economic tidbits #1

"The number of people living in extreme poverty [in America] is the highest ever recorded since the census Bureau began tracking such data three decades ago."
— Eyal Press, in The Nation Magazine

"American households experienced negative savings [in 2005] – they spent $42 billion more than they earned – for the first time since 1933, the depths of the Great Depression."
— William Greider in The Nation Magazine (20 Feb 2006 issue)

"The personal savings rate in 2005 [was] minus 0.5%, the first year since the Great Depression that Americans spent more than they made."
— Time Magazine (13 Feb 2006 issue)

"The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has fallen all the way back to the level it was in 1945."
— Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky [Dem IL]

"By most conventional measures, especially job growth, the Bush years have been the worst of any president in the last fifty years ... Since the recession ended at the end of 2001, corporate profits are up 81 percent, while the wages that corporations pay their employees are up just 18%, a ratio of over four to one ... We're some ten million jobs below where we should be, based on historical averages."
— Doug Henwood, The Left Business Observer [est. 1986]
& The Washington Spectator

Working Minds 'Boycott W-9 Project'

The Forces of Endarkenment are on the brink of provoking Pearl Harbor III sometime in 2006. (September 11 was the curiously convenient Second Pearl Harbor.)

While we may have 'nothing to fear but fear itself', events around the world and within America are cause for great concern, frustration and worry. Detention camps are being built across America by Halliburton, war plans move forward for air attacks on Iran, the Rangel-Hollings Bill lurks offstage, the budget deficit sets records, the National Debt has risen beyond legal levels, and Americans are losing jobs and trying to survive on their equity or meager savings.

Folks who pay attention to non-propaganda news sources are looking for ways to act, to restore Constitutional powers to Congress (such as oversight), and to halt the lies & deceit & unwarranted secrecy, the war crimes and bribery, the greed & torture & death, the widespread abuse of power that is the stock in trade of the Bush Administration.

The new 'Working Minds Boycott W-9 Project' includes steps to take back your power, to assert your freedom as an Individual, to voice your disgust & disdain & disapproval of the way that America is headed – leaping and bounding toward an economic tsunami, toward widespread religious wars, toward ecological disaster, toward the sale of America and Americans to the lowest bidder.

The new website URL is http://www.BoycottW9.org
(which redirects to http://www.working-minds.com/boycottW9.htm )

Visit the site & begin your participation in the boycott ...
then copy & paste this to everyone in your address book

Fight tyranny: Regime change in November 2006 !!

boycott the Oligarchy

this new website includes simple steps for bringing the Bush-Cheney-Rove Imperial Presidency to account for their treasonous disregard for the U.S. Constitution & its guarantees of privacy, representational government & due process

http://www.boycottW9.org
which redirects to http://www.working-minds.com/boycottW9.htm

Regime change in November 2006 !!

Google™ has a philosophy

The Google philosophy:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well
3. Fast is better than slow
4. Democracy on the web works
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer
6. You can make monëy without doing evil
7. There is always more information out there
8. The need for information crosses all borders
9. You can be serious without a suit
10. Great just isn't good enough
                   {{ from their website }}

Monopolies Я Us (part 2)

BROADCAST MEDIA INDUSTRY
"Five conservative companies own 90% of the media in America." — per talk show host Ed Schultz

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PERSONAL COMPUTER INDUSTRY
Microsoft has 90% of the personal computer market, though hundreds of other vendors make the products & get the revenue. Poor Apple/Mac is still only 10% of the PC market; their main business is now the fantastically successful iPod.

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PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
As for the U.S. petroleum monopoly, five companies control 56.3% of the market and the top ten companies own 83.3% (per January 2006 Senate testimony by Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen).

The breakdown for 2004 is as follows:
Conoco-Phillips et al 13%
Valero-Shamrock 12.8%
Exxon-Mobil 11.9%
Shell et al 9.8%
B.P. 8.8%
Chevron-Texaco-Unocal 5.9%
Citgo 5.8%
Marathon 5.5%
Sunoco 5.3%
Koch-Flint Hills 4.5%
... for a total of 83.3%, leaving independent oil companies with only 16.7% !!

another smoking gun

On February 2nd, U.K.'s Channel 4 News released the story of their having a copy of the classified transcript of the 31 January 2003 meeting of President Bush & British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the White House, where they agreed to provoke Saddam Hussein into military action that would justify an invasion of Iraq.

Portions of the classified transcript are online at http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=1661

Bush said that "The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another {U.N.} resolution and would 'twist arms' and 'even threaten'. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway."

Blair responded that he is "solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam."

Extra credit question: How many times did you hear/see a report on this news item broadcast over the major media in the last week?