OPINOINS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
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YEAR FIVE
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OBOF
YEAR FIVE INDEX
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OBOF
TYMHM
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Jan.
07, 2015
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OBOF
TYMHM Vol 15 - No 1
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Jan.
19, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 2
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Feb. 03, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 3
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Feb. 23, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 4
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Mar. 02, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 5
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Mar. 06, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 6
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Mar. 13, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 7
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Mar. 23, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 8
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Mar. 28,
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 9
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Apr. 13,
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May 02,
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 11
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May 09,
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 12
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May 19, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 13
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May 26, 2015
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TYMHM Vol 15 - No 14
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May 29, 2015
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Agenda
1.
The Economic Tsunami Gathering Momentum Off the Shores of America
2. A
Letter Carrier’s Special Delivery
to
Congress
From Floyd:
I am actually getting a posting out on Friday, be it a short
one. I think you will find it worth your
time.
The Economic Tsunami Gathering Momentum Off the Shores of America
Author:
Michael Payne
NationofChange
Op-Ed
Published:
May 24, 2015
Our government is a dysfunctional, corporate-ruled mess with a
massive debt that has gotten out of control.“ A massive tsunami, a
mega-powerful financial tidal wave, is growing in intensity off the shores of America
FROM
FLOYD:
If
this article doesn't blow you mind about spending, then nothing will.
A massive tsunami, a mega-powerful financial tidal
wave, is growing in intensity off the shores of America
Certainly one of the biggest factors in the current
downward spiral that America is experiencing is that, instead of this country
manufacturing products for home consumption and exports around the world that
once pumped money into worker’s pockets and from there into the economy, we now
have created a flat, lifeless service economy.
As this
has taken place the profits of corporations have soared, dividends to rich
owners and investors have followed suit but, at the same time, the majority of
the people of America
The estimates vary but studies of Americans’ financial
condition indicates that some 60% or more of them are living paycheck to
paycheck, not having enough money in their savings accounts to cover at least
six months of expenses; enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical
emergency or some other unexpected event.
As Americans take on this excessive debt they buy fewer
consumer goods such as washers, dryers, TVs, cell phones, computers and a host
of other products. This negatively affects consumer purchasing power which, in
turn, continues to further weaken the economy. Corporations’ sales, which depend
on this purchasing power will, at some point in the future, begin to plummet,
driving down stock prices and dividends to investors, reducing profits and
causing further reductions in the workforce.
Graduating students entering the workforce and taking
lower paying jobs are being loaded down with debt and are being forced to hold
back on purchases of all sorts of necessities as well as purchases of
non-essential but highly desirable electronic products, further adversely
impacting consumer purchasing power.
Another area that will require massive government
funding, money that it does not have, is the nation’s rapidly deteriorating
infrastructure, the foundation of America’s system of commerce. It is now so bad that the “American Society of
Civil Engineers says that repairing the nation’s bridges, alone, would cost at
least $9.4 billion per year for the next 20 years. Another estimate by the ASCE
puts the cost of bringing the entire US
Both Social Security and Medicare are both going to
have severe financial problems going into the future and hundreds of billions
of taxpayer dollars will have to be pumped into them in order to keep them
afloat; just where this funding will come from no one knows but you can bet it
will add greatly to the national debt.
All that is bad enough but if you want to know where
the biggest threat to this country’s financial stability lies here it is: Let’s talk about the Fed’s Quantitative
Easing Program. This article explains the QE
program as well as any I’ve seen as it illustrates this program’s complexity
and the fact that it creates money out of thin air that is then given to banks
to initiate loans to businesses. What it
looks like is yet another government financial boondoggle that will be a major
contributing factor to an eventual financial collapse.
Here’s an excerpt from that article that shows how
ineffectual and dangerous it is:
“However, it (the QE) didn’t
achieve the Fed’s goal of making more credit available. It gave the money to banks, which basically
sat on the funds instead of lending them out. Banks used the funds to triple
their stock prices through dividends and stock buy-backs. The large
banks also consolidated their holdings, so that the largest .2% of banks now control more than 70% of bank assets.” And this massive giveaway program to the banks
has been going on since 2008 at a cost of
over $4 trillion and at a rate of $85 billion per month for a great part of
that time.
FROM FLOYD:
Note the time period. This was enacted during the Bush/Chaney
Administration and the GOP Congress. Don't lay this at the Obama door step.
In this article a former Federal
Reserve high level official, Andrew Huszar, issued these words of warning: “If the Federal Reserve continues to wildly create money
out of thin air with no end in sight, the rest of the world may decide to stop
lending us trillions of dollars at ultra-low interest rates. When we get to that point, it is going to be absolutely disastrous for
the U.S. economy and the U.S.
We can call this a massive economic tsunami heading
directly toward America or
we can call it another Perfect Storm building up tremendous power in the skies
above America
Those well respected economists in America who are not wholly owned and controlled
by the corporate media are well aware of the dangers that lie ahead for America
This highly dysfunctional, corporate-controlled
government of ours totally dismisses these warnings and totally ignores the
alarms beginning to go off across America
~~~
A Letter Carrier’s Special Delivery
to
Congress
Author: Jim Hightower
NationofChange
Op-Ed
Published: May 27, 2015
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow — nor even the
likelihood that he’d be killed en route — could stop this letter carrier from
making his appointed rounds.
Doug Hughes is one gutsy and creative mailman. In
April, this rural letter carrier from Florida
stunned the Secret Service, eluded federal aviation authorities, embarrassed Washington U.S.
Far from a terrorist or a kook, Hughes was just a
mailman on a mission, a patriotic citizen who — like most of us — is disgusted
that Big Money interests are able to openly buy lawmakers and laws. But he did
more than write a letter to his congress critter — he wrote letters to all 535
of them, loaded the missives in his mailbag and — as postal workers do —
literally went the extra mile to make a “very special delivery” in his
gyrocopter.
This was no flight of fancy. Doug planned his mail delivery for months, and
he was fully aware that he might crash, be killed by a scramble of military
jets or be gunned down by guards when he landed. Nor was it a sneak attack — he repeatedly
posted his intentions in blogs; a reporter was covering his preparations; and
the Secret Service had investigated and interviewed him about his plans more
than a year earlier.
His landing jolted the Capitol into lockdown. Guards rushed out to arrest Doug and haul him
off to some deep cellblock; a bomb squad arrived; and spooked lawmakers were
scared silly. They ran around screeching
that they were threatened by terrorists. Of course, the real threat to America
is not some guy flying a gyrocopter in protest but the utter corruption of
Congress, the courts and democracy itself by the plutocratic elites whom this
mailman targeted with nothing more (nor less) dangerous than a bagful of
truth-telling letters.
Actually, Hughes was not alone on this heroic mission
of civil disobedience — the great majority of Americans are totally on board
with him, his message and his bold effort to shake up and shape up Congress.
It’s not surprising that when the activist mailman
delivered his powerful message to Congress he drew saturation coverage from the
mass media.
Not coverage of his message, mind you, but a ridiculous
spasm of media scaremongering over the non-existent terrorist threat that our
self-absorbed members of Congress say his visit posed to them.
Shazam! In an
instant, the politicos fabricated a sob story about themselves, recasting their
role from for-sale villains to pitiable victims. We’re threatened by a security network so
porous, they squealed, that this dangerous terrorist can easily fly right up to
the Capitol building. They convened
emergency hearings, went on talk shows and imperiously demanded that they be
made safe from such a horrific threat. And the media meekly bought into the whole
hubbub, entirely losing sight of the damning message that the mailman was
carrying. While Hughes carried no
weapons of terrorism on his flight, the message he brought to Washington
Hughes did not commit and act of terror; it was an act
of civil disobedience. His flight was a
thoughtful, well-planned, non-violent stand against the tyranny of money,
undertaken in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hughes is standing up for We the People, and like freedom fighters before him,
he’s full-aware of and prepared to pay the price of civic defiance. On May 20, a federal grand jury indicted this
messenger of democracy on a mess of charges that could add up to more than nine
years in prison. Far from backing away, however, he’s now calling out you and
me: “We spend billions protecting the United States
One time when Thoreau was in jail for his defiance of
authority, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson happened by and asked: “Henry, why
are you here?” Thoreau retorted: “Why
are you not here?” To help save our
democracy from plutocracy, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.
~~~
If the good Lord is willing and the creek
don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week, hopefully, on Friday.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United States of America
Floyd
