On November 18, 2013, the first Congressional hearings on virtual currency --technology-based currency--took place before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Tom Carper. According to the Washington Post, the hearings were lovefests, with it being stated that Bitcoin was a "legal means of exchange" and that "online payment systems, both centralized and decentralized, offer legitimate financial services".
The big questions should be: Why is Bitcoin so acceptable to the Feds? Why, all of a sudden, is it being promoted by mainstream media, and powerful 0.01% financial elites--Forbes, Fox Business, Time Magazine, MasterCard, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, the CFR, DHS, etc? If that doesn't make you nervous, nothing will. So, is there a strategic plan for the replacement of the US dollar, and/or the debt-based fiat money system, with a global reserve currency? And will that currency be Bitcoin?
Bitcoin, to quickly explain, is a pseudo-anonymous protocol, a decentralized digital currency based on software by "Satoshi Nakamoto" (a pseudonym for the unknown person or people who designed the original Bitcoin protocol in 2008) where the transactions (entries on some type of global ledger) require a peer-to-peer network. The original amount of Bitcoins mined--involves solving complex mathematical problems that require a lot of computer power--is said to be 21 million, therefore limited, but that's easy to change with a few clicks of a mouse I would think, not to mention, the controllers do not have to account to anyone for any additional amount of Bitcoins created. Bitcoin can be subdivided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis and is also created by a process called mining. The difficulty of mining ranges depending on the systems being used, and that--the difficulty-- in addition to the market, decide it's worth, which is about $801.80 per bitcoin today at 12:54 AM EST. Now, the total crypto currency market--Litecoin, Peercoin, Quark, Namecoin, Primecoin, etc.--including Bitcoin is worth approximately $13 billion in total.
Now, keep in mind that DARPA created the Internet--which Bitcoin is totally dependent on--initially promoting it as an open, innovative information infrastructure. Fast forward to today and Verizon beat the FCC (Verizon v. FCC) where net neutrality regulations were vacated by all three DC Circuit judges. This marks the second time in four years the FCC had its net neutrality enforcement struck down. Then there is the software that supposedly hides user identities on the Internet, the TOR Project, which was developed by the US Naval Research laboratory and endorsed by Senator Hillary Clinton. According to the Tor Project Annual Report 2010, the U.S. Government supplied over 80% of its funding.
Gavin Andresen, the Lead Core Bitcoin Developer and founder of The Bitcoin Foundation is slated to address the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on Thursday, February 16, 2014, as he did the C.I.A. a couple of years ago when Bitcoin wasn't as big as it is now. This, in and of itself, may not be a big deal, but it's apparent to anyone with eyes to see that this foundation is seeking government acceptance to insure a seat of power in what might become the new highly globalized Bitcoin economy.
And then there is the potential Bitcoin Greenlist that will determine the people who are allowed to conduct trade online. While the Greenlist predates Bitcoin, this patent filing incorporates Bitcoin into its features. Think about it. If the U.S. government acquires access to the owners of even ten percent of Bitcoin addresses, they'll gain a large amount of financial data about the entire world!
“In April 2011, President Obama signed (PDF) the NSTIC or the National Strategy For Trusted Identities In Cyberspace where public and private players are collaborating on the creation of an “Identity Ecosystem” to address “(1) the insecurity and inconvenience of static passwords and (2) the cost of transactional risks that arise from the inability of individuals to prove their true identity online.”
BitLegal is the easiest way to explore the evolving legal and regulatory status of Bitcoin and virtual currencies around the globe.
“The study focuses on the value of all consumer payments ($63 trillion in total spend), including those that happen beyond retail point-of-sale. In 2011, 34 percent ($21 trillion) of total global consumer spend was done with cash, with cashless payments accounting for 66 percent ($42 trillion)[...]Countries such as the United States (where an estimated 80% of the value of consumer spend was cashless) and Singapore (69%) are approaching the "tipping point" to becoming nearly cashless, and remaining cash use is largely a product of consumer habit.
I've always believed that we, the American, live in the best of all possible worlds and much to my surprise, after all I've learned, and after all I've complained about, I still do, although to a much lesser degree, of course. I realized this when I came across the headline," America Is the Most Inhumane Developed Country on the Planet..." My immediate reaction, at the gut level, was shock.. that is, until I had time to think about the extraordinary incarceration rate, the millions and millions of people without health insurance, the millions and millions of people without enough food to eat, without safe shelter, without the means to pay off exorbitant student loan debt, without full employment, or in an increasing number of cases, without employment at all....
However, if I didn't know just how inhumane our nation has become, the fourth edition of the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (2013) cinched it for me. The report ranked the US as the most unequal of all advanced economies. The Gini coefficient-, the standard measure of a nation's wealth-inequality (a Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality) in the U.S. is 85.1. That's right, we're thee number one most unequal of the 20 developed nations in the world! 75.4% of all U.S. wealth is owned by by the top 10%! Followed by:
Denmark, with 72.2% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Switzerland, with 71.5% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Sweden, with 71.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Israel, with 68.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10% Norway, with 65.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Germany, with 61.7% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Singapore, with 61.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10% Ireland, with 58.4% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, New Zealand, with 57.6% of its wealth owned by the top 10% Canada, with 57.4% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Netherlands, with 54.6% of its wealth owned by the top 10% Spain, with 54% of its wealth owned by the top 10% U.K., with 53.3% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Italy, with 49.8% of its wealth owned by the top 10% Japan, with 49.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10%, Finland, with 44.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Hell, we even beat Chile (72.5%), India (73.8%), Indonesia (75.0%), and South Africa (74.8%)!
At the other end of the wealth spectrum, the bottom 90% of the U.S. population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth in our nation, whereas in most of the other developed nations, the bottom 90% own, on average, approximately 40% of the wealth.
Moreover, not surprisingly, this so-called "economic recovery" has only benefited the richest Americans, as the richest 1% of Americans have received 95% of the income-gains since the 2008 financial crash, raising their incomes by 31.4%.
Once again, this should come as no surprise in a world where the richest 300 people on earth have more money than the poorest 3 billion.
Is the response to the 2008 financial meltdown a band-aid fix that "punished none of the financial abusers, propped up the major culprits at the expense of consumers and taxpayers, and brought us closer to an even worse disaster?" That is the question radio host Thom Hartmann, author of “The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America and What We Can Do to Stop It,” answers on NPR's show, The Takeaway..
Hartmann claims the crash of 2008, that really began in 2006 when housing started to collapse, is still ongoing, despite the over-the-top performance of the stock market. Millions of people have fallen out of the middle class since the 1980s, including 700,000 in the last couple of years, driving wealth inequality to an all time high. These enormous concentrations of wealth are not being used productively in the economy as they are invested internationally and stored in Swiss bank accounts.
One of the main problems is that banking has replaced manufacturing as the fundamental impetus of our economy, yet it creates no wealth, not to mention, Glass-Steagall Act (1933) has never been replaced so the banks are still gambling with our deposits. Then there is the the quantitative easing program that's devaluing our currency more and more every day. Half of the program is buying toxic securities--junk--from the banks to the tune of $35-$40 billion per month. That is they're buying junk left on the books of the banks left over from the unregulated derivatives market that Phil Gramm created in 1999 and 2000 when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Act of 1999 was passed and even more importantly, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) a law that opened the door to unregulated trading of credit default swaps, the financial instruments blamed, for the 2008 economic meltdown. The passing of this Act catapulted the derivatives market to $800 trillion in 2008! (Keep in mind, the GDP of the entire planet is $65 trillion.) Right after the crash in 2008, It fell to $500 trillion, but according to the Bank of International Settlements it's back up to $800 trillion!
Since the wheels of commerce started to spin, there's always been some sort of commodities futures market in play, where farmers and merchants could lock in on actual physical things--pork bellies, wheat, oil, etc.--in advance at a fixed price. Up until 2000, the commodities futures market ran through the Chicago Board of Trade and has always been transparent. For example, airlines could hedge their bets by buying futures in oil. With the CFMA it became possible to make these kind of bets on the non-physical, and it became possible to make bets on bets on bets. In other words, they've created an economy that has absolutely no value!
While the price of food is substantially increasing, the food-stamp program is now set to downsize as there's a big automatic cut scheduled for tomorrow that will trim $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending, disproportionately affecting children, seniors, and people with disabilities. That's not counting the 900.000 veterans and their families who will receive cuts to their benefits as well.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this cut will average less than $1.40 per person per meal and jeopardize the strength of the current economic recovery. Moreover, according to theCenter for American Progress (CAP) "each $1 billion dollar reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eliminates 13,718 jobs," resulting in more than 68,000 job losses in the coming year.
Keep in mind that programs such as SNAP have what economists call a "multiplier effect"—in other words, "a dollar given to an entitlement recipient has amplified economic benefits. In this case, those consist primarily of the grocers who benefit when food stamp users shop in their stores. The estimated multiplier effect for food stamps is as high as 2 to 1."
Billions more in cuts are scheduled to occur in the following two years, despite the fact that food insecurity in America has not even begun to return to pre-recession levels.
But who cares? The stock market's soaring to new heights despite the income disparity that continues to widen at unprecedented levels.
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” -- Margaret Purvis, , president and CEO of the Food bank for New York City,
To be sure, job cuts--and some might say, massive job cuts--are a daily event, but what about jobs created? According to the Household Survey, of the 953,000 jobs created in 2013, 77%, or 731,000 are part-time (full-time=35 hours or more per week, part-time=less than 35 hours per week) so as Zero Hedge has been saying for over three years, the workplace in America is radically changing right before our eyes, although, unlike Zero Hedge, I certainly don't think Obamacare is the reason behind the transition to a part-time work force. Jobs were sent away a long time ago and our current economy was/is a creation decades in the making. Don't forget that the financial crisis started under 'W' who started two wars, created the TSA, passed the Patriot Act, pushed for the bailouts, and spent more than every president prior to him.
Moreover, we're fighting for full-time jobs that should be paying at least 40-60k but are instead paying 15-30k with less benefits and no job security, not to mention, the huge student loan debt that most people have to pay off no matter what kind of job they get.
Sky-high college debt, unpaid internships, part-time low-wage jobs with no benefits, no medical insurance...does any of this sound familiar? Well, that's what's facing our young generations. As for older generations, the only thing they have going for them are shorter sentences. In fact, I heard one middle-aged woman say that she and her husband plan on mugging a postman. At the very least, they'll get three square meals a day. You know, "Club Fed". Although, I think those cushy accommodations are reserved for top 1%. If you have to mug a postman, you are definitely not in that category.
Meanwhile, media "analysts," politicians and academics paint a very rosy picture, telling us a "robust" recovery is on the way, maybe even as early as 2014. Really? For whom?
Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that manufacturing jobs continue to collapse, however...
... not to worry, there are enough below-minimum-wage server jobs to take their place. It would appear that all the depressed unemployed, underemployed and fearing-for-their employment are self-medicating.
The bottom line, college degrees, for the most part, are/will be about as useful as used toilet paper. So, forget about sending your kids to college; just teach them to say, "Would you like fries with your order?"
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The average student loan debt was $17,233 in 2005 and had risen by58 percent to $27,253 by December 2012 and the federal government will take in $34 billion in profit!
"With the current level of unemployment, American college graduates are finding it difficult to find jobs commensurate with their education. Without a steady income, many former students are unable to pay back their student loans.
America’s unemployment rate was as high as 13.8 percent at the end of March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) alternative measures of labor underutilization. This number is far higher than the published official statistic of 7.6 percent because it includes those who would like to work but are not currently looking for a job—including so-called discouraged workers—as well as those who only work part-time because they cannot find a full-time job.
The Economic Collapse website said in April 2012 that in 2011 (the latest such statistics available) more than 50 percent of college graduates had not landed a job or had accepted a position that did not make use of their skills. Often, these individuals took a part-time position, leaving them at or below the poverty level.
The Debt.org website states that student debt is at $1 trillion and increases another $3,000 every second. The average student debt amounts to $26,000.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Fed) provides statistics that correspond to the Debt.org information, published at the end of March using data from the last quarter of 2012.
“Student loan debt is the only form of consumer debt that has grown since the peak of consumer debt in 2008. Balances of student loans have eclipsed both auto loans and credit cards, making student loan debt the largest form of consumer debt outside of mortgages,” the Fed states.
Enriching the Federal Government
On April 9, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), an alliance of student groups and young people, released an Issue Brief accusing the U.S. federal government of making billions on the federal student loan program.
The brief states that the U.S. government earns 36 cents profit on each dollar loaned to students. With an estimated 21.8 million student loan recipients and approximately $108.9 billion in outstanding loans, the federal government will take in $34 billion.
On subsidized Stafford loans, which are federally guaranteed loans based on financial need, the federal government earns an estimated $3.5 billion, while on unsubsidized Stafford loans (also federally guaranteed loans, but anyone may apply for such loans), the federal government makes an estimated $20 billion.
With Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans, the federal government makes $5.1 billion and $5.3 billion respectively. Under the Parent PLUS student loan, parents may take out a loan on behalf of their children to cover any amount not covered by any other financial aid package.
“The federal student loan program as it currently operates is the opposite of a low cost program to student loan borrowers—it makes billions in revenue yearly. Meanwhile, student loan borrowers, continuing to face economic uncertainty, bear the brunt of continued high costs,” according to the U.S. PIRG brief.
Subsidized Stafford Loan Impasse
The interest rate on federally subsidized loans, which serve low- and moderate-income families, will increase from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.
The interest rate was lowered over time from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent under the 2007 College Affordability Plan and was meant to return to 6.8 percent in 2012. The Obama administration and Congress extended the availability of the lower rate until July 2013.
The brief suggests that the increase in the interest rate will harm students and only add to the federal government’s profit.
“More than two-thirds of all subsidized student loan borrowers come from families with annual incomes of less than $50,000. These families have been hard hit in the recent recession and continue to face high unemployment and tight family finances,” the brief states.
Student Loan Debt and Defaults on the Rise
Research by credit-scoring company FICO stated on Jan. 30 that student loan defaults are rising at an accelerated rate. At the forefront are students who took out student loans more recently.
The percentage of student loan defaults by those who took out a loan during the last two months of 2005 and the first month of 2006 was 12.4 percent. But the default rate by students who took out loans during the last two months of 2010 and the first month of 2011 was 15.1 percent. That’s a 20 percent increase in the rate of defaults over a five-year period.
A FICO December 2012 survey of lending industry professionals indicates that close to 60 percent of respondents expect student debt delinquencies to rise by mid-2013. Yet these professionals are still providing ever-increasing loan amounts. The average student loan debt was $17,233 in 2005 and had risen by 58 percent to $27,253 by December 2012.
“The stakeholders in the student lending industry have to take a hard look at the terms and repayment rules for student loans, and the industry may have to develop a new lending model to prevent a bad situation from getting completely out of hand,” said Dr. Andrew Jennings, FICO chief analytics officer, in the FICO release.
Quoting a March 2012 Fed report, FICO said in January that outstanding student loan debt reached $870 billion, exceeding the $693 billion in credit card debt and $730 billion in auto loan debt.
In 2005, the credit reports of 12 million Americans showed two or more student loans, according to the FICO report. By 2012, that number had more than doubled to 26 million.
“The worsening state of the student loan industry should raise concerns. The combination of lower credit quality, increased debt loads and trying economic conditions will lead to even more distress in the industry,” the FICO report warns.
Japan has debt that is 20 times its annual tax revenue which essentially means it is already insolvent. So, in a giant experiment, Japan's central bank made a drastic shift in monetary policy today, it's doubling its monetary base.
Sure, right now, the clear winner from the Cyprus crisis is the US dollar, which stands to benefit from public and private flows after the euro's reserve currency takes another hit. Today, the euro fell to its lowest against the US dollar in four months and the dollar came in just below its 52 week high. However, don't get too complacent because Cyprus is the canary in the coal mine, a petri dish, but unlike a petri dish, it will not be contained. It will affect the European markets and extend into the U.S.becoming the new modelfor bank bailouts, where money is directly confiscated from our bank accounts, not to mention, the fundamental breach in the public trust on which money relies.
"As it stands now, nowhere in Cyprus accepts credit or debit cards anymore for fear of not being paid, it is CASH ONLY. Businesses have stopped functioning because they cannot pay employees OR pay for the stock they receive because the banks are closed. If the banks remain closed, the economy will be destroyed and STOP COMPLETELY. Looting, robberies and theft are already on the rise. If the banks open now, there will be a massive run on the bank, and the banks will FAIL loosing all of its deposits, also causing an economic crash. TONIGHT there are demonstrations at most street corners and especially at the parliament building (just 2 miles from me).
Many are thinking that the ECB and EU are allowing Cyprus to fail as a test ground for new financial standards.
Just wanted all you guys to know the real story of whats going on here. Prayers are appreciated (although this is very interesting to watch) many of my local friends have lots of money in the banks.
You see, the entire western banking model is built on the dollar. So with the crisis in Europe, the flight to the dollar and flight to U.S. treasuries, makes the dollar the last safe haven. However, once everyone’s on board this “lifeboat” full of holes will be pushed out to sea and sunk. Then, what do we do? Why, bring on the global currency, of course.
What leads me and others far more knowledgeable than me to this dreadful conclusion?
Well, it's not just Cyprus, it's what lies beneath Cyprus, and practically every economy in the world: the toxicity of the$1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. Eventually, the cascading domino destruction of global economies will occur largely due to this monstrosity that's rarely mentioned. The Eurozone is over leveraged on a tremendous amount of American sub-prime mortgages, a ton of derivative debt – collateralized debt obligations (cdo), credit default swaps—sold throughout the world via Wall Street.
Keep in mind, the Bank for International Settlements in Europe acts as an umbrella for all the central banks world-wide. But beware, the BIS downplays the total notional value of the global derivatives market, although, even at $600 trillion, that's much larger than the global economy by far. Anyway, nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.
“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.”– Michael Lind
In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper 0.1% of the 1% population according to the report by David DeGraw, Analysis of Financial Terror. Meanwhile an astounding 62 million Americans have a zero net worth, and 68.3 million Americans struggle to put food on their table. That's right, the very same people, the top one-tenth of one percenters, 300,000 out of 300 million people, essentially responsible for the devastating economic damage to the US,whilst benefiting greatly, have almost $46 trillion in wealth. Remember, $1 trillion is equal to $1000 billion! Imagine, what $46 trillion can do for you.
And unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, the top 0.1%--not to mention, the 99.9%--can often borrow as much as they want at very nearly 0% interest, keep profits and production offshore, store personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and greatly influence legislation in the US. They have access to the best of the best in accounting firms, attorneys, consultants, private wealth managers, and access to a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and on and on and on...
However, thanks to the absence of reporting and/or the reporting of outright lies on this issue by the mainstream media--despite growing financial hardship--most of us are left to believe the rest of the nation is coming out of this financial crisis and getting back on their feet. Add to that, statistics based on rather primitive and outdated poverty/unemployment measures. Although, all one has to do is drive around and see the empty storefronts that line the streets of the wealthiest nation in the world.
"Well, 30 years of Reaganomics and the Republican Revolution has allowed the super-wealthy to "trickle down" on the heads of the middle class and the poor in America... allow the wealthiest 1% to squeeze every penny they can out of the middle-class (those who actually spread money throughout the economy and kept it thriving for so long), and of course it eventually leads to the demise of once healthy middle-class neighborhoods!
Just check out On Points recent show on "Dirty Politics and Big Money" for an idea of the ways in which "The Club for the Rich" rigs the game for their own private and exclusive benefit, bestowing temporary Visas into the Land of the Wealthy unto politicians who "play ball" by the Club Rules.
The wealth, savings, and homes of the middle-class are fodder for the super-wealthy to milk at will:
The market goes down, the wealthy make a bundle while the rest of America gets wiped out
The market goes up, the wealthy make 99% of the profit
The middle class saves money, the wealthy use institutionalized gambling to leverage those savings at absurd risk for their own gain, hedging their leverage for their own gain if the poor suckers' savings get wiped out
Got a good job? Wait a while... the wealthy will see that your employer is liquidated for a nice tax write-off; or maybe they'll restructure and send your job off to China to improve the value of their executive preferred stock options
Need cheap gas or food to make ends meet? Well, a nicely cornered commodity and some specualtive maneuvering will see to it that oil gets a $30 jump to makes someone billions almost overnight; or perhaps wheat, or corn, or pork
You'd like to see that decaying bridge fixed so you don't end up having to add an hour to your commute? Well, Government's broke because the wealthy needed another tax cut... or perhaps a few million tossed by industry lobbyists saw to it that those infrastructure dollars were spent on corporate subsidies instead.
Start a brilliant business and now want to take it public? Well, you'll get in on the IPO, of course... but the rest of the IPO stock needs to be reserved for the bank's "more deserving clients..." we don't want just anybody in on this money-maker, do we?
... But Hey, let's protect those tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% who milk the rest... even if not compromising means giving up the 4 trillion in deficit reduction the Dems and the Prez offered up in exchange,
[...]
Then you wouldn't be an industry lobbyist looking for corporate subsidies at the expense of infrastructure development! Good, successful programs start to suffer at the hands of the Mismanagement Kings who would rather see taxpayer dollars go to corporate welfare, tax breaks for those who don't need them, and the military-industrial complex... after all, why spend the money on Government programs that work well for 99% of Americans."
"I'm an Electrical Engineer with a Masters Degree in Biomedical Engineering. I'm 57 and was layed off two years ago when the business I was associated with went under. At my age (ageism is accepted in our sociaty) I've given up after 100+ resumes. Luckly my wife is a tenured academinc, otherwise our situation would have been quite serious. Yes we are still middle class, however if the situation was a little different we would have been catapolted into the growing ranks of the distressed. I'm now doing furniture and cabinet work that grew out of what was a hobby. I've gone from being saleried to hourly and although I own my own buisness, my revenue is joined to the hip of the failing economy. Our income was cut by more than half and I feel like the very fabric of what made this country great is being torn apart.
Not only have our values been turned upside down, exalting greed and technology to the level of god, we no longer create value. Manufacturing and even services are increasingly chase cheap labor all over the world. At the same time institutionalized gambling--the stock/bond/derivative markets--has taken over, creating nothing, or counterfeit "value". The jobs have been shipped overseas, or "in-sourced", leaving us with a feudal system of lords and serfs. A perpetual underclass and permanent overclass.
This did not happen overnight. Rising home equity and easy credit masked the ever-increasing deficit in wages and purchasing power. But now that they've crashed the housing sector and tightened credit, the veil is beginning to rise, revealing the ugly reality. Moreover, the predator class is cashing in and increasing our burden tenfold, ensuring that the next generation faces a third world society, a reality they are not prepared for, given they've been dumbed down and distracted by glitzy celebrities and super shiny technology.
A few years ago I blogged about the "deliberate dumbing down of America" and I included congressional investigator (Reece Committee) Norman Dodd's interview that exposed the charitable trusts and tax-exempt foundation's hidden agenda toward the acceptance of global government based on the principles of socialism which is to be ruled from behind the scenes by those same interests which control the foundations. This interview includes such a wealth of information that I thought I'd post it again, adding to it, some background of what led up to the Reece Committee, and additional information and links.
Some background:
After America had freed the world--winning WWII, that is--by 1950, Eastern Europe and China had fallen to communism. But a U.S. senate investigative committee found that General Chiang Kai-shek had virtually won the civil war against communist China, and was very much committed to creating a democratic form of government. So what happened? Well, the American State Department decided that's not what they wanted and demanded that Chiang Kai-shek form a coalition with the Chinese communists. He refused. So the American State department put an arms embargo on China and saw to it that Chiang Kai-shek did not get the weapons he already purchased. Not only that, his efforts at buying weapons elsewhere were blocked by the State Department.
"The guiding and influencing of [Vice President] Wallace that John Carter Vincent [Chief of the State Department's Division of Chinese Affairs] acknowledged included the following:
(1) He steered the conversations between Chiang and Wallace during the mission toward a settlement between Chiang and the Communists;
(2) he had Wallace emphasize the desire of the United States that Chiang make peace with the Communists;
(3) when Madame Chiang Kai-shek proposed during the conversation that there be a North Pacific Conference, Vincent directed the conversation toward an insistence by Wallace that China and the U.S.S.R. settle first (p.2062);
(4) Vincent conceded he urged Wallace to press that the United States would not aid Chiang until he made his peace with the Soviet Union (pp. 2065-2066);
(5) Vincent kept bringing the conversation back to the question of the United States sending a representative to Communist territory in Yenan, and finally extracted a promise from Chiang that one would be sent (pp. 2060-2061);
(6) when Chiang, recognizing the prestige such an act would give the Communists, argued against it (p.2051), Vincent urged Wallace to stress that the United States was not interested in Chiang's opposition (p.2052) from the Communists but were interested in the military intelligence such a representative would yield (p. 2055);
(7) Later it was shown that Vincent again steered the conversation so that the promise given by Chiang for the representative to Yenan was really nailed down."
Now, the U.S. Congress voted $125 million to be sent to Chiang Kai-shek but the ships were kept in the harbor in San Francisco for months. Finally, when the weapons arrived in China, there was no ammunition to be found, therefore, utterly useless. Without weapons, Chiang Kai-shek and his large army was defeated by a small well-armed communist army in 1949. This is backed up by the 1952 McCarran Committee's report on the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR) .
The IPR was an organization, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation, specifically designed to use as a propaganda tool for the Communists. For instance, they spoke of Mao and Zhou Enlai,as if they were George Washington and Abe Lincoln, and through a carefully crafted propaganda campaign, convinced many in the U.S. that Chinese Communists were not Communists at all. The American State Department got their wish, and the newly formed Chinese government-- that America helped to establish--resulted in the death of up to 80 million Chinese.
After the report on the IPR came out, it sparked a congressional investigation to determine which of these "foundations and organizations are using their resources for purposes other than the purposes for which they were established, and especially to determine which such foundations and organizations are using their resources for un-American and subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest or tradition of the United States." The first of the Congressional Committees to attempt such an investigation was the Cox Committee, created in 1952 under the leadership of Congressman Eugene E.Cox. However, not only did this congressional committee suffer great obstacles, their leader, Congressman Cox died. Fortunately, Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, demanded a new investigation which became the Reece Committee, of which Norman Dodd became director of research.
According to the book, Foundations Their Power and Influence, tremendous pressure was brought to bear on members of Congress to force them to stop the investigation as well as to cut off appropriations. The committee was routinely attacked in the New York Times, Washington Post and all of the major media outlets. Congressman Wayne Hays was appointed to disrupt its hearings.
". . . Mr. Hays told us one day that 'the White House' [Eisenhower] had been in touch with him and asked him if be would cooperate to kill the committee."
What the record quickly shows is that a considerable portion of the IPR activities operated not to discover, analyze, assemble and publish data (the normal primary concern of scholarship and research), but to influence public opinion. The subcommittee noted throughout all the testimony and all the exhibits that so great a portion of the IPR energies went into public relations, lobbying, propaganda, and other activities, having the primary effect of influencing public opinion that it is not correct or adequate to describe the IPR as a scholarly and research organization. Its chief function was rather that of a crucible of United States public opinion on the Far East.
Rowan Gaither [head of the Ford Foundation]: "Those of us here at the policy-making level have all had experience either with the OSS or the European Econmoic Administration in operating under directives the origins of which is the White House. We today operate under just such directives. Would you like to know what the substance of those directives is
Norman Dodd: Yes, Mr. Gaither, I would very much like to know.
Rowan Gaither: The substance of the directives under which we operate is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the Untied States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."
Norman Dodd: "Mr. Gaither, in light of what you just told me, many of your grants make sense, but I don't think you're entitled to withhold this information from the people of this country to whom you are beholden for your tax exemptions so why don't you tell them what you just told me?"
Rowan Gaither: "Mr. Dodd, we would not think of doing that"
Norman Dodd: Well, Mr. Gaither, in answer to your first question, you forced the Congress of the U.S. to spend $150,000 to find out what you just told me.
Once one opens their eyes to the truth behind the carefully crafted presentation of the "truth," it takes some time to reflect upon, and deal with this reality: that our subversive public education system and mainstream media is basically a tool to brainwash, condition, and fool us into compliance with the agenda of the ruling class. As Norman Dodd sincerely points out the ruling class has been scheming to consolidate all the power to rule America by corporate monopoly. Why communism? Because collectivism at centralized levels is easy to manipulate toward a tyrannical government. This type of system needs communitarian law, which is based on the "consensus reached by globalist "do-gooders."
Economic and psychological weapons of destruction rather than full out war...that's the plan. A man in a stupor is harmless. A mind befuddled by reality shows, iPhones, Twitter, Facebook is manageable. So the elite can continue to offshore our jobs and loot the treasury to the tune of trillions of dollars as was the plan all along by aforementioned major subversive forces.
"...explores the history, philosophy, and modern-day implementation of Sustainable Development, Communitarian Law, and Community Policing.
Part-autobiography, part-thesis, and part-guidebook to International Law, this 327-page book introduces Community Law with a mix of personal experiences, field research, and direct quotes from American presidents and international heads of state, domestic and foreign courts, officials, ecclesiastics, gurus, agencies, think tanks, universities and law schools, foundations, conferences, scientific reports, newspapers, and academic journals.
The Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan (Washington) and The Anchorage 2020/Anchorage Bowl Comprehensive Plan (Alaska) are highlighted to show how Local Agenda 21 plans balance individuals, laws, and economic growth. Readers are challenged to consider some of the little-known aspects of Community Economic Development, like mapping and mobilizing human assets, data-mining, innovative militarized policing, mandates for service, global citizenship, the Hegelian Dialectic, and the ancient spiritual foundation for a worldwide, corporate, quasi-religious legal framework.
"Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies", funded by the tax-exempt Carnegie Corporation of New York, published in 1934, is the most important report ever written on the future of American education. All its recommendations and its philosophy are an intrinsic part of education in the United States today. Professor Harold Laski, a philosopher of British socialism, said of this report: "At bottom, and stripped of its carefully neutral phrases, the report is an educational program for a 'Socialist America'. One excerpt from this important report reads "The implications for education are clear and imperative: (a) the efficient functioning of the emerging economy and the full utilization of its potentialities require profound changes in the attitudes and outlook of the American people, especially the rising generation--a complete and frank recognition that the old order is passing, that the new order is emerging, (pp. 34-35).
As usual, Goldman Sachs did quite well for themselves last year as their revenue increased by 30%, their stock price by 40%. But it is the estimated $400 millionthey made in 2012 from speculating on food including wheat, maize and soy, that is the most disturbing. Why? Because betting on food prices jacks of food prices, contributing further to a growing global food crisis.
Millions of Americans are drawing down their 401(k)sfor non-retirement needs in record numbers just to keep their heads above water as they struggle due to stagnant wages on an inflation adjusted basis since the early 1980s--that is if they have a job--and increasing expenses on essential items. Rising food prices, escalating tuition, escalating medical costs...you name it, are drowning hard-working Americans in debt.
"In 2010, 28 percent of participants reported having an outstanding loan against their retirement accounts, an all-time high, according to a survey of 110 large employers by Aon Hewitt, a human resources consultancy. And nearly 7 percent of employees took hardship withdrawals that year — roughly a 40 percent increase since the recession, while 42 percent of workers cashed out their plans rather than rolling them over when they changed jobs.
Here are some of the best comments from the Washington Post article... because the comments are much more truthful than the article (if you want to read comments for yourself just click here and sort comments by "most liked").
Sean2020 wrote:
"This article misses the mark in a major way. For example, the author says there are efforts underway to cut Social Security benefits as a means of reducing the deficit, but Social Security doesn't add to the deficit. He also suggests employers are overpaying employees with regard to retirement benefits, but employers significantly cut overall employee compensation when they switched from DB to DC plans. Many employees didn't figure out that their overall compensation had been cut (still haven't!), because their salaries weren't reduced, and they thought DC plans would offer similar benefits to DB plans - they don't. I do agree with the author about the importance of establishing an emergency fund, but the real problem is that with wages stagnant on an inflation adjusted basis since the early 1980s, many workers have little to no money to save after paying essential expenses. The bottom line is that DCs should be used as they were originally intended - as a supplement to a pension, not as the primary vehicle for retirement income. To be blunt, they benefit Wall Street much more than Main Street. Research has shown DB plans, which enjoy professional management, lower costs, and economies of scale, do a much better job of managing money and providing benefits. The average worker needs a pension in retirement - no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The only way they're going to get them is to form unions to pry the money loose from executive salaries and perks, which have grown exponentially since the early 80s. There's collective bargaining or individual begging. Oh, by the way, conservative trolls on this blog have suggested this is all Obama's fault. Get real. For starters, try reading "Retirement Heist," by Ellen Schultz, a former Wall Street Journal reporter.
ScottFromOz wrote:
"Workers are in debt up to their eyeballs, with mortgages underwater, savings are gone and now they're dipping into their 401K's to pay the bills. Meanwhile, businesses and the 1%ers are drowning in oceans of cash that they WON'T spend. They keep tightening the screws on wages and then wonder why demand falls.
ticked wrote:
"Second great depression brought to you by the war criminals and war profiteers and oil profiteers and enablers of the financial crooks= bush/cheney/rove/gramm/paulsen...et al......
Oil under clinton averaged $28.00 a barrel
Oil under bush went to a high of $147. and averaged around $100-110
In 1999, CEO pay averaged 30-40 times worker pay
Today CEO pay averages 343 times worker pay
When Clinton left office there was a surplus
When the crooks left office the debt was $10 TRILLION and the financial crooks tole over ten trillion
And still five plus years later and the financial crooks are still not regulated and toxic derivatives are not regulated and according to goldman suxs are 5-6 times what they were when the bubble burst in 2007....that's over $1.2 QUADZILLION or more money than in all the world....
Wake up Americans the colluding politicians and special interests are stealing more of your money every day.
Here are the sums of total compensation for the most recent fiscal year- 2011 according to S&P
Capital IQ based on as reported total executive compensation:
• JPMorgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $23.1 million
• Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $19.8 million
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: $16.2 million
• Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit: $14.9 million
• Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $8.1 million
JPMorgan Chase's Dimon clearly brings home the biggest haul, but it's also the largest U.S. bank, largely due to his leadership.
Time will tell if the national outrage over bank CEO pay will result in changes in how the compensation is structured.
ccs53 wrote:
"When I started working 40 years ago, my savings account paid 5% interest and had zero fees. What's a savings account paying today? Less than 0.5% and fees if the balance falls below a minimum. A 401(k) plan is only as good as the employer that (who? Citizens United) sponsors it makes it. The employer chooses the investment vehicles (for better or worse), chooses the match level (or zero match), employees get the gains and pay the losses (2008 anyone?) MINUS fees and loads on the investments (employee can't control). What's the "average" rate of return for the typical American employee’s 401k over the last two decades? I found quotes of 3.5%-6.5%. A lot less or only slighly more than my savings account earned 25+ years ago, and back then I didn't have to risk losing half of it when the stock market tanked like it did in 2008 and will do again in the future. So how good is your 401(k)? Without nationwide standards, a 401(k) is only as good as the employer makes it -- do you trust your employer with your retirement money?
KarenLS wrote:
"Retirement was "guaranteed" relative to the contract individuals had with the companies....whether they were union or non-union jobs. Some form of retirement was part of the compensation packages given to each worker. What we have found over the decades is that these contracts are meaningless in the eyes of the courts which is why these corporations have been able to go to court and get judges to toss them without input from the workers who were losing the benefits without any equivelent compensation. Just all that "money" wiped off the books. First such major corporation I read about was back in the mid-90's in fact. I'm not just talking about going from defined pension plans to so called investment plans (which can tank and it`s just considered oh well the risk of investing.....when we have no choice) but all terminating health insurance coverage that had been promised as part of the compensation packages.
The Government has been doing the same with the military workers. "Free health care for life" was caveated back in 1957 and they (DOD) have been marching forward over the decades to elimination of coverage for retirees. Latest and greatest is to restrict the "miiitary health care" management companies from negotiating with medical organizations outside XXX miles of military treatment facilities for the best (Prime) rates. That makes the retiree or dependent have to pay a higher co-share of the bills which are not at the lowest negotiate rates. Kind of like going out of your plan. Won't be the retirees option.
So breaking faith with employees is not unique to the civilian world or the gov`t. What I find unsettling is that we employees don`t seem to care or perhaps notice. We certainly don`t seem to call it out. All while, at least in the civilian world, the top tiers of manangement are walking away with tens of millions of dollars in benefits whether they do a good, bad or indifferent job. We are Sheeple folks."
Centsorsense wrote:
"First employers raided pensions to pay their bills, then The government raided the social security trust fund to pay its bills, now workers are raiding their savings to pay their bills . . .
I wonder where they got that idea?
Also since many employers pay employees less salary based on their retirement benefits, employees are being repeatedly ripped off.
They are paid less in order to have a pension or 401k. Then the company steals the pension money leaving the retiree high and dry. Then Congress tanks the market again and again so the 401k loses value, instead of gaining.
Then just to be especially nasty the retiree gets bilked on their social security benefits too.
Meanwhile the CEO that raided their pension gets a bonus, Congress gets a six figure salary and healthcare for life, and then the retiree is called one of the 47% who paid into the system.
The game is rigged, these guys are right to cash out their 40lk. Otherwise they will never see their money it will be wasted by politicians and executives. So at least by spending it now they get something for their work."
Increasingly, corporations are gaining more and more access and influence to legislation that the public and even Congress does not have through groups like ALEC and trade agreements such as NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that merged the United States, Canada, and Mexico creating essentially a north American continent of supposedly, "free" trade. "NAFTA contained 900 pages of one-size-fits-all rules to which each nation was required to conform all of its domestic laws - regardless of whether voters and their democratically-elected representatives had previously rejected the very same policies in Congress, state legislatures or city councils." After NAFTA was signed, two-thirds of Canadian families saw a decline in real income while two million peasant farmers were displaced from their land in Mexico, forcing many into trying to gain entrance into the United States, adding to our already growing immigration problem.
Now, there is "NAFTA on steroids," the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (see links below), "a legally binding trade agreement for advancing transnational corporate tyranny and dismantling domestic democratic accountability" that is not only the largest “free trade agreement” ever negotiated, but also the most secretly negotiated, with "no public oversight, input, or consultations". Only two of its 26 chapters deal with trade, the rest grant unprecedented powers and privileges upon Trans-National Corporations (TNCs)while dismantling regulations and laws without any democratic oversight or input."
Take the intellectual property chapter alone, which would extend copyright provisions, if enacted into law, from a state/federal jurisdiction to a matter of international agreement, and within that framework, plans on extending endless copyright terms across the globe The U.S. already has the most extensive copyright terms in the world. This is increasingly problematic for today's remix culture, intrinsic to the health of our economy. Not only can one face statutory damages, with preset fines of up to $150,000 per infringement, the criminal section of intellectual property chapter indicates an individual could face actual jail time.if it's proven that they had direct or indirect motivation for financial gain Not to mention, copyright expansion can be used to silence speech as they often do on websites such as Youtube.
In February 2012, powerful content groups such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) met in Beverly Hills along with representatives from nine countries including the United States were secretly meeting in a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills. Public interest groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) were shut out, their hotel reservations canceled without their consent. Another public interest group's representatives were kicked out of the hotel.
For example, public interest groups have been warning that the TPP could result in millions of lost jobs. As a letter from Congress to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk stated, the TPP “will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas,” including “those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”
The next round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations will take place from December 3-12 in Auckland, New Zealand, and it will be done with the same level of secrecy as the last 14 rounds in order to grant far-reaching new rights and privileges to the 600 corporations aligned with the TPP at the expense of the tax-paying public. This could affect the health and welfare of billions of people worldwide, so where is the mainstream media?
The following is alist of 35 of the 134 lobbying clientswho paid more than $1 million on lobbying in 2011-2012 and reported lobbying a federal agency on the Trans Pacific Partnership.
More Americans will use food stamps to buy their Thanksgiving dinner this year than ever before, according to a new report from The Sunlight Foundation. That's right. This Thanksgiving, 42.2 million Americans will be on food stamps, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
One person on food stamps has a budget of about $1.25 per meal. In other
words, a family on food stamps must buy an entire meal per person for
less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
Let's face it, American jobs are much less rewarding and secure than those of our parents and/or grandparents. For one generation after WWII until approximately 1973 American workers, empowered through union contracts, achieved a somewhat harmonious balance with their employers. Good wages, benefits and expectations of job security were the norm there for a while.
In contrast, in addition to the fact that wages have not been/are not increasing in line with expenses despite increasing productivity and skyrocketing executive pay, today's employees are now viewed merely as factors of production, subject to the whim of their employer for the most part. Workers can be fired arbitrarily, forced to work off the clock, forced to work as so-called independent contractors or part-time, etc. American workers have truly become an afterthought or invisible. So, why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations squeezing their employees dry? The answer in a nutshell, greed.
According to New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, since 2006, the U.S. has cut a million full-time jobs while adding more than 500,000 part-time jobs. Eager to cut costs in a very competitive global economy, the explosion of sophisticated scheduling software make it simple for today's employers to align staffing to customer traffic, therefore making it easy to increase the use of part time work. Lower hourly wages, unpredictable hours, and few if any benefits make this trend anything but advantageous to workers.
“Over the past two decades, many major retailers went from a quotient of 70 to 80 percent full-time to at least 70 percent part-time across the industry,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consulting firm.
Moreover, our national statistics underestimate involuntary part-time employment because they only ask if you work 35 or more hours per week. It doesn't matter whether or not that 35 hours is a result of one job, two jobs, three jobs or four jobs... if your hours add up to over 35 hours, you're classified as full-time.
The Affordable Care Actwill only worsen this part-time trend as employers do not have to pay that shared responsibility fee if their workers average fewer than 30 hours per week. Big incentive for employers to substitute part-time positions or full time.
The bottom line is that the fear of unemployment and the fear of falling back from the "middle class" into the ranks of the poor are being used by employers to take unfair advantage of working people. It's created an atmosphere of abusive treatment and total disrespect for working people that now permeates our society and the globe. This increasing trend to part-time workers is of course, fueling the income gap/income inequality, funneling more profits and capital gains to those at the top.
About 50% of the population is now poor or near poor and there are not enough jobs to get them out of the hole. Gone are the days of earning a living wage with benefits.
"I remember back in the 1970s that the futurists thought our biggest problem would be finding things to do with all our spare time, as computers were going to radically increase productivity and we'd all be working part-time. Of course they assumed that workers would see most of the benefit of that increase in productivity...
"Damn, I'm glad to see somebody else mention this. It was hugely accepted in the 60s and 70s that the benefits of automation would be shared throughout society and we would all be working fewer hours while also enjoying a higher standard of living.
But nobody imagined the kind of wealth accumulation that we see today. Nobody imagined something like a Walmart where one family acquires $100 billion in wealth on the backs of millions of minimum wage workers.
Also that was a more idealistic time. Back then we didn't know just how cold-blooded and greedy people can be. Most rich people are perfectly happy to put the screws down on workers and drive wages down below a subsistence level if it means they can buy a 10th luxery car or a 5th mansion or whatever. There are no limits to the greed of those who are already well off it seems.
You can't create wealth out of thin air; therefore it's plain to see that money is not wealth, it's the mechanism used to transfer wealth from we the taxpayers to the ruling class. For instance, when Ben Bernanke prints new money (QE3), who gets first dibs on that money? His wealthy friends, of course. And then, in turn, they lend it out at quadruple the price and/or purchase up all of the finite resources--especially land, farmland, that is. Why? He who controls the food controls the world.
That's right, the global tycoons, especially since the financial crisis in 2008, have been buying up farmland all over the planet at an alarming rate, while subsistence farmers are losing their land and their way of life. They're being priced out of existence as the New World Agricultural Order unfolds.
Meanwhile, the Fed is quietly acquiring massive amounts of property in the US through their purchase of mortgage-backed securities. There are an estimated 1.5 million homescurrently in the foreclosure process. Under the current QE3, Bernanke will own those properties once the foreclosure is complete. The point? To create a huge land-grab within the US where the Fed owns massive amounts of land and can leverage this acquisition against the American public as the transition becomes apparent.
Oh, and the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) recently announced that “strategic defaulters”, i.e. those homeowners who have abandoned their mortgage because they could not afford to make the monthly payments will be jailed for this “crime”.
So what we have here are banks, agencies and government "manipulating" the market toward their own agenda at the expense of we the people. Nothing new here.
Supposedly, these homes are being released in bulk to major conglomerates who have billions of dollars to buy them for pennies on the dollar and fix and sell them or lease them out. The banks are selling in bulk to them with the understanding that they are not to be sold within a certain amount of time
Former CIA case officer, former member of National Security Council (NSC) and former CIA Angola Task Force Commander John R. "Bob" Stockwell provides an analysis of the Reagan Revolution. He discusses the fundamental restructuring of the economy and foreign policy, and how Reagan accomplished this. Stockwell scrutinizes Reaganomics and shows how it has weakened the U.S. economically while carrying out an enormous transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich. He also criticizes the Reagan record on civil liberties and the interventionist foreign policy.
Recorded July, 1987
News: June 24, 1987; April 14, 1987
In June, the NY Times published an articlestating that "the suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago." . Well, it appears the suicide epidemic is not confined to the military.
A new studypublished in the American Journal of Public Health found that suicide causes more death than car crashes. That's right, while the rate of car crashes continues to decline, the rate of suicide has increased dramatically making it the leading cause of injury deaths in America.
I guess it should come as no surprise as statistics show that suicide rates increase in times of economic trouble,and despite what the media tells you, the only recovery going on is the banks and corporations recovering more and more of our money.
Deaths from car accidents decreased 25% while deaths from poisoning rose 125%, deaths from falls rose 71% , and deaths from suicides rose 15%. Moreover, the author of the study, Ian R. H. Rockett, PhD, MPH, believes suicides are "terribly undercounted" and that the official data on suicide may be off by as much as 20%.
"Suicides are terribly undercounted; I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe. There may be 20 percent or more unrecognized suicides.
Many of the poisoning deaths may actually be intended. A lot of these deaths are due from overdoses of prescription drugs." --Ian R. H. Rockett
The last decade has seen not only the national rate increased, but the global rate as well.
"Conclusions. Mortality rates for suicide, poisoning, and falls rose substantially over the past decade. Suicide has surpassed motor vehicle traffic crashes as the leading cause of injury mortality. Comprehensive traffic safety measures have successfully reduced the national motor vehicle traffic crash mortality rate. Similar efforts will be required to diminish the burden of other injury. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 20, 2012: e1-e9. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.300960)
