Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Ukraine Capital Controls and 200% Inflation But Still In Better Shape Than US! / Politics / US Debt
By: Jeff_Berwick
In a TV address to a torn nation, Ukraine's PM Yatsenyuk first implied heating prices would rise incrementally, and then later confirmed a plan to increase prices 100% in the next two years (and nearly 200% by 2017) as the cost of imported Russian gas is expected to rise to $500 from the current $84.
Monday, March 31, 2014
French Local Elections Prove France Is Ungovernable / Politics / France
By: Andrew_McKillop
Turnout Low - Interest in Democracy Even Lower
French media made a brave attempt following the second and final round of local elections, 30 March, to paint a picture of a “moderate recovery” in voter interest. In fact the countrywide turnout to vote was around 53% on 30 March compared with 52% on 23 March, according to the French Interior Ministry. Many large cities were plagued by turnouts in some districts of as low as 16% of registered voters bothering to vote. In other words, 84% of voters did not vote.
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Monday, March 31, 2014
How to Avoid the Obamacare Penalty / Politics / US Politics
By: LewRockwell
Laurence M. Vance writes: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but better known as simply Obamacare, is a collection of new taxes masquerading as a healthcare law.
Obamacare institutes new taxes on indoor tanning services, drug companies, medical device manufacturers, comprehensive health insurance plans, and health insurers. It increases the employee share of the Medicare tax (currently 1.45 percent) to 2.35 percent on that portion of income that is more than $200,000 for individuals or $250,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly. It also adds a new 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income that will apply to the lesser of one’s net investment income or the amount of adjusted gross income in excess of applicable thresholds.
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Monday, March 31, 2014
Ron Paul - Aid to Ukraine Is a Bad Deal For All / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill approving a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine and more sanctions on Russia. The bill will likely receive the president's signature within days. If you think this is the last time US citizens will have their money sent to Ukraine, you should think again. This is only the beginning.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014
Debunking The Gutting Of U.S. Military Storyline / Politics / US Military
By: James_Quinn
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – General Smedley Butler – War is a Racket
I peruse a number of websites everyday as I look for interesting articles to post or reference in one of my articles. I agree with many conservative leaning websites when it comes to economic issues, but when it comes to war mongering and flag waving, I go my own way. Any site that supports our empire building and excessive spending on war is not a conservative website. You can’t act in a fiscally responsible sustainable manner without dismantling our war machine and taking on the military industrial complex. You’re a faux fiscal conservative if you think we can continue to spend $800 billion per year on war with no financial implications. The entire Federal budget was $800 billion in 1983.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014
The U.S. Empire vs. Eurasia / Politics / US Politics
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
The U.S. and its puppets, especially the E.U. and Nato, have been trying to weaken the rebuilding Russian empire as much as possible to contain it, while maintaining the U.S. Global Empire.
This has become a vital, crucial goal because of the rapid growth of Chinese power and the ever closer Alliance of Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Central Asia, Pakistan, etc.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
What If the Crimeans Changed Their Minds? / Politics / Eastern Europe
By: Michael_S_Rozeff
It’s easier to raise questions than it is to answer them. My brief answers are merely indicative of a direction an answer might take, but I’d expect many possible more elaborate answers.
If tomorrow the Crimeans changed their minds and decided to join Ukraine, would Russia’s owners and operators let them?
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Ron Paul, Richard Cobden, and the Risks of Opposing War / Politics / US Politics
By: MISES
Ryan McMaken writes: Since at least as early as the eighteen century, classical liberalism, and its modern variant libertarianism, have opposed warfare except in cases of obvious self-defense. We see this anti-war position clearly among the anti-federalists of eighteenth-century America (who opposed all standing armies) and more famously within George Washington’s Farewell Address. Thomas Jefferson frequently inveighed against war, although in moves typical for Jefferson, he acted against his own professed ideology on a number of occasions.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
The Fed is Beginning to Freak Out About Bubbles / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Graham_Summers
As we noted earlier this week, the Fed is growing increasingly concerned of a bubble forming in the financial markets. Previously we noted that Janet Yellen was concerned about another bubble forming.
Now St Louis Fed President James Bullard is saying the same thing.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014
Death Cross For European Energy / Politics / Energy Resources
By: Andrew_McKillop
Play With the Toy Until its Breaks
Commentators have begun to focus on the “moving average” of European energy demand – always downward – as the moving average of European energy prices always rises. They easily conclude this is a death cross caused by the always-unrealistic energy policy and programs of the European Union. Making this more deadly, the “bearish outlook” for future energy supply in Europe is hard-baked into the policy mix and kept that way by political grandstanding and corporate inertia.
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Saturday, March 29, 2014
Advanced Naval Military Tech And China's Blue Water Challenge / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Andrew_McKillop
The BRICs and the West
The possibly sanctions-frozen sale by France to Russia of two high tech Mistral-class “invasion platform” fighting ships enabling simultaneous military electronic and physical assault, and regional subversion and sabotage by helicopter-dropped special forces in the attack region exhibits one key dilemma for political deciders.
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Friday, March 28, 2014
It’s Gut-Check Time for America / Politics / Social Issues
By: Andy_Sutton
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one…. We’re sure that almost all of you will recognize the beginning of this historic document. Notice its title; it was a declaration. Could just as easily have been called an affirmation. But it merely stated in words what was already reality. For all of Jefferson’s wisdom, his most popular piece was merely a restatement of fact. That it needed to be restated was the problem. In today’s world – on so many levels, we have this type of ersatz freedom rather than the real thing. We’re not independent. We’re not really free in any sense of the word. But because we can hop on a plane and, after having ourselves and our companions treated like cattle, fly off to Disney World, we think we’re free.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Cold War Atavism – Skewed Clues For An Uncertain Future / Politics / New Cold War
By: Andrew_McKillop
Skeuomorphic Culture
According to ethnologists and anthropologists who specialize in the subsector of primitive and ethnic technology, that is pre-modern non-western technology, a skeuomorph is a part or whole of a design or an artefact made to resemble a previous and different material or technique. Ancient potters who had moved up to wheel-throwing and kiln baking continued designing and making wooden-like or woven rope-like handles on their solid, one-piece wares. A simple example for Western culture's technological and cultural skeuomorphism are estate wagon cars with light-colored plastic “wooden” framing, or garden chairs made of extruded aluminium with PVC seats, which are produced with “screws and tenon joints” for the fake-wooden chair parts, and printed “handwoven raffia-style” plastic seats and chair backs. Coloring of the aluminium and plastic to mask their real nature, can include elaborate tinted and printed wood grain effects.
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Friday, March 28, 2014
Ukraine "On Verge of Financial Bankruptcy" Reaches $27 Billion "Kamikaze" Deal With IMF / Politics / Global Debt Crisis 2014
By: Mike_Shedlock
Ukraine and the IMF have agreed to an aid package that will no doubt prove to be as beneficial to Ukraine as the Troika bailout (plunder) of Greece.
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Thursday, March 27, 2014
When Corporations Take Precedence Over People / Politics / Social Issues
By: Jesse
"There is felt today very widely the inconsistency in this condition of political democracy and industrial absolutism. The people are beginning to doubt whether in the long run democracy and absolutism can coexist in the same community; beginning to doubt whether there is a justification for the great inequalities in the distribution of wealth, for the rapid creation of fortunes, more mysterious than the deeds of Aladdin’s lamp." -
Louis D. Brandeis, The Opportunity in Law, Speech to Harvard Ethical Society, May 4, 1905
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Winding Down Fannie and Freddie the Economic Scam of the Century / Politics / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
The leaders of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), released a draft bill on Sunday that would provide explicit government guarantees on mortgage-backed securities (MBS) generated by privately-owned banks and financial institutions. The gigantic giveaway to Wall Street would put US taxpayers on the hook for 90 percent of the losses on toxic MBS the likes of which crashed the financial system in 2008 plunging the economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Proponents of the bill say that new rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) –which set standards for a “qualified mortgage” (QM)– assure that borrowers will be able to repay their loans thus reducing the chances of a similar meltdown in the future. However, those QE rules were largely shaped by lobbyists and attorneys from the banking industry who eviscerated strict underwriting requirements– like high FICO scores and 20 percent down payments– in order to lend freely to borrowers who may be less able to repay their loans. Additionally, a particularly lethal clause has been inserted into the bill that would provide blanket coverage for all MBS (whether they met the CFPB’s QE standard or not) in the event of another financial crisis. Here’s the paragraph:
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
This Is Why We Are Doomed / Politics / Climate Change
By: Raul_I_Meijer
If there’s one thing that defines why we, and the world we live in, are doomed, it can be found – once more – in a recent spat of (leaked) reactions to the upcoming new IPCC report. We’ve come a long way since skeptics started budging in the way creationists demand equal time on the new Cosmos series – only more successful – and now we’re way past mere skepticism. Not only has it become totally acceptable to pooh pooh and hush hush climate change, we’ve arrived at the point where we go look for positive angles.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
IMF and EU Capture of Ukraine / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: BATR
It should be obvious that the recent putsch and regime change in the Ukraine inspired and backed by the U.S. shadow government, benefits the international banksters. For the average EU resident, only further economic displacement and diminished prospects can be expected from any inclusion of Ukraine into the EU dictatorial structure. Not so, for the corporatists who expects expanded opportunities as Consortium News analyzes agricultural and energy companies recent involvement within the Ukraine.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Is Ben Bernanke Worth $250k Per Speech? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Christopher_Westley
“Bernanke Enjoys the ‘Fruits of the Free Market,’” or so we’re told in a Reuters headline from March 4 about the former Fed chairman’s 40-minute speech in Abu Dhabi for which he received, ahem, $250,000. In the Reuters author’s defense, he was only quoting a DC lobbyist who was defending the amount, and added, Bernanke “will personally experience supply and demand.”
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
From Estonia to Azerbaijan: American East European Strategy After Ukraine / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
As I discussed last week, the fundamental problem that Ukraine poses for Russia, beyond a long-term geographical threat, is a crisis in internal legitimacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his time in power rebuilding the authority of the Russian state within Russia and the authority of Russia within the former Soviet Union. The events in Ukraine undermine the second strategy and potentially the first. If Putin cannot maintain at least Ukrainian neutrality, then the world's perception of him as a master strategist is shattered, and the legitimacy and authority he has built for the Russian state is, at best, shaken.