Socialist countries are failing you say?

Every time someone on the internet brings up Socialism there has to be at least one person who starts the "Socialism is bad, m'cay" routine.   It's a given.  And it seems like the all got the same mass email of "how to debate Socialism" in their inbox.  Nothing the say is ever backed up with facts.  There are no hard numbers, or in the rare case that there are numbers they are only from one side.  One I always hear is "Look at the Scandinavian Debt clock.  The Nordic countries are failing. They want to get rid of their Socialism and go back to Capitalism.

Well lets start with some Debt clocks then shall we?

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/denmark

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/finland

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/norway
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/sweden

There are the Nordic block countries and yes their National debt is swelling.  Gosh those clocks keep spinning while I watch them.  How about some of those numbers below the debt.


Denmark  -     Interest per Second - $115    Debt as % of GDP - 46.57%    Debt per Citizen $27,985
Finland  -        Interest per Second - $119    Debt as % of GDP - 59.68%    Debt per Citizen - $28,752 
Norway  -       Interest per Second - $68      Debt as % of GDP - 19.62%    Debt per Citizen - $14,419
Sweden  -       Interest per Second - $127    Debt as % of GDP - 28.09%    Debt per Citizen - $16,536


Boy oh boy those are some scary numbers.  There is no way out of it. The north Of Europe, that vast Socialist with with all their universal healthcare, free college, welfare programs.  It's no wonder they are so deeply in debt.

Of course we here are doing so much better

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedstates

USA       Interest per Second - $16,692     Debt as % of GDP - 104.50%    Debt per Citizen - $56,797

Or maybe not so much.

If you bring this up the next thing you get to hear is that those Nordic countries have super high tax rates.  They only keep their debt down by having exorbitant taxes.   So how about that?

Finland Tax rates 2011

Taxable earned income (US Dollars)		Rate within brackets
17,332 – 25,776		6.5%
25776 – 41,997		17.5%
41,997 – 75,773		21.5%
75,773 –		30.0%

 United States Tax rates 2011

Taxable earned income		Rate within brackets
8,500		10%
8,500–34,500		15%
34,500–83,600 83,600 83,600		25%
83,600–174,400		28.%

174,400–379,150		33%
379,150–		35%

Again to be fair there are other taxes too.  In Finland municipal taxes are Fixed and vary from 16.5% – 21.5%

Just like we have state taxes the vary from 0% in some states to as high as 13% in California. 

So yes Taxes end up being a little bit higher but not as much as those attacking Socialism would have you believe.  Not when you compare what they get for those taxes.  We get no healthcare and instead subsidize the health insurance marketplace with our taxes.  While a few people are happy with the Affordable Care Act there are plenty who are not for good reason.  High out of pocket costs, large deductible and premiums that are not included in our tax rates and would start to equalize things out a bit.  Then of course there's no tuition paid be the state for college here, limited workplace protections, no mandatory vacation time.  The list goes on. 

What do we pay for with our tax money?  One of the worst performing primary school systems in the developed world, more prisoners per capita then anywhere in the history of the world. Military aid sent out to both sides of conflicts our two largest military aid packages being to Israel and Egypt. And an overall military spending budget that is higher then the next 20 countries on the list combined all of whom we have treaties with.  Even our Veterans Administration in underfunded and those many who fought to keep our country "free" get less service the the average citizen in the Nordic bloc.

But they must have more poor people right?

Well I like to look at the children first so lets quote a study done of the 35 riches countries ranked by percentage of children who live in poverty. Here is info from the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in 2012

Children living in relative poverty:

Iceland     4.7
Finland     5.3
Norway    6.1


Denmark  7.3
Sweden    7.3


How about us?
We came in at number 34 out of 35
USA        23.1

In fact only two countries have more than 20% of their children living in relative poverty, Romania and the United States.


Now to be fair none of the Nordic countries are Socialist, they are mixed markets with both Capitalist and Socialist Economics being used.   In my mind this mixture of the two systems is the best way to go and I can only hope this country begins to follow this trend as mixing the two has in the past show to lead to economic growth.

Introduction to a book a have been working off and on since early 2012.

Does anything matter anymore? Tens of thousands gather together to say they are fed up with the treatment of the people by the government and we barely even hear about it except to create disinformation about what is going on. Why should we continue to try and gather for a redress of grievances if "our" government clearly does not want to let that happen? We now know that the FBI worked with DHS and other government agencies and local municipalities to organize a crackdown on local occupy movement groups around the country. Why? The only reason would be that the government knows the occupy movement is correct, that we have attained levels of corruption that surpass the oppressive regime we fought against over 200 years ago. No taxation without representation was the call then and today we again face that same thing. "We the people" were upset with all our taxes being taken away from us and given to the royal family. Today we have new leaders, the 1% as occupy likes to call them, but they rule us today the same as the British royal family ruled us then.

If next to nothing has changed over this time then we need to examine why. The truth is things have changed but then they went back. We must look at both how and why this happened. In 1776 we as a people decided enough was enough. We looked beyond left right divided and realized the truth, that every man woman and child were treated as less then slaves of the royal family. We were no more then cattle to them. Today, despite all the efforts of the founding fathers, we are right back to being cattle. What went wrong? Many things happened starting with making too many deals. The declaration of independence, written in June of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson, paints a very different version of what the founding fathers imagined then the constitution and the bill of rights when they were written from 1787 to 1789. During those years something happened, part of finding out what happened is looking at who signed those two documents, and who didn't. We all look at Jefferson as a founding father yet he never signed the constitution as it went against nearly everything he stood for. While the Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal" the constitution counted 5 slaves as 3 people for districting and limited voting rights to only landowners until the 1830's. "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the Declaration of Independence. "Inalienable rights" the Declaration. Just about everything we think this country stands for comes from the Declaration of Independence, a Document that has nothing to do with the system of government we now have. So we can see that within those few years we had already lost much of what we think this country was founded on.

Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers wanted a federal government that only oversaw the interactions of the different states. This can be seen in the articles of confederation, the system of government we had in this country from 1774 until 1789. The first true president of this country was Peyton Randolph in 1774. George Washington called the president of the continental congress "the most important office in this country." After Peyton Randolph there were another 14 Presidents of the continental congress until we got rid of the articles of confederation and replaced them with the constitution. So why then do the history books not talk about this early government? Why are they hidden away from us? What do they not want us to know? The most important thing to know is that war is not cheap. Even the guerrilla war waged by the minutemen cost quite a bit and since it was a war against taxes there was no easy way to fund it. Much of the funding came from France who were at odds with the British but still wealthy citizens of the Americas needed to be brought on board so many changes were made to keep them happy. While the Declaration held that there should be a small government of the people based on Jeffersonian Republicanism, the constitution pushed for a larger government based of Alexander Hamilton's federalist papers. A government where we would replace the British crown with a new ruling class, the richest of those who lived in the "new world."

We have to admit that without the funding of these richest early Americans the war might not have gone on very long, but to give up on the system of government set forth in the articles of confederation was to give up on the very thing these revolutionary soldiers were fighting for. Truth, Liberty, and Freedom were to be replaced by Lies, Injustice, and Slavery. Were it not for early Republicans who fought for the Bill of Rights this country would have failed from the start. However much of those rights were assumed to be quite easy to interpret, yet have proved to be open to much changes of intent. Let’s look at the 2nd Amendment. The promise of an armed militia was to keep our own government honest. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What is important to see here is the term "free state," that a militia, not an army, is required for freedom. How did the revolutionary militia differ from an army? The militias were true direct democracy in action. Leaders were elected by those who served in them and decisions were put to a vote. There was no requirement to serve, no prison time for deserters, and as such those who fought and died for their country had to feel as if they were a part of the unit, not a servant to their officers. Today's armed forces would fall to pieces if there was no requirement to serve once enlistment papers were signed. Would an openly run, democratic military be facing a suicide every day? Not likely as soldiers would not be forced to do things they do not agree with. Today's armed service men and women are forced into killing innocent civilians and trained to not feel guilty if they do kill someone just because of an itchy trigger finger. If soldiers were able to vote out commanding officers whose orders they disagreed with then most CO's would be gone. Those who joined the militias were made a part of the governing of this countries defense and they were armed with the best technology of the era.

Today gun ownership is relegated to sport weapons. If there was ever an armed revolt it would be put down by the very military that has sworn an oath to protect the rights it would suppress. Say that today, Texas decided to leave the union. That they would no longer be a part of the United States because it had grown in corruption to the point of citizens interests no longer being represented and had formed a new local government that did not recognize U.S. rule. The military would be called in and they would disarm or kill everyone who stood for "no taxation without representation" The very militias the second amendment protects are now listed as terrorist organizations by the FBI. However for a peoples militia to protect the values of this country it would have to have weapons of equal power to the governments military. I'm sure there are few who would argue that we should arm the people with stinger missiles but with bans on assault weapons being proposed we are seeing the one thing the people had left to protect themselves being taken from them.

The loss of the second amendment was gradual, just like the other losses we have suffered. They have swung back and forth many times but eventually we have lost everything this country was founded on. One great example is the civil war. In modern times we look at the civil war as being fought to end slavery but there are two main things to look at. One, was forcing the end of slavery before it naturally was unable to compete and failed on its own the cause of over 100 years of bigotry and racism? And two, did the loss of the States rights to govern themselves hurt us more than freeing the slaves helped? Today we are the leading the global race to lock our population up in a for profit prison system. A disproportionate ratio of the prison population is Black and the leading cause of incarceration is drug related. States efforts to regulate and decriminalize drug use are fought on the federal level and the very loss of States rights that were fought over during the civil war now keeps tens of thousands as slaves of the prison industrial complex.

From the cattle and railroad barons of the old west to the factory owners in the late 1800's things continued to get worse until we had the biggest income divide this country had ever seen. The pendulum finally swung back to the working class and the labor movement was born but from the beginning there was a divide in the labor movement. On one side you had the mainstream trade unions today represented mainly by the AFL-CIO and on the other side you had the radial industrial unions survived in the U.S. by only the IWW but elsewhere in the world many anarcho-syndicalist and socialist unions still thrive. Unfortunately first the tactics used were demonized by the Taft Hartley act then the very activists and organizers who were still active were vilified by McCarthyism until those battles won by the radicals are the few concessions still seen today. The fight for the 8 hour work day directly led to the haymarket massacre and the execution of 7 Anarchist union leaders for nothing beyond political ideology. Today we are seeing the return of many of the tactics used by radical unions in the early 20th century. 500,000 gathered in the Wisconsin capital chanting general strike during 2010 and the first general strike in over 60 years took place in Oakland California in October 2011. The IWW is the strongest it has been in decades and worldwide radical unions old and new are gaining support.

In the following chapters we will look in detail at both what has gone on in the past as well as what is going on now, how we are still fighting the same battles that the founding fathers waged and how we can learn from the mistakes of the past. We will look at the pendulum of the left right political spectrum that has been used to keep us enslaved and why we must break that system now and move beyond this false ideological divide and unite the working class to take back this country. In particular we will look at the two largest populist movements on the century, the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement, how they differ and how they are the same.

I heard a story about Diane Teti, girlfriend of Brew Works owner Rich Fegley, and Ed Pawlowski meeting at some city event during the time that both of the former were opposing the trash incinerator being proposed by the later.
Pawlowski asked Teti what she was doing opposing him after he had helped secure funding for the Brew Works. When she told him that was what a mayor was supposed to do he replied "You know how it works, one hand washes the other."
This sort of attitude from Pawlowski may very well be why a Grand Jury is now sending the FBI to raid city hall. Spokesman for the city Mike Moore has claimed that based on what was taken by the FBI that the city contracting process seems to be the target of their probe however J.B.Reilly, CEO of City Center Investment, has made it clear in the time since the raid that City Center has never had a contract with the city.
While this is true the FBI specifically listed Reilly as one of the targets of their investigation on the search warrant. Due to this one must assume that the investigation is not limited to the cities contracting process.
Back to Pawlowski's hand washing we can see that Reilly washed Pawlowski's hand first by being the largest single donor to Pawlowski's campaign starting in 2005 when he was first running for mayor. The same year the FBI has been searching records back to. Reilly and his partner in City Center Joe Topper even maxed donations to Pawlowski at $10,000 each in non election years.
However the other hand washed right back. Before the NIZ formerly had lines drawn on a map Reilly started buying property downtown. Lots of it. A map published on the front cover of the Morning Call showed these properties nearly a month before the NIZ zone was actually created. When the NIZ zone (or zones as despite the law stating a zone there are three separate zones) was created it was not a simple square. The NIZ does not follow boundaries such as 5th to 10th, Liberty to Walnut. Instead the NIZ is a very complicated area jutting out to include a block here, part of a block there, one building on this street, another on that one. Interestingly enough most of the areas the downtown NIZ juts out at are areas Reilly owns property.
Despite buying all these properties before the NIZ was formerly laid out it was not enough for Reilly nor did Pawlwoski think that drawing the NIZ map to include these properties was enough hand washing. So before there was ANIZDA, before there was any way to apply for NIZ funds, a grant for $20 million was given to City Center so they could buy most of the block across Hamilton from the new arena.
So far the NIZ has given out over 1 billion dollars in loans but none of these loans will be repaid by those that received the money. Instead the taxpayers of Allentown will have to repay these loans and there is no end in site. On the 14th of July Pawlowski's facebook linked to an article about new NIZ backed development on the waterfront and the day before he linked an article about Reilly's City Center building another two towers near the arena. Despite the FBI and Grand Jury investigation the NIZ money grab continues. Pray for your future Allentown because none of your elected officials care about you.