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POPSWall Street celebrates bonuses, schools beg for supplies We see stories like “Recession Pinches Back-to-School Budgets” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/03/eveningnews/main5361456.shtml and “School budgets dip, class sizes grow” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32156424/ns/us_news-education/ along with reports of Wall Street reaping fat bonuses after being bailed out with taxpayer dollars. Sure, the bailouts were necessary to keep the economy afloat. Or so we are led to believe. And while the wisdom of a Wall Street bailout is being debated there is no debate about whether or not our schools need more money. Should public schools needs be ranked second to Wall Street because schools don’t turn a profit? Actually, if your head is on straight, you can clearly see how schools do turn a profit, but you need to value education above making money in order to see it. If you do, here’s an online charity that connects you to classrooms in need: http://www.donorschoose.org/
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POPSWhat I Saw at the 9/12 March Wow! There is still a lot of misinformation floating around out there. Most people have good hearts and are fearful of what direction they think the government is headed, and rightly so. They should always question the government’s motives but they should also question their sources of information. One of the biggest dangers of any democratic society is to follow unquestioningly what you are told by the mainstream media. Especially a corporate controlled media that embraces bias and plays on your fears to get your attention. The author mentions many things these people are either against or fearful of. I am given the impression that these people are against them simply because they are perceived to be democratic principles. The truth is many of these things were started under a Republican administration. Some of these things fall directly onto Barack Obama.
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POPSReport Finds Corruption at Waterfront Watchdog The report said the agency became a patronage-laden favor bank where staff members took cars for personal use, a boat that was bought with federal money to fend off a “waterborne attack” mainly ferried V.I.P.’s during Fleet Week, and friends got friends jobs with high salaries and little work. Sounds a lot like many government offices: Governors offices, Senators offices, Congress, the White House. One detective failed his entry exam twice, for example — until Commissioner Madonna himself slipped him the test, and he ended up turning in the highest score in the history of the commission. It’s good to know someone on the inside. :) What perpetuates this is the attitude that “everybody does it so why not get my share?” If people are allowed to operate without transparency and over-sight, this will continue. Out tax money is either given away to thieves in the form of a bailout or they just take it. America, what a country!
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POPS$100 Million Payday Poses Problems for Pay Czar
In our capitalist society, we cannot begrudge corporations making a profit, as long as they do it legally. Also, outsiders do not have any say in how these businesses spend their money, whether it goes to improving their products, expanding their business our throwing it at their staff. In these hard financial times, our government saw fit to bailout that corporate sector that they thought needed it the most. Two major problems I had with this is that they were bailed out at all, because since we are a capitalist society businesses will find a way to make it by their own ingenuity or they should not be in business in the first place. Secondly, the amount of money given to these corporations and the fact that there was no oversight was way out of line and borders on criminal negligence. Obviously, they were given too much money or they would not be able to give bonuses and still plan on staying in business. Our government screwed tax payers again.
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POPSMore Race-based policies from the Obama administration His entrance into the dust-up between a Massachusetts police officer and Dr. Henry Gates proves that as far as our President is concerned, if you're white, you're not right. He played the race-card in a grand Presidential trump, accusing a white cop of violating a black man's rights. He refused to even consider that his friend, the esteemed doctor, behaved like a titty baby. The Administration's own numbers show that rural America is a diverse community. There is no need for Government intervention. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center acknowledges that the rise in "hate" groups is astounding, in the last five years, we’ve seen a 30% increase in the number of hate groups. There you have it. All those years of Government mandated affirmative action programs have failed. If the goal was to improve racial relations, they missed it by a country mile. Further proof that the last thing the rural community needs is a bunch of liberal urbanites dictating how we live.
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POPSResist of Become Serfs The author paints a dismal and truthful image. What we are witnessing is capitalism run amok and misplaced loyalties. The old platitude “Money is the root of all evil” can be applied here. The government thinks it is obligated to step in and save capitalism from itself but is going about it the wrong way. Throughout history businesses have made the proper adjustments to save themselves without the wholesale give away that Geithner and company is participating in. And isn’t it great to have other peoples money to play with? I say let them sink or swim. Prosecute the thieves. The incompetent will fall to the wayside. We tax payers cannot endure this current course of action.
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POPSActivists protest bailouts near Wall Street Did not hear of any protest on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. Also, nothing in NY Times or Wall Street Journal. After first learning of it via IReport on CNN I googled and found this report from Reuters of the protest on Friday NEAR Wall Street. Evidently the protesters were not allowed to protest within hearing distance of the very people they were protesting against. This is the state of our ‘right to protest’ controlled by the powers that be. The IReport covers an apparent second protest that occurred on Saturday Apr 4 ON Wall Street when Wall Street was closed. Guess they wanted to do it so they could have bragging rights that they actually protested on Wall Street. Here’s the IReport clip: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-239743. Here’s a little more info on Bail Out the People website: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/
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POPSStates relent, take stimulus money Dangle that carrot long enough and it will be taken. I think it was disingenuous for states to refuse financial assistance citing good reason not to take it and then take it anyway. It undermines any remaining principles state leadership was trying to exhibit against federal influence over state matters. I also think it is wrong for the federal government to force state policy changes as a condition for receiving so called assistance. But such is the state of politics in America. The federal government exerts more and more control over states rights and money talks louder than principle.
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POPSAmerica Is in Need of a Moral Bailout Moral nihilism. The author of this commentary, Chris Hedges, has been able to put into words the sentiment I have felt about this nation for a very long time. Our educational system has gone to hell in favor of supplementing corporations and the military, instead of producing thinkers addressing the larger moral questions of meaning and purpose. We give ourselves too easily to the influence of reality television, mass media, and cultural assumptions. Our capacity to be affected by human rights issues has been relegated to the occasional financial gift because it makes us feel better, if we bother to give at all. We turn a blind eye to American corporations involvement with environmental and wildlife destruction as long as we get the latest new product we think we must have. We subjugate our dignity to the never-ending thirst for more money, things, and power. Where has our value system gone? What has it been replaced with? Moral nihilism.
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POPSObama’s Toxic Advisors Read this article carefully. Is Obama so eager to be surrounded with ‘experience’ in his cabinet that he is over looking what that particular experience cost us as a nation, or is there a hidden agenda? Allow me to speculate: If someone in the 1990’s, or earlier, was to formulate a plan to create a ‘One World Order’, with either America at the head or a committee of international leaders, surely a major stepping stone in achieving this dream would be to control the world’s financial markets. The best method to take over these markets would be to first crash them to the point that they would need help to become solvent again. A group of nations, say for example the G20, would step in to take over the markets, thereby “saving the world”, and appointing themselves as the de facto leaders in this “One World Order”. Next step, would be to formulate a one world currency to make it easier to control. Call me paranoid but too many signs are pointing in this direction.
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POPSYou could be a terrorist if... If you are a puppet-on-a-string assiduously following every law to the letter, enthusiastically nodding in agreement to everything the government tells you, patriotically turning in your neighbors for every infraction of the law (both written and social), then you have nothing to worry about. Many Americans, Republican and Democrat, have grown tired of the direction in which this country is headed. The once occasional lapse in ethics has become common place, greed and irresponsibility by our financial institutions are being rewarded in the form of ‘bailout’ tax dollars, citizens have to watch what we say and do and how we do it, self-interest has supplanted “doing what is right for this country”, special interest groups are favored over national security and welfare, food safety has been jeopardized in favor of profit. Civil unrest is brewing and FEMA detention centers are sprouting up across the nation. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04.htm
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POPSHypocrisy and the Bailout Bill Aren't Republicans supposed to be the fiscal responsible ones? I wonder if politicians ask for this money with a straight face. There must be a clause in these requests that says any excess money goes to the general fund. Earmarks for “the design and construction of a school sidewalk”, “development of an online encyclopedia”, “tattoo removal”?!? This is blatant mis appropriation of funds. The earmark system itself is not the problem. If earmarks are used to put citizens to work and to generate an income source for the benefit of the general population then I’m all for it. What we need is a method of prioritizing earmarks so that frivolous projects don’t get funded. And the system needs to be manned and monitored by civilians immune to the reach of politicians. An alternative solution would be to not tax us so much so there wouldn’t be all this excess money to support tattoo removal.
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