This is just another reason Webster is my hero. Witness the brilliance in his 5 point plan. This is the difference between the puppet of the banksters in the White House, the fanatics in the Congress and a learned elder statesman.
Mike

30 MILLION PRODUCTIVE JOBS TO REBUILD US INFRASTRUCTURE, INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE: THE PROGRAM TO END THE ECONOMIC DEPRESSION
by Webster G. Tarpley, www.tarpley.net
November 14, 2009

The US and the world are gripped by a deepening economic depression. There is no recovery and no automatic business cycle which will revive the economy. This bottomless depression will worsen until policies are reformed. The depression results from deregulated and globalized financial speculation, especially the $1.5 quadrillion world derivatives bubble. The US industrial base has been gutted, and the US standard of living has fallen by almost two thirds over the last four decades. We must reverse this trend of speculation, de-industrialization, and immiseration. Current policy bails out bankers, but harms working people, industrial producers, farmers, and small business. We must defend civil society and democratic institutions from the effects of high unemployment and economic breakdown. We therefore demand:

1. Measures to reduce speculation and minimize the burden of fictitious capital: End all bailouts of banks and financial institutions. Claw back the TARP and other public money given or lent to financiers. Abolish the notion of too big to fail; JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other Wall Street zombie banks are insolvent and must be seized by the FDIC for chapter 7 liquidation, with derivatives eliminated by triage. Re-institute the Glass-Steagall firewall to separate banks, brokerages, and insurance. Ban credit default swaps and adjustable rate mortgages. To generate revenue and discourage speculation, levy a 1% Tobin tax (securities transfer tax or trading tax) on all financial transactions including derivatives (futures, options, indices, and over the counter derivatives), stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and commodities, especially program trading, high-frequency trading, and flash trading. Set up a 15% reserve requirement for all OTC derivatives. Use Tobin tax revenue and a revived corporate income tax to provide immediate tax relief to individuals, families, the self-employed, and small business by increasing personal exemptions and standard deductions. Stop all foreclosures on primary residences, businesses, and farms for five years or the duration of the depression, whichever lasts longer. Set a 10% maximum rate of interest on credit cards and payday loans. Re-regulate commodities markets with 100% margin requirements, position limits, and anti-speculation protections for hedgers and end users to prevent oil and gasoline price spikes. Enforce labor laws and anti-trust laws against monopolies and cartels. Restore individual chapter 11.

2. Measures to nationalize the Federal Reserve, cut federal borrowing, and provide 0% federal credit for production: Seize the Federal Reserve and bring it under the US Treasury as the National Bank of the United States, no longer the preserve of unelected and unaccountable cliques of incompetent and predatory bankers. The size of the money supply, interest rates, and approved types of lending must be determined by public laws passed and debated openly, passed by the congress and signed by the president. Stop US government borrowing from zombie banks and foreigners — let the US government function as its own bank. Reverse current policy by instituting 0% federal LENDING with preferential treatment for tangible physical production and manufacturing of goods and commodities, to include industry, agriculture, construction, mining, energy production, transportation, infrastructure building, public works, and scientific research, but not financial services and speculation. Issue successive tranches of $1 trillion as needed to create 30 million union-wage productive jobs and attain full employment for the first time since 1945, reversing the secular decline in the US standard of living. Provide 0% credit to reconvert idle auto and other plants and re-hire unemployed workers to build modern rail, mass transit, farm tractors, and aerospace equipment, including for export. Extend 0% federal credit for production to small businesses like auto and electronics repair shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, tailors, family farms, taxis, and trucking. Maintain commercial credit for retail stores. Create an unlimited rediscount guarantee by the National Bank for public works projects to provide cash to local banks for bills of exchange pertaining to infrastructure and public works. Repatriate the foreign dollar overhang by encouraging China, Japan, and other dollar holders to place orders for US-made capital goods and modern hospitals. Revive the US Export-Import Bank. Set up a 10% tariff to protect domestic re-industrialization. Nationalize and operate GM, Chrysler, CIT, and other needed but insolvent firms as a permanent public sector. Maintain Amtrak and USPS.

3. Measures to re-industrialize, build infrastructure, develop science drivers, create jobs, and restore a high-wage economy: state and local governments and special government agencies modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority will be prime contractors for an ambitious program of infrastructure and public works subcontracted to the private sector. To deal with collapsing US infrastructure, modernize the US electrical grid and provide low-cost energy with 100 fourth generation, pebble bed, high temperature reactors of 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts each. Rebuild the rail system with 50,000 miles of ultra-modern maglev Amtrak rail reaching into every state. Rebuild the entire interstate highway system to 21st century standards. Rebuild drinking water and waste water systems nationwide. Promote canal building and irrigation. For health care, build 1,000 500-bed modern hospitals to meet the minimum Hill-Burton standards of 1946. Train 250,000 doctors over the next decade. The Davis-Bacon Act will mandate union pay scales for all projects. For the farm sector, provide a debt freeze for the duration of the crisis, 0% federal credit for working capital and capital improvements, a ban on foreclosures, and federal price supports at 110% of parity across the board, with farm surpluses being used for a new Food for Peace program to stop world famine and genocide. Working with other interested nations, invest $100 billion each in: biomedical research to cure dread diseases; high energy physics (including lasers) to develop fusion power and beyond; and a multi-decade NASA program of moon-Mars manned exploration, permanent colonization, and industrial production. These science drivers will provide the technological spin-offs to modernize the entire US economy in the same way that the NASA moon shot gave us microchips and computers in the 1960s. These steps will expand and upgrade the national stock of capital goods and enhance the real productivity of US labor. Return the federal budget and foreign trade to surplus in 5 years or less.

4. Measures to defend and expand the social safety net: Restore all cuts; full funding at improved levels for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, jobless benefits, WIC, Head Start, and related programs. Offer Medicare for
All to anyone under 65 who wants it at $100 per person per month, with reduced rates for families, students, and the unemployed. Pay for this with Tobin tax revenues and TARP clawback, and by ending the Iraq and Afghan wars. Seek to raise life expectancy by five years for starters. No rationing or death panels; savings can come only by finding cures.
Quickly reach a $15 per hour living wage. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and affirm the right to organize. Pass card check to promote collective bargaining.

5. Measures to re-launch world trade and promote world recovery: Create a new world monetary system including the euro, the yen, the dollar, and the ruble, plus emerging Arab and Latin American regional currencies, with fixed exchange rates and narrow bands of fluctuation enforced by participating governments. Institute clearing and gold settlement among member states. Replace the IMF with a Multilateral Development Bank to finance world trade and infrastructure. The goal of the system must be to re-launch world trade through exports of high-technology capital goods, especially to sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and the poorer parts of Latin America. Promote a world Marshall Plan of great projects of world infrastructure, including: a Middle East reconstruction and development program; plans for the Ganges-Bramaputra, Indus, Mekong, Amazon, and Nile-Congo river basins; bridge-tunnel combinations to span the
Bering Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Malacca, the Sicilian narrows, and connect Japan to the Asian mainland; second Panama canal and Kra canals; Eurasian silk road, Cape to Cairo/Dakar to Djibouti, Australian coastal, and Inter-American rail projects, and more. American businesses will receive many of these orders, which means American jobs.

This program will create 30 million jobs in less than five years. It will end the depression, rebuild the US economy, improve wages and standards of living, re-start productive investment, and attain full employment with increased levels of capital investment per job. Most orders placed under this program will go to US private sector bidders. Because of the vastly increased volume of goods put on the market, inflation will not result.

*Principal that did this makes $151.189/year. Your property tax $ at waste! (my note)

Updated: Friday, 22 Jul 2011, 6:52 AM CDT
Published : Thursday, 21 Jul 2011, 8:51 PM CDT
By Dane Placko, FOX Chicago News

Chicago – At a time when Chicago Public Schools are struggling for money, residents might be surprised by what FOX Chicago News found in the dumpster behind one school on the Northwest Side.
Thousands of dollars in school supplies – most of them unused – tossed in the trash at Northwest Middle School in the 5200 block of West Palmer, in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood.
The concerned viewer, who tipped off FOX Chicago, was outraged by the waste they found. As school officials preparing for the new year dumped boxes and boxes of unopened school supplies straight into the trash.
The tipster said to check the dumpsters behind Northwest Middle School. Sure enough, in one of the dumpsters lay thousands of dollars worth of books and unused school supplies that had apparently been tossed out in just the past few days.
Boxes and boxes of unopened chalk in packs of 12, enough to supply hundreds of classrooms for an entire school year, were found in that dumpster. At $0.89 a box, that’s just over $10 per pack, wasted.

There were also reams of unopened writing paper, drawing pads, bottles of glue at $1.19 each, boxes and boxes of books – some used, others brand new – and hundreds of textbooks and test preparation booklets.

Not a single page was marked.

Hundreds of rolls of adhesive tape, at just under $6 a piece, had been dumped, still inside the office depot boxes that were delivered to the school.
FOX Chicago wondered how Northwest Middle School could afford to simply throw away these valuable supplies, at a time CPS is facing a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
When asked the reason behind throwing out all the supplies, Principal Marilyn Strojny explained they were conducting inventory.
“To actually know what our inventory was,” Strojny said, “to actually straighten it all up, to know what we had.”
The principal said the supplies and books had been taking up space for several years. She also said she offered it around to other nearby schools but there were few takers.
Strojny didn’t know if there was a way to send the supplies back downtown to the central office, so they could dispose of it in another way.
The principal said she tossed out the tape because she didn’t have the right tape dispensers, which she said cost $70 a piece.
“If I don’t have a tape dispenser what do I do with it?”
Why throw out cases of chalk and erasers?
“Cause everybody uses overhead projectors,” Strojny said. “So we don’t use it.”
She didn’t know of another school that might have used the chalk and erasers.

“Since I’ve become a central banker, I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” ~ Federal Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, during a panel discussion on financial services.

Citi Bank has sent another ‘love’ letter to its customers and here is the essence of what it says. “We reserve the right to require 7 days advanced notice before permitting a withdrawal from your checking account. While we currently do not exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past we are required by law to notify you of this change.”

What right? A bank is not a person therefore it has no rights. Rights are granted and given by the Creator not man. Hear that Supreme Court? This is just their contract and you don’t have to agree or you can amend it with your own and that is your RIGHT! They don’t have to accept but that’s business. A right is something we have to recognize and respect; it’s not negotiable.

They must notify you because they are required by law. Imagine if there was no law. In my opinion they would not notify you at all.

Now why the change at all? What are they afraid of? Or what is it they know about the future? What I read in this is do what you can to prepare. They are planning a very bad and unpleasant future to say the least.

Please do not think that I exaggerate when I say that I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps. ~ Sully Sullenberger Capt. US Air

I did not deal well with the politicians. I tend to tell people that when they are full of crap, that they are full of crap. ~ Robert Crandall

Since the ADA was passed in 1978. Ground flight crew salaries have been cut about 225%. Pilot salaries have been cut by about 40%; the agent group has been decimated. Pensions are basically worthless; the best talent is shying away from an airline industry job. Now they want to eliminate health care from those who worked their life away for the airlines. All these are victims of the invisible hand a system called airline deregulation.

I’m reprinting an article from USA Today written by George Hobica, Airfarewatchdog.com. I believe it to be real and true because the CEO could not use his real name and reveal the real name of his airline, but it is a REAL airline because his comments reveal a history of when airlines recognized some semblance to economic and financial reality; it was called regulation. Finally at long last an honest CEO tells it like it is and is not at war with the employees for the want of his own ego and greed. Here is the article in its entirety.

If and airline CEO were your seatmate, he’d give you an earful
By George Hobica, Airfarewatchdog.com

Recently I “interviewed” Wilbur Flywright, CEO of BrokenWings Airways. Mr. Flywright, a veteran of the U.S. airline industry, has been taking me to task lately for “coming down too hard” on the airlines in some of my columns. In our interview, I asked him how he would explain some of BrokenWing’s more unpopular policies to a customer, should he find himself sitting next to one on a future flight. Here’s what he told me he’d say:

“OK. Let’s get real here. Just in case you were in a coma for the last 25 years, airlines have done nothing but lose money. In fact, since its beginnings the U.S. airline industry hasn’t made a dime. Quite the contrary, it has lost billions upon billions. And why? Because of you.

“That’s because whenever we raise fares to a level that allows us to make a profit, you stay home. Or you take the damned BoltBus. Or you drive to grandma’s house (did you miss the memo that driving is 100 times more dangerous than flying?).

“Please. Airfares, since the 1978 deregulation legislation that nearly killed our airline, are a freaking bargain. Over the past umpteen decades, whenever we sold you a ticket, on average we lost money on the deal. Exactly what would you have us do? All of us go out of business? Yeah, well have fun taking BoltBus to Paris.

“So what did we do? We eliminated service. We CUT SALARIES AND BENEFITS. No more little plastic wings for the kiddies; if you remember those, then you remember that the cheapest roundtrip coach fare from New York to Los Angeles in 1959 was $231, or about $1800 in today’s dollars. And if you remember that, then could you please shut up about the fees?

“Ah, the fees. Can we agree on just one thing? If you r neighbor moves, you aren’t going to pay for it, right? No, of course not. Not unless you really wanted him gone. So why should you pay for the jet fuel consumed by some moron who’s flying a 100-pound steamer trunk across the country in our baggage compartment?

“Because that’s what you’ve been doing all these years. You’ve been paying for all those folks who think they need 20 pairs of shoes when they fly to Vegas for the weekend. You paid when Fluffy got out of his cage and bit the guy in 23C (but trust me, your in-cabin pet fees didn’t cover the six-figure settlement, let alone the legal bill). And you’ve been paying for the lady who spends an hour tying up one of our phone reservationists looking for the cheapest fare to Boise, and then buys the ticket on Expedia.

“And please don’t call these fees ‘hidden’. They’re all spelled out in black-and –white on our website, under ‘fees’. You just have to read, all right?

“So that’s all history now. Let people who use the services pay for the services. Don’t want to play? Fine. You don’t have to. No one’s forcing you to book the rows with extra legroom. Take the seat we assign you. Don’t check bags. Don’t change your travel plans and expect a free pass (the Yankees don’t let you switch game dates if you change your mind, so why should you hold us to a higher standard?). And don’t pay the lousy $6 to watch our in flight satellite system with 24 channels of live TV. So what if we paid a small fortune to install it.

“Read Wing and a Prayer, our entertaining in flight magazine, instead. It’s located in the seat back pocket in front of you.

“It’s free. For now.”

On October 24, 1978 Airline Deregulation was enacted thus began the deconstructing of the greatest service to the passenger worldwide. Here is a list of facts involving airline deregulation. Remember airline deregulation started the entire deregulation mania that has caused the current depression, whether it’s NAFTA, Smoot-Hawley, Glass-Steagall Act, etc. being eliminated it all falls under deregulation.

Before Airline Deregulation
·    Airlines had a stable route system.
·    25 years before deregulation not one airline filed for bankruptcy.
·    The latest aircraft advances were within about a 10 year window. For example, in the 1950’s we had piston propeller planes, in 1959 Boeing gave us fan jet service with the 707, in 1970 the airlines began to use wide body jets. Since dereg. no major advancements.
·    Passengers enjoyed the finest service both on the ground and in the air.
·    Passengers were people to be respected not numbers as part of a herd.
·    Meal service was hot and filling in both First and Coach and included in the service.
·    Because employees were paid properly it was service with a smile.
·    First class was first class.
·    Only occasionally was there a small delay usually because of weather.
·    No million dollar bonuses for senior management while cutting pay and benefits for employees.
·    To be a pilot was a dream.
·    An airline job was a good job with a future.
·    Good pensions.
·    Large safety margins.

After Airline Deregulation
·    Over 50 airlines have gone bankrupt.
·    50,000 jobs have been lost.
·    Pay for ground crews have been cut 50-75%.
·    Vacations and holidays have been lost.
·    Pay on holidays is little better than the reduced straight pay and the employee is forced to work these holidays and not able to be home with their young children. It has always been that way but now the employees are not paid for being there. It is said now that the only people that celebrate Labor Day is management.
·    3-12 hour waits for arrivals and departures are now reported and for many reasons from weather to maintenance to no reason given at all. Passengers are now treated as a herd. In the opinion of many  management doesn’t care because;
·    1-2 million dollar bonuses are arrogantly given to 7 thousand plus executives smaller bonuses are given to supervisors all over the system while workers suffer pay and benefit cuts.
·    Pilots are quitting and telling their children not to aspire to this job.
·    An airline job has been made a lousy job with no future.
·    Worthless pensions.
·    The margin of safety is all but gone compared to regulation.
·    Now many airlines experience parts problems while jets and passengers wait.
·    First class in now about the same as coach. It is said in the industry that all you’re paying for in First is the seat.

In 1978 an act was passed called the Airline Deregulation Act.  It should have been called what it really was; the Airline Employee Subsidization of Passenger’s Ticket Act, because the lowest paid employees were forced to pay the largest percentage of their checks to subsidize the unpaid balance of the passengers’ ticket.

As I often explain to passengers, do you really believe there is such a thing as a $300.00 fare from New York to Los Angeles? It takes that much to start the engines. Actually Mr. Passenger what happens is you buy the cheapest ticket in town for let’s say $1800, you paid $300.00 and the airline employees paid the balance of $1600 from their confiscated payroll.

This form of communist gangster capitalism has a name for this process. They call it forcing the unions to give concisions. It’s a very clever process first they buy off the government with cash and convince the congressmen to believe in the failed policies of Milton Freeman, the Chicago School and the Shock Doctrine. Next Jimmy Carter, Alfred the Father of Airline Deregulation Kahn, Senator Chappaquiddick Kennedy and the media heavily lobby the American people until it seems the only cure for all of America’s and for that matter all the ills of the world will be solved forever if we can only pass this act called airline deregulation. This is how they fix the deal and freeze out any proper opposition, Regan walks into the oval office for the first time and the fate of the poor employee (especially) on the ramp is now sealed.

From the book Airline Deregulation and Laissez-faire Mythology by Paul Stephen Dempsey quoting; “Without admitting it, the CAB had effectively adopted an indiscriminate policy of permissive entry, for it had systematically rejected every argument that it should moderate its approach. The burdens it placed on opponents of new entry were so onerous that, realistically, they could not be overcome. The board was determined to deregulate no matter what arguments were made about the deleterious consequences of the blind application of an economic philosophy case in concrete. In the CAB’s own words, the board was “determined to extend competition to the very core of the national transportation system.”

Kahn had two partners in this crime Michael Levine (CAB’s director of pricing) and Phil Bakes (CAB’s general council). Kahn would sit on the board of New York Air Levine would be at its head. Phil Bakes would be known as the hit man that destroyed Eastern and Continental through bankruptcy. This rouges gallery was well populated not the least of which was one Frank Lorenzo working tightly with Kennedy his puppets and the Democratic paid machine staff. This is a complete conflict of interest.

What can you say about an industry that has increased its hourly scale $7.00 in thirty years all the while eliminating benefits? The ramp flight crews have not seen a raise in 30 years because the pennies squeezed have always been lower than the cost of inflation. For example there was a 6 year contract with a six percent increase over the life of the contract. At the end of the six year period inflation went up 24% the ramp flight crews received 6% that translates to an 18% drop in their standard of living or an 18% cut in pay. Pretty slick uh?

This is possible because airline deregulation (like all privatization schemes) creates wage slaves at the cattle car airlines that sprout up and the employees are told to compete with wage slavery of the cattle car airlines. This is the biggest reason morale and service is at an all time low and dropping.

Meanwhile the public are harangued with cries of high labor costs. What is not said is that the highest labor costs are borne and harbored in the boardroom of senior management the CEO and the rest of his crew of pirates. When oil was at $27 a barrel airlines threatened the employees with bankruptcy while structuring for themselves upwards of 75 million dollar parachutes for themselves. When oil was at $140 a barrel senior management is found giving themselves $2 million bonuses. In my fathers day they called that embezzlement.

At airline subcommittee hearings around the year 2001 with airline presidents sitting next to him the Father of Airline Deregulation Alfred Kahn was asked, “Mr. Kahn how does a company make money under your model of deregulation?  Kahn’s answer was senator I don’t know how any company would make money following my model of deregulation. This from the grand architect and father of airline deregulation an act that is not looked at to modify even in the most modest form.

THE SOULTION

Bring back a new and moral Civil Aviation Board (CAB) and reregulate the fares. Eliminate the failed policy of airline deregulation. Airline deregulation has destroyed employees families, caused suicides, destroyed what little middle class there was especially for the ramp crews, created bailouts to the airlines with the associated overpaid executive labor, and executives lowering the stock through the bonus’s of greed.  The result has been not enough money spent in your neighborhoods and communities to support local business.