Poverty By Design – It’s No Accident

Poverty_By_Design_Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

Poverty By Design – It’s Not An Accident

The poor define the middle class. The middle class define the wealthy. When social class becomes more important than the recognition of our common humanity, the upper classes will embrace policies that increase class differences.  ~Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

The stratification of society inevitably leads to the stagnation of progress. Human genius and innovation are random blessings bestowed without regard to race, creed, gender or social standing. Thus, when the poor are excluded from educational opportunity, or the quality of the education made available to them is substandard, society has effectively cut itself off from access to the most powerful resource on this planet, the human mind.

When you examine history, the Renaissance, Industrial Revolutions and rapid technological advancement have always been marked by a collapse in stratification of the societies in which they occurred. If you look at the most modern and advanced societies in existence today, they are the ones in which the most freedom and social mobility exists.

Poverty By Design - Walled Enclaves

The wealthy will live in enclaves, the poor in squalor.

Repression of the people may protect the wealth and power of the aristocracy. However, it also leads to a dystopian society where the wealthy live in walled enclaves and the majority of the people live in squalor. The energy which would be directed toward communal advancement is turned to maintaining the status quo. This continues until a critical mass is reached and and total societal collapse occurs.

We are well down the path to a dystopian future unless we change course immediately. While the masses have slept, lulled by the illusion of equal opportunity, the wealthy have worked to enact laws to maintain their power and control. Our tax laws have been written to nearly exempt them from taxation. Loopholes allowing offshore accounts and tax havens have allowed them to profit from the labor of the working class without reinvestment of that wealth back into our society.

Opportunity is gradually being reduced like an ever tightening noose. To be considered for gainful employment, you need a college degree. The cost of college tuition is rising faster than the economy is growing. In order to pay for college, those who were not born wealthy must incur the debt of student loans, with no guarantee of employment upon graduation.

Poverty By Design - Overcrowded PrisonInner city schools are being de-funded and closed. Most children successfully completing our public education system, find themselves unprepared to pass college entrance exams. While they’re de-funding inner city schools they are funding prisons. In fact, prisons are a growth industry. More and more goods and services are now being produced with prison labor. Prisons have become the new plantations.

Connecting The Dots

Most of the wealth of the middle class was in their pension funds, 401k and in their homes. Remember Enron? Remember WorldCom? Those were the big ones. These companies were looted by their executives. However, what many people – those who’s 401k’s were not heavily invested in these companies – missed, was the 100’s of thousands of people who saw their retirement savings vanish virtually overnight.

The next big hit was the collapse of the real estate market. The family home was the bank account for the middle class. If all else failed, they could look to their equity in their homes to see them through hard times. The family home was the vehicle for the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next. When the real estate bubble burst and the housing market collapsed, people who had built up equity saw that equity evaporate leaving many of them upside down. Many lost their homes.

Poverty By Design - Reverse Mortgage

Fred Thompson for AAG. Separating people from their wealth.

You cannot watch television for any length of time without seeing a commercial for “Reverse Mortgages.” If you survived the collapse of the real estate market, a reverse mortgage might seem attractive. However, what they’re not telling you is, a reverse mortgage prevents you from transferring the wealth you’ve built up in your home to the next generation. When you leave your home – read die – the bank acquires your home… unless your children want to apply for a mortgage and pay the bank back at interest rates that more than compensate them for whatever they paid you.

These are not coincidences. This is a well planned strategy for the stratification of our society. The only question is, how many of these things have to fall into place before we wake up? This is poverty by design, and it’s no accident!

 

Presidential Nullification – Death of Democracy

Presidential Nullification Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

THE BIGGEST THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY? The Nullification Of A Presidency!

Elections do and should have consequences. Congressional Republicans have been committed to nullifying the Presidency of Barack Obama since the night of his first inauguration. The will of the people be damned!

Whether you love him or hate him… is NOT the point. The office is larger than the man. Unlike our previous President, President Obama was not appointed President by a panel of judges on a court stacked by his daddy. He was duly elected by a majority of the American people. He deserves the opportunity to enact his agenda. He deserves… the American People deserve for him to have his full cabinet filled. He deserves to have his appointments either confirmed or declined.

When one Party – ANY Party – takes it upon themselves to subrogate the collective will of the electorate, replacing it with their own agenda, Democracy dies. We no longer have a Constitutional Republic. What we have becomes a fascist oligarchy which will quickly degenerate into tyranny and despotism.

What Harry Reid did by changing the Senate rules ending the abuse of the procedural filibuster was to strike a blow for Democracy. Don’t be naive! Sequestration and the shutting down of the Government were both designed to deliver a one, two punch to the Affordable Care Act. Both came at a time when the federal government needed resources to launch the program correctly. The timing wasn’t an accident. Now of course, the Republicans are holding hearings to find out why things are going poorly. Republicans need look no further than their own mirror.

Presidential nullification is not just insulting and disrespectful to our first Afro-American President, it is a slap in the face of the American electorate. We voted him in not once but twice.