It didn't take long for this "change" to come.

some economist should answer this question: had we kept in place the federal tax rates of 1999, one of the most prosperous years in america history, what would be the order of america's fiscal house today, february 20, 2010? did we use the 00's as partytime, looting away our children's future in some ego-inflating consumeristic frenzy? looks like we did. had we been prudent, we would have so much surplus now that the 123 billion dollar shortfall our states collectively owe could be wiped out in a minute by a low interest or no interest loan from uncle sam. or, maybe the states wouldn't be in debt at all.

If we had an unemployment rate of 4 percent all these problems would go away.

And only massive federal govenrment jobs programs do this.

If you want that, well, then we need a new president.

Stop the wars and return that money to the states for health and education. Weaponry and foreign invasions cause the biggest hemorrhage of wealth away from our everyday lives. We are being bled dry.

Return the troops to the states and keep paying their salaries to do useful work in their home neighborhoods.

Build pleasant economical housing with greenery and gardens. Rehab abandoned homes for the homeless.

Tax the very rich. Tax stock transfers.

Prohibit usury and reckless speculation and schemes like bundling. Instead force the banks to lend judicious amounts to ordinary people and small business. If they won't, nationalize them.

Employ people to repair, clean and maintain the infrastructure.

Support and expand local agriculture.

Build production plants for solar panels and windmills. Put the darn things up everywhere.

And to make it all possible, unelect those purchased by lobbyists and corporate money.

These are some obvious ideas out of hundreds.

Joe

Forget it. Nobody is listening. We don't care about poor people because the ones who cause problems get thrown in prisons.

"Work Makes You Free"

America has become an open-air Auchwitzs.

They bailed out AIG, the big insurance company that covered all the greedy banks and wall street bad loans, so basically , we bailed out a huge insurance company , which paid the banks insurance claims on bad loans.

Ch ching Banks and wall street!! Then we had th bail out the banks again, ch ching banks and wall street.

Why wall street, thats who the banks owed money for hedge funds and dirivatives gambling.

Move all the jobs over seas, and you have a planed neocon economic ca lapse to bring in a new world order and financial system. Money on debit cards, credits, and wow, it just so happens that will eliminate cash and force terrorists to use their cards.Now we can find the terrorists, and start new wars, because people will need jobs. Mores wars, more jobs.

All that , and a nation wide community watch right wing Christian spy network ready to help catch dissidents when martial law kicks in, because chaos is sure to follow starving , jobless people.

Americans have had no leadership in DC for thirty years, just neocon free market greed masters.

AND SO HERE WE ARE , IN THE LAND OF DISAPPEARING JOBS,MONEY , AND OPPORTUNITY.

LAST VERSE OF THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, THAT YOU NEVER HEAR.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Lets keep God fear politicians out of office, they all say God bless America, and not one of them know what it means to protect America.

Sioux Rose

Henry Ford, one of the nation's early capitalists understood that if he was going to sell his cars, he had to pay his employees a fair wage so they could become his customers.

In contrast, the Chicago School model which gives all the booty to an elite few, starves the masses of the resources they'd otherwise have at least to sustain a retail economy.

There's no question that "The Shock Doctrine" has come home. There were wise, prescient economists published on CD and elsewhere that explained if the homeowners were not given new loan terms and/or subsidies to retain their homes, not only would the surplus of homes on the market diminish all values, but states would lose a notable revenue source in the way of absented property taxes. So here we are.

The ridiculousness of tax cuts to the very rich against the facts that illustrate the degree to which wealth continues to aggregate upwards, without any benefit of "trickle down," added to the lack of regulation on a Wall ST CRAZED with making quick bucks on other peoples' life savings (and when these fail, using the profits creamed off the top to BUY politicians who continue to grant these grand theft experts a free pass), added to wars based on naked resource acquisition... these 3 agendas in particular, are what have toppled the American dream and brought a continued train wreck in slow motion to too many neighborhoods.

When the pundits in the well-placed media outlets began chanting "The Good News" that the recession was over, I explained in this forum that the astrological pattern remains one of great scarcity, one that mirrors a similar "cosmic" set-up that took place in the early l930's. We are hardly out of the woods. The past few presidencies have ruled by appearances only, by their power to set message and work to convince the public of things that were totally false: like Saddam's relationship to the events of 911, that things were going "swimmingly well" in Iraq, that our economy is now on the road to recovery, etc. Lies don't pay the rent for average persons or governments. So here we are.

This is one of the very things that Joe Stack saw happening to America, before his tragic death. They keep shouting that everythings getting better, yet, there's no evidence that things are getting anything but worse. I, for one, don't intend to hold my breath waiting for the 'turnaround'.

Capitalism eventually is a destroyer of wealth.

Trillions of dollars lost -- poof from the bubble that was the inevitable climax of yet another capitalist "growth and wealth creation".

Millions of jobs lost, millions of lives destroyed...

wealth destroyed.

as of now, New York Times reports that the millions of americans who lost jobs , and now beyond six months out, and beginning to outlive their unemployment benefits, lost "insurance" etc...

are to expect NO JOBS for YEARS to come...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?hp

Perhaps the Govenors should send the Idiots at the White House a history book and highlight the chapters covering FDR and the Republican Great Depression. These clowns have the benefit of hindsight, so with a history book as their guide they should be able to right ouir economy in no time!...What's that?....No pictures!.....Damn!

The United States began as a federation in which each State retained all powers and responsibilities except for the few that were delegated to the federal government. The primary federal responsibility was national defense. That has obviously changed and the federal government is responsible for exploring the planet Mars among countless other things. Perhaps it is time for the State governments to be dissolved and the federal government to be declared the sole government of the country. Then the federal government could simply sell some more bonds to China and we could go along our merry way.

This is a good commentary. Nothing terribly surprising for the readers on this site, but it's nice to see something like this get published on HuffPo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/wall-streets-obama-invest_b_470234.html#postComment

I liked this paragraph because, even though at this point it's still conjecture, it really does makes sense:

"ma's self-possession and exquisite timing -- not consistent traits of his political character -- had a traceable source. He had been schooled for anything that might come at the White House by his conversations with Bernanke, Paulson and the rest. As for President Bush, his attitude toward McCain appears to have been a mixture of bafflement and irritation. It is likely, on the evidence offered by Heilemann and Halperin, that he wanted Obama to be his successor. But that is another and perhaps a smaller story."

The pics and footage of Obama and Bush right after the election, in the back of my mind I always felt they looked very comfortable together -- like they really were quite simpatico. At the time I did not want to believe this, but like so many things regarding Obama I had all of these nagging concerns. The demeanor and attitude of the man rarely seemed to match the words that came out his mouth. Maybe I would not have had these concerns had I personally met Obama or attended one of his rallies. He did dupe a lot of people.

"Economists have declared the national recession over."

Economists, by and large, have their heads WAY up their asses.

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

I one looks at the data from the recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northwestern University of Boston found at:

www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/Labor_Underutilization_Problems_of_U.pdf

One sees the following breakdown of unemployment by income level based on income earned in 2008 vs. corresponding level of unemployment by 4th quarter 2009:

Income of $150,000 or more: 3.2% unemployment in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Income of $100,000 to $149,000: 4.0% unemployment
Income of $ 60,000 to $75,000: 6.4% unemployment
Income of $ 50,000 to $59,000: 7.8% unemployment
Income of $ 40,000 to $49,000 9.0% unemployment
Income of $ 30,000 to $39,000 12.2% unemployment
Income of $ 20,000 to $29,000 15.3% unemployment
Income of $ 12,500 to $20,000 19.1% unemployment
Income of $ less than $12, 500 30.8% unemployment

Absolute peak unemployment during the first Great Depression was 27% but levels of approximately 25% were more sustained.

Most State jobs on the chopping block in the next two years are in the income range between $27,000 and $49,000. Until recently the entry-level middle-class earning around $40,000 to $49,000/yr. have suffered 9% unemployment--one percent less than the official national average. But if the States are compelled to lay-off enough government workers in that income range we may see a rapid acceleration of social and political instability.

There will also be an opportunity for positive change, but only if progressives are united in numbers sufficient to educate the public and push for that change. We may only get one chance at this before much darker chapters in American history will prevent us from making a second attempt. The time for a national summit of progressive leaders to create a new movement and/or umbrella Party to unite all authentic progressives is ripe. If we fail to better organize and leave things to the corporate class and the Tea-Baggers, then the fault for the consequences of our inaction is our own.

What this study also tells us is that while the political and media classes are focused on the middle-class and endlessly push tax cuts as the "solution" for that class, and while the "free trade" regime targeted much of the middle-class for elimination, the real target of the after-effects of the housing bubble has been the lower-working-class, underemployed and long-term unemployed. The country no longer just doesn't produce enough middle-class jobs, it doesn't produce enough entry-level minimum wage and low service wage jobs. That means a generation (two, maybe three generations?) are being effectively blocked from entering to participate in the real economy. Expect drug-related and violent crime to soar along with a corresponding intensification and distribution of Police State interdictions and technologies. Unemployment levels for people ages 17 to 25 are now higher than at any time on record. For many of them their only economic choice will be between domestic crimes and war crimes. Ross Perot warned us we'd be a nation of burger flippers: We don't even offer our kids THAT option in enough numbers anymore.

So what we have seen over the last 30 years is a multi-pronged, systematic attack on first, the middle-class, soon more of the middle-class, and now especially on the lower-class by the upper-middle and upper-classes. This attack has included corporate collectivization of small and medium-sized family farms, legalized credit card & pay-day loan shark usury, the anti-regulatory "free trade" regime, tax-payer subsidies for American companies to offshore their jobs and factories, the deliberate tamping down of wages to de-link wage increases from soaring worker productivity in the techno-1990s (masked by increasing credit card debt & faux housing bubble equity), fifteen years of soaring illegal immigration also putting downward pressure on wages and increasing unemployment, the deregulation of banks, the deregulation of derivatives trading, artificially low interest rates for a decade to catalyze the housing bubble, outrageous open-ended military expenditures and historically unprecedented tax cuts for the super-rich that insanely persist to this day.

This has been a deliberately contrived, direct top-down class warfare assault on the working-classes of this nation in an ongoing attempt to turn it into a gigantic banana republic dictatorship run by a ruthless and lawless oligarchy and their increasingly militarized Police State and mass media. Only a people's movement that is very broad and deep can effectively resist it and like any major class war, we must expect to take our lumps.