on many occasions.
But my experience at Occupy Wall Street has served as a serious reality check about just how free our society is. The disproportionate police presence surrounding the rebellion exists for one reason— to intimidate us. Since day one, the state has sent an enormous supply of cops to monitor us, threaten us, arrest us, and beat us up. Well over 800 people have been arrested. And for what? For exercising their most basic right. Meanwhile, the criminals on Wall Street who have trashed the global economy, stolen trillions from the taxpayers in bailouts and continue to engage in the same speculative practices that got us into this mess have faced no retribution. The CEOs at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and AIG have not been arrested. They continue to reap millions in bonuses and deferred stock options. And they use the state to send the cops out to crush resistance. JP Morgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the NYPD. Clearly, they approve of the brutality.
As someone who grew up in New York, I have been to Wall Street many times. In my experience there has never been a police presence even remotely comparable to what we’ve seen at Occupy Wall Street, even on days when there were high terror alerts. At times, at least in the early days of the protest, it felt like there were more police officers than demonstrators. The message is clear—don’t come out, stay home, be afraid. But we are not afraid.
I haven’t been arrested so far, but I have had a surreal experience of my own. On Tuesday last week someone hacked into and shut down my Web Site, which had been receiving thousands of page hits a day. It was frightening and surprising, though in retrospect I should have anticipated it. As with the police brutality, I had previously been familiar with the government’s abuse of surveillance power in the aftermath of 9/11. The Patriot Act allows them to spy on us and do what they like with full impunity. And the surveillance state, much like the military apparatus, is dominated by private, mercenary corporate contractors. But it’s one thing to read about someone else’s brush up with the police state; it’s another to experience it yourself.
The measures taken by our government against Occupy Wall Street resemble what occurs in dictatorships and third world countries. The police refuse to let protestors sleeping overnight at Liberty Plaza set up tents to block the rain, which has been torrential at times. I have spoken to numerous people who say they have either gotten sick or will eventually catch a fever because of such conditions. They consider this treatment cruel and unusual punishment.
On Saturday, according to many eyewitnesses, the police set up the protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge for mass arrests. I arrived too late to join the demonstration. By the time I got there, the area was swarming with cops. I asked one officer where the protestors were. He said they were on the bridge and being arrested because they were “blocking traffic.” I knew he had made false charges and tried to get onto the bridge to see for myself. But the police had blocked off the area and forced everyone to leave.
Every witness I spoke to afterwards confirmed that the NYPD trapped the marchers. It was the police who had blocked traffic, not demonstrators. The protestors were initially marching on the pedestrian walkway, and a huge row of cops had shut down the bridge in the direction towards Brooklyn, luring demonstrators into a trap by creating the appearance that it was permissible to walk on the road. When the crowd moved onto the road, a new row of officers sealed them in from behind, rolling out thick orange tape, and they started arresting people indiscriminately without warning and provoking violence (see footage at end of article). In one of the largest mass arrests in American history, the NYPD incarcerated over 700 people, forced them to sit in massive buses, about ten vehicles in total, and sent them to prison. This is terrorism.
Everyone was terrified. One girl I spoke to said she nearly had a panic attack and had braced for an arrest, though she managed to escape. Another person I interviewed, a lawyer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania named Allen, told me “people started preparing for pepper spray,” although mercifully the police didn’t resort to such measures because of the bad press from two Saturdays ago.
Allen says he came to Wall Street precisely because he had heard about the police brutality two Saturdays ago and wanted to resist such brazen violations of his rights, which he thinks “is a reason to be deeply concerned,” adding, “if you don’t exercise your rights you’ll lose them.” He explains that we are perhaps headed towards full-blown totalitarianism—“these things happen in increments. By the time it becomes pure totalitarianism, you won’t even realize it. They’ve been conditioning us to get used to losing our rights. They put up cameras all over this park, the CIA trains the NYPD, which is illegal—the CIA is required to engage only in foreign affairs, not domestic— they spy on our conversations and online activity.”
He declares that “the message of today’s march is to tell Americans to wake up. We have the power, if we stick together, to restore our rights.” He says he feels a stronger sense of resolve now than before he participated in the march on the Brooklyn Bridge, exclaiming, “you don’t become less determined because the cops are out to get you,” and, “when the police spend that much time and resources to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, you realize they’re scared.” Everyone I have spoken to at Occupy Wall Street shares this attitude.
The crackdown on Occupy Wall Street is part of a much broader trend. The police state has been spying on American dissidents without any evidence of wrongdoing and brutally breaking up protests it does not like. The state cut off cell phone service in one recent case. At the G20 Summit protest in Pittsburgh last year, the government militarized the area, bringing in contractors from Fallujah and setting up check points. America has militarized its police force, sending SWAT teams to conduct raids on over 40,000 American homes a year (that’s right). And now, the government has done the unthinkable—murdered a U.S. citizen without evidence of criminal conduct or any semblance of due process.
Shortly before he died, George Carlin did a bit on how we do not have and have never really had rights. I quote in full:
“Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you’re at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in, ‘Japanese-Americans 1942,’ and you’ll find out all about your precious fucking rights…
In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was… right this way! Into the internment camps.
Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away. And rights aren’t rights if someone can take ‘em away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY privileges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter. Yah, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn’t give a fuck about them. The government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. It simply doesn’t give a fuck about you. It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing; keeping it, and expanding wherever possible.”
The only antidote to this nefarious trend is to join the rebellion. Come out to Wall Street, help us through our Web Site if you can’t, start your own resistance in your local community, occupy a bank, talk to people, get the word out. We can change things for the better. We can take the power back and transform our corppratocracy into a real democracy.http://thebloodycrossroads.com/442/the-police-state-and-occupy-wall-street/
http://thebloodycrossroads.com/442/the-police-state-and-occupy-wall-street/

The Police State and Occupy Wall Street | MichaelMoore.com

MSNBC: Wall Street Protests

MSNBC: Wall Street Protests

Inmates paying for stay in jail may have little impact locally - Kentucky New Era: Home

Inmates paying for stay in jail may have little impact locally - Kentucky New Era: Home: A new law passed by the 2000 General Assembly allowing county
jails to charge inmates for their stay may have little impact on
Christian Count…

Inmates paying for stay in jail may have little impact locally - Kentucky New Era: Home

Technology Nanotechnology & the "Grey Goo"

Technology Nanotechnology & the "Grey Goo"

Technology Nanotechnology & the "Grey Goo"

Remembering Steve Jobs’ Record on Workers’ Rights | MichaelMoore.com

Remembering Steve Jobs’ Record on Workers’ Rights | MichaelMoore.com

Remembering Steve Jobs’ Record on Workers’ Rights | MichaelMoore.com