*SECRET GOVERNMENT BECOMES MORE SECRET UNDER OBAMA
* ** *"That the Obama administration has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers is by now well-known and well-documented, as is its general fixation on not just maintaining but increasing even the most extreme and absurd levels of secrecy," begins a piece by Glenn Greenwald <http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/secrecy_creep/> this morning. "Unsurprisingly, this ethos --- that the real criminals are those who expose government wrongdoing, not those who engage in that wrongdoing --- now pervades lower levels of the Executive Branch as well." * ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *BANKSTER RULE IN THE OBAMA REGIME * ** */Corporate Crime Reporter/ begins a piece <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/> this morning: "The Justice Department issues a press release. But doesn't send it to its press list. And doesn't post it on its web site. Why not? The Justice Department won't say. Clearly the press release in question is not your run of the mill press release. "It deals with the question that hangs like a dark cloud over President Obama's Justice Department -- why not a single prosecution of a high ranking Wall Street executive or major financial firm fully four years since the financial crisis that involved major fraud crippled the American economy?" * *Could it have something to do with the fact that President Obama received more campaign bribes <http://luvnews.info/Bribes.htm> from banksters than any candidate for any office in history? * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *AMERICAN PEOPLE: CONGRESS SUCKS * ** *The approval rating for Congress has dropped to the lowest level in 38 years <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/congress-approval-rating-all-time-low-gallup-poll_n_1777207.html>. Republicans blame the Democrats, Democrats blame the Republicans, and both stay on their knees kissing the same butts for campaign bribes <http://luvnews.info/Bribes.htm>. The masses believe they will get change by pulling the levers for the same Democrats and Republicans, as the nation slides toward third world status. * ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ** ****Some of the people we most admire at /LUV News/ are those who work and lobby on behalf of the poor. City councils, state legislatures and the US Congress largely ignore the poor for two reasons (1) they don't contribute to political campaigns and (2) they don't vote. On this second point there are many reasons they don't vote, centering around corrupt voting laws at all levels that shut out the poor, particularly the homeless, but there's no denying that the poor see no benefit from voting for candidates who have no interest in them.** **** **It should be a national shame that we have so many people living in poverty in the richest nation on earth, if not for the mass media's covering it up. On /NPR/ the other day I heard a talking head say "You can't say the poor do not have health care, they can go to any emergency room at any hospital and get care." The man is either an idiot or a propagandist, but such statements are constantly aired in the mass media, and few citizens are aware of the thousands who die in this country for a lack of medical care each year (Obama/Romney care will not change this, it didn't work in Massachusetts).** **** **One fourth of American children live in poverty, many of them missing at least one meal each day. Anyone with their eyes open must see we are moving toward third world status under Republicans and Democrats, and both make excuses their followers buy for why it is the fault of "the other party." This problem could easily be erased simply by taking the money the rich and corporations have invested offshore to avoid paying taxes, and aren't using, and putting it to building shelters for the homeless, providing job training, providing jobs at living wages, and pushing to see that millions eligible for food stamps get them, but that would require a government which represents more than the 1% --Jack Balkwill** **** ** <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/14-1>** **The 64-Gazillion-Dollar Question** <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/14-1> **** **A top authority on poverty has changed his mind about the urgency of fighting inequality.** **** ** by Sam Pizzigati** **** ******Peter Edelman has battled poverty for nearly half a century --- first as a top aide to Senator Robert Kennedy, later as a state and federal official, and currently as a key figure at a widely respected law and public policy center in Washington.** **** **** **Over his years in and out of government, Edelman has probably earned as much respect as anyone in our nation's public policy community. Back in 1996, he did something few high-ranking federal officials ever do. He resigned in protest when President Bill Clinton signed a law that Edelman could not support in good conscience. ** **Edelman, then an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, publicly warned that the "welfare reform" that Clinton signed into law would be devastating for the nation's most vulnerable children. He turned out to be right. The number of children living in deep poverty --- kids in families making under half the official poverty threshold --- rose 70 percent from 1995 to 2005, and 30 percent more by 2010. ** **America's elected leaders didn't listen to Edelman in 1996. Now they have another chance. Edelman, currently a co-director at the Georgetown University Law Center, has just released a new book --- So Rich, So Poor --- that aims "to look anew at why it is so hard to end American poverty." ** **You get the feeling from this candid new book that Edelman would be astonished if our elected leaders actually paid attention to his poverty-fighting prescriptions. So Rich, So Poor seems to address a different audience: the millions of decent Americans, from across the political spectrum, who share his outrage about our continuing deep poverty. ** **These Americans have a special reason for paying close attention to Edelman's new book. The author, one of the nation's most committed experts on poverty, has changed his mind --- not about poverty and the poor, but about wealth and the rich. ** **"I used to believe," Edelman writes in his new book, "that the debate over wealth distribution should be conducted separately from the poverty debate, in order to minimize the attacks on antipoverty advocates for engaging in 'class warfare.' But now we literally cannot afford to separate the two issues." ** **Why? The "economic and political power of those at the top," Edelman explains, is "making it virtually impossible to find the resources to do more at the bottom." ** **Figuring out how we can achieve a more equal distribution of income and wealth has become, Edelman advises, "the 64-gazillion-dollar question." ** **"The only way we will improve the lot of the poor, stabilize the middle class, and protect our democracy," he notes, "is by requiring the rich to pay more of the cost of governing the country that enables their huge accretion of wealth." ** **What about those antipoverty activists and analysts who still yearn to keep poverty --- the absence of wealth --- separate from the concentration of wealth? Many of these folks, Edelman notes, argue that the rich as a group have no reason to oppose efforts to help end poverty. ** **Edelman's response? "More than anything else," he observes, the wealthy "want low taxes," and they know the taxes on their sky-high incomes will rise if government ever starts spending money to really help people in need. ** **"The wealth and income of the top 1 percent grows at the expense of everyone else," Edelman sums up in So Rich, So Poor. "Money breeds power, and power breeds more money. It is a truly vicious cycle." ** **Only average Americans have the wherewithal to end this cycle. Middle- and low-income Americans need to join in common cause. If they don't, Edelman bluntly adds, "we are cooked."** **** **http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/14-1** **** ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *If you wish to be removed from this list, please let us know* ** *To join the Liberty Underground news service email [email protected] "join" for a subject* ** *You may also join our talk group athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/ <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/>if you would like to participate* ** *email: [email protected]* ** *Tell your friends about /LUV News/ because some people just don't get it* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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