The Black Community Controls $1.1 Trillion in Buying Power, Yet . . .

Beneath The Spin*Eric L. Wattree

The Black Community Controls $1.1 Trillion in Buying Power, Yet . . .

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The African American community controls more spending power than the Gross National Product of Germany, the third richest industrial nation in the world, so why are we whining to the White man to provide for our needs?
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Dr. James P. Neelankavil, a professor of marketing and international business at Hofstra University, says in his book, International Business Research, that "Since the output of a country is an indicator of its economic activity, the GNP [Gross National Product] is often used as key factor in evaluating a country’s economic strength. The five largest countries in the world based on their GNP are the United States, $7 trillion; Japan, $2.5 trillion; Germany, $1.1 Trillion; France, $873 billion; and China, $393 billion."
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So based on Professor Neelankavil’s data, the African American community’s buying power of $1.1 trillion is equal to the economy of Germany, the third largest industrial economy in the world. We control $127 billion more than France, and $607 billion more than the gross national product of China. So why was it that in the 2014 midterm election people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West were running around suggesting that due to high unemployment in the Black community, Black people would be justified in sitting at home, not voting, and letting the Republican Party win governorships around the country, and take over the House and Senate? There’s something wrong there. Either they, and their ilk, are grossly uninformed - in which case, they need to keep their mouths shut and educate themselves - or they’re in active collusion with the GOP - the Black community’s worst enemy, and the domestic enemy of the United States as a whole.
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It’s not President Obama’s fault that we have high unemployment in the Black community. We in the Black community need to educate ourselves to a few fundamental facts. Barack Obama is merely President Obama, not King Obama. The U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. House of Representatives SOLE power over spending, and the house is controlled by the Republican Party. Thus, President Obama has to get permission from them to even pay the light bill, but the GOP has a vested interest in keeping the American people hungry, angry, and divided, so they’re blocking everything he tries to do. We saw the reason for that in the midterm election, because with people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, Boyce Watkins, and the entire Republican Party, they can convince the American people that it’s Obama’s fault, and win elections.
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NOBEL PRIZE WINNING ECONOMIST

The very same thing is true of the nation’s high unemployment. The economy is doing better than ever, and corporations are making more money than they’ve ever made in history, so the American people should be more prosperous than ever, and riding high. But the corporate/GOP coalition have a vested interest in not allowing that to happen, so they’re sending what should be American jobs, overseas. Again, the reason for that is political for the GOP - they want the American people angry with President Obama so they can win elections. And for the GOP’s corporate partners, it’s a business strategy - they’re trying to soften the American middle class up to the point they will accept a lower standard of living. They want to lower the American middle-class standard of living to where it’s more in line with the global economy, where in some countries workers make less a week than many middle class Americans spend on lunch per day. So the bottom line is, even though Barack Obama is President, in a free society, there is nothing that he can do to force corporations to hire more American workers. So I find it quite strange that someone who is SUPPOSE to be as brilliant as Cornel West is laying all of our problems at Obama’s feet, and not saying a mumbling word about the corporate/GOP alliance.
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Again, the Black community controls as much spending power as the GNP of Germany, the third largest economic power in the world, so we’re a nation within a nation, and there’s no reason why we have to sit around and wait for the White man to pass us crumbs. The reason we’re in this situation is because of our conditioning. As I’ve said many times before, we are products of the very same racist environment as White people, so some of us harbor some of the very same underlying bigoted attitudes toward other Black people as any barefoot, sheet-wearing, Hillbilly, as people like Clarence Thomas, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and a whole hoard of Black conservatives clearly demonstrate - oh, did I forget Boyce Watkins (It’s important that I keep mentioning these people, because with the exception of Clarence Thomas, the others are trying to influence Black people covertly).
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As a direct result of many of our underlying attitudes toward our own people, Black consumers will drive right past Black businesses to give our hard-earned money to Walmart, a corporation that’s closely associated with ALEC (and Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, I might add), and an organization that leaves no stone unturned to obstruct Black people’s right to vote, support politicians who are dedicated to impeding any legislation or program designed to enhance the interest of the minority community, and undermine poor and middle-class American worker’s as a whole. For this reason, Black businesses are absent or barely surviving in the community, and can’t afford to hire Black workers, so we’re creating our own Hell. 
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The following statistic says it all:
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"Currently, a dollar circulates in Asian communities for a month, in Jewish communities approximately 20 days and white communities 17 days. How long does a dollar circulate in the black community? 6 hours!!! African American buying power is at 1.1 Trillion; and yet only 2 cents of every dollar an African American spends in this country goes to black owned businesses"(http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/02/african-americans-1-1-trillion-dollars-buying-power-putting-good-use/).
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But in spite of the $1.1 trillion passing through the Black community, there are many who still insist on coming up with the excuse that the problem is with the banks - they won’t finance Black businesses. That’s a lame excuse, and we really need to stop trying to make excuses for our condition, because by coming up with all of these excuses, we’re simply giving ourselves a convenient excuse for failure. With all of the money that passes through the Black community, if we came together we could establish our OWN banks.

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Black Community Opens Its Own Market, and Creates Its Own Jobs

The Black community of Greensboro, North Carolina has seen the light. The African Globe reports the following:
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"Winn Dixie and other large grocery chains had divided up market territory, resulting in the closing of some stores despite their profitability. The loss of this Winn Dixie turned Northeast Greensboro into a food desert . . . For more than 15 years, there were many efforts to lure a new grocery store into the space. However, while the store would be profitable, it wouldn’t be profitable enough to satisfy the demands of the shareholder-based economy of a large corporation. Fed up with essentially begging for access to affordable, quality food,  residents of this predominantly African-American and low-income neighborhood decided to open their own grocery store.
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"After learning about cooperative businesses, they decided to open a community-owned grocery store. The store would meet local residents’ needs for access to quality food and dignified, well-paid jobs. And now it’s going to happen. When the Renaissance Community Cooperative opens in 2015, it will be a conventional grocery store (like a Food Lion or Kroger) where wages start at $10 per hour."

The Black Community Must Rid Itself Of Poverty Pimps

If the Black community ever wants to be a viable entity, however, we’re not only going to have to follow Greensboro’s example, but in order to do that, we need an organized community, and a big obstacle to that is the self-serving poverty pimps among us who benefit from our suffering. We’ve got to eliminate these people. These are the ones who are primarily responsible for the plight that we currently find ourselves. When Martin and Malcolm were alive, the only thing they wanted from the White man was for him to leave us alone and allow us to live our lives in peace. My grandfather had a little verse that reflected their attitude. He used to say, "The only thing I want from this whole damn nation, is a pretty little wife, and a good foundation." I didn’t realize it at the time, but in that one little verse he was teaching me the meaning of life - and he had that - a prosperous and meaningful life, and more.
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But after the death of Martin and Malcolm, the poverty pimps swooped in to try to take their place, but both their philosophy, and their agenda, were much different. They convinced the Black community that we couldn’t make it on our own. They convinced us that we were incapable of such a monumental feat. They told us that we needed the White man’s help to move forward, so it was incumbent upon us to hire them as our official emissaries to the White man. That was in the late sixties and early seventies. But since that time, the "emissaries" have all profited greatly, while we’ve been sitting on our hands suffering, whining, and begging for the past forty years - and we're still waiting for the White man’s response. Sure we want our piece of America's pie, but the only way to get that is by organizing and making ourselves a strong enough political force to DEMAND it, not pay poverty pimps $30,000 an hour speaking fees to talk about how unjustly we're being treated. First, we already know that; and secondly, the only one it's benefitting is the poverty pimp. We're actually PAYING him to help spread the word, and profile us, as an hopelessly inept culture.
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So it’s time to bring the poverty pimp hustle to an end. We don’t need one voice speaking for millions; we need millions speaking with one voice. We also need to re-embrace our self-esteem, and begin to recognize who we are, what we represent, and the dignity of what we’ve managed to overcome. We're not puppies who need to be defended. We are a strong and vibrant people. One of our number has risen from the very bottom to become President of the United States. That's one of the most amazing accomplishments in the history of mankind. It's the equivalent of a captured slave rising to become the emperor of Rome, and it also speaks volumes about the American people's respect for excellence. But the poverty pimps have a vested interest in playing that down. They have a vested interest in playing you down.

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The Community Must Control The Way We Are Being Portrayed

In addition, the Black community is doing itself a huge disservice by just sitting back and allowing ourselves to be portrayed in a distorted and negative fashion. It sends the wrong message to our children, and the world. When our children sit around for hours on end watching the antics of Lil’ Wayne and others flaunting the very worst of who we are, it sends the message to our young people that they have a moral obligation to be stupid in order to demonstrate their Black pride. They’re, literally, being instructed in what it means to be Black by sources other than ourselves. They’re being taught that being Black means wearing pants saggin’ off their asses, engaging in reckless and irresponsible behavior, scarring their bodies with ugly tattoos that can prevent them from obtaining employment, and giving priority to chasing "bling," momentary pleasure, and superficial trinkets over pursuing education, knowledge, and investing in themselves as individuals.
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If we’re tolerating these things in our homes, we have no right to complain when the rest of society refuse to hire us, and profile us a superficial and irresponsible idiots. But the fact is, we’re not only tolerating it, we’re making people filthy rich by supporting an industry that thrive on producing videos that are nothing short of ten minute commercials being circulated around the world saying that the very womb of our culture are sluts and whoes who are only good for abuse, and that Black men want everything out of life but a job - and will do anything to get it.
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That’s not who we are as a people, but that’s the way that 90% of the community is being portrayed by a mere 10% of the most dysfunctional element in the Black community.  That’s who our young people are looking up to, and that’s the way the rest of the world sees us. So if we allow this to continue, whose fault is it when the rest of the world believes their lying eyes? No wonder unemployment is so high among Black people. I wouldn’t hire anyone like that either - would you?
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So the Black community needs to come down on the media like a sledgehammer, and stop them from slandering our community. We also have to start letting our children know, in no uncertain terms, that stupidity’s not cute. And we can't start to disseminate that message too soon, or too early in a child’s life, and since kids tend to gravitate toward those things that they’re rewarded for as "cool," it’s not enough to simply address this issue as individual parents - we might as well be spittin’ in the wind. We have to address this issue as a COMMUNITY.
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We’ve got to let BET know that if they want the community’s continued support, they’re going to have to change their call letters to stand for Black Excellence Television, and their programming is going to have to reflect that. We have to make it clear to BET, MTV, and the rest of the media that if they want the support of the Black community that they’re going to have to air programming that’s consistent with our agenda as a community - programming that reflects manhood as having the character to face and defeat adversity, and reflects strength as being tender enough to sooth the wounded feelings of a baby girl.
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And we should also encourage the promoters of these awards shows, like the Soul Train Awards, to be more responsive to the needs of our community. We don't need yet another parade of swaggering millionaires staggering up on stage, snatching microphones, and acting a fool. We need to start placing more emphasis on honoring young scholars, educators, and the people in the community who are helping to move Black people forward. That isn't to say that celebrities and entertainment shouldn't be involved in the shows (I'm a musician myself), but they should be the "help," not the honorees. After all, if all our young people ever see the community honoring are singers, movies stars, and athletes, why should they aspire to be anything else?
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And finally, we've got to demand more responsibility from our churches. We've got to make it clear to some of these preachers that if they expect to take collection money out of our community on Sunday, they’re going to have to do more than just flap their lips; they need to be prepared to put some kind of service back into the community during the week. Our churches should be serving as low-cost childcare facilities for working mothers during the week. They could then employ unemployed mothers, and at the same time hold classes in child rearing. They should also put some of their tithes into starting businesses to provide jobs within the community, instead of squandering it on big cars and expensive homes (generally outside the community) for the preacher. So the community needs to send a very direct and precise message to some of these preachers -"Don't just preach me a sermon, live me one."
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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The 2014 Midterm Election - A Towering Testament To Monumental Stupidity

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

The 2014 Midterm Election - A Towering Testament To Monumental Stupidity

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The objective eye of history is undoubtedly going to look back upon the 2014 Midterm Election as both validating the concept of divide and conquer, and, as a towering monument to the stupidity of contemporary American society.
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In spite of the fact that the most pressing issue in American society today is to create jobs and complete the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, the American electorate delivered a repudiation of the president who save the nation from descending into a second Great Depression, and provided a sweeping victory to the GOP, the very party that’s directly responsible for its current misery, and has a vested interest in ensuring that the nation remains miserable, hungry, and divided for the next two years.
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How could that possibly happen? Well, there’s enough blame to spread around almost evenly, but let’s start at the top and work our way down.
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While President Obama is a dedicated, accomplished, and highly skilled chief executive, he seems to have two personality traits that would ordinarily be considered commendable in a private individual, but must be considered a flaw in a politician. First, he’s the consummate gentleman, so he meticulously avoids ugly confrontation if at all possible, and that’s a serious shortcoming when you’re dealing with greedy, lying, and ugly people. Secondly, he also meticulously avoids tooting his own horn, which is also a serious shortcoming when dealing with people who specialize in denigrating his accomplishments, and padding their resume regarding their own. A perfect example of that is how the GOP has obviously convinced the American people that their unconscionable obstruction to the nation’s recovery was done in the best interest of the country.
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Back in February of this year, I wrote an article, and sent a copy to the White House, with the presumptuous title, "Dear Bro. Obama"  (I hate that title, and I wish I could go back and change it), in which I addressed the above issue with the President:
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"So while I think you, personally, should continue in the mode that you’ve established, at the same time, you should create a staff - housed right next door to the Oval Office - whose sole purpose is to debunk Republican disinformation. Then, whenever any Republican appears on the news to distort reality, he or she should be able to look forward to the next day’s news cycle being flooded with information not only debunking his or her words, but also, examining every action that he or she has engaged in during their career that tends to be in conflict with their current position. In short, you should parade their hypocrisy before the American people.
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"If you would take that simple action, Mr. President, you would not only drive home to the people the GOP’s hypocrisy, but you would cause individual Republicans to run away from the cameras instead of stumbling all over one another to be the first one to present the latest Republican assault on reality. In addition, it would appease the thirst for blood among the people in your base, provide writers like myself with grist for our mill, and also give us an indication of what areas of investigation would bear the most fruit."
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Since much of the GOP’s popularity and success is based upon the complete ignorance of a sizable percentage of the American electorate, I’m convinced that if the President would have followed my advice and educated the people to what they’re actually dealing with in the GOP, he could have done an end run around what we witnessed last night.
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But the President’s failure to confront the GOP’s manipulation of the people is not the only thing that led to last night’s result. Another huge contributor to last night’s GOP victory was the activities of the self-serving and hypocritical so-called "progressive" lip-flappers like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and Boyce Watkins, who spend all of their time attacking President Obama and the Democratic Party regarding what they’re NOT doing, while at the very same time being as quiet as church mice regarding GOP obstruction to voter rights, any form of job creation, extended unemployment insurance, women’s rights, gay rights, affordable health care, and anything else that might provide the least bit of relief to the American people. The collective and individual behavior of these so-called "Black activists" is far too defiant of logic for it to be either by accident or mere stupidity.
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These three individuals, and others, have done a grave disservice to the very people that they claim they wanted to protect by convincing these people that they should be so upset with the "Bogeyman" that they should leave the backdoor unlocked for the Devil. As a direct result of their activities - and directly implying, in the case of Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, that the people should be so upset with Barack Obama that it would be understandable if the people decided not to vote - they have now placed the very people that they’re supposed to be so concerned about in, literally, the worst situation of their lives.
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So to use a term that Tavis likes to sling around so "liberally," the people should hold them directly accountable for their behavior by relegating them to the ash heap of Black history. Considering the heavy and horrific price that Black people have paid for the right to vote, the mere suggestion that Black people not turn out to vote, alone, should be considered sacrilege for ANY so-called Black activist - and they've made a living off of undermining the Democratic agenda and enabling the GOP for, at least, 14 years, when Cornel West played such an integral role in helping to get George W. Bush elected President in the 2000 Election.
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These people don’t make it a point to time the release of their books to come out just before every election for nothing. That gives them the opportunity to help the GOP by bad-mouthing the Democratic Party under the pretext of being on a "book tour." I've been trying to warn the people against the activities of Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and later, Boyce Watkins'. It wasn't hard to predict the possibility of it leading to the Republican blowout that we witnessed last night, because Cornel West has done it before.
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There's two ways of delivering a victory to the GOP, either directly advocating that the people vote Republican, or through the backdoor like these three, by making the people so angry at President Obama and the Democrats that they don't turn out to vote. Because what many people don't realize is, there's no such thing as not voting.  They're failure to vote is a vote for the side they dislike most.
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For just that reason, I wrote two articles, back-to-back, just last month warning the people about these individuals - "The ‘Black Prophetic’ Mouth of Cornel West is At It Again - And As Usual, Just In Time To Sabotage Democrats In The Upcoming Election," and, "Is Cornel West A Judas Goat - When Was The Last Time You Heard Him Attack A Conservative Republican?" In the latter I point out the following:
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"After Ralph Nader was rejected for the 2000 presidential nomination by the Democratic voters, instead of acknowledging his rejection and falling into line to help defeat the Republicans, Nader went into a petulant snit and ran as a third party candidate. It was clear that he purposely ran as a third party candidate with the mean-spirited intent of sabotaging the Democratic effort, because third parties never win; the only purpose that third parties ever serve is to help elect the people that you like least, because they divide the vote of like-minded people.
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"Cornel West joined Nader in this foolish - or treacherous, you make the determination - campaign, and as a result, George W. Bush won the election over Al Gore by winning Florida by a mere 537 votes. The Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So when I say that Cornel West is more than a little responsible for George W. Bush becoming President of the United States, and thus, your current economic condition, don’t take my word for it – you do the math.
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"Most people, if they were sincere, would look at the disastrous results of their activities and be devastated. After all, causing Bush to be elected was the worst possible outcome for everything West is SUPPOSE to represent. So most people would conclude that they had made a grave error, and that they would never do anything to divide the progressive vote again. But not Cornel West, he teamed up with Ralph Nader yet again in the 2012 election against Obama, and tried do the very same thing that they'd done in the 2000 election that resulted in Bush's presidency. The only thing that stopped them was, this time the people weren’t buying it."
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The third element that contributed to last night’s election disaster is the people themselves - they are so grossly uninformed that they fail to realize that they’ve just cut their own throat (Fellow Americans, Don't Let Our Ignorance Destroy Us).
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 Many of the poor and middle class social conservatives who are undoubtedly dancing in the street with jubilation over striking a blow against Obama fail to realize that the fiscal, or corporate conservatives, whose win they’re celebrating, don’t care any more about them than they do Black people, Hispanics, women or gays. They don’t even share their agenda. The corporate conservatives have merely been catering to the social conservative’s bigotry and hatred to keep the poor and middle class divided, so they could be conquered. So what the social bigots are too dumb to realize is, they’ve just voted themselves into the status of "the new niggas."
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What the social bigots should have been asking themselves is, when the corporatists started shipping jobs overseas, were they just eliminating Black jobs, or did their jobs go too? And during the housing crisis, was it just Blacks, Hispanic, and gay people who lost their homes, or did they lose their homes as well?
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The corporate/GOP alliances ultimate goal is to transform America from a democracy, to a corporate feudalist society, where corporations control every part of our lives. We may still get to vote, but our votes will be meaningless, because they’ll have so much control over our lives that we’ll know that if we vote the wrong way, we’ll be punished. They’ve already started the conditioning process. They’ve already conditioned many of us to believe that organized labor - historically, the best friend of the poor and middle class - is evil, they cause us to lose jobs; they’ve also conditioned many of us to believe that the minimum wage is a bad thing, because it causes us to lose jobs. So they using the withholding of jobs to slowly lower the American middle-class standard of living to conform to the global economy, where many workers make less a week, than American middle-class workers spend on lunch a day.
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And another thing, if you social bigots think the corporatists are going to conform to your desire to keep undocumented workers out of the country, you’d better think again. The corporatists have a vested interest in allowing as many undocumented workers into the country as they can get, because they make you have to compete for lower paying jobs, which again, lowers the middle-class standard of living. Thus, you’re determined insistence on remaining a bigot, has led to you cutting your own throat. It’s ironic, isn’t it?
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Revenge of the Nerds: Are Americans Being Brainwashed Into Mass Servitude?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Revenge of the Nerds:

Are Americans Being Brainwashed Into Mass Servitude?

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THE GOP HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN KEEPING
AMERICANS MISERABLE, ANGRY, AND UNEMPLOYED

I gave up watching television about a year ago. One day I got tired of simply complaining about how silly and inane television shows were and decided to do something about it. So I called Direct TV and told them to shove it, and I haven’t regretted that decision for even one second since. 
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But last week I had occasion to spend a night in a motel, and for lack of anything else to do, I decided to turn on the television and let it lull me to sleep. That decision not only confirmed why I stopped watching it in the first place, but much more. After not watching it for a year, its aggressive propagandizing was not only much more apparent to me, but its blatant and heavy-handed approach to controlling the public’s collective mind was all but oppressive.
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The problem - and danger of television - is that it lulls the mind into a hypnotic state and then presents ideas and concepts as though it goes without saying that they’re valid. That causes the public to accept the most ridiculous and dysfunctional propositions as valid without the scrutiny of critical evaluation.
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One of the most destructive propositions that television promotes in this manner is the concept that brawn is superior to brains. How many times have you watched movies or television shows that portray the dumb and clueless jock as superior to the "nerdy" intellectual? These shows will show a jock who can’t chew gum and tie his shoes at the same time as a handsome, sharp dressing, and confident lady’s man, while portraying the most intelligent student in the school as disheveled, awkward, and a turn-off to women. In short, they routinely profile intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge as a dysfunctional condition to be avoided at all costs.
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That is the exact opposite of the message that we should be sending our young people. So it’s no wonder that America is rapidly sliding downhill. The fact is, just because an individual is intelligent, that doesn’t mean that he or she is either awkward, nerdy, or, socially dysfunctional. One simply has to look at many of the elegant denizens of Wall Street or Madison Avenue to recognize the fallacy of that portrayal - in fact, many of the struttin’, jock-strap-wearing "lady’s men" from high school are now the chauffeurs, flunkies, and "gofers" of these so-called nerds.
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But perhaps that’s why many of the rich and accomplished have so little sympathy for middle-class America - they remember how they were treated in high school and college while they were trying to lay down their foundation for success. Many were looked down upon and treated as outcasts, so now, it’s payback time - and we’ve made that payback extremely easy to accomplish.
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When many of us should have been hard at work laying down our own foundation to become competent individuals, we were so busy trying to be popular, and living vicariously through the exploits of our favorite celebrities and sports heroes, that we never learned to think. Instead of learning HOW to think, we were taught WHAT to think. As a result, we’ve become so thoroughly programmed in group-think that we’re now mired in a cesspool of intellectual dysfunction. That accounts for why we routinely hear, and never question, comments like, "President Obama is a socialist - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to provide my family with healthcare." Many Americans have been so brainwashed with respect to the "isms" that they fail to recognize the stupidity of such a statement.
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A sizable number of Americans have also casually accepted the ridiculous concept that by making the simply rich, filthy rich, it will help to create jobs - and that’s in spite of the fact that the American middle class has been plummeting downhill for the past 35 years under the fallacy of that economic concept. Far too many Americans lack the simple intellectual competence to recognize that regardless to how much money we give to the rich, they will never use that money to create jobs unless they have someone to purchase the products in which those jobs produce - and the American middle class no longer possess those funds, because we’ve already given the rich our money . . . for free. So the one-percenters have absolutely no incentive to create jobs - they don’t have to. They can just sit back and play the stock market with the money they’re already getting from the American taxpayer. So why should they take on the additional headache of actually having to produce a product? 
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The scheme to convince the American people that jobs are created by the rich was conceived during the Reagan administration by USC economist, Art Laffer. His name is quite appropriate, because the rich have been falling out laughing all the way to the bank every since. Even many Republicans were absolutely shocked when the American people fell for such a transparent scam. George Bush Sr. called it "voodoo economics," because the scam was, literally, predicated on the assumption that the American people were so gullible, undereducated, and dumb, that they could reintroduce Santa Claus back into our lives - and the amazing part was, it worked.
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That was an eye-opener for the corporate community and their political cronies. The mere fact that they could get America to embrace a concept as ridiculously self-defeating as "trickle-down economics" clearly demonstrated to them that they could get the American people to embrace ANYTHING, as long as they could convince us that it would hurt a targeted group that they could conditioned us to hate, the concept was repeated often enough, and it was wrapped in the appropriate patriotic vestments. That’s why every time you turn on your television set you’re served up the virtual equivalent of "The Night Before Christmas" - even though Christmas Day has been eluding us for the past 35 years now.      

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The reality is, jobs are created by a vibrant and healthy middle class who has the money to purchase goods and services. Thus, it doesn’t matter how much money we give Gucci, he will never hire anyone to produce handbags if he’s forced to try to sell them in a homeless shelter - and for good reason - because no one would have the money to purchase the product that he’s produced - and essentially, that’s what we’ve allowed America to become, a homeless shelter.
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So when we turn our money over to the rich, they’re not going to use it to create jobs and re-circulate that wealth; they’re going to let that money draw interest, and dust, in offshore accounts. We’ll never see that money again. That’s why the top 5% of the nation controls 83% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% of Americans only control 7% of the wealth, and the gap is widening with every day that passes. So consider what happens when the 7% of the wealth that’s controlled by the middle class becomes only 3%, or even 1%. At that point, for all intent and purposes, we’ll be slaves. The only difference is, we’ll have to provide our own housing and maintenance, and therein lies the corporate whip.
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So if there’s a moral to this story, it’s that the American poor and middle class need to wake up, begin to educate ourselves, and stop allowing corporate interests and their political cronies to keep us fighting among ourselves. It’s way past time for us to recognize that we’re no longer engaged in a race or ethnic war; we’re now in the middle of a class war, and we’re losing badly.
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Now, that isn’t to say that racism and bigotry is a thing of the past; on the contrary, it’s still being used to great effect. But there’s a major difference in its character. Today, bigotry is no longer the war itself. Racism and other forms of bigotry have now become a TOOL of war. It’s being used to keep the poor and middle class divided, because as long as they can keep the masses at one another’s throats, the people will never come together to defend their mutual interests.
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Another important distinction of a class war is the fact that we can no longer assume that because a person is of the same race or ethnic group, that they’re on same side. That fact should have been made abundantly clear to White America during, and subsequent to, the 2008 Wall Street calamity. It wasn’t just Black people who lost their homes and jobs, and they’re not just sending the jobs of women and gays overseas, the corporatists are targeting ALL of poor and middle class America. Be you Black, White, Asian, or Eskimo, if you’re not independently wealthy - and comfortably so - you’re the new "nigger" on the block. 
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That point was driven home in graphic detail during the recent school board election in Los Angeles, when two Black politicians (Alex Johnson, and his mentor and boss, Mark Ridley-Thomas) mounted a highly financed campaign (funded by charter school interests) that brutally slandered Dr. George McKenna, a nationally recognized and respected educator who was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the movie, "The George McKenna Story." Even though Johnson and Ridley-Thomas are Black, just like Dr. McKenna, they weren’t concerned about the interests of the Black and minority community, their alliance was with the corporatist agenda. 
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And again, the same is true of White corporatists. They don’t care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do Black people, women, or gays. This is true of corporate feudalists of every stripe. All these people care about is subjugating the poor and middle class to big business - period.
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So the next time you turn on your television set, or allow yourself to be swept away by any component of the mass media, keep in mind who’s tailoring the message being propagated. Because chances are, that message was specifically designed - or at the very least, promoted - to cloud your mind (and the minds of your children) with nonsense that undermines your way of life - all "isms" notwithstanding.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.comCitizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Black Racists and Their Thinly Veiled Racist Rants Against Obama

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Black Racists and Their Thinly Veiled Racist Rants Against Obama

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In a comment on Electronic Urban Report (http://www.eurweb.com/2013/08/an-open-letter-to-tavis-smiley/#comme...), a gentleman by the name of Earl Wilkerson said the following:

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"Many of the arguments Mr. Smiley and Mr. West have concerning the African American community still exists and always will. Oh My how have we often forgotten President Obama Mother is a White woman to many this does not truly represents a African American fully. In fact, many may call him a half breed."

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Mr. Wilkerson’s "half breed" comment was nothing less than a not so thinly veiled racist rant, much like those of Cornel West. I found his allusion to "half breed" laughably ironic, since Barack Obama is perfectly symbolic of the African-American culture itself – part African, and part American. MOST African Americans are mixed, and a very short excursion among REAL and PURE Africans would clearly demonstrate that fact. Afros, Dashikis, and exotic-sounding names notwithstanding, we’re clearly not the genuine article.

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Our mixture may not be as direct as Obama’s, but I’d be willing to bet that as many as 90% of us have a "White boy" lingering somewhere in our family tree – I know I do, in spite of my large lips, kinky hair, and beautiful BROWN skin. And to listen to some of you – at least, with respect to your hostile attitudes towards Obama – it’s clear that more than a few of you not only have White boys lurking in your family trees, but those White boys brought their sheets along. Clear evidence of that is, instead of heatedly discussing the Republican attempt to reverse the Voting Rights Act, all of your anger is focused on the first Black President of the United States. No other culture in America would be that stupid – do you hear me, Smiley and West?

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And about President Obama’s seeming inability to part the Red Sea

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 Why is Unemployment So High?

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It is clear that the corporate/Republican alliance have decided that it’s in their best interest to keep unemployment artificially high. We know this is true because they’re making more profits than they’ve ever made in their history, so there’s no reason for unemployment to be so high. There are several reasons why it’s in their advantage to do so.

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1). It’s to their political advantage to keep the American people angry, miserable, and divided during the Obama administration. That’s why we have gridlock in congress.

2). They know that by allowing the poor and middle class to obtain any disposable income whatsoever it will stimulate the economy and create even more jobs, because the TRUE job creators are the poor and middle class. The poor and middle class create jobs when they have the disposable income to purchase goods and services, because that forces businesses to hire people to provide those goods and services.

3). The corporate/Republican Alliance doesn’t want the economy to be stimulated because their agenda is to place so much pressure on the American Middle class that they’ll be less resistant to accepting a lower standard of living, and thereby, be dragged down to a standard of living that conforms to the new GLOBAL economy where countries are paying their workers less per week than many American workers spend on lunch per day.

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So if that is the case, and the corporatists are REFUSING to hire, is there anything in a free society that President Obama can do to FORCE corporations to hire workers if they’ve decided that it’s not is their best interest to do so?

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You see, the problem with the thinking of people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and other Obama critics is they seem not to recognize – or at least, don’t want the people to recognize – that Obama is merely the President of the United States, not the King of the United States. So these people are either not very bright, or they’re purposely trying to mislead the people – which do you believe it is?

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And by the way, it’s no accident that once Smiley and West lost the confidence of the Black community, they switched their strategy to start calling Obama a war criminal. By doing so, they’re trying to reach out to another constituency. Thus, while their lips say their interest is with what’s in the best interest of the Black community, their behavior clearly demonstrate two so-called brothers running all over the place trying to find ANYTHING that they can use to smear this Black president.

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Their antipathy towards President Obama is much like that of the Republican Party and social bigots - the only way the president could possibly appease their hostility would be to resign and apply for White House butler. So their behavior is not only embarrassing, but it’s disgustingly racist, and the Black community shouldn’t tolerate it.

A BLACK RACIST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHSH1GYJXEE

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President Obama: Protect America From Economic Terrorists

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2011/09/president-obama-protect-america-from.html

 

 Eric L. Wattree

http://wattree.blogspot.com/

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Scott Walker Recall: A Referendum on American Democracy

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Scott Walker Recall: A Referendum on American Democracy

The effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker in tomorrow’s Wisconsin election will undoubtedly have repercussions far beyond the boundaries of the state. Walker has come to be seen as the point man in the GOP’s concerted assault on the American middle class. All across the country GOP governors and Republican-controlled legislatures have launched aggressive campaigns to obstruct voting, bust unions, make draconian cuts to the police, fire departments, education, and social programs, all in the name of deficit reduction, only to use the resulting revenue to give huge tax cuts to large corporations and the top 1% of the population.
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In August of 2011 ThinkProgress.org reported that Walker turned away more than $9 million in grants from the Affordable Care Act. The funds were intended to address the state’s problems with drug and alcohol abuse, assessing the impact of public policies on the health of its citizens, and for signing up residents who qualify for state health programs. According to the article, health commissioners were "outraged." Reportedly, Walker indicated that the funds "duplicated existing efforts." This, in spite of the fact that Walker had "slashed $500 million from Department of Health Services and instituted a $1.6 billion reduction in public school funding." In addition, "Wisconsin is also near the very bottom of states for public health funding, ranking 49th in the nation for state funding of prevention services per capita."
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And according to an article in "Labor Notes" written by Eleni Schirmer and Lenora Hanson,"When Walker entered office in January 2011, the state had a budget surplus of more than $120 million. Walker made quick work of creating a budget crisis, allocating $140 million in corporate tax write-offs and giveaways during his first weeks in office." Thus, the GOP’s ostensible concern over the deficit appears to be nothing more than a pretext to redirect funds to corporations, the top 1% of the population, and to make absolutely certain that the poor and middle class remain miserable, angry, and divided until after the next election.
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Did I say this is a concerted effort on the part of the GOP? Absolutely.
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The Republican Party has done everything in their power to ensure that the American people remain miserable, divided, and angry until the 2012 election every since Rush Limbaugh gave them their marching orders early in Obama’s presidency. Limbaugh said, "I don't want this to work . . . I hope he [Obama] fails." And the Republicans have been on a single-minded mission to ensure Obama’s failure every since - which also means America’s failure. Thus, the GOP has, literally, been on a mission to sabotage America.
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From the moment Rush Limbaugh gave the Republican Party their marching orders, every initiative that President Obama has put forward to improve the economy and create new jobs has been met with fierce Republican opposition. They could care less that America is suffering. In fact, they want America to suffer - the more the better. All the GOP cares about is making absolutely sure that President Obama doesn’t succeed in bringing relief to the misery they caused the American people under eight years of George W. Bush..To that end, the Republicans in congress have engaged in a record number of filibusters in an attempt to block every initiative that Obama has put forward to rescue the American people. Their determination is so fierce in that regard that any Republican who fails to go along with their strategy is in dire jeopardy of being banished from congress. The attack on Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, who has spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate, is clear warning to all others who fail to fall in line.
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And even those initiatives that did manage to miraculously survive were being blocked from implementation by Republican Governors across the country, under the pretense that rescuing America constituted "wasteful spending." But their concern over the budget deficit didn’t prevent Republicans for a minute from holding the unemployed hostage to extend the Bush tax cut for the rich which, to a large extent, is what brought us to this point in the first place
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The Houston Chronicle reported Texas governor, Rick Perry, as saying the following regarding federal money allocated for Texas to assist the unemployed:
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"The money would come with too many strings attached. Taking the half billion would require the state to assist qualified out-of-work residents seeking part-time jobs, an idea that Perry said the state has rejected before, partly because it could discourage them from seeking full-time employment. The federal money injection would also make Texas extend benefits to more low-paid workers, and Perry said the overall expansion would force business to make higher unemployment insurance payments."
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Perry neglected to point out that the money would also be used by the unemployed to purchase goods and services. That would stimulate the economy, and the Republicans can’t have that. Yet, after initially turning down federal money targeted at creating jobs, Perry eventually took the stimulus money. But instead of using it to create jobs and bring relief to the poor and middle class, he used it to plug his budget shortfalls and save his "rainy day fund." CNN Money reports the following:
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"Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched . . . Now that the stimulus money has dried up, state lawmakers last week unveiled an austere budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal years that cuts $31 billion in spending. Schools, colleges, Medicaid and social services for the needy will be hit especially hard."
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So while Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has undoubtedly done his part to promote the GOP obstructionist agenda, in terms of symbolism he pales in comparison to Scott Walker. Walker’s shamelessly blatant assault on the rights and livelihood of the poor and middle class makes him the walking, breathing, embodiment of the Republican effort to lower the standard of living of working-class America. That’s what makes it essential that he’s recalled in tomorrow’s election. He represents the GOP’s trial balloon. If Walker survives, the Republican assault on the rights and livelihood of the working class will go into high gear all across America.

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Related Article:
THE GOP: A ONE HUNDRED YEAR RECORD OF SWINDLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Eric L. Wattree wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

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Whenever I hear a person claim that President Obama is a slave to the corporatist Wall Street culture, I know immediately that he’s one of three things - he’s either ignorant, blind to reality, or he’s promoting his own agenda. Of course Obama is a slave to Wall Street - we all are.
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You can’t live in this society without being a slave to Wall Street. But there are two kinds of slaves. There are slaves who are subservient and content to simply do what they’re told, and then there are slaves who engage in a constant struggle to free themselves and their people. So, while I’m not always happy with some of the day-to-day decisions that President Obama makes to promote our cause, I’m convinced that Obama is one of the latter. If he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to get rid of him.

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The fact is, if you’re a casual observer sitting at home and keeping score based purely on your attitudes, prejudices, and feelings, it’s easy to pass your uninformed judgment on every decision that any politician makes. But the reality is, anyone who decides to go into politics has to be practical, and a huge part of that practicality entails recognizing the fact that you’re going to have to dance to the music that’s being played, and it’s Wall Street that leads the band. So regardless to who we elect, they’re going to have to have, at the very least, a working relationship with the corporate establishment - and ironically, it’s our own fault.

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The primary reason that every politician in this country is forced to play footsy with the corporate establishment is because we, the people, are so lazy, undereducated, and disengaged from our own political well being that we allow the corporations to use money to control our minds. So the only way that a politician like Obama can even get through to us is by way of the corporate establishment.

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The reason that money has such a large influence on our political system is because it’s used to tell us what, and how, to think. From the time that most of us get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night, we spend most of our free time with corporate voices whispering in our ear. It could be the radio, television, or even the billboards that we don’t think we’re noticing as we’re driving in to work, but the fact is, they are all having a profound subliminal effect on our thinking and attitudes. They’re conditioning us to think, and to do, what they tell us to. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year to convince wimps with severe cases of acne and horrendous body odors that if they buy a certain kind of car, the beautiful model that’s sensuously stroking its hood, or someone just like her, is going to fall in love with them - and they influence out vote in exactly the same way. Thus, every politician must remain cogizant of that fact. 

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My personal favorite is the National Rent-A-Car commercial. They have a businessman walking through the air port in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background. Then when he gets to the counter, they have the lady behind the counter making goo-goo eyes at him like she can barely restrain herself from jumping over the counter and attacking him. Then the clincher is, at the end of the commercial they have a deep, authoritative voice saying, "YOU DESERVE THIS!"

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That commercial servers two purposes. First, it entices the traveling businessman to believe that using National Rent-A-Car makes him seem more important. But it also sends a message to the public - that big business is powerful, and that’s a good thing, so the concept of big business should be seen in a positive light because, "THEY DESERVE THIS!"

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Since the public is manipulated like this 24 hours a day, any politician who doesn’t have a working relationship with corporations can’t survive. The reason for that is simple. The very same corporation that runs commercials on Monday that convinces an unthinking electorate that "Obama is a big-government socialist who’s trying to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor," can turn around on Tuesday and convince that very same unthinking electorate that it’s appropriate to create a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus. That explains why we have people walking around saying things like, "Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family’s healthcare and send my kids to college." It sounds like hyperbole, but as we see on a daily basis, people are actually that brainwashed.

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Thus, the problem in this country is not the amount of money flowing through the system, that’s only secondary; the primary problem is the apathy, selfishness, and ignorance of the people. Money is merely a tool used to feed that apathy, selfishness, and ignorance to our severe disadvantage, and to make sure that we remain that way - both ignorant, and disadvantaged.

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While the corporations can’t use their money to literally buy a political office, they can, and do, use it to convince us to GIVE it to them by repeatedly reelecting those politicians who are willing to promote corporate interests. Their primary method of doing that is by playing on our ignorance and selfishness through the use of conflation. That keeps the poor and middle class so angry and divided that we fail to come together to protect our mutual interest.

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The corporate manipulators will conflate liberalism with socialism, communism, and un-Americanism, then tell everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to liberal philosophy that the liberals are trying to take away their way of life. Then they’ll target Blacks and initiate a campaign to convince everyone else that Blacks want to rob and steal from them, murder their sons and rape their daughters. Thereafter, they target every segment of the poor and middle class, one by one, and associate them with some threat to everyone else. That keeps the poor and middle class in turmoil. It causes them to be so angry, fearful, and divided among themselves that they fail to recognize that they’re being manipulated, while all their throats are being cut by a common foe - corporate greed.
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But corporate greed is not the only foe. We must also add the misery leeches and poverty pimps who also have a vested interest in keeping the people angry and divided. These are the self-appointed "defenders of the poor and put-upon" who make a fortune by manipulating the people’s anger. Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West immediately come to mind in that regard. Every time Smiley has a book to promote, wants a boost in his television ratings, or has any other snake oil to promote, he tours the country stirring up the very division that keeps the people impoverished. And West, who has teamed up with Smiley - just as he did with Ralph Nader during the 2000 election that gave us George Bush - also has a vested interest in the peoples’ misery. He reportedly pulls in $10,000 a speech complaining about our misery, while at the same time promoting the division that keep us that way. Thus, if the people ever did "overcome," it would be economically devastating to both of these hustlers.

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The only remedy for this situation is education, and through education, enlightenment. Because through a true education and its attendant enlightenment - as oppose to mere literacy - we’re more prone to become independent thinkers. As a result, we wouldn’t be nearly as susceptible to the unsubstantiated claims of snake oil salesmen. We would examine what we were being told, and we would consider the motives of those who were going out of their way to spread negative generalizations about others. Then, and only then, will we be able to defend our individual interests, and come together to defend the nation against the widespread and rampant corruption that’s currently dragging this country under the bus.

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Thus, if we want to save this nation for the benefit of our children, and their children, it is incumbent upon the American people to wake up to reality - and in a hurry. The world is changing faster than it ever has before, so we may not have but one or two elections left before the damage to this country is irreversible.

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We’ve got to start thinking of this country like it’s a business, we’re the owners, and the politicians are our employees. Only then will we begin to recognize the importance of our full engagement in running that business. Because the fact is, if the United States was a business, and as owners, we simply lounged around at home watching BET, MTV, and ESPN while allowing our employees (the politicians) to run it in the ground by giving themselves unwarranted raises in the middle of the night, and squandering and away our profits, it wouldn’t be the employees’ fault. It would be ours.

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So again, is President Obama a slave to Wall Street? Of course he is. We all are, and it’s way past time to correct that situation. But any president, regardless to who we elect, is going to need our help in that regard.

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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A Lesson in Republican Hypocrisy and Distortions

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Lesson in Republican Hypocrisy and Distortions

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Is the modern Republican Party really “the party of Lincoln,” and responsible for freeing the slaves? I don’t think so. But the GOP regularly, routinely, and with a straight face makes that claim. One Black Republican recently told me the following:
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"Black people weren't lynched in the South because they were Black, but because they refused to vote Democratic."
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And yet another Republican told me:

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"It was Republicans who beat Democrats in the Civil War, thus freeing the slaves. It was Democrats who started the KKK as its military wing to intimidate the (largely black) Republican party who were running the south after the war. Can a leopard change its spots?? Are the Democrats now the party FOR the black people after being against them for so long? So many of you are duped by the Devil's trickery. a few table scraps from massa's table and you run right back to his side. The Democrat is the racist."

The above assertion is a prime example of how many Republicans can take a kernel of truth and create a banquet of lies. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and so was Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King. But since the Civil War the Republican and Democratic parties have completely changed their relative political positions, so relative to their political philosophy, the modern Republican party bears absolutely no relationship to its predecessor.

Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party was made up of big business interests and Northern aristocrats, and the Democratic Party was made up of Dixiecratcs and Southern agrarian interests - farmers and slave owners. Thus, the Republicans were progressive liberals and the Democrats (or Dixiecrats) were Southern conservative slave owners.

But that began to change during the Great Depression when Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came out against the corporations and to the aid of the poor with his "New Deal for the American People." With the “New Deal,” Democrats ushered in workers’ rights. They created Social Security so the elderly wouldn't have to go to the "Poor House" or become a burden on their children when they became too old to work.

The Democrats also created unemployment insurance so people would have something to fall back on if they lost their jobs, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set rules of conduct for corporations that allowed workers to work with some semblance of dignity. The new law set a minium wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and many other regulations protecting workers.

Prior to the FLSA corporations could work employees for as many hours as they liked, and they often set wages so low that families had to send their children to work just to survive - and many of those children were maimed or killed because they had to work under the most horrific conditions, such as in coal mines and the like.

But after President Roosevelt brought relief to the people with these “big government, socialist programs,” the Democratic Party began to become associated with the common man, and the Republican party embarked upon a single-minded mission to reverse these "bleeding heart liberal" policies and return America to what had previously been the status quo.

Then during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats.

Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots.

It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of wealthy and highly educated individuals with huge amounts of monetary resources, and thus, political influence - and they use every bit of that leverage to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. These are the people who hate any and everybody who doesn’t look, think, and act like themselves.

The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting town hall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the “Joe the Plumbers” of the world who are being deluded by corporatist propaganda. Also among their ranks are the diehard racists who are still fighting to promote a segregationist agenda.

But the social bigots are merely the soldiers of the party. The corporatists, who control the GOP, have never lost sight of their seventy-year-old mission to undo the New Deal. But they've found that the safety-net that President Roosevelt provided for the people is much too popular to attack head on, so they had to devise a plan to chip away at it.

Then came 9/11, so they decided to used the war in Iraq to ravage the national treasury. They then gave themselves a $4 trillion taxcut to further deplete the treasury, and now they're telling the poor and middle class, "Sorry, but we no longer have the revenue to fund the programs that you've come to depend on for the past seventy years. And in the meantime, Gov. Scott Walker is hard at work in Wisconsin trying to dismantle the Fair Labor Standards Act.

So, can a leopard change its spots? Yes it can - and with regard to the Democratic and Republican parties, the leopard has changed in a very big way. But the modern GOP has never been prone to allowing the facts to distort a well-crafted lie. That's why they have such a fierce aversion to a well-educated electorate.

Thus, the facts dictate that the modern GOP’s claim to have any connection with President Lincoln whatsoever - other than the enemy of everything he stood for - is not only a gross misrepresentation of history, but a blatant lie. The fact is, if the Civil War was being fought today, the GOP would be the Confederacy.
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So don't get it twisted. Conservatives have ALWAYS been this nation's bigots, regardless to what party they were in, and they currently populate the GOP in huge numbers.

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PORTRAIT OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE

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. . . Don’t mention it, Abe. I got this.
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Conservatives and Lower IQ

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Do Racism, Conservatism, and Low I.Q. Go Hand in Hand?

Lower cognitive abilities predict greater prejudice through right-wing ideology.

Published on April 22, 2013 by Goal Auzeen Saedi, Ph.D. in Millennial Media

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand

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Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | January 26, 2012 10:29am ET 

http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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