Muslims In 21st Century America: Violent Clashing Culture

Part1: Basic incompatibility of Western thought and Muslim theocracy…

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” said radio talk show host Peter Boyles last week on www.khow.com in Denver, Colorado.

Boyles’ remarks followed a horrific mass killing by Muslim U.S. Army Major Nadal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan blasted away at 42 military personnel and civilians as they stood defenseless in line awaiting deployment processing for the Middle East. He screamed, “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar!” while unloading his firearms into the bodies of U.S. troops.

A female off-duty police officer waded into the chaos with her gun blazing until she brought him down with four shots. He lays in a Fort Hood hospital bed in critical condition.

His condition stands as a warning and a metaphor for the United States of America as it places itself in critical danger by importing millions from incompatible cultures and languages into America at breakneck speed. It reminds me of students in a chemistry class pouring unknown chemicals into a beaker and hoping it doesn’t boil over or blow up.

This incident isn’t the first time. U.S. Army Muslim Sergeant Hasan Akbar threw a grenade into a tent at the beginning of the Iraq War, which killed three U.S. Army officers.

The philosopher Emanuel Kant said, “Religion and language are the two great dividers of humanity.”

First of all, Islam’s basic tenant means, “Submission.” Imams say that Islam remains a religion of peace, but they fail to tell listeners that peace will arrive only when Islam becomes the sole religion in the world. Its prime directive in the Koran reads, “…convert or kill all non-believers, starting with the Jews.”

If you look at Islam in the modern world, its terror tactics began in Munich, Germany 1972 with the mass killings of Jewish athletes at the Olympics. From that point, every major mass murder, or killing attempt across the planet stems from Muslim terrorists at regional levels all the way to the 19 Muslims that brought down the World Trade Towers. Muslim terrorists brought down Pan American airlines at Lockerbie, blew up barracks filled with soldiers in Africa, bombed night clubs in Balli, killed Theo Van Gogh, train bombings in Madrid, Spain; subway bombings in London, 9/11, Fort Dix six, and dozens of other killings or attempted bombings. Muslims place ‘fatwa’s’, (a death threat for life) against writers, speakers and political leaders such as Hirsi Ali in Holland for standing up against Islam. Muslims do not tolerate free speech, free choice of religion and they do not tolerate women as equals.

Two weeks ago, in Detroit, Michigan, 11 Muslims fought FBI agents with calls to create a separate Muslim state in Michigan under Sharia Law. Muslims rioted in Sweden this summer against Jewish tennis players playing in that country. Muslims rioted in November 2007 in France.

Amil Imani , “Islam is Fire” , September 12, 2009, said, “The Islamic fire, fueled by immense oil income, is raging in certain regions of the world, smoldering in others, and is ready to ignite in yet other parts of the world. It is imperative for the free people of the world to abandon all illusions about Islam and put out its fire, once and for all. Multiculturalism, live and-let live, is a delusion of kind-hearted naïve people. Islam, as fractured as it is, is a non-compromising mono-culture; a cruel culture of a primitive people handed down by Muhammad some 1400 years ago.”

Most Americans sit and watch with total oblivion of the march of Islam into America. In 1990, only 100,000 Muslims inhabited the United States. Today, over eight million spread across the country with over 1,000 mosques and growing. We import over 1,500 Muslim refugees every thirty days into America. They stand in diametrical opposition to a republican form of government and equal rights for women.

At the same time, honor killings, female genital mutilation, violence toward women and hostility toward Americans accelerates.

“Immigrants devoted to their own cultures and religions are not influenced by the secular politically correct façade that dominates academia, news-media, entertainment, education, religious and political thinking today,” said James Walsh, former Associate General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. “They claim the right not to assimilate, and the day is coming when the question will be how can the United States regulate the defiantly unassimilated cultures, religions and mores of foreign lands? Such immigrants say their traditions trump the U.S. legal system. Balkanization of the United States has begun.”

For example, Muslims practice female genital mutilation (FGM). It’s 6th century Dark Ages barbarism alive in the 21st century. It occurs today in Detroit, Michigan, Freemont, California and Denver, Colorado, and wherever Islam grows in America. Seven years ago, hundreds of cases of little girls suffering from infected genitalia, after being slashed with razors and glass, landed in Colorado hospitals from the FGM ritual. Islamic practitioners, without sterile room technique or anesthesia, cut out the labia majora and minora as well as the clitoris of girls, usually less than nine years of age.

Led by Colorado House Representative Dorothy Rupert, lawmakers passed a new law to halt it. The practice didn’t stop; it torpedoed underground. What happens when Muslim culture becomes the majority and votes it into legal practice?

Have you seen a country devolve? In the Middle East today, Muslims stone women to death for adultery. They won’t allow women to drive. Women cannot go out in public without a male relative at their side. They demand separate swimming pool times for men and women. They make women hide their faces with a burka into ‘non-beingness’. They practice Sharia Law which proves harsh and diametrically opposed to parliamentary law.

Don’t think it can happen in America? Fox News, July 25, 2008 reported a Muslim honor killing in Garrett, Texas when a 12 year old girl called 911, screaming, “My dad shot me; I am dying.” She died before an ambulance arrived. Reason: father didn’t like her wearing western jeans and blouses.

In Clayton County, Georgia, July 10, 2008, a Pakistani immigrant father, Chaudry Rashid strangled his daughter for not accepting his choice of a husband. She wanted a divorce. She was 14 when she died.

In New York, February 16, 2009, FOX News, Joshua Rhett Miller reported, “The estranged wife of a Muslim television executive feared for her life after filing for divorce last month from her abusive husband,” her attorney said — and was found beheaded Thursday in his upstate New York television studio. Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, was found dead on Thursday at the offices of Bridges TV in Orchard Park, N.Y., near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, has reportedly been charged with second-degree murder. “She was very much aware of the potential ramification of her filing for divorce might have,” said attorney Elizabeth DiPirro, whose law firm represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding. “But she wanted to proceed despite the potential for it to erupt.”

Under Sharia Law in the Middle East, such an ‘honor killing’ remains accepted in Islamic society. Ann Curry on NBC hosted a news piece, “Honor Killings in America.” She reported on the astounding rise of honor killings in America by Muslim immigrants.

Last week, in Glendale, Arizona, an immigrant father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, ran down with his Jeep truck and killed his daughter Noor for being too “Westernized.” Her crime? She liked to wear jeans. A sane person might ask, “Why did he immigrate to America and why did he bring his daughter?”

Worldwide, Muslim husbands and brothers kill 5,000 women every year, year in and year out—for disobeying them. (Source: Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts, November 8, 2009, “American dream doesn’t include this nightmare) And, they get away with it because Sharia Law condones honor killings. You see, Mohammed the prophet proved an illiterate tribal war leader who cut his enemies’ heads and fingers off if they disobeyed him. His barbarism remains with Islam today.

As their numbers grow in host countries, they displace laws, culture, language and finally, take over. America will prove the last stand of humanity and Christianity against Islam’s onslaught. So, far, the USA is losing its language, customs and culture—to Islam. Of course, you see the same nightmare occurring in Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Austria, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Germany.

Part 2: Three parts of ‘soft’ Jihad, political correctness and Robert Spencer

U.S. Sustainable Immigration Policy For All Americans

The United States races into the 21st century like a seasick captain at the helm of a battleship plowing into Hurricane Katrina. The more he vomits, the bigger the mess to clean up. The further he heads into the 50 foot waves, the sooner he could be washed overboard. The worse the storm grows, the more the windows fog up so he cannot see where he’s going in rough seas. The more he tries to maintain a steady rudder, the faster his ship takes on water to ultimately follow the Titanic’s fate.

Today, our country, the United States of America, charges full steam ahead into a Human Katrina in the 21st century that becomes fiercer, more powerful and more ominous with every year that passes. If ‘people’ represent the North Atlantic waters of Titanic’s sinking moment—and they do—the United States cannot maintain itself as to sustainability, clean water, food, energy and quality of life.

Every 30 days, the USA takes on 200,000 to 240,000 immigrants from a never ending line of an added 77 million annually of desperately poor from around the world. They add up to over 2.5 million annually pouring into the USA. They stress our infrastructure, overwhelm our water supplies, our food supplies, our hospital facilities, our educational systems and overload our prisons.

At the bow of the Titanic, our most populace state: California–adds 1,700 mostly immigrants net gain per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year on their way to adding 20 million to their already overloaded 38 million in 2009. They destroy 250,000 acres of wilderness annually to cope with their added human payload. They add 400 cars net gain daily. California represents everything happening to America—and none of it equates to good.

As Governor Schwarzenegger said, “We are out of money….” He’s not only out of money, but he’s loaded up with a $26 billion debt, gridlocked highways, toxic air, trashed schools, filled prisons, 86 bankrupted hospitals and ER wards and water shortages. The cause? Unrelenting, massive and unending legal and illegal immigration!

In Dr. Otis Graham’s “Unguarded Gates: A History of America’s Immigration Crisis”, he writes, “Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all–ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.”

Al Gore, gracing Newsweek Magazine this week, pitches to stop global climate change. He pretends to solve the problem but he won’t whisper the cause.

The eminent US demographic expert, Dr. Albert Bartlett said, “Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally.”

Can you? Can adding 200,000 immigrants monthly to the USA solve our toxic air over our cities? Gridlocked highways? School crowding? Water shortages? Energy costs? Hospital facilities? Enhance our quality of life?

As Mike Matz said in a Denver Post article, we lose 6,000 acres daily to human encroachment and expect to lose another 1.26 billion acres of wilderness within 35 years, i.e, ‘ecological footprint’ or, the amount of land that must be destroyed to support one American. That number equals 12.6 acres of land.

“In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.” ~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971

Yes! I could present a dozen more examples of this “Human Katrina” swamping our country. You read about them daily, so you know what I speak about.

So how do we stop this mess without sinking our country as surely as the Titanic sank?

Dr. Jack Alpert said, “TEMPORAL BLINDNESS is a limitation in cognitive process. People with temporal blindness cannot gather and process available information into predictions of future conditions. Their processes cannot connect future conditions to a causing behavior. When their processes do create unpleasant predictions, and identify the causal behavior, they fail to create enough present meaning for the future conditions to motivate a change in that behavior.”

What’s causing our ship to sink? Fact: mass immigration.

What do we do about it? Take action!

Let’s propose a “US Sustainable Immigration Policy” of 100,000 or less annually in order to keep our country afloat today, next decade and throughout the 21st century.

Why 100,000? That many people egress the country annually. Voila! Net gain of zero!

Simple, smart, proactive, reasonable and sustainable!

Yes, you can become emotional citing that this nation’s greatness stemmed from its greatness via immigration. That was a mathematical possibility then, but now, a non-mathematical equation. We cannot continue with unrelenting immigration.

Thirty years from now our kids will ask two questions. If we fail to engage a “US Sustainable Immigration Policy”, they will be swimming in 100 million more people fighting for diminished water, resources, energy and clean air. They will gasp, “What were you thinking?”

Or, if we do enact an immigration policy, and we do not add 100 million people, and our kids enjoy quality of life, a decent living, and a balanced and thriving environment, they might ask, “Were my parents smart or what?!”

As a nation, as a culture, as a people, we must think about the 7th generation to come. How will they be able to live, eat, work, play and enjoy their lives if we fail to act responsibly?

Each of us carries a sacred trust to our children and the children of the future of this amazing United States of America as well as our planet. I urge every person reading this column to join www.numbersusa.com and become a faxer of prewritten letters to your Congress critters. Also, www.capsweb.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.thesocialcontract.com and www.fairus.org .

This will prove THE single greatest issue facing our civilization in the 21st century. By our collective action, we can turn this Ship of America toward calmer, more peaceful and viable waters.

About The Social Contract: Our Society and the Future

This past week, in Detroit, Michigan, a group of Muslim immigrants engaged the FBI in a gun battle.

Journalists Paul Egan and Oralandar Brand-Williams of The Detroit News wrote, “The leader of a Detroit mosque who allegedly espoused violence and separatism was shot and killed Wednesday by the FBI in a gun battle at a Dearborn warehouse. Luqman Ameen Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was being arrested on a raft of federal charges including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, and firearms offenses. Charges were also filed against 11 of Abdullah’s followers. Eight were in custody Wednesday night awaiting detention hearings today; three remained at large. A federal complaint filed Wednesday identified Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group.” His black Muslim group calls itself “Ummah,” or the brotherhood, and wants to establish a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law, Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a joint statement.”

While most Americans ignore that minor incident in Detroit, it proves indicative of a larger dilemma facing the United States’ immigration policy. Former President Bush in 2008, began importing 1,000 Iraqi immigrant refugees into the USA monthly. He jumped that to 19,000 a year for 2009. President Obama, earlier this year, signed a bill to add thousands more from Palestine.

How long can a country maintain its own language, culture and identity in the wake of endless immigration from cultures that do not assimilate into the host country? What happens when immigrant numbers grow greater than the native people?

For a simple example, look to North America in 1492 where 522 Indian tribes lived upon the land for centuries without change to their languages, religions and cultures. They enjoyed their ‘space’ all around America. The Blackfeet ‘ruled’ Montana. The Apache occupied Arizona, etc. The Seminoles lived in Florida. The Chippewa owned Michigan, etc.

By 1850, white settlers slaughtered millions of them and sent them to reservations. In the Smithsonian Indian exhibit in Washington DC, gives the reason for the destruction of the indigenous people of North America: “After first contact, the main destruction of the red man stemmed from guns, disease, the Bible and alcohol.”

Samuel P. Huntington said, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”

Today, American Indians suffer on reservations with 80 plus percent alcoholism, lost languages, loss of religion, cultures and ways of life. We subdued them, so much so, they could not respond to our onslaught.

But enter the 21^st century and enter Islam. Muslims now fan out around the world with one “prime directive” to “…convert or kill non-believers.” Muslims, whether peaceful or radical, they all follow the same edict in their Koran. Given enough numbers, they overwhelm their host country.

Example: Holland fights for its life today. It suspended any further immigration by Muslims last year. They pay immigrants to go back home. France mandated that all immigrants must speak French and no more wearing of the burka. Great Britain cowers under growing Sharia Law and more emboldened numbers of Muslims. They will not recover from their immigration dilemma nor will their culture as it becomes overwhelmed by immigrants: projections show them adding 11 million more within two decades. British society and British culture will not survive.

If you would like to learn more, visit www.thesocialcontract.com

“The English philosopher John Locke, whose thinking helped inspire the American Revolution, said that society should be governed by an understood set of values he termed the social contract. Under the social contract, governments have obligations to their citizens, and citizens have responsibilities to society,” the website reads, “Most public issues are basically moral and ethical ones. What is the right thing to do? How do we decide what we think is right? When rights collide, which ones take precedence? The concept of the social contract helps us sort out the difficult issues confronting American society today and helps us find balance.”

Each quarter THE SOCIAL CONTRACT journal examines trends, events, and ideas that have an impact on America’s delicate social fabric. This journal addresses the following key topics: Human Population issues; including absolute size, rate of growth, and distribution. Do cherished American ideals prosper or suffer through further population growth?

• Immigration issues. In order to best facilitate meeting the highest goals of the American people, (1) how many immigrants should we admit? (2) who should he admitted? And (3) how can we humanely enforce the rules?
• Language, assimilation, culture, and national unity considerations. What shared values are necessary to the maintenance of our social contract?
• The balance of individual rights with civic responsibilities. Since the previous issues are so often framed in terms of rights, what are the balancing obligations?
• Other nations’ efforts at creating and guarding their own social contracts. What practical insights can be gained. from observing the failures and successes in nation-building by other societies?

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT explores these complex and interrelated issues with articles, essays, and book reviews that vary greatly in outlook and philosophy. They encourage a wide spectrum of opinion as they publish contributions from many vantage points.

If you want to learn more, spend $25.00 a year for the “Social Contract Quarterly”. It educates beyond anything you will hear in the main stream media. MSM only reports accelerating consequences, but it’s better to solve the problems rather than to continue racing into them.

Just as the ‘tiny’ incident in Michigan will be dismissed, like a cancer, it will grow and it DOES grow without attention, until, it will become a tumor that destroys the ‘social contract’ that successfully served this civilization for 233 years. But, like what happened to the Aborigines of North America, we will become victims of our own immigration policies.

How do we stop what is happening to us? Empower your collective strengths by joining www.NumbersUSA.com ; www.capsweb.org ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.thesocialcontract.com

U.S. Filling Up With Dumb People: Chaos of Illiteracy

Part 2: Ethnic division, welfare, balkanization, clashing cultures.

Over 18 million human beings starve to death in third world countries around the world annually. According to the World Health Organization,10 million of them are children that die of starvation or related conditions yearly. When you watch religious channels featuring appeals to “Save the Children” in Africa, South America and Asia, what constitutes the driving condition of their plight?

Illiteracy! Culture! Profligate fecundity!

At the same time, how can the Western world in Europe and North America enjoy endless ‘all you can eat’ buffets seven days a week that created over 180 million obese people in the United States alone?

Education! Culture! Personal choice!

What happens when a highly educated society, culture and people such as the United States degrades or devolves its educational systems toward illiteracy and loss of personal accountability?

Look around you!

You watched that process clutch at the throat of American educational system for the last 40 years— and today; it’s got us by the carotid artery.

What do 35 million Americans subsisting on food stamps indicate? Answer: poor or no educational achievement.

APATHY AND TOLERANCE: THE MOST DEADLY VIRTUES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

Personal responsibility: do you think 400,000 pregnant women that arrive annually in America, unlawfully, will birth tomorrow’s responsible citizens? Do you think millions of unwed American mothers that bring 1,2,3,4 and five children into this world using welfare “Aid to Dependent Children” will rear responsible, intelligent and contributing future citizens?

Personal accountability: do you think the 1.2 million high school dropouts annually in the USA will become thriving, contributing and responsible future citizens? You see, that number of academic failures has been mounting for over 10 years, thus, more than 11 million illiterate kids wandering the streets of America.

Do you think ethnic groups that abhor education or quit from their own lack of parental guidance, drive and academic ability – will remain docile in the burgeoning slums? Here or worldwide? I address that dilemma in Chapter 20: Burgeoning Cities of Poverty in America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. {Copies available:1 888 289 7715}

ABSOLUTE VOID OF DECENT STRATEGIC PLANNING

“Most cities in developing countries already have pressing concerns, including crime, lack of clean water and sanitation, and sprawling slums,” said Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund. “But these problems pale in comparison with those that could be raised by future growth. If we do not plan ahead, it will be a catastrophe.”

Please note that China, India, Mexico, Bangladesh, Rio, Indonesia, etc. constitute present day catastrophes already manifesting.

Where does this lead to?

What do we see happening in the USA?

Why won’t anyone address it?

Illiteracy can and will kill our civilization! No if’s, and’s or but’s! And the “when” is easily predicted.

Social Interaction EXPLOSIONS Are Inevitable.

The fact grows that the United States injects volatile mixtures of incompatible cultures, antagonistic races (e.g. – Jewish and Muslims), illiteracy and multiple languages into its core culture— hoping that it won’t explode. Yet, you can see the explosions, strife and conflict already manifesting in Great Britain, France, Holland, Norway, Germany, Austria, Spain and elsewhere.

Cultural Assimilation is NOT Happening.

In “The Silent Catastrophe” by Jared Taylor, October 12, 2009, he said, “Part of the problem for immigrants is adjusting to the U.S.; Hispanics born here are more likely to finish high school than those who immigrate as children. However, the graduation rate slightly decreases for the second U.S.-born generation (85.1 percent vs. 85.9 percent), so that in 2007, even after three generations in the United States, Hispanics had a dropout rate that was still 2.3 times the white rate – and 33 percent higher than the black rate.

“Big-city public school districts, which are heavily black and Hispanic, have appalling track-records.

In Detroit, only 26.8 percent of students graduated on time in 2006. (76 percent in 2008 reported by Brian Williams, NBC) The other worst performers were Philadelphia: 39.1 percent, Dallas: 40.7 percent, Los Angeles: 47.7 percent, and Washington, DC: 48.8 percent. Jefferson High School, which is 90 percent Hispanic and 10 percent black, had the worst dropout rate in Los Angeles: 58 percent.

“That is not the figure for students who fail to graduate on time; it is those students do not graduate at all.”

Today, newspapers and magazines publish to a sixth grade reading level for audiences across this country! The U.S. Army manuals scale their educational efforts to a 4th grade level.

Taylor continued, “The American workforce has historically been the best educated in the world: 85 percent of adult Americans are high school graduates, up from just 25 percent in 1940. Twenty-eight percent have a college degree, a fivefold increase since 1940. Better education helped raise real average per-capita income in the United States 40 percent between 1980 and 2000 – but that money had less purchasing power.

California Illiteracy; Legal AND Illegal Immigrants

“According to a 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an estimated 400,000 legal immigrants and 350,000 illegal immigrants were illiterate in their native languages, much less English. This contributed to the first decline in literacy in California’s history. In 2003, its adult illiteracy rate of 23 percent— up 50 percent in the most recent 10 years— put it last among all states.”

Please note that California suffers an estimated five (ten ?) million illegal immigrants and five million recently arrived legal immigrants. It suffers a gigantic, untaxed underground economy resulting in $24 ($47 ?) billion in debt. Across the USA, immigrants cost taxpayers, according to economist Edwin Rubensetin, www.thesocialcontract.com — $346 billion annually across 15 federal agencies.

“The California Dropout Research Project at U.C. Santa Barbara estimated in 2009 that because high school dropouts commit more crime than students who stay in school, dropouts cost California $1.1 billion annually in law enforcement costs and victim damages while they are still minors,” said Taylor. “This estimate did not include lost productivity costs as adults or continuing public outlays for adult criminals and indigents.”

“For the U.S. economy, the implication of these trends is really stark,” said Patrick Callan, president of the center.

Andrew Sum of Northeastern University in Boston works with ETS on research projects said, “There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years,” he says, when literacy and numeracy have declined, “but if you don’t change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face.”

“If blacks, Hispanics, and immigrants are excluded from the American results, our performance rises from 12th, to 2nd in reading and 5th in math,” said Taylor. “This means immigrants, blacks, and Hispanics are dragging our rating down to 12th from 2nd and 5th. Likewise, the oldest Americans (56 and older) came in second in reading whereas younger Americans, those 26-35 and 16-25 years old, ranked 11th and 14th, respectively.

The oldest age groups— the ones with the most whites— are doing the best, while the youngest groups with the fewest whites do the worst. The ETS also found that native-born blacks and Hispanics performed at only the 28th percentile, compared to other rich countries, and immigrants at only the 17th percentile.”

In 2009, we suffer $35 million in shoplifting DAILY within the United States by those that lack education, personal responsibility and accountability.

As the inequities accelerate, we face entrenched and growing slums that will drive food stamp usage beyond our ability to feed our citizens. As they grow more volatile, expect balkanization, ethnic separation and confrontation. As inequities grow between the haves and have not’s, expect extreme disrespect for law and order.

Finally, why continue importing 2.5 million immigrants into this country annually when we cannot support or employ our own citizens?

Additionally, when you see 600,000 Muslim immigrants added to the Detroit, Michigan region— sporting a 76 percent dropout rate from area high schools— you can count on illiterate, upset, angry and culturally incompatible Muslim-Americans taking their frustrations out on the rest of us.

Expect growing domestic violence, honor killings, FGM, rapes and much worse as now experienced in Sweden, France and Great Britain, and, of course here in the U.S. Check out the numbers, take action at www.NumbersUSA.com and join as if your kids’ lives and this civilization depended on it. In Truth, it does.

What Physicians Know

I had a long conversation with my favorite physician, who has operated on me twice successfully. He is an incredibly kind person without an ounce of greed or pretense. Like other physicians I have spoken to, he spoke eloquently about the terrible times he consistently has with private health insurance companies.

While he praises Medicare for its simplicity and certainty, he has absolutely nothing positive to say about private insurers. They take up huge amounts of time of him and his staff, trying in every possible way to deny services to their customers (his patients) and also to pay as little as possible to him. His endless struggles with the insurance companies make his life miserable. Meanwhile all he cares about is giving his patients the very best care and not making them suffer because of their insurance carriers.

Like so many of us he sees the need for major reforms of our health care system, but remains pessimistic about what Congress and President Obama will eventually deliver. He is incredulous at how executives of private insurers make vast amounts of money while making physicians and their patients suffer endless annoyances and negative impacts on health care. And they get away with making people pay more and more money for worse and worse insurance.

He also has many stories about patients that do not take medications for long term chronic conditions because they cannot afford prescriptions. He gives out as many samples that he can get, is angry that people in other nations pay much less for brand name drugs, and feels terrible for his patients because the US health care system has let them down.

What would be the ideal solution to the current health care mess? My doctor believes that opening up Medicare to everyone would be wonderful, and the system could be opened up immediately. I totally agree. There is no sound reason for Congress to protect the private health insurance industry. But of course they always have and always will because it is the source of huge amounts of money for political campaigns.

While no one should be forced into Medicare, just making it available to all who want it would be fair. If private colleges compete with public ones, and private for profit hospitals compete with nonprofit ones, why shouldn’t health insurance companies be put in a similar position?

Corruption blocks true and necessary health care reform. Remember that the next time you vote.

Is Capitalism on the Ropes?

Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff…

1. Mike Whitney—In your new book, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know”, you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? (“The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)

Michael Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid-to late-1970s, when it became apparent that the post-World War Two “Golden Age” of U.S. capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them was ideological, that is, a struggle for “hearts and minds,” to use a military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation. Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could be tied to simple cliches, like “get the government off our backs,” “the unions have gotten too powerful” (with always a hint that they are too radical thrown into the argument), and “welfare queens” (with that always popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.

This ideological attack bore fruit quickly. President Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent. Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach (though ignored by President Obama’s more right-wing economic advisors), which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and putting the nail in labor’s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of neoliberalism—such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage—are all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care. Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, “See, we told you so. The government always makes things worse.” In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.

Fred Magdoff: Although these institutions were very successful, along with a number of other forces, in shaping public attitudes toward the economy, the reality of the current severe economic conditions are causing many, including some economists, to rethink their views of how “efficiently” markets function in the real world (as opposed to their ideological make-believe world) and that some different approaches may be needed. People seem to understand that the “big players” played a major role in the crisis, but most of the anger has been placed on the outrageous salaries of the top echelon. Of course, this is just “chump change” compared to the massive amounts at that are transferred to the wealthy through the speculative casino that our economy has become.

2. MW—Socialism has a huge public relations problem. Wouldn’t you agree that socialism has been effectively discredited in the U.S. media and that, even now–with unemployment soaring at 10 percent and more than 300,000 foreclosures per month–the average American worker still believes in the virtues of capitalism? How do you explain this phenomenon?

Michael Yates: Part of my answer here can be seen in my response to your first question. Socialism has, indeed, been discredited here, partly due to its rejection by its natural supporter, namely the labor movement. The CIO expelled in the late 1940s and early 1950s the left-wing forces who built the great industrial unions. When it did this, it abandoned the worker-centered ideology that might have laid the basis for support here for at least the kind of social democracy we find in the Scandinavian nations. This left the ideological field to the enemies of social democracy and socialism. Of course, we cannot ignore the long and inglorious history of police-state repression of those persons and organizations that championed socialism. Our government has never hesitated to arrest, imprison, and even kill the enemies of capitalism. So it has been dangerous to be a radical here, though not so much today when radical ideas aren’t taken seriously and there are no powerful radical organizations left. Suppose that after the Second World War, the left in the labor movement had grown, and the left-led unions had continued to successfully organize workers and win good collective bargaining agreements. Suppose that they had built upon their impressive worker education programs, made inroads in the South, and fought hard against U.S. imperialism and the Cold War. We might have a much different political terrain on which to fight today.

Two other factors that must be considered in the attachment of the working class to capitalism are racism and imperialism. In the past, employers routinely pitted white workers against black, and one weapon they used was to associate black workers (and the civil rights movement) with communism (It was interesting to note in this connection the attempts to make Obama out to be a radical socialist). The claim that black union supporters were reds helped to solidify white support for capitalism. By the same token, anti-imperialist struggles in the poor nations of the world (often former colonies of the rich countries) were typically led by political radicals. These could be made out to be anti-American, and then those in the United States who allied themselves with these struggles could also be labeled anti-American, despite the fact that they might also be supportive of policies that would benefit working people. The schools and the media could be counted out not to try to set anyone straight on any of this.

Now, having said this, I must also say that to the extent that left forces in the United States identified themselves uncritically with the former Soviet Union and its extremely undemocratic political system, they sometimes played into the hands of those opposed to socialism. And I must also admit that socialist forces were, at their strongest, never powerful enough here to force their best ideals permanently into the consciousness of the working class majority. Finally, in the past, the success of capitalism in the United States allowed for some sharing of the wealth with workers, and this, too, made people less willing to entertain radical ideas.

Old and deeply ingrained ideas die hard, and unless there are forces at work to develop new ones and unless there is at least widespread experimentation with new ways to organize production and distribution, little is likely to change, even in the face of economic catastrophe, such as so may working men and women are facing right now. Quite the contrary, workers might be persuaded that actions detrimental to their long-term self-
interest need to be taken, such as, for example, draconian measures against immigrants.

Fred Magdoff: There is no question that the term socialism has a public relations problem. But while it’s true that most people don’t fully understand the basic workings of the capitalist system nor what socialism is, there are indications that many people are ready to talk about alternatives—and that includes socialism. The positive public response to Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism,” is one indication. But a Rasmussen poll last spring found that only 58% of American’s say that capitalism is better than socialism. For adults under 30, 37% preferred capitalism and 33% preferred socialism. It’s not clear what the poll results really mean. But it does indicate that people are willing to hear about and talk about alternatives to capitalism.

3. MW—In a chapter titled “Neoliberlism” you focus on the disparity of wealth in the US today. Here’s an excerpt:

“By 2006 the top 1 percent of households received close to a quarter of all income and the top 10 percent got 50 percent of the income pie. In 2006, the 400 richest Americans had a collective net wealth of $1.6 trillion, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million people. This degree of income and wealth inequality was last seen just before the beginning of the Great Depression.” (pg 50)

Let’s ignore the moral issue for now, and focus on the supply/demand question. Is it possible for an economy to produce sufficient demand when more and more of the wealth and income goes to the upper 5 or 10 percent of the population? (isn’t this proof that capitalism is inherently crisis-prone?)

Michael d. Yates: If a certain amount of output is produced, an equal amount of income is generated. So, conceptually, there could be enough demand to buy the output, no matter that the incomes generated are getting more unequally distributed. It certainly has been the case that the rich people now getting such a large share of the pie spend gobs of money. And rich foreigners spend a great deal of money in the United States as well. However, the rich also save a lot of money (the more they get, the more they save), and this money does not enter immediately into the spending flow. Working people, on the other hand, can be counted on, by virtue of the limited income that they command, to spend all of their income. Therefore, the more income the rich have, the more savings there will be, and, unless some way is found to convert all this saving into spending on newly-produced goods and services, the more likely it is that there will be a crisis caused by not enough spending (and its corollaries of unsold goods and services and unemployed labor). If we understand that growing inequality is the normal trajectory of capitalist economies, a trajectory only mitigated by the power of organized working people to win a bigger share of the pie for themselves and to compel the government to intervene in the marketplace on their behalf, then it is correct to say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone for this reason alone.

Growing inequality also creates other potential problems for the system. Sometimes it can generate a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy so to speak. The rich exert tremendous political power, and this power grows as those at the top command a larger and larger share of a society’s income. To the rest of us, the game looks increasingly rigged, with us having little chance to improve our circumstances through individual efforts. More inequality also has harmful social and economic consequences that we don’t normally think of. Recent research has shown that if we compare two entities (two states in the United States, for example) with equal average incomes but different degrees of inequality, then the place with more unequal incomes will also have higher rates of infant mortality, arrest and imprisonment, school dropouts, low infant birth weights, and many other measures of social well-being. Growing inequality actually kills some of us, makes some of us sicker, and puts some of us in jail.

I want to add an important point. To say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth (stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new system.

Fred Magdoff adds: It is one of the many contradictions of the system. If ordinary folk are paid well they can buy a lot of stuff and help keep the system going. So from the point of view of the system as a whole, higher paid workers would help the economy. However, there is only one driving force for individual capitalists–and that’s to make as much money as possible. What might be better for the overall economy can be of no concern to the individual trying to maximize profits. For an analogy, let’s take a look at ocean fishing. Almost every fish species is being fished to the point at which the population crashes. It would make sense for all of the companies operating the large trawlers to cooperate and fish less in order to preserve the resource on which they depend. So what’s good for their long-term future is sacrificed as each individually tries to maximize their catch and therefore profits.

4. MW—Here’s another excerpt from the book: “In 2006, the financial sector employed about 6 percent of the workers but ‘produced’ 40 percent of the profits of all domestic firms.”(pg 56) A few paragraphs later you add that, “Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the present crisis.”

This seems to imply that as manufacturing and other parts of the “real” economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become Wall Street’s new profit-center, the Golden Goose. What impact has the “financialization” of the economy had on ordinary working people?

Michael Yates: I think that an answer here has two parts. First, it was the neoliberal “revolution” begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to working people. For example, unionization rates began to fall dramatically in the 1980s, as Reagan began his “magic of the marketplace” assault on the working class. Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then. Relatively high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization, which also damaged working class living standards. The move toward “free trade” did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with financialization per se.

Second, however, once the neoliberal attack on working class living standards took hold and incomes began to flow upward, those with a great deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work. The corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same. The United States has always had a robust financial sector, though in the past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services. [It is important to note that we see neoliberalism as a political response to capital’s quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s when the post-Second World War two economic boom ended and the slow growth (stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.] These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to reduce, for example, the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments. From these innovations came still more, until finance began to take on a life of its own. And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing individual savings and business profits. Finance of one kind or another then began to be seen as a place to dispose of surplus and make still more money. Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate “investments,” all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough opportunities in the real economy of production. As these things happened, financial “innovation” exploded, with all of the alphabet soup of financial instruments we describe in our book.

This explosion of finance proved detrimental to working people in a number of ways. Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt, assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of thousands. The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion that it was the job of managers to increase the share price of their businesses—in any way possible. Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the inevitable bursting of the bubbles. As we have seen, the bursting of financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people: shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones. The last bubble, in real estate markets, was harmful to workers not only after it burst but also as it was developing. In the aftermath of the dot.com bubble, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed Board of Governors, directed Fed policy to pressure interest rates down to very low levels. This helped to push loose money into real estate. As house prices began to rise, banks and brokers started to encourage working people to do two things: borrow money against the appreciated value of their homes and buy homes, either as first-time buyers or as purchasers of more expensive homes (after selling old ones). Working people were eager to do both because they saw houses as sources of cash to compensate for stagnating household incomes and as a form of wealth that could help secure them against the hazards of ill health, lost pensions, or college-age children needing money for school. Working class households began to take on large amounts of debt, making themselves more vulnerable, even as they thought they were making wise financial decisions. Ironically, those who saw their incomes rise so high because of neoliberalism were now, in effect, loaning money to those who didn’t fare so well. As banks accumulated mortgages, farsighted Wall Street swindlers saw golden opportunities to develop a slew of new financial instruments based upon the packaging and repackaging of mortgages into new and exotic instruments. Greenspan played their shill, arguing that they had uncovered the secret of hedging infallibly against risk. From here it was but a short step to the criminal schemes of Countrywide and a host of other financial institutions. The billions of dollars made were used not only to finance a new gilded age of revoltingly lavish consumption but to corral the most tractable politicians money could buy.

Fred Magdoff adds: Financialization of the economy created the possibilities for people to take on more and more debt—credit cards, new cars, 2nd mortgages, etc. It was the selling of a lifestyle way beyond people’s ability to pay for it plus the easy access of loans that created the bind that many people find themselves in today. In essence, it allowed people to live beyond their means. They were encouraged to take on debt as their house values seemed headed up forever, and the great rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies is the unfortunate result of the financialization of the economy. Also, those people who had retirement money in individual accounts or with pension systems and thought that they had become very wealthy, now found themselves with much less to rely upon.

5. MW—In the last couple of decades, consumer debt has skyrocketed, as you note, “doubling from 1975 to 2005, to 127 percent of disposable income.” (pg 60) Have we gone as far as we can without deleveraging and paying down debts? What happens to a credit-dependent economy when the consumer can no longer increase his/her debt-load? Is this just the beginning of a decades-long down-cycle?

Michael Yates: Certainly no entity—not a person, a family, a business, even a government— can take on rising levels of debt (relative to income) indefinitely. Sooner or later, the piper has to be paid. Working-class consumers took on large amounts of debt, to compensate in part for stagnating wages and incomes, and, it is important to note, to pay for health problems and other household traumas. This meant that the burden of the debt rose, since income wasn’t rising as fast as the debt, and also because the interest rates charged on credit cards and subprime mortgages were so high. We at Monthly Review have been decrying the rise of consumer debt for many years, and we said that the debt chickens would come home to roost sooner of later. I must say that I was surprised that debt could be broadened and deepened for so long. The ingenuity of creditors in extending loan periods and devising so many new forms of debt has to be admired for its audacity. Then, the ways in which these debts were packaged and sold so that more debt could be extended was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, consumers ultimately couldn’t pay and all hell broke loose. Now, with so much unemployment, workers are truly strapped. They will not be borrowing so much or spending so much anytime soon. [One interesting recent development is that, as some households have defaulted on debts or simply stopped making payments, consumer spending has showed a bit of an upward tick!] So the question arises: what spending will fuel a sustained recovery? It won’t likely be consumer spending. Capital spending was stagnating to begin with and was the root cause of the crisis. There are no new “epoch-making” innovations on the horizon that would generate the amounts of investment that were brought forth by the automobile. U.S. exports seem a very unlikely demand support. That leaves the government. In a capitalist economy, especially one like the United States with its lack of a history of generally accepted public spending, it seems very unlikely that public spending will make up for shortfalls in aggregate demand. Already, there are widespread entreaties (and not just from the far right) urging the federal government to wind down in spending programs—well before, I might add, the economy has recovered. As we see it, the United States is, indeed, in for a long period of stagnation, a “down cycle” as you put it.

Fred Magdoff: This is one of the major constraints on the system. The economy is in a process that economists call “deleveraging,” which is just another way of referring to somehow getting rid of debt. Some are able to pay off what they owe, a few are able to renegotiate down some of their debt, many are losing their homes, and some are going bankrupt. Until this works its way out, and a lot of debt is shed one way or another, there will be a drag on the “consumer” portion of the purchases. This is particularly significant to the U.S. economy because it is so dependent on consumer purchases—in 2007, these absorbed approximately 70% of the goods and services produced.

6. MW— “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” is as lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read. In the closing chapter you state that capitalism is undergoing a “crisis of legitimacy” and that “the system can never deliver what is needed for us to realize our capacities and enjoy our lives…That “instead of private gain” the purpose of society and the economy is “to serve the needs of people, by providing the necessities of life for all, without promoting excessive consumption (consumerism) while protecting earth’s life support systems.”

All of the things that which kept capitalism in check–progressive taxation, crucial regulations, and the power of unions–have either been reversed, repealed or greatly eroded. More and more people are beginning to see the greed which governs the system, and it scares them. But is the country really ready for structural change or will the vision of an economy which “serves the needs of its people” be dismissed as “pie-in-the-sky” Utopianism?

Michael Yates: Well, first thank you Mike for the kind words. They are much appreciated. Typically, the best we have been able to hope for from the public in the United States has been an amorphous populism; people are willing to say that the system is corrupt and that it is biased in favor of the rich. But proposals for change, much less a radical transformation of the economic system, are rare commodities. I think things would be different, however, if we had a real labor movement, one that was rooted in communities, broad in its composition, and not afraid to have principles and stand by them come hell or high water. This should be the lesson that progressives learned from the right-wing. The talking heads of Fox may seem insane to us, but they and their intellectual gurus almost never deviate from the set of reactionary principles with which they began to transform the “common sense” of the nation. We suggest at the end of our book that we ought to ask ourselves if a return to the pre-economic crisis status quo is what we want. In the best of times, there is plenty of unutilized labor, a degraded environment, poverty, dead-end jobs, and much more that is not so desirable. So we chose a number of alternative outcomes to what we have now that we think have mass appeal, from universal healthcare to basic food guarantees. However, as you say, these might well, and I think will cause people to react with a pie-in-the-sky indifference. What might make working men and women stand up and take notice would be for these goals to have a mass-based advocate, one that would make these goals matters of rigid principle and begin to fight for them through mass actions. We might think that the right-wing ideologues we see on television are insane. Yet, come hell or high water, they stick to their guns. Their political and economic adherents have wielded tremendous power for a long period of time, and even today when they seem to be losing their grip on the national “common sense,” they can still mobilize the faithful. The left needs to take a lesson from this. More particularly, the labor movement must take a firm and rigid stand on issues like national health care, food security, environmental degradation, full employment, good and cheap housing, U.S. war-making and imperialis, racism, and a host of others. Then it must educate members rigorously and constantly about such principles. Most importantly, it must begin to actively fight to achieve them, activating its millions of members and allies, wherever it can find them. It is through action, bold and unafraid, that people’s minds will get changed and a new “common sense” developed.

Having said this, I think it is clear that the labor movement, as currently constituted, is not up to the tasks at hand. Too many unions are moribund, stuck in the failed labor-management cooperation mind set of the past and run by people too old and infirm to do much of anything. So, not only will we have to have a worker-led opposition to the status quo, fighting to change it radically, but this opposition will have to be built on a new basis. There are some hopeful signs, such as the development of community-based worker centers, mainly in immigrant communities. These may be models for the labor movement of the future.

Fred Magdoff: Just getting what should be the most reasonable reforms through Congress is a major effort, which usually fails or is corrupted in the process. Look what’s happening with health care “reform.” Even if a “public option” is finally part of the bill, it will be a bill that helps some people, but is primarily a boon to the health care industry, which will get a lot of new revenue. It’s not a bill designed with the single purpose in mind: how can we supply medical care for everyone at reasonable cost. Rather it’s a bill designed with significant input from the for-profit sector that will end up supplying them with extra profits. It is clear that government-run systems (and there are a variety of ways to do this) are far cheaper and more efficient and can actually cover everyone. SO, it seems as though piecemeal reform is a) very difficult to obtain and b) can be reversed as the power of the wealthy increases. A system is needed that can break the power of the wealthy and create a real political and economic democracy in order to be able to meet the basic needs for all the people.

Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” Monthly Review Press, New York

U.S. Filling Up With Dumb People: Immigration’s Ultimate Dilemma

“Transforming the American dream into the American tragedy.”

Part 1: Illiteracy leads to shoplifting, babies, crime, gangs…

As an educator in Colorado through the 70s, 80s and 90s, I watched academic standards and expectations drop like a brick in a bucket of water, like a jet fighter plane auguring into the ground, like water cascading over Niagara Falls.

As if guided by an invisible hand nationwide, administrators forced teachers to dumb down the academic requirements. Teachers passed kids to the next grade level… whether those children performed… or not.

Good students dragged down by their illiterate peers

As they failed to cement their educational foundations with the basics— the gaps in their math, science, reading and English skills— created terrible frustrations in their personal lives. When their irritation levels became too great, they ‘gave up’ their pursuit of minimal levels of educational achievement.

Often, while being ‘pushed’ up through grade levels, they acted out their annoyances with disrespect for teachers as they became malcontents, troublemakers or shut down altogether to cope with their growing lack of self-esteem… and failures.

Cannot think critically, read at a fifth grade level or balance a check book.

This year, Paul Robeson High School in Chicago, Illinois featured 115 pregnant girls. That equals not only 115 dumb girls, but 115 dumb boys, which will beget 115 more troubled babies facing horrific futures on all counts. Thus, millions drop out or ‘graduate’ functionally illiterate, i.e., cannot think critically, read at a fifth grade level or balance a check book.

To completely upend and degrade the educational systems of America, the late U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy, in 1965, passed a bill to inject 1.2 to 1.5 million immigrants into the equation annually. While some are doctors and nurses, to be sure, others come from third-world nations with precious few academic skills. They arrive with dozens of languages, cultural bias against education and hostility toward learning.

Forty years later, we have 100 million people added to the United States from disparate cultures around the world, as K-12 educational systems around America grind on in total chaos.

With a 600,000 Middle Eastern immigrant load in central and suburban Detroit, Michigan, as reported by NBC’s Brian Williams, “…76 percent of high school students in Detroit schools flunked out this June… other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston feature similar dropout rates from 50 to 60 percent… each year 1.2 million teens hit the streets illiterate.”

That leads up to the distressing fact that 1 in 7 Americans remains functionally illiterate:

Illiteracy Statistics

• 42 million American adults can’t read at all; 50 million are unable to read at a higher level that is expected of a fourth grader.
• The number of adults that are classified as functionally illiterate increases by about 2.25 million each year.
• 20 percent of high school seniors can be classified as being functionally illiterate at the time they graduate.

Source: National Right to Read Foundation

Where Illiteracy Leads

• 70 percent of prisoners in state and federal systems can be classified as illiterate.
• 85 percent of all juvenile offenders rate as functionally or marginally illiterate.
• 43 percent of those whose literacy skills are lowest live in poverty.

Source: National Institute for Literacy

Yet, with those disturbing figures, our U.S. Congress, by their action and by their inaction, imports an added 2.5 million legal and illegal immigrants into this country every year. That equals over 200,000 every 30 days. AND THE FOLKS FROM THIRD-WORLD NATIONS HAVE HIGH BIRTH RATES. Their kids overwhelm our schools… subverting education for our own children. The immigrants themselves face daunting challenges as to culture, language and jobs.

In Denver, we suffer 85 languages and a 67 percent Denver Public Schools flunkout rate, as reported by the now defunct Rocky Mountain News in a story “What Happened?” Ironically, the ‘Rocky’ bankrupted in 2008 because not enough people could read! The same holds true for dozens of cities across our country.

Becoming a nation of dummies in the 21st Century

What happens when somebody cannot read, write or perform simple math?

If they cannot obtain a labor job, they pursue crime, drugs, alcohol, welfare, homelessness and worse. Such uneducated women usually become pregnant and their children become abused, live in poverty and become wards of the state. Over 13.4 million American children live below the poverty line according to Katie Couric in a recent telecast. An astounding 35 million Americans subsist on food stamps.

Massachusetts; A Glaring Example.

What happens when young adult women fail their educational pursuits? Let’s use one state to show you the underbelly of what’s happening to the United States:

Nearly nine of every 10 teen-agers who gave birth in Massachusetts were unmarried, the highest percentage of out-of-wedlock teen-age births of any state in the nation. According to the most recent data available from the National Center for Health Statistics, 86 percent of the 7,018 mothers under age 20 who gave birth in this state two years ago were not married.

The percentage was higher in Boston, hitting 92 percent. In Springfield, 90 percent of teen-age mothers were unmarried. “It is staggeringly high,” said state Health and Human Services Secretary Charles D. Baker Jr. Additionally, it is estimated that 80 percent of unwed teen mothers end up welfare.

The declining quality of the American work force.

In a penetrating article, Jared Taylor, “The Silent Catastrophe” October 12 2009, “One great, avoidable evil we face is the declining quality of the American work force. The Census Bureau tells us that if immigration continues at its current rate of some two million people a year, whites will become a minority of the under-18 child population in just 14 years— in 2023— and will become a minority of the working population just 16 years later.

The greatest increase will be in Hispanics, who are now dropping out of high school at higher rates than blacks, doing little better than blacks when they manage to stay in school, and are the group least likely to go to college. Demographers are beginning to warn that as well-educated, white baby boomers retire and are replaced by poorly educated blacks and Hispanics, the productivity gains of the last several hundred years will be reversed, and the United States could go into a tailspin.”

“We have the possibility of transforming the American dream into the American tragedy,” says Irwin Kirsch, senior research director at the Educational Testing Service. He warns that our increasingly non-white and immigrant workforce threatens not only our standard of living, but the very survival of republican government (the U.S. is a Republic) based on an informed middle class.

“Here are some of the facts,” said Taylor. “In 2007, 93.5 percent of white and 93.1 percent of Asian 18- to 24-year-olds had graduated from high school. The figures for blacks and Hispanics were 88.8 percent and 72.7 percent, meaning that Hispanics were more than four times more likely than whites… and 2.4 times more likely than blacks… to have failed to graduate from high school.”

Painfully, as witnessed in Detroit, so many poor people shoplifted from grocery stores and retail merchants that the businesses bankrupted or vacated the inner city. Thus, the poor cannot find a place to buy their groceries… even with food stamps. On a national scale, shoplifters hoist $35 million a day in goods from retail stores. We all pay for that massive theft. Think of the implications of adding 70 million more immigrants (half of whom are illiterate) to our cities across America.

John Wayne said, “Life is tough, but it’s even tougher if you’re stupid!”

Next — Part 2: Consequences from rapidly growing illiterate numbers.

Made in China

Importing America To Its Own Death…

During the Bolshevik Revolution that led to communist Russia, Comrade Vladimir Lenin said, “Sell the capitalists enough rope and they will hang themselves!”

Nearly 100 years later, Lenin’s predictions reveal his veracity with chilling fruition. The United States bleeds $11 trillion in debt. It suffers a $700 billion annual trade deficit, mostly with China, which by the way thrives as a communist nation selling us lots of ‘rope’, i.e., consumer goods. We import another $700 billion in oil annually from other countries. We borrow $2 billion daily to float our sinking economy. The average American’s credit card debt equals $9,425.00 according to NBC’s Brian Williams. We suffer 15 million unemployed American workers and 35 million subsisting on food stamps.

How did Lenin’s foreshadowing come to pass? How could he know that we would bring our downfall upon ourselves?

First of all, every empire in history fell to its own manifest destiny (ego), avarice and greed. Today, the U.S. empire features 572,000 military personnel on 700 bases in 120 countries around the world. Their purpose? Few Americans could tell you! The costs accelerate to unimaginable levels.

Secondly, major capitalists, the ‘gatekeepers’ or money changers, however you want to call them, ‘own’ the power to make their choices realized. Some call them the Rothchilds, Bilderbergers, etc. The fact remains, they pull all the money strings. We remain their puppets.

For instance, in the past 15 years, the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, ‘persuaded’ our U.S. Congress to implement H-1B, H-2B and L-1 visas that brought foreign workers into this country to displace 1.0 million U.S. IT workers. How? Those visa beneficiaries arrived from third world countries and worked at a third the wage. Additionally, big manufacturing firms insourced jobs, outsourced jobs and offshored jobs. Maytag moved to Mexico. Levi Straus moved to India. Schwinn bikes moved to Taiwan, etc.

If you visit a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Sears, Penny’s, Kohl’s and hundreds of other retail outlets, you will notice 80 to 90 percent of the hard and soft goods “Made in China” ; “Made in Mexico” : “Made in Pakistan” : “Made in Bangladesh”, etc. The most popular cars sold in America originate from Japan, Korea and Germany.

Each year, China sells the United States $700 billion in goods. Unlike Clinton, we ‘inhale’ that much junk from China! The United States sells China $67 billion in goods annually as reported by Charles Gibson on ABC last week! How’s that for ‘free trade’ and you can see the communists figured out how to sell us enough ‘rope’ to kill ourselves—and we are! China holds nearly $1 trillion of our treasury bills. We feel the squeeze of our debt every year as we pay out over $540 billion in interest on our debt. Our leaders ‘keep’ us fighting at a cost to taxpayers of $12 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for eight friggin’ years! Are you feeling incensed?

If you look inside the USA, you see Hormel, Tyson Chicken, McDonald’s, Berger Chef, Pizza Hut, Chipotle’s, Taco Bell, and many more as well as construction firms, landscaping firms, roofing firms and car washes hiring unlawful immigrants by the millions. At least 10 million unlawful immigrants work jobs at 21st century slave wages while our citizens stand in unemployment lines or live on welfare. At the same time, we lose our jobs to illegal aliens, or see our wages downgraded, or watch our schools, culture and language vanish in front of our eyes—those few corporate chiefs make horrific profits—while we pay for illegal aliens’ educations, medical care and incarceration. How did we arrive at this obscene juncture?

Because our corrupt capitalists can make many more billions of dollars! And, they can get away with it because their lobbyists “pay off” our U.S. Senators and House Reps to NOT enforce our laws against such activities. Of recent note, former U.S. House Rep. John “Duke” Cunningham serving an eight year jail sentence for taking $2.4 million in construction bribes. How about House Rep. William Jefferson hiding $100,000 in cash in his freezer?

How many scoundrel U.S. Congressional reps haven’t been caught? My estimate: dozens if not a hundred in the U.S. House and Senate.

Notice also, that AIG just awarded more annual bonuses of $6 to $10 million to their corporate bosses—after failing—and after we taxpayers bailed them out!

You cannot help but lament, “What a country!”

Not only that, we citizens fail to demand accountability. We citizens shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other stores by the millions, which means we kill our own American jobs and manufacturing.

How can I say that? Just look at our economy. We’re in debt up to our nostrils! We’re dangling at the end of an economic rope bull-hooked into our wallets by 535 members of U.S. Congress and the last four presidents. And our newest president, Barack Obama, rides and talks the same bull!

As Mark Twain once said, “Suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of congress—ah, but I repeat myself.”

The greatest flaw of our founding fathers: not placing a 12 year term limit on every position in Congress. The cronyism, personal greed and outright materialism of most of them defy a sane man’s imagination.

Amazingly, the American voters stupidly re-elect such men as the late Teddy Kennedy for 44 years of incompetence, John McCain for 30 years of failing to protect our borders, Robert Byrd who can barely totter across the Senate floor, Arlen Spector with full blown cancer for 35 years and the list grows. Those men and some women bring death to this republic, but we elect them again and again to kill us and our futures.

You might think that importing 160,000 foreigners every month, in the form of legal immigrants, would stop with 14 million Americans unemployed and 35 million living on food stamps. But you would be wrong! Not only will Congress continue, but those 535 men and women will vote for an amnesty that will lead to adding 100 million people to this country in 26 years, over 70 million immigrants.

Lenin’s prophesy continues and Mark Twain remains right on the money—while the American people watch their language, culture and way of life swirl the toilet. America: made “in” and owned “by” China!

Amnesty Assured To Create Added Illegal Immigration

A recent Zogby International discovered that, “…people in Mexico think that granting legal status to illegal immigrants would encourage more illegal immigration to the United States. As the top immigrant-sending country for both legal and illegal immigrants, views on immigration in Mexico can provide insight into the likely impact of an amnesty.”
I spent last weekend in Washington, DC meeting with Dr. Steve Camarata and Mark Krikorian at www.cis.org . You may find the results with Dr. Steve Camarata at: Center for Immigration Studies’ website.

Among the findings:

• A clear majority of people in Mexico, 56 percent, thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally. Just 17 percent thought it would make Mexicans less likely to go illegally.
• Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States, 65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally.
• Two-thirds of Mexicans know someone living in the United States; one-third said an immediate member of their household was living in the United States.
• Interest in going to the United States remains strong even in the current recession, with 36 percent of Mexicans (39 million people) saying they would move to the United States if they could. This is consistent with a recent Pew Research Center poll which found that about one-third of Mexicans would go to the United States if they could. At present, 12 to 13 million Mexico-born people live in the United States.
• An overwhelming majority (69 percent) thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States.
• Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.
• A plurality, 39 percent, of Mexicans thought that in the last year fewer people they know had gone to the United States as illegal immigrants compared to previous years. Only 27 percent thought more had gone.
• A plurality, 40 percent, also thought that in the last year more of the illegal immigrants they know had returned to Mexico compared to previous years. Only 25 percent thought the number returning had fallen.
• Both the bad economy and increased immigration enforcement were cited as reasons fewer people were going to America as illegal immigrants and more were coming back to Mexico.

Krikorian said, “As the nation begins debates the issue of immigration, the perspective of people in Mexico is important because Mexico is the top sending country for both legal and illegal immigrants. In 2008 one of six new legal immigrants was from Mexico and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 6 out of 10 illegal immigrants come from that country. Asking people in Mexico their views on immigration can provide insight into the likely impact of an amnesty for illegal immigrants and other questions related to immigration.”

Dr. Camarata reported, “This survey is the first to ask people in Mexico if they thought legalizing illegal immigrants in the United States would encourage more illegal immigration. The survey was conducted in August and September of 2009 and consisted of 1,004 in-person interviews of adults throughout Mexico. The findings show that a majority of people in Mexico think that an amnesty would make it more likely that people in Mexico would come to the United States illegally. This is especially true for people who have a member of their households living in the United States. It is important to note that respondents were asked specifically about whether an amnesty would make illegal immigration more likely, not just immigration generally. Other questions in the survey explore attitudes about migration to United States generally, recent trends in migration, and loyalty to the United States.

“The results may give pause to those lawmakers who think that an amnesty/legalization for illegals immigrants would reduce illegal immigration in the future. The findings of this survey indicate that an amnesty would encourage more illegal immigration, at least from Mexico.”

While the political winds blow toward a new amnesty against the American people by the representatives elected to work in their interest, these findings illustrate the human juggernaut Americans face with any amnesty. Demographic projections show Mexico adding 40 million more people to their population by 2050. If they cannot sustain them in 2009, you can bet millions of poor along with other migrants around the world cannot help but see a green light to overload Americans shores with sheer numbers.

With California already sinking into water shortages, air polluted cities, electrical shortages, gridlocked roads and worse—can they survive their projected added 20 million people to hit 58 million in 30 years? Can the USA withstand the projected 70 million immigrants within 30 years?

“Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all–ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

Perfect Storm Approaching The United States

While Leaders Snore and Citizens Sleep…

In this ongoing series with Dr. Jack Alpert, we hope to educate, enlighten and activate American citizens toward a sustainable future. In all great social change, it takes an educated citizenry to create “consciousness shift” which moves to “critical mass shift” that ends with a paradigm shift via “tipping point.”

When you look back on history, the good things that made your life better started with the Magna Carta for human rights. From there, humans fought and died to establish the U.S. Constitution. Gandhi guided India and all humanity toward peace. Susan B. Anthony won the right to vote for women in the United States. In most of the Middle East with their ancient cultures, women cannot vote, drive or enjoy an education. Martin Luther King marched for equal rights for people of color. Yes, the human race faces a great deal of educational challenge to move past antiquated paradigms.

But along the way, we need to change our energy, population and environmental paradigms sooner rather than later.

In Dr. Jack Alpert’s, “Civilization’s Perfect Storm”, he illustrates our current dilemma with the movie starring George Clooney, “Perfect Storm”. www.skil.org

“The “Perfect Storm” is a movie about down-on-their-luck fishermen who went fishing in a storm because they needed to make a living,” Alpert said. “Unfortunately it was not just a simple storm. It was a perfect storm. A perfect storm forms at the intersection of several colliding weather fronts. High winds and gargantuan waves sank the boat and drown the crew.

“Is it possible that global problems could join together to make a perfect storm and sink human civilization? Could fights over hunting grounds, famines, mal-distribution of wealth, slavery, genocide, ethic cleansings, religious or economic competitions, deforestations, fishery depletions, oil exhaustion, climate change, species extinction and global terrorism, combine to make the perfect storm that kills the human experiment?

“On fishing boats, people take precautions to weather storms. They close watertight doors, and wear safety harnesses and cold water survival suits. And they usually come home safe even in bad weather. However, in the “Perfect Storm,” none of these actions were enough to save their ship or their lives.

“Maybe we should ask, “Will our recycling, driving a fuel efficient car, insulating our house, sequestering our CO2, having only two children, and investing in technology to produce more with less, be enough to get us through a perfect storm of global problems?” Is it possible that if everyone copied our behaviors, “It would not be enough to survive that storm?”

“Is it possible that six and a half billion people don’t see global problems integrating into a perfect-storm? Is it possible they don’t see their politically correct, social justice, and green behaviors as being impotent to address these conditions?

“Is it possible they don’t see that civilization surviving the perfect storm conditions will require rapid population decline? They don’t see that each couple on earth must have at most one child per family. And they don’t see that even if everyone does, the ride to a nice future is going to be bumpy for some and dreadful for others.”

I find interviewing with Dr. Jack Alpert a study in certitude born from his scientific models that combine our current energy use, carbon footprint, Peak Oil, species extinctions now running over 100 per day planet-wide and climate destabilization.

Our predicament encompasses our refusal to manifest changes fast enough to guide us out of the approaching “Perfect Storm” rolling toward the United States as well as worldwide. As you might have read in my reviews of Chris Steiner’s $20 PER GALLON, we allow ourselves to run out of time and ability to outrun the approaching energy crisis, let alone climate destabilization.

When you include the multitude of predicaments facing our civilization—such as water shortages for starters—doesn’t it dawn on you that while our leaders push for population growth by adding 3.4 million people to this country annually mostly by immigration—that those in power to make positive change continue snoring even while awake?

When humans add 77 million more people to the planet annually, and those that suffer in overpopulated civilizations instead of practicing birth control— escape to other countries while continuing their profligate population increases—it doesn’t take a sixth grader to figure out the equation cannot continue.

The result, as Alpert said, we face a “Perfect Population Storm” that engulfs our ability to survive it no matter how much we might ‘think’ we can avoid it. We shake hands with the devil with a Faustian Bargain that leads to Hobson’s Choice.

Today, the United States ‘storms’ toward adding 100 million people in 26 years by 2035. Yet, we sleep, we snore, we yawn into our perilous future! It’s almost beyond comprehension how this ‘educated’ civilization allows itself to follow in the footsteps of China, India, Bangladesh, Mexico and others—without blinking any eyelash!

To continue pushing the solutions off into the future until we find ourselves left with two choices: door number #1 or #2. Door #1 allows you to walk over a cliff and door #2 allows you to step into quicksand.

While our leaders snore and we sleep, our civilization moves toward a “Perfect Population Storm” and only Hobson’s Choice to save us.

Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates, said it best, ““Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all–ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.”

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