Transmittal For Unemployment Us Department Of Labor: Fill & Download for Free

This man. He took the Democratic Party and turned it into the Republican Party. Since that time there is no opposition to right wing policies in the United States. Clinton made decisions which would decimate the American people’s way of life, all to satisfy his lust for power and attention.Welfare to Work—Smashing the Social Safety NetPRWORA granted states greater latitude in administering social welfare programs, and implemented new requirements on welfare recipients, including a five-year lifetime limit on benefits. After the passage of the law, the number of individuals receiving federal welfare dramatically declined. The law was heralded as a "reassertion of America's work ethic" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill's workfare component. Critics have argued that the law unnecessarily damaged the social safety net, increased the poverty rate, and pushed former recipients into low-paying jobs.[1]These “reforms” trapped millions on people into low paying jobs. As the number of applicants increased, employers could pay as little as possible because the labor pool increased so dramatically. It meant instead of being raised by their parents, millions of children were sent to daycare centers while their mothers worked, making just enough to pay for daycare. So the mother had to work to pay someone else to raise her child. Horrendous.Nothing could be more cruel than to destroy welfare to teach the mothers “tough love and personal responsibility.” Rather, this was a class war, and it was a tremendous blow to the most vulnerable of American society.Repealing Glass SteigelThe Glass-Steagall Act is a 1933 law that separated investment banking from retail banking. Investment banks organized the initial sales of stocks, called an initial public offering. They facilitated mergers and acquisitions. Many of them operated their own hedge funds. Retail banks took deposits, managed checking accounts, and made loans.By separating the two, retail banks were prohibited from using depositors' funds for risky investments. Only 10 percent of their income could come from selling securities. They could underwrite government bonds. Most important to depositors, the act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.The law gave power to the Federal Reserve to regulate retail banks. It created the Federal Open Market Committee, allowing the Fed to better implement monetary policy.Glass-Steagall prohibited investment banks from having a controlling interest in retail banks. They had to find another source of funds separate from depositors' accounts.It prohibited bank officials from borrowing excessively from their own bank.The act introduced Regulation Q. It prevented banks from paying interest on checking accounts. It also allowed the Fed to set ceilings on interest paid on other kinds of deposits.The official name for Glass-Steagall was the Banking Act of 1933 (48 Stat. 162). The law was named after its sponsors, Senator Carter Glass, D-Va. and Representative Henry B. Steagall, D-Ala.When It PassedGlass-Steagall was passed by the House of Representatives on May 23, 1933. It was passed by the Senate on May 25, 1933. It was signed into law by President Roosevelton June 16, 1933 as part of the New Deal. It became a permanent measure in 1945.After the law passed, banks had one year to decide whether they would become investment or commercial banks.PurposeGlass-Steagall sought to permanently end bank runs and the dangerous bank practices that created them. Congress passed Glass-Steagall to reform a system that allowed the failure of 4,000 banks during the Great Depression. It had debated the bill during 1932. It redirected bank funds from fueling stock speculation to building industrial capacity.Since 1922, the stock market had gone up by almost 20 percent a year. Banks invested in the stocks. When the market crashed in 1929, depositors rushed to withdraw their funds. By March 8, they had withdrawn $1.78 billion in just four weeks. Others demanded gold in return for the money. The United States was still on the gold standard. But the demand was so high that the Federal Reserve was running low on its gold deposits.A bank run will put even sound banks out of business. Banks keep just one-tenth of their deposits on hand and lend out the rest. Most of the time, they only need 10 percent to fill depositors' demand. In a bank run, they must quickly find the cash.On March 6, 1933, President Roosevelt declared a four-day bank holiday. On March 9, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act. It allowed banks to reopen on March 13. Banks would no longer exchange dollars for gold. Instead, the Federal Reserve printed dollars to meet depositors' demand. The currency was based on the banks' paper assets. By March 15, most banks had reopened to find the bank run was over.EffectGlass-Steagall restored confidence in the U.S. banking system. It increased trust by only allowing banks to use depositors' funds in safe investments. Its FDIC insurance program prevented further bank runs. Depositors knew the government protected them from a failing bank.During the Reagan administration, the banking industry complained the act restricted them too much. They said they couldn't compete with foreign financial firms that could offer higher returns. The U.S. banks could only invest in low-risk securities. They wanted to increase the return while lowering the overall risk for their customers by diversifying their business.Citigroup had begun merger talks with Travelers Insurance in anticipation of Glass-Steagall. In 1998, it announced the successful merger under a new company called Citigroup. Its move was audacious, given that it was technically illegal. But banks had been taking advantage of loopholes in Glass-Steagall.RepealOn November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act that repealed Glass-Steagall. Congress had passed the so-called Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act along party lines, led by a Republican vote in the Senate.The repeal of Glass-Steagall consolidated investment and retail banks through financial holding companies. The Federal Reserve supervised the new entities. For that reason, few banks took advantage of the Glass-Steagall repeal. Most Wall Street banks did not want the additional supervision and capital requirements.Those that did became too big to fail. This required their bailout in 2008-2009 to avoid another depression.[2]NAFTANAFTA destroyed the American Middle Class. It also destroyed the traditional farming way of life for Mexicans, causing the immigration problems America sees now. NAFTA was an opportunity for corporations to send factories overseas and save on labor, leaving American cities with millions of unemployed Middle Class people, the erosion of the tax base of many cities, causing financial problems, and the end of America as it was known.NAFTA is criticized for destroying half a million American jobs and lowering U.S. wages. In addition, NAFTA increased the U.S. trade deficit.How did NAFTA contribute to these problems? First, it cost jobs when manufacturers moved to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs. The four states that suffered the most were California, New York, Michigan, and Texas. Before NAFTA, these states had a high concentration of factories for motor vehicles, textiles, computers, and electrical appliances. Those were the industries most likely to move to Mexico.Lower wages in Mexico reduced U.S. wages and benefits. Workers in the remaining U.S. factories could not bargain for higher wages, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University. Companies could now threaten to move to Mexico if labor unions negotiated too hard, as detailed in her report, "Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages, and Union Organizing," published September 6, 2000.Some accuse NAFTA of exploiting Mexico's workers, destroying its farms, and polluting its environment. Rural Mexican farmers could not compete with low-cost American subsidized corn and other grains. The Mexican farmers who managed to stay in business were forced to use more fertilizers and farm marginal land to survive. That created more pollution and deforestation.Labor in Mexico’s maquiladora program was cheap because workers had no labor rights or health protection. Thanks to NAFTA, almost a third of Mexico's labor force works in the poor conditions of these manufacturing jobs.[3]His “tough on crime” criminal reforms put millions of poor people in prison for minor crimes. The incarceration rate soared. America has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. It is 5% of the world’s population with 22% of its incarcerated.The explosion of the prison system under Bill Clinton’s version of the “War on Drugs” is impossible to dispute. The total prison population rose by 673,000 people under Clinton’s tenure — or by 235,000 more than it did under President Ronald Reagan, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute. “Under President Bill Clinton, the number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction doubled, and grew more than it did under the previous 12-years of Republican rule,combined,” states the JPI report (italics theirs). The federal incarceration rate in 1999, the last year of the Democrat’s term, was 42 per 100,000 — more than double the federal incarceration rate at the end of President Reagan’s term (17 per 100,000), and 61 percent higher than at the end of President George Bush’s term (25 per 100,000), according to JPI.Just before the New Hampshire primary, Bill Clinton famously flew back to Arkansas to personally oversee the execution of a mentally impaired African-American inmate named Ricky Ray Rector. The “New Democrat” spoke on the campaign trail of being tougher on criminals than Republicans; and the symbolism of the Rector execution was followed by a series of Clinton “tough on crime” measures, including: a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes; new life-sentence rules for some three-time offenders; mandatory minimums for crack and crack cocaine possession; billions of dollars in funding for prisons; extra funding for states that severely punished convicts; limited judges’ discretion in determining criminal sentences; and so on. There is very strong evidence that these policies had a small impact on actual crime rates, totally out of proportion to their severity.There is also very strong evidence that these policies contributed to the immiseration of vast numbers of black (and also white) Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to the well-known conclusions of journalists, academics and other criminal justice experts. Federal funding for public housing fell by $17 billion (a 61 percent reduction) under Bill Clinton’s tenure; federal funding for corrections rose by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to Michelle Alexander’s seminal work, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” The federal government’s new priorities redirected nearly $1 billion in state spending for higher education to prison construction. Clinton put a permanent eligibility ban for welfare or food stamps on anyone convicted of a felony drug offense (including marijuana possession). He prohibited drug felons from public housing. Any liberal arts grad with an HBO account can tell you the consequences for poor, black American cities like Baltimore. As Alexander writes, “More than any other president, [Clinton] created the current racial undercaste.”[4]Clinton balanced the budget on the backs of the poor and needy. His policies would in time prove to be disastrous, and the effects of his choices are being felt today, as children are held in concentration camps at the border. The effects were felt as the repeal of the banking regulations led to the 2008 financial meltdown and bailouts.On the foreign policy front his bombing in the former Yugoslavia made the situation worse, and inflicted unnecessary carnage. 20 years later, the effects of the bombing are still felt.On March 24th, 1999, NATO launched its 78-day round the clock aerial assault on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Over a thousand NATO warplanes delivered over 2,000 airstrikes in nearly 40,000 sorties, dropping over 20,000 bombs over the former Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilian men, women, and children, as well as upwards of a thousand Yugoslav soldiers and police.NATO employed weapons considered criminal by international law such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs.The popular narrative is that is that the Western powers dropped these bombs out of humanitarian concern, but this claim falls apart once the distorted lens of Western saviourism is dropped and actual facts are presented. In truth, NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was predicated on the imperialist, colonialist economic and ideological interests of the NATO states, masquerading for the public as a humanitarian effort, that in fact served to dismantle the last remnant of socialism in Europe and recolonize the Balkans. This becomes apparent when the economic interests and actions of the NATO bloc in the decades leading up the breakup are analyzed, when what actually occurred during the intervention is further explored, and when the reality of life in the former Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the ‘humanitarian’ intervention is more closely examined. It becomes clear that the most suffering endured by the Yugoslav people since Nazi occupation was the result of the actions of NATO with the United States at its helm.As the Ottoman Empire crumbled in the late 1800s, the other empires set their eyes on Turkish possessions in the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs of the Balkans struggled for independence, aided by the Russian Empire. In response, the Western powers attempted to prop up the Ottomans to circumvent the growing Russian sphere of influence. Eventually the Great Powers called the Congress of Berlin to redivide the Balkans amongst themselves. Leon Trotsky wrote of this process:The states that today occupy the Balkan Peninsula were manufactured by European diplomacy around the table at the Congress of Berlin in 1879. There it was that all the measures were taken to convert the national diversity of the Balkans into a regular melee of petty states. None of them was to develop beyond a certain limit, each separately was entangled in diplomatic and dynastic bonds and counterposed to all the rest, and, finally, the whole lot were condemned to helplessness in relation to the Great Powers of Europe and their continual intrigues and machinations.Borders were strategically drawn across artificial ethnographic lines in a process that came to be known as ‘Balkanization’. The newly independent Bulgaria had its interests in Macedonia, which was still Turkish, whereas Serbia’s interests laid within Austro-Hungarian borders, and Romania’s to the north in Russia and Hungary. Therefore, Pan-Slavism was no longer a viable uniting force within the Balkans against empire. Nonetheless, leaving the peninsula in this semi-liberated state could merely delay the inevitable and eventually war would break out in the First and Second Balkan Wars, followed by the First World War. In the wake of these wars the first Yugoslavia would finally be born. It would last until World War II, when fascist occupation once again divided the Balkans. Many regions were annexed by the Axis empires outright, while Croatia was expanded and transformed into a Nazi puppet state. The Yugoslav people once again rallied behind the banner of Pan-Slavism and the dream of the re-establishment of a multiethnic state – this time led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, aiming to expel fascism and establish a socialist Yugoslavia. In 1945, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was built around six socialist republics and two autonomous provinces in Serbia. The right to self-determination of all nations was guaranteed. The state provided education, employment, healthcare and housing, and most importantly, ethnic tensions ran at an all time low as nationalism was stamped out in favour of ‘brotherhood and unity’ between nations. Unlike the Eastern Bloc countries, Tito’s Yugoslavia took a more open approach to foreign policy and established relations with the West and the capitalist bloc (at the expense of their relations with the USSR). This friendliness with the West would sow the seeds for the demise of Yugoslavia.The multiethnic and socialist Yugoslavia achieved a life expectancy of 72 years, near full literacy and averaged 7% GDP growth in the 60s.Free medical care and education were provided, as was the right to an income and housing. Yugoslavia was temporarily tolerated by the west as a buffer between the Soviet sphere and Western Europe, but in 1984, the destabilization of Socialist Yugoslavia and the imposition of the market became official U.S policy with National Security Decision Directive 133.After the failure of the Vietnam War, U.S foreign policy avoided direct intervention and instead opted for the funding of contras or the imposition of market reforms and ‘shock therapy’ via U.S dominated institutions such as the World Bank or IMF. Fortunately for the US, Yugoslavia’s ‘non-aligned’ stance in the Cold War meant it had been taking on IMF loans since the end of WWII, and by 1981 the SFRY had racked up nearly $20 billion in foreign debt. The IMF and World Bank demanded an economic ‘restructuring’. Neoliberal austerity reforms were imposed on Yugoslavia – wages were frozen, state subsidized pricing was abolished, worker-managed enterprises were dismantled and social spending was cut. The national wealth was directed towards debt payments as unemployment skyrocketed. The economic reforms “wreaked economic and political havoc… Slower growth, the accumulation of foreign debt and especially the cost of servicing it as well as devaluation led to a fall in the standard of living of the average Yugoslav… The economic crisis threatened political stability … it also threatened to aggravate simmering ethnic tensions”.Growth in industrial production shrank from 7% to negative 10% by 1990 as foreign capital and imports flooded the republics, smothering domestic production. In 1989-1990 alone the World Bank created 600,000 layoffs; an additional hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs worked without pay for months at a time.The IMF froze wages as inflation skyrocketed and by early 1990 real wages had dropped 41%.Overall the IMF and World Bank programs greatly undermined the federation and fuelled ethnic tensions and secessionist movements which would tear Yugoslavia apart, namely by freezing transfer payments from Belgrade to the republics.As the IMF took control of the Central Bank and rendered the federal government almost completely powerless, secessionist movements began gaining traction in the republics. Germany, a NATO member, backed these secessionist movements in Slovenia and Croatia.This included arms shipments and training.Slovenia and Croatia were among the richer republics, and as the IMF imposed economic crisis worsened they became increasingly opposed to having to subsidize the poorer republics. In 1991 they both declared independence and were immediately recognized by Germany. The leader of the newly independent Croatia was one Franjo Tudjman, who wrote in 1989 that there was a need to “be rid of the Jews” and that Holocaust death tolls had been inflated.The Western backed leader went as far as to hail the fascist Ustaše (Nazi collaborators, who established the first independent Croatia during WWII) and apologize for their crimes – namely the ethnic cleansing of Serbs.The Krajina Serbs inside Croatia made clear that they wished to remain a part of the Yugoslav federation – they were not recognized by any NATO members. Tudjman’s Croatia followed in the fascist Ustaše’s footsteps and between 1991 and 1995 the US backed Croatia drove out half a million Serbs. In 1992 Macedonia also declared ‘independence’ and accepted occupation by US troops. In the same year fighting broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the situation was more complicated – no single nationality held a majority. Nonetheless, the United States and Germany backed the Croatian and Bosnian separatists, providing training and arms, and thus fanning the flames of the conflict.The Western-backed leader of the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovinawas Alija Izetbegović. Unlike Tudjman, he did not simply apologize for fascists; during WWII he joined the Young Muslims, a group which advocated for an Islamic Bosnia and collaborated with the Nazi SS.He did not hide his desires for an Islamic state and declared “[t]he media should not be allowed… to fall into the hands of perverted and degenerate people who then transmit the aimlessness and emptiness of their own lives to others. What are we to expect if mosque and TV transmitter aim contradictory messages at the people?”.Foreign Islamist fighters flooded the country, with passports provided by the Bosnian government. The only thing that was missing was Osama bin Laden himself – one Bosnian newspaper noted that “If bin Laden does not have a… passport, then he has only himself to blame. He should have asked for it in time”.In 1992, the Carrington–Cutileiro plan proposed a degree of autonomy to the Bosnian Serbs in order to prevent war. After a meeting with US ambassador Warren Zimmerman, Izetbegović was convinced to withdraw his signature, and the Bosnian war broke out.The NATO powers (namely the U.S) had facilitated Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power as president of Serbia in 1989 to further open up the Yugoslav markets, but the Milosevic leadership and the Yugoslav people refused to completely dismantle Yugoslav socialism in Serbia – as late as 1999, as much as 75% of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s (FRY)basic industry remained publicly owned.Over half a million Serbian workers engaged in massive walkouts and protests against IMF restructuring – often joined by Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Roma, and Slovenian workers.In Bosnia, a large number of Muslims refused to give up on the Yugoslav idea – rightly believing it was only way to keep the Balkans free from conflict.Bosnian and Croatian Serbs clung to the Federation when Croatia and Bosnia declared independence. In the West this was spun as Serbian expansionism – Western media often parroted the claim that Milosevic wanted a “Greater Serbia”. In fact, the Serbs were simply holding on to what remained of Yugoslav socialism while the Federation was being ripped at the seams by foreign powers and their proxies. It became clear that socialism in Yugoslavia was resilient and was withstanding IMF restructuring and the conflict that came with it, NATO intervened militarily. 1992’s ‘humanitarian’ UN sanctions on Yugoslavia isolated the country economically. Per capita income fell to $700 per year, unemployment rose to 60%, Serb civilians endured a 37% increase in infectious fatalities and their caloric intake fell 28%. Most astonishingly, inflation reached 363 quadrillion percent.No sanctions were placed on Tudjman’s Croatia, which in the same time period, with the support of private military companies composed of U.S veterans, ethnically cleansed nearly 200,000 Serbs through rapes, executions, and shelling.When starving Yugoslavia didn’t end the conflict, NATO began bombing Bosnia into peace in 1994. The U.S brokered the Dayton Peace Accords in late 1995 between Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and Croatia – without the Bosnian Serb leadership present. Milosevic made many concessions – willing to do near anything to end the isolation of Yugoslaviaand agreed to the partitioning of Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic – both became IMF/NATO neocolonies with a non-Bosnian “High Representative” appointed by the US and EU with full executive authority.Radovan Karadžić, president of the Serb Republic, who still opposed secession, was forced out of power. A right-wing monarchist took his place and promptly purged the army, police, and government of any anti-NATO or leftist Serbs. Dissident radio stations were shut down and protests were suppressed with NATO armour.With all dissent crushed and the state purged of any officials not approved by the West, the transformation of Bosnia into a NATO colony was complete. A similar fate awaited the autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo. The ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’, which was recognized by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, received British and CIA training and arms.The group received the majority of its funding – and many members – from the Albanian diaspora, Islamist fundamentalist groups, and the international drug trade. The KLA relied on drug trade, assassination, intimidation (of not only Serbs but also ethnic Albanians who opposed them), destruction of Serbian property (namely homes and churches), and other acts of ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians. The Milosevic government was provoked and cracked down the KLA terror, in turn it was portrayed as genocidal against Kosovar Albanians. At this point, the Yugoslav federation was still suffering from economic collapse and had no interest whatsoever in another war, let alone more NATO bombs.Allegations of mass expulsions of the Albanian population by ‘Serbian’ (Yugoslav forces) began to surface, but a OSCE monitor reported no international refugees and only a couple thousand internally displaced before NATO bombing. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians would be displaced by NATO bombs, as were 100,000 Serbs (who were supposed to be the perpetrators of the genocidal ethnic cleansing).One Albanian woman crossing into Macedonia put it bluntly and told a news crew “There were no Serbs. We were frightened of the bombs.”Allegations of systematic, mass rapes and ‘possible sites of mass graves’ were made. One NATO spokesperson alleged that the 200,000 Albanian women in refugee camps amazingly gave birth to 100,000 babies in the span of 60 days, apparently due to ‘Serbian mass rapes’. Genocide allegations were popular; vastly different figures of 100,000, 500,000, 225,000, and 10,000 dead or missing were made by the U.S, NATO, UN, Kosovo and various NGOs. The FBI carried out an investigation across the “largest crime scene in the FBI’s… history” in June 1999. They found not hundreds of thousands of bodies, but 200 total across 30 sites.Of course, the Yugoslav army, and especially Serbian paramilitary groups did carry out massacres and rapes – but nothing on the level of the systematic and genocidal allegations that were made to justify bombing. In fact, NATO committed a slew of war crimes in the 1999 bombing campaign – the bombing was illegal from the very beginning and was launched without the approval of the UN Security Council.The 1995 and 1999 NATO bombings aided ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Cluster bombs were dropped on highly populated urban areas. NATO estimated 350 would be killed in the bombing of an office building in Belgrade housing TV and radio stations, and political parties – the bombs were dropped anyway. NATO insisted afterwards that the civilian deaths were ‘unintended’. NATO jets bombed a refugee convoy, killing dozens of non combatants, first trying to pin the attack on Yugoslav forces before retreating and claiming it was an ‘accident’. When a hospital was bombed, the only excuse NATO could muster was that it was actually a military barracks. Journalists who visited immediately after found only the remains of civilians and a hospital in ruins.State owned and only state owned firms and factories were bombed, as were state owned housing projects, water supplies, railroads, bridges, hospitals and schools. This amounted to “privatization by bombing.”A Spanish NATO pilot confirmed that NATO jets were “destroying the country, bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped with parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops and [more]”, going on to call it “one of the biggest barbarities that can be committed against humanity.”The situation in the former Yugoslavia has not improved since the NATO’s ‘democracy’ bombs were dropped. The FRY finally collapsed in 2006 and the Balkans have been Balkanized once again. ‘Yugonostalgia’ has swept across the Balkans – many remember the days of the SFRY as ones where they lived better.As many as 81% of Serbians believe they lived best in the age of socialism.Similar trends exist in Slovenia, Bosnia, and Macedonia.A ‘Yugoslav’ identity persists in the Balkans.In the wake of the tons of depleted uranium dropped on the former Yugoslavia, there has been a spike in leukemia and cancer.Serbia is still host to hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced peoples. The neocolonial protectorate installed in Bosnia has proved hugely unpopular – many call it a ‘failed state’. Corruption is rampant and economic growth is slow. In a 2013 survey, half the respondents chose the word “lethargic” to describe their current state of mind – less than 15 percent used positive words such “optimistic” or “content”.The citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo see their governments as corrupt, and worse still see government efforts to curb corruption as essentially useless. The anniversary of Milosevic’s death is still honoured across Serbia – he is seen as a man who stood up to the NATO forces that would soon destroy their country.Anti-NATO demonstrations in the country gather thousands, if not tens of thousands in the streets.Many Serbs still wish to see NATO punished for war crimes during the bombing campaigns – it seems NATO imposed democracy has not been accepted with open arms in the Balkans.By the year 2000, Yugoslavia had been ripped apart with NATO bombs, IMF restructuring and ethnic conflict. Serbia was destroyed and the rest of the republics were transformed into neocolonies of the Western powers. The most popular narrative is that the West intervened in the region out of humanitarian concern – to stop genocide. However, this claim doesn’t hold up when actual facts are brought into play. In reality, the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was not a humanitarian one; it was instead motivated by the colonial-imperialist, economic and ideological interests of the member states of NATO – namely the United States and Germany.Although the bombing was dressed up as ‘humanitarian’, all it really served to do was dismantle all that remained of socialism in Europe and once again ‘Balkanize’ and colonize the Balkans. This truth becomes obvious upon a principled analysis of the economic interests and actions of the NATO bloc before formal intervention, an investigation into how the actual intervention was handled, and a look into the current state of the former Yugoslavia. The ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic’ bombs dropped on Yugoslavia resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damage which dramatically reduced the living standards of the Yugoslav people – the most damaging in the region since the Nazi occupation during WWII. The strategy of Balkanization and ‘humanitarian intervention’ has become the West’s (often through NATO) modus operandi; the same strategy of partitioning unified economically nationalist and independent states first exercised over Yugoslavia has also been practiced in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. The results are always the same – a drop in living standards, a huge resentment towards the West and NATO from the populations of the targeted countries, and a profit for the imperialist powers.[5]Bill Clinton poured gasoline on the house, lit the match, and played his saxophone, quietly exiting the building, while the whole damn thing burned down. Was it all his fault? Of course not. The path of neoliberal destruction was first set by Reagan. He is the grandfather of the destruction of the American Middle Class. Clinton is the father. Bush Jr. and Obama just heaped more coals on the inferno. The rich have become super rich, rich beyond anything anyone could dream. The understanding between corporations and labor under FDR was that the spoils of capitalism would be shared to some degree with those who worked to produce them. That agreement was shredded by Reagan.The effects are catastrophic—massive income inequality. Deregulation, privatization, cutting taxes for the rich, destroying social programs, free trade, and offshoring have hollowed out the American Middle Class. The U.S. is done. Game over.Thomas Picketty documented this well:In this week’s magazine, I’ve got a lengthy piece about “Capital in the Twenty-first Century,” a new book about rising inequality by Thomas Piketty, a French economist, that is sparking a lot of comment and debate. (Brad DeLong has a useful summary of some early reviews.) I’ll go further into that discussion in future posts, but first I thought it might be useful to portray the gist of Piketty’s story in a series of charts.The charts aren’t merely illustrative: they are an essential part of Piketty’s contribution. Fifteen or twenty years ago, debates about inequality tended to be cast in terms of clever but complicated statistics, such as the Gini coefficientand the Theil entropy index, which attempted to reduce the entire income distribution to a single number. One thing that Piketty and his colleagues Emmanuel Saez and Anthony Atkinson have done is to popularize the use of simple charts that are easier to understand. In particular, they present pictures showing the shares of over-all income and wealth taken by various groups over time, including the top decile of the income distribution and the top percentile (respectively, the top ten per cent and those we call “the one per cent”).The Piketty group didn’t invent this way of looking at things. Other economists, such as Ed Wolff, of New York University, and Jared Bernstein and Larry Mishel, the creators of the invaluable State of Working America series, have long used similar charts and tables in their publications. But partly by using new sources of data, such as individual tax records, and partly by expanding the research to other countries, Piketty and his colleagues have deployed their charts to reshape the entire inequality debate.For a long time, that debate was almost entirely focussed on what was happening to median incomes. That inevitably led to discussions of globalization, skill-biased technical change, and policies focussed on education and retraining. Now, thanks to Piketty et al., the remarkable gains of those at the very top can’t be avoided. And this means that the issues of politics and redistribution can’t be avoided either.The first chart is a simple one, and it concerns the United States alone. It tracks the share of over-all income taken by the top ten per cent of households from 1910 to 2010. Broadly speaking, it’s centered on a U shape. Inequality climbed steeply in the Roaring Twenties, and then fell sharply in the decade and a half following the Great Crash of October, 1929. From the mid-forties to the mid-seventies, it stayed pretty stable, and then it took off, eventually topping the 1928 level in 2007. (The chart shows the share of the top decile falling back a bit after the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008. New figures for 2012 from Saez, which came out too late to be included in Piketty’s book, show the line hitting another new high, of more than fifty per cent.)The second chart shows the share of income taken by the one per cent over the same period, and the teal line, which includes income of all kinds, has the same U shape. (Once again, the 2012 figures, which aren’t included, show another step up.) The top percentile hasn’t taken such a large share of over-all income since 1928. Interestingly, the recent rise in its share is a bit less dramatic when the analysis is confined to wage income. The difference between the bottom line (wage income) and the top line (total income) is accounted for by income from capital—dividends, interest payments, and capital gains. Because they own a lot of wealth, the one-per-centers receive a lot of their income in this form.Chart Three expands the analysis to what Piketty calls other “Anglo-Saxon countries”— Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and it confirms that rising inequality is a global phenomenon. Since 1980, the share of over-all income going to the one per cent has risen sharply in those three nations, too. However, the United States still comes out as the winner of the inequality race. That’s perhaps not too surprising: we tend to think of the United States as a very unequal country, but it’s worth noting that this perception wasn’t always accurate. The chart shows that, ninety years ago, the United States and Canada had roughly the same amount of inequality, according to this measure, while the United Kingdom was a markedly less equitable place. Today, though, the U.S. has few challengers. Even in terms of income generated by work, Piketty notes, the level of inequality in the United States is “probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world.”Chart Four shows what’s been happening in six developing countries: Argentina, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. Once again, we see the familiar U shape: during the past few decades, more and more income has been accumulating at the top. In most of these countries, however, the share taken by the one per cent is quite a bit lower than it is in the United States. The one exception is Colombia, where the figures are broadly comparable. (Compare Chart Four to Chart Two.) It barely needs noting that Argentina, Indonesia, and South Africa are highly stratified and grossly inequitable nations. But, according to this measure, anyway, they have less inequality than the United States does.Despite the recent growth of a big-spending nouveau-riche class, the same is true of China.The fifth chart switches the attention from income to wealth, and it takes a long-term perspective. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the class-bound societies of Western Europe were dominated by a landed and monied elite that owned much of the land and the wealth. The United States had rich and poor, too, but the wealth was still spread around a bit more widely. In 1910, for example, the one per cent in Europe owned about sixty-five per cent of all wealth; in the United States, the figure was forty-five per cent.In recent decades, the roles have been reversed. The U.S. monied elite has outstripped its counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic, and wealth has become even more concentrated in the United States than it is in Europe. In 2010, the American one per cent owned about a third of all the wealth: the European one per cent owned about a quarter. Citing figures like these, Piketty warns that “the New World may be on the verge of becoming the Old Europe of the twenty-first century’s globalized economy.”The last chart is a bit different. It concerns Piketty’s theory that capitalism has a “central contradiction”: when the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, inequality tends to rise. (That’s because profits and other types of income from capital tend to grow faster than wage income, which is what most people rely on.) The purple line shows Piketty’s estimate of the rate of return on capital at the world level going back to antiquity and forward to 2100. The yellow line shows his estimate of the global growth rate over the same period.The important point to note is this: setting aside the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, which is roughly what we would call modernity, the growth rate has been below the rate of return, implying steadily rising inequality. The twentieth century, far from representing normality, was a historic exception that is unlikely to be repeated, Piketty argues. In the coming decades, he says, the growth rate will most likely fall back below the rate of return, and the “consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying.”Source: Piketty’s Inequality Story in Six ChartsHis destruction of Haiti’s economy:His “help” at the instigation of US big Agribusiness dumped tons of free rice on the Haitian economy. This has three immediate impacts:it bankrupted local farmers, since they could not compete with giveaways.It distorted the Haitian diet, reducing the vitamins and nutrition consumedIt increased a culture of dependence on foreign aid, leading to abuses in child services and crime rates[6]If you live in a neighborhood with a mansion and a shack the average wealth is going to be high compared to a neighborhood with 3 bedroom homes with comfortable but average values. Which neighborhood would you rather live in? That is what we have in Cuba. People live simply, but they have what they need. Healthcare is provided to all, regardless of ability to pay. Education is provided, regardless of ability to pay. In Cuba we put people first. In America it is everyone at each other’s throats.Sad. I feel bad for Americans, I really do.Footnotes[1] Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act - Wikipedia[2] This 1933 Law Would Have Prevented the Financial Crisis[3] Fast Facts About the World's Largest Trade Agreement[4] The Clinton dynasty's horrific legacy: How "tough-on-crime" politics built the world's largest prison system[5] NATO & the Humanitarian Dismemberment of Yugoslavia[6] http://Tim Shimeall

I see Mr. Vladimir Dalicnikov, one of Vlads bloggers is at it.Most longer sentences are served at private for profit prisons that actually charge rent every day.That’s nice, made up, but its nice.Then their is Mr. BeckAmerican judges are prison crazy, giving the US the highest prison population in history, absolutely and per capita, far more than China, the most rabidly insane Muslim country or South Africa in its white supremacist eras. Judges, prosecutors, & our criminal justice system are pure revenge & sadism. It’s similar to ancient Britain that upped the ante on punishment to the point they had the death penalty for endless crimes down to just petty theft. Juries were the only chance a defendant had, as jurors, common people had major common sense compared to the legal eagles & legalistic beagles of the legal profession.Ok, so now I have a picture of a mad cur on a black robe with a frothing mouth barking out “20 Years.”Mr. Beck where would you prefer to do 20 years?South Africa? China? a rabid Muslim nation to be named later?South Africa The number gangs charge non gang members rent for a bed.Gangs may deprive non-members of all their personal belongings or deny them access to privileges. Several ex-prisoners described to us the experience of arriving in the section for awaiting trial to have everything they had brought to prison taken away from them. One prisoner described having to "buy" the right to a bed from gang leaders in the cell. Another stated that he had been deprived of access to his visitors on several occasions by gang leaders who had demanded payment to allow him to see them next time.A “rabid” Muslim nation (Your words not mine!)Prisons in Pakistanby Abuzar Salman Khan Niazi , (Last Updated December 19, 2016)Our Criminal Producing FactoriesThe prison system of Pakistan presents a sorry state of affairs; it is a cumbersome and outmoded colonial legacy still governed by archaic laws, for instance, The Prisons Act of 1894, , The Punjab Borstal Act, 1926, Good Conduct Prisoners Probation Release Act,1926 and Pakistan Prison Rules 1978 etc. The system is inherently biased and elitist; the British used it primarily as an instrument to repress political dissent and curb rebellious tendencies of natives. Our prison system is inundated with malaises of the most grievous and obnoxious kind; the prisons in Pakistan can hardly claim as centres for rehabilitation but inversely hardens the behaviour of criminals.Prison system in Pakistan is suffering from multiple maladies; the most vicious to my mind are:Firstly, prisons in Pakistan are abundantly overcrowded; Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan till April 2015 gave the figure of total prison population as 80,169 against official capacity of 46705. The Prison Rule No 745, envisages that each inmate must get minimum of 18 square metres in a barrack, however, in practice the prisoners in the barracks are not even able to turn if they lie alongside each other. Overcrowding begets other problems such as, transmittable diseases (TB, Hepatitis C, HIV), sanitation issues, food scarcity, increased violence and negatively affects the ability to administer prisons.Second, The Prison Act 1894 recommends an arrangement whereby under-trial prisoners (still innocent), political convicts, terrorists, petty criminals, serious offenders, habitual offenders and first time offenders are kept separate, however, in practice all categories are frequently mixed up in barracks. Approximately 69 percent of the total prison population comprises under-trial prisoners, unlawful amalgamation results in prisons becoming a breeding ground for criminality, delinquency and immorality. Resultantly, the under trials who are acquitted or those convicted of petty offences when released are often repeatedly apprehended in heinous crimes.Third, professional capacity of prison staff is much below the desired level, lacking in adoption to modern concepts of prisoners psychology, rehabilitation programmes, imparting skills development and awareness in crime sociology. Though prison system is a provincial subject but till date no Provincial prison training institute exists in Pakistan, there is only one institute i.e. National Academy of Prison Administration (NAPA) which functions under the Central Government.Fourth, unwarranted physical punishments are frequently inflicted on the prisoners, which commonly turn into sad episodes of merciless beatings. The purpose behind incarceration is rehabilitation of the criminal; however, this object is undermined by acts of torture, ill treatment and mental abuse.Fifth, medical facilities available in our prisons are deplorable; there is an acute shortage of quality doctors and reliable medical laboratories. Prison rules patently ignore the issue that whether a prisoner suffering from a mental disease can consult an independent psychiatrist. The medical officer of the prison or a doctor from a public hospital checks the prisoner and often rules out any psychological issues.Sixth, prisons in Pakistan are states within a state, where a separate economy thrives; comforts are directly proportional to one’s bank balance and political connections; if one have necessary wherewithal, prison staff would dutifully arrange all accessories, e.g. drugs, liquor, quality food, gambling, hospital stay, home visits, cell phones. Use of cell phones inside prison walls is a serious matter as the criminals especially those linked to militant groups can misuse it. The cell phone jammers only work in those barracks where poor and vulnerable prisoners reside i.e. those who can’t bribe the prison staff.Seventh, the prison authorities exploit prisoners when the formers want to meet their loved ones. Such meetings are often arranged by greasing the palms of wardens. The poor mechanism for conjugal visits of spouses of inmates is another ignored issue, as it occasionally results in financial and sexual exploitation of vulnerable women.Eighth, due to indifferent attitude of prison wardens many underprivileged prisoners are denied legal aid and right to consult a lawyer, which patently infringes their right to a fair trial guaranteed by Article 10- A of the Constitution. Lastly, our criminal justice system lacks innovation; under the current scheme, after conviction, a judge has two options — incarceration or the imposition of a fine. Where fine is unsuitable, imprisonment is the sole option (even in petty offences). We need alternatives to incarceration e.g. probation and community service.Justice Marshall once said “A prisoner does not shed his basic constitutional rights at the prison gate”, that aperson is not entirely stripped of his constitutional rights when he is detained. Genesis of our Constitution lies deep in spirit of social justice and egalitarianism, away from feudal tendencies and state callousness, sustaining itself by divine trust on man and his sacred dignity. Article 14 of Pakistani Constitution assures dignity of man and protects him against torture; denying this fundamental right to prisoners is tantamount to, holding the Constitution responsible for dehumanisation and brazenly renouncing International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 and the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1984 (ratified by Pakistan in 2010).Our corrupt, deteriorated and counterproductive prison system illustrates collapse of the rule of law and failure of criminal justice system. The dreadful injustices caused to poor and vulnerable inmates are never compensated; their life is anonymous and their voices are out of earshot, under such circumstances, these fortified castles will only produce hardened criminals not rehabilitated individuals. JL Nehru’s observation during his stay at Naini prison aptly describes current situation of prisoners in Pakistan, when he wrote “The inmates brood and warp themselves in angry thoughts of fear, revenge and hatred; forget the good of the world, the kindness and joy, and live only wrapped up in the evil. From time to time the prisoner’s body is weighted and measured. But how is one to weigh the mind and the spirit which wilt and stunt themselves and wither away….Ok, how about China?The November 1979 supplementary regulations on "re-education through labor" created labor training administration committees consisting of members of the local government, public security bureau, and labor department. The police, government, or a work unit could recommend that an individual be assigned to such reeducation, and, if the labor training administration committee agreed, hard labor was imposed without further due process. The police reportedly made heavy use of the procedure, especially with urban youths, and probably used it to move unemployed, youthful, potential troublemakers out of the cities.That’s really nice, no die process. The authorities just look at you and say BYE!!Of course you won’t actually do 20 years. Many crimes in China are punishable by a bullet in the back of the head.Yes, you family gets the bill for the bullet.So where would you prefer to do time Mr. Beck?