Save the Arcade, D96, the Village budget, foreclosures, the state and County deficits... maybe all that is like that little kid in the middle of this when you think about it. Or?
I don't agree with the last part - for my dough I think the pic of Sophia glaring at Jayne Mansfield was the most important pic ever taken... but then I'm a child of the '50s....
Here's an interesting take on financial history. From an unnamed blogger (to me.) I don't agree with all of it, but it's a relatively concise timeline for a lot of major financial events.
http://www.richardccook.com/2009/11/23/economic-crisis-what-must-be-done/
The United States does not control its own destiny. Rather it is controlled by an international financial elite, of which the American branch works out of big New York banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Federal Reserve System. They in turn control the White House, Congress, the military, the mass media, the intelligence agencies, both political parties, the universities, etc. No one can rise to the top in any of these institutions without the elite’s stamp of approval.
This elite has been around since the nation began, becoming increasingly dominant as the 19thcentury progressed. A key date was passage of the National Banking Act of 1863, when the system was put into place whereby federal government debt was used to collateralize bank lending. Since then we’ve paid the freight through our taxes for bank control of the economy. The final nails in the coffin came with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
In 1929 the bankers plunged the nation into the Great Depression by constricting the money supply. With Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, the nation struggled through the decade of the 1930s but did not pull out of the Depression until the industrial explosion during World War II.
[...]
Interesting, and leads credence to the "shadow government" only whispered about. It IS time to take our country back. We didn't elect George Soros and his cronies to lead us to oblivion.
spatny, i appreciate the articles which you post. I don't always agree with them or even understand them, but they always make me think.
to link this up with another thread, why do we allow the school boards to have their ways with us?
I like the idea of limiting these "gift cards" for use only on Made-in-America items. Then people would wake up and realize how little we manufacture anymore. When Bush handed out that stimulus just as the TV broadcasts were switching to digital he might just as well sent the dough in a lump sum to China - we don't make anything like flat screens anymore. All those containers rolling through Riverside on Warren Buffet's railroad are full coming in, but mostly it's scrap paper and steel going back so they can use that to make value-added items to sell to you at Walmart. They do it to you coming and going and don't even kiss you first...
There is an equal amount of blame on both sides of the aisle. I think that rather than blaming one or the other, our better tact is to join together to fix it--I mean FIX it. I buy American as much as I can. I refuse to buy foodstuffs from China, such as garlic and tilapia, and I no longer buy my favorite imported beer. We have to do as much as we can to help ourselves, ourselves meaning the United States residents.
I like your idea of buying "made in America", even if it does cost a little more. That's one of the reasons we're in the mess we are in. That is the only way we will get back to work.
I am not sure how we got from Keep Looking Up to the heavens (nice video; thanks) to 'buy american', which on the surface sounds tribal , zenophobic, and even, possibly, fighting words (haven't there been wars fought over trade barriers?). On the other hand the trade deficit is completely nutz, and the wages are spiralling downwards for US Americans. Clearly, we got to be a super (economic) power from inventing and manufacturing things. The recent apparent economic uptick in the last twenty years was all a fictitious bubble, we have found now.
I did see a bumper sticker the other day that said...
Lost your job yet?
Buy American.
And it is more than mere widgets made in China that are problematic. I lost my Information Technology job to Indian IT workers. Our insurance products, for example, although coming from companies headquartered here, are increasingly using foriegn workers, too.
I saw this link when trying to find more about this quote.
Interesting (thought) experiment:
What if all of American consumers only bought products and services whose derivation and production is at least ...60 pct (provide a percentage)... American? Is it possible? It is voting with your feet and your wallet.
I wonder if there is a site somewhere that reports on the percentage of the product or service that comes from the USA.
On Friday, I had to call tech support for an computer product. The person on the other end of the phone was clearly from India. To make small talk as he was checking the serial number of my product, he asked how I spent my Thanksgiving Day. I told him I spent it with family and then asked how he spent his. He quietly said that they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. I told him he should, because were it not for the bounty and generosity of the people of the United States of America, he would not have the job he has-- working in tech support for a company based in the US. He agreed.
I finally made the time to look at the video. Very cool, indeed.
I also skimmed the link that mrt just posted. It got me thinking of earlier today, when I glanced at the ads which came in the Tribune this morning: just about everything that is being advertised is made overseas, mostly from China. Do we REALLY need to buy more junk from China just because it's Christmastime? Most of the stuff that is in the Christmas boxes that has filled my house this weekend was from China. I don't want it in my house anymore.
I will gladly shop the Buy American aisle. Glad you posted it, mrt.
But we need leadership and organization here and now to combat this. That place in Round Lake is not going to cut it.
There was another part to that link which addresses my query about there being some kind of conduit to provide info to the consumer about American made products. Apparently in 2001, according to that site, a bill to provide people info on companies which sell primarily American made products was passed overwhelmingly in the House, but has languished in the Senate ever since. Of course, we had some significant distractions from 2001 to now trying to wage wars on two fronts , three counting our own homeland. But with the 2008 financial collapse, maybe this bill might get some traction.
http://www.howtobuyamerican.com/content/form-ba-petition.shtml
Another fun item I found in that site - how almost 900 million stimulus dollars went overseas for windmills produced there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/hell-if-dc-didnt-offshore_b_363647.html
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