 This reading is from censored number 126 and before I begin I'd like to read a few thing a little quotes from the Massed head prove all things hold fast that which is good And that's one Thessalonians 5 21 He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he that gives to the rich shall surely come to want Proverbs 22 Verse 16 He that makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent Proverbs 28 20 and as the nail sticks to the to the stone So sin sticks to buying and selling Ecclesiasties 27 verse 2 The article is called a question of freedom By William J. Eisenman PhD Since the time men and women left the land and Settled in cities, especially during the industrial revolution This move was thought of as a gaining of freedom Young people wanted to leave the farm and find their fortune in the big city Once in the city one needed a job to support himself Many times it was a matter of any job This attitude proved a boom to business Which founded profitable to exploit the situation Workers experienced low wages and terrible working conditions As workers try to improve their lot by forming unions They were fired Beat up or killed At this time the police and national guard were on the side of the employers Workers had no rights in our capitalistic system There is a built-in uneasy tension between employer and employee The fatal flaw in the system is that the boss will never pay an employee what he's truly worth The employee is always forced to make more for the employer than the employer pays him The worker is always exploited and this is accepted as natural as if it were God ordained As a thought experiment ask yourself why Is it so readily accepted that an individual drags himself out of bed in the morning It's the streets, newspapers, internet, unemployment office to find a job Wouldn't it be more logical and economical for the business or corporation to seek out the worker Our thinking, politics, economic decisions are all done from the point of view of the boss The business, the corporation It has now become clear to all who truly observe that not just see that Democrats and Republicans owe their allegiance to corporations and big business Over and over again censored has informed its readers that when corporations own the government are married to the government that is fascism Where is your freedom in such a situation? The only freedom we have today is the freedom to shop Today we have people and politicians calling for and enacting cuts in food stamps, wick and other programs that help the needy and the poor This is all done by the disguise of cutting the budget to make government smaller and save it money This is a lie These people are not serious If these people were serious they would be going after waste and fraud, subsidies and grants As well as tax breaks to huge corporations and the rich Censored 125 showed clearly that these tactics are merely a tax on the poor These cutters of programs for the needy and poor hate the poor and are jealous of the poor They believe the poor get something for nothing These entitlement cutting politicians have managed to get the poor to fight among themselves for crumbs and bitch that the other guy got more than him While politicians laugh all the way to the bank Politicians have for years conspired with certain government agencies to save money by denying people benefits that they are entitled to Recently a doctor working on behalf of the office of Black Lung was exposed as denying people had Black Lung disease When they did have the disease, claimants also get tied up in court for years and years until they die Which saves the government money Even the Social Security Administration has been exposed as having an official policy of denying first-time disability claims Knowing that about one-third of claimants will not pursue their claim Even cost of living adjustments to colas are rigged The CPI calculation used is all a scam All of this is a conscious decision by our government to increase income inequality During the Georgia W. Bush administration the United States began giving tax money to faith-based organizations The First Amendment to the Constitution grants freedom of religion But not the supporting of it There's supposed to be a wall of separation between government and religion We already unfairly grant religions tax-exempt status According to the Bible all religions are not equal And all those professing to be Christians are not Christians Mark 7 verses 7 through 9 Wherever one looks concerning government the payouts flow upward The average American is screwed at every turn Our government engages in welfare Our government is for sale During the financial meltdown of 2008 markets failed Banks could not borrow Nobody would lend No one could refinance But foreclosure's mushroom Millions were out of work Two auto manufacturers filed for bankruptcy protection Banks failed And the stock market crashed Behind all of this were deliberate mistakes And machinations accomplished by men like Phil Bram Larry Summers Robert Rubin Arthur Levitt And Alan Greenspan All these opposed the regulating of derivatives and credit default swaps They got President Bill Clinton to go along with them And he signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act Which allowed all hell to break loose The problems grew and grew And yet these smart men knew it all But their premise was wrong All they did was as a result of the get way of life The devil's way of life Ben Bernanke another perceived smart man said In October 2007 that the United States banking system was healthy In fact the banks were starving for capital All this as a result of greed How's that freedom thing going for you Private industry is the basis of the capitalist system And therein lies the problem It cannot be stressed too often That expecting the private sector to provide jobs for all who want one is wrong It's a big mistake It amounts to nothing more than a sock to industry Keep this in mind all who think government cannot work And is too big The taxpayer rescued the entire financial system In the United States 2008 All would have been lost if not for big government 8 million jobs were lost in the chaos of the financial meltdown The new finance was a failure Did you have any say in any of this Feeling free yet? Some ideas Even when proven wrong and dangerous are hard to kill It has become clear by now that market liberalism has failed And our ideas about economics are wrong Market liberalism reared its ugly head in the 1970s And since the 1980s companies have abandoned any pretense of a social contract with their workers Economic growth in the 1960s before market liberalism took hold was 4.3% a year While after market liberalism became the flavor of the day Growth in the 1990s was only 3% We have had jobless recoveries in the 1990-91 and the 2001 recessions At this time there are 3-20 applicants for every available job The growth of the financial sector has been staggering Its share of corporate profits in the United States in the early 1980s was only 10% And in 2007 it was 40% This financial monster soon began buying political power It was a debt machine It bought deregulation which gave it more freedom to manipulate money and exchange rates All checks and balances were removed And by the end of President Bill Clinton's term Speculation ruled the day and debt followed Behind it all was the short-sighted arrogant We don't need government mantra This is paradoxical reasoning The financial markets created the financial meltdown They were uncontrolled And of course this led to disaster In all of this we note that political power has shifted Overwhelming to the wealthy Inequality began to rise again in the United States during the 1980s It is claimed by some that tax revenues doubled during President Ronald Reagan's administration It was conveniently forgotten that revenues rise naturally with inflation, population growth And with increases in real wages In 2008 the poverty rate was 13.2% And real incomes of the poor have gone down in the last 30 years In 2008 food insecure households amounted to 49.1% Excuse me 49.1 million Americans And 15% were without health insurance In 2007 there were 1.6 million homeless Americans What many of us are stumbling upon is that equal opportunity is a myth Knowing all of this and more Parentheses see censored number 125 end of parentheses What has led evil men and women in Congress to cut food stamps WIC and other needed social programs Adam Smith warned us to beware of capitalists Because their interests are not, are never exactly the same as the public Their interest is generally to deceive and even oppress the public In 1882 William H. Bavander built in true capitalist style Bellowed, the public be damned The capitalist, although most times cloaking himself in some form of phony Christianity Believes the poor are unfit to survive They are nature's failed experiments Jay Gould expressed his disdain for workers when he said I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half Today's capitalists have gotten workers and the poor to fight among themselves for crumbs While the big boys and girls cart off the whole loaf A type of socialism reared its ugly head in America at the end of the 19th century When big business began running the economy In 1886 corporations were illegally regarded as persons As per the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution Things got so bad that the Sherman antitrust laws were enacted Which were enacted to defang big business And regulate them in regard to the public interest These laws ended up being used against the unions Unions were portrayed as conspiracies in restraint of trade President Grover Cleveland understood what was happening when he said That corporations were becoming the people's masters President Teddy Roosevelt also saw the handwriting on the wall When he said that regular folks can't get a square deal With the rich controlling everything Roosevelt called the rich malfactors of great wealth These men understood that we need public power to counterbalance private power Those who call for smaller government in this sense are selling you out Or making you of no effect Their objective is to have no firewalls between us And the viruses of the big corporations in the wealthy In 1913 the income tax was instituted to also defang the wealthy And big corporations while redistributing income throughout the economy More fairly in 1914 Henry Ford began giving his employees Five dollars for eight hours of work At the same time steel workers were getting one dollar for twelve hours of work Henry Ford was in business to sell cars And he knew that if his workers did not make decent wages They would not be able to afford buying his cars Consumer credit came on the scene in 1920 which expanded the economy Today many people believe that the stock market represents the economy But the Dow Jones is merely the average stock price of thirty huge companies The consumer is the economy Workers are the economy Milton Friedman maintained that people were motivated by self-interest And that concentrated power, that means government, is a threat to freedom There was not one word from Friedman about unregulated concentrated corporate and wealth power This brand of laissez-faire economics claims that the government, that is you and me Should never intervene in the economy This ideology has brought suffering and hardship to our economy But it has concentrated the wealth upward to those who already have Our government has been taken over by the very interests it was supposed to regulate Some die-hard republican conservatives regard President Ronald Reagan as akin to a god According to these sycophants, Reagan saved America from liberal ruin And brought the Soviet Union to its knees Let's examine some of what Reagan actually did In 1981 the tax rate was lowered to 50% And in 1986 it was lowered to 28% Some loopholes were closed and some others were at it Huge corporations got tax cuts and rebates In 1981 General Electric, a firm Reagan worked for, got $150 million The government and deficit ballooned under Reagan So much money was thrown at the Pentagon that it paid inflated prices for things such as $643 for a hammer And a $2043 for a nut Reagan's tax breaks went almost exclusively to the rich There were 130 Reagan administration officials investigated, indicted or convicted Which was a new record In 1982, 1983 and 1986 Reagan raised taxes The base was broadened and social security taxes were raised So most people, except the rich, paid more taxes The national debt was below $1 trillion when Reagan took office and was over $1 trillion when he left The rich got richer in the 1980s Until the 1980s the United States was the world's biggest creditor But soon it was the world's biggest debtor We got massive homelessness under Reagan We got rising health care costs, joblessness, loss of family farms and gated communities Reagan was no saint nor a god And could have been impeached for Iran contra Selling weapons to Iran which was illegal Government policies during the 1980s were deliberately crafted To concentrate wealth in a few hands, those who were already wealthy The plan was to starve the beast, the government So there would be no money for people helping projects A reverse, Robin Hood And so we come full circle We poked holes in our vaunted individualism Our worshipped upward mobility And our supposed equal opportunity Our freedom We have discovered that our freedom is an illusion And that the only freedom we really have Is the freedom to shop The end