Category: Social Issues
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
America's Suffering Middle Class, Still Worse Off than 2008 / Politics / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes:
The government's numbers - primarily the monthly data on unemployment and inflation - tell the story of a slow but gradual recovery by the U.S. economy.
But the experience of millions of Americans tells a far different story.
According to a new national survey conducted by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, many Americans continue to suffer from the impact of the Great Recession.
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Monday, February 11, 2013
Only in California - The Media Loves Manhunts: Can Chris Dorner Survive? / Politics / Social Issues
By: Danny_Schechter
New York, New York, February 8, 7 PM: Only in California, home of the late Huey P Newton and then the Symbionese Liberation Army that went several steps further, do characters emerge that transcend every action movie fantasy and stereotype, characters like an ex-cop who has declared war on the police on, of all places, Facebook in a 6000 word statement that’s being described as “rambling.” (He never claimed he was writer.)
He denounces police practices that he considers racist and abusive, although the sheer drama of the manhunt will make it unlikely that media outlets will seriously delve into the substance of his charges.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Meet the Global Corporate “Supra-Government” / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_G_Marshall
We live in a corporate culture, where most of us have worked or currently work for corporations, we spend our money at corporate venues, on corporate products, watch corporately-owned television shows and movies, listen to corporate-sponsored music; our modes of transportation, communication and recreation are corporately influenced or produced; our sports stadiums and movie theaters are named after car companies and global banks; our food is genetically altered by multinational conglomerates, our drinking water is brought to us by Coca-Cola, our news is brought to us by Pfizer, and our political leaders are brought to us by Exxon, Shell, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Decline of the Middle Class Under Obama / Politics / Social Issues
By: Money_Morning
Ben Gersten writes: U.S. President Barack Obama often makes a point of talking about how important our country's middle class is to our economic growth - something he reiterated yesterday (Monday) in his second inauguration speech.
"Our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it," President Obama said. "We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class."
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Saturday, January 12, 2013
Insights into U.S. Cultural Shifts from a Visit to a Hardware Store / Politics / Social Issues
By: Casey_Research
Pete Kofod writes: "So this is what it looks like when a society is starting to collapse," the man standing behind the counter at the hardware store said matter-of-factly. The remark had been directed at no one in particular, but generally at anyone standing nearby. As I was among that audience, I looked at him inquisitively, eliciting in return a look indicating that his observation should be intuitively obvious to even the casual observer.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
The Rich and Poor Divide Isn’t Good for America / Politics / Social Issues
By: InvestmentContrarian
George Leong writes: There is a crisis in America, relative to the widening income gaps between the rich, the middle class, and the poor. This ultimately impacts consumer spending.
In the fiscal cliff talks, President Obama decided to compromise on the Bush-era tax cuts after raising income taxes on those individuals earning in excess of $400,000 annually and over $450,000 for married couples. These groups account for roughly the top one percent of income earners, according to the Tax Policy Center. (Source: “Fiscal Cliff Deal Will Raise Taxes On 77 Percent Of Americans: Tax Policy Center Analysis,” Huffington Post via Associated Press, January 2, 2013.)
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Tuesday, January 08, 2013
The Crisis of the American Middle Class, The Long-Term Threat to U.S. Power / Politics / Social Issues
By: STRATFOR
Last week I wrote about the crisis of unemployment in Europe. I received a great deal of feedback, with Europeans agreeing that this is the core problem and Americans arguing that the United States has the same problem, asserting that U.S. unemployment is twice as high as the government's official unemployment rate. My counterargument is that unemployment in the United States is not a problem in the same sense that it is in Europe because it does not pose a geopolitical threat. The United States does not face political disintegration from unemployment, whatever the number is. Europe might.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Successful, But Looking For An Escape Hatch from America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jeff_Berwick
[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV legal correspondent, Jim Karger]
Jerry Loftus is laid back, inquisitive, and easy to talk to. He is also a successful US businessman, co-owner of a masonry and concrete repair and restoration company in Chicago, Illinois, and an avid TDV reader. He and his charming wife, Gina, spent 10 days with us in our San Miguel de Allende compound. Jerry is 53 years old, never been in trouble with the law, but like so many of our TDV visitors, is considering leaving the United States. I interviewed him on our rooftop in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, sharing margaritas on a typical cloudless 70 degree afternoon.
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Sunday, January 06, 2013
The Mayans Have Competition, Mutant War Future / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andrew_McKillop
Mayans believed that robot-like warriors, linked to their alphabet soup of sombre and deadly gods with names like Yum Cimil and Ah Puke (sic), were prowling on dark nights and inauspicious days: about 9 out of 10 days and nights, that is. In the USA of today, bionic warfare is rapidly emerging from the shadows of the imagination and with it, the fear of robot soldiers. Under a gripping photo of a US Army soldier testing the Lockheed Martin HULCE or HUman Load Carrier Exoskeleton, 'Wired Magazine', on January 1st, told its readers they have a mutant future coming - defined as a robot military future.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Limits to Economic Growth, Humanity Is Still on the Way to Destroying Itself / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Quote Of The Year. And The Next. I came upon this quote a few weeks ago in an interview that Der Spiegel had with Dennis Meadows, co-author of the Limits to Growth report published by the Club of Rome 40 years ago. Yes, the report that has been much maligned and later largely rehabilitated. But that's not my topic here, and neither is Meadows himself. It's the quote, and it pretty much hasn’t left me alone since I read it.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Politicians - Egocentricism vs Social Conscience / Politics / Social Issues
By: Brian_Bloom
Most politicians will tell you the reason they entered politics was that they saw an opportunity to make a difference in the way their constituency was being run. The evidence suggests otherwise. In short, the evidence suggests that politicians are, by and large, egocentric, megalomaniacal and some may even be categorized as psychopaths (in the medical sense as opposed to the horror movie sense – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSDIT55KeKc ).
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Monday, December 31, 2012
New Years ResolutionTo Restore the West / Politics / Social Issues
By: Ron_Holland
By any political, cultural or economic measure the nations of the West are in total decline. The historic virtues of hard work, free-market thinking and a common cultural integrity as well as religious and historical principles are gone. They have been subverted and replaced by an emphasis on rampant materialism and a consumer driven society that exceeds 70 percent of GNP in addition to private and public debt. Furthermore, a kind of parasitism has laid claim to Western culture by which sports stars, politicians, media darlings and financial scam artists get recognition and exorbitant incomes while real workers find their incomes falling and promised benefits curtailed.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
2013: Why Does Advanced Science Suggest Peaceful Co-Existence In A Multi-Polar World? / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 shows us that everything is made up of energy. Science demonstrates that energy is the building block of all matter. Energy exchanges take place within, without and at the interface of everything at all times in a most complex dynamic. Everything in this universe is ultimately made up of that same energy flow. It is just present in different forms and different shapes and keeps on transforming and recycling perpetually. The energy that composes our bodies is indeed the same one that composes the building materials of our homes and the animals and the trees found outside. It is all just the same and ever exchanging!
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Humanity’s Factions: America’s 21st Century Revolution / Politics / Social Issues
By: Stephen_Merrill
There have always been competing factions in the contest for power over others, now called politics and economics. Parallels of political struggles are found in all societies, whether a republic or an authoritarian state. Which political faction may prevail over the others in a particular conflict is often up in the air.
Monday, December 17, 2012
America's Conditioning, Children Randomly Slaughtered in Schoolrooms and by Predator Drones / Politics / Social Issues
By: James_Quinn
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
The world makes less sense every day. Little children are randomly slaughtered in their schoolrooms. Predator drones roam the skies over foreign countries exterminating bad guys, along with innocent women and children (collateral damage when it occurs in a foreign country). Drugged up mentally ill kids with no hope and no future live lives of secluded quiet desperation until they snap. Ignorant, government educated, welfare dependent drones with no self respect or respect for others, assault, kill and rob within their government created urban jungles.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Western Nations Saying Goodbye to Liberaty / Politics / Social Issues
By: Alasdair_Macleod
The human race, in its advanced economic form, is committing euthanasia. The US, UK, Europe and Japan are all implementing economic policies that must ultimately result in the complete destruction of their currencies; and if you destroy the means of exchange of goods and services, your people will starve. The political class and government establishments have drifted in incremental steps into this tragedy. Far from being the guiding hand for society, they are its destroyers.
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Monday, December 17, 2012
Shadow Forces Behind the Government / Politics / Social Issues
By: BATR
Let no man or woman dare speak of a shadow government. The crony corruptocrats that make up the ruling elites of the world must maintain the illusion, that elected governments are based upon willful consent and have the legitimate authority to establish rules of conduct that their citizen are obligated to obey. For those regimes that maintain their grip of power by undemocratic means, the apologists for the international community give a wide berth of acceptance in order to maintain the appearance of individual national sovereignty.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Murder at Newtown, America's Moral Bankruptcy / Politics / Social Issues
By: Michael_T_Bucci
Kate Randall of WSWS.com asked the important question in her coverage of the Newtown, Connecticut massacre of December 14. She lamented: "What intellectual bankruptcy! No US government official or media personality has the mental capacity or courage to ask why these horrible tragedies occur in America with such heartbreaking predictability."
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
Who Was Adam Lanza? A Disturbed Mentally Ill Mass Murderer / Politics / Social Issues
By: DK_Matai
Post America's worst mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Adam Lanza -- the twenty year old -- who is suspected of killing 26, including 20 children, appears to have killed his mother Nancy Lanza at their family home where they lived, before driving to the school to commit the massacre and then taking his own life.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Mayan Prophecy, Fiscal Cliff, End of the World – What, Me Worry / Politics / Social Issues
By: DeviantInvestor
(December 21, 2012)
The world will not end on December 21, 2012 or anytime soon. I think the Mayan calendar indicates the end of a very long-term cycle that has a gradual impact upon the world, just as other long-term cycles make significant but gradual changes. Increases and decreases in solar output (a long-term cycle) may create ice ages or droughts that slowly and gradually change the world.
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