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Merchandised Consumer Democracy: The Cause of the Economic Cancer in the United States

Merchandised Consumer Democracy: The Cause of the Economic Cancer in the United States
Fri, 2/19/2016 - by Deni Leonard

Accumulating the largest financial capital in the history of the United States, the financial owners have committed an Act of Violence against their society as their wealth is hidden offshore, while children are starving, lack health care, the fossil fuel industry expands climate change damages to the planet, the military consumption of citizens taxes is out of control and the U.S. legislators have chosen to ignore legislative reforms to correct this criminal toxic financial reality perpetuated by the owners of financial institutions leading to a potentially larger financial crisis than that of 2008.

In 2008 there was a "bail out" process using tax dollars to rescue the bankrupt financial institutions as their complicity in illegal sub-prime financial packaged loans were essentially junk rated banking instruments. Instead of imposing a penalty on those financial criminals, the United States federal legislature created legislation to allow them to have a "bail-in" process in which the depositors become liable for the illegal action of these new bankrupt financial institutions. This is the Dodd-Frank Act which is altered to protect the banking owners. The economic cancer is now expanding its toxic effects on American citizens.

These financial institutions have created individuals steering a wealth cartel which, instead of assisting the U.S. citizen by correcting the harmful effects of this economic cancer – lack of health care, housing, food and education – have created new prisons (the U.S. has the highest prison population in the world) to respond to criticism of their government. To make things very clear regarding their objectives, they have moved their illicit profits from the illegal packaged loans to off-shore entities in an amount exceeding $2.7 trillion. This protects their assets from future bankruptcy of their financial institutions, and is an Act of Violence against their fellow citizens.

To finance their illegal banking structures, the financial owners have taken over the U.S. election process through the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, essentially giving criminal corporations the right to raise campaign funds recognizing them as persons and therefore having rights to campaign using unregulated hidden funds to elect legislators who openly support their crimes. This process guarantees their protection against citizens opposing this illegal banking methodology, by electing legislators who are bought to comply with these illegal banking instruments. This Act of Violence against the common citizen openly threatens those who would oppose the U.S. Department of Justice ignoring any prosecution to correct these violations of the laws regarding financial institutional theft of citizen assets. The economic cancer is allowed to grow unabated.

This economic cancer must be treated with a citizens' action removing the complicity between Wall Street, the U.S. federal government and the U.S. federal legislators. Iceland, when presented with bankers who violated prudent regulations regarding citizen deposits, prosecuted those bankers and the banking institutions were allowed to go bankrupt. Iceland now has one of the strongest economies in the world. The bankers went to jail and the financial institutions were reorganized into a legal compliant part of the Iceland community and government.

International hegemony has been U.S. foreign policy for many decades as financial institutions have used the military to secure sources of raw materials, primarily oil, to support their industrial corporations. This use of foreign policy by force has cost the U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars of tax revenue to the U.S. federal government. The estimated cost of the illegal invasion of Iraq is exceeding $3 trillion. More trillions were lost to invasions of Afghanistan, incursions in Syria and bombings of Libya to support a U.S. foreign policy of "regime change" to compel new leaders to comply with the U.S. corporate appetite for oil. This Western pattern of hegemony has created the largest "international refugee" migration in the history of the world and there may not be sufficient funds to manage this new human emergency originating from the criminal corporate actions putting profits over human rights.

Political change and a new consciousness within the American citizenry is necessary to establish a foundation for social justice and to cure this economic cancer. The goal is returning fundamental citizen control back to each individual citizen in elections, prosecuting the criminals in charge of financial institutions, and restoring the use of federal tax dollars to cure the national social needs for food, housing, health and education. A socially democratic citizens’ revolution to secure a new and just government and economy is an immediate necessity.

New domestic regulations restoring control of financial institutions is necessary, and the reversal of the Citizen United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court returning constitutional citizen participation in elections is also crucially needed. The control of campaign funding whereby the common citizen influences elections and legitimately elects someone who represents his/her interests will help restore a democratic system that has been hijacked by corporate multinational interests.

Today, the United States has over $17 trillion in national debt directly related to military costs and the unregulated control of corporations that manipulate financial, health and education system costs. In response to the widespread shipping of funds offshore, a "financial user fee" must be imposed on these renegade corporations to return their ill-gotten profits back to the United States to provide for citizen improvements here at home.

The young people of America are the real political future power, and they now have access to a new avenue to address major national issues in the United States. Call it the virtual social revolution, where cloud interconnectedness may be able to reach a majority of citizens who can then issue a call to action for a national vote on a range of social referendums. This will permit a national dialogue on the issue of citizens' rights – and the creation of a revised Bill of Rights to protect people's Constitutional rights. A new documented Bill of Human Rights for every citizen will be memorialized into this new constitutional document.

Here are some of the Bill of Rights issues which need to be included in any revision to update the living U.S. Constitution:

1. Economic Bill of Rights

  • The U.S. Department of Justice failed American citizens by not prosecuting the financial institutions that created the largest financial crisis in the history of the United States. Reinstate Glass Steagall to control banks from making risky investments with depositors money and imposing penalties

  • Financial institution owners have moved their money, estimated at $2.7 trillion, to offshore tax havens. Require those institutions to retain their personal capital within the borders of the United States, with a financial fee to ensure they pay their fair share.

  • Require a minimum wage of $15 for each U.S. worker to secure a livable standard of life providing food, clothing, shelter, health care and education for their families.

  • Establish community banks, known as Public Banks, that provide capital to communities without charging interest on social infrastructure projects.

2. Housing Bill of Rights

  • Acknowledge the minimum standard that Housing is a Human Right.

  • Create national, regional and local laws that establish standards in which predatory housing prices and rentals, when eliminating domiciles and vital facilities for families, constitutes an Act of Violence, and ensuring that this pattern of abuse will not be permitted in any community.

3. Education Bill of Rights

  • Declare that education for all citizens is a human right.

  • Provide public funds to educate all citizens from early education through college.

  • Educate each student to understand and accept all cultures and their values.

4. Environmental Bill of Rights

  • Establish a national presidential pledge to penalize any destruction of our environment by businesses that use scientists to establish methods of energy production at the cost of a healthy environment.

  • Direct federally funded research and development to transfer fossil fuel energy methods and structures into renewable energy and products that are environmentally safe in the long term.

  • Prosecute major energy companies that evidence complicit actions in preventing or disguising potential damage to the climate using fossil fuels, with significant fines on those companies to support clean fuel initiatives.

5. Medical Bill of Rights

  • Declare that medical care is a human rights for each and every person, and is the responsibility of our federal government to provide.

  • Remove medicine as a capitalistic financial business to ensure that all medicine is affordable to each person, and fine pharmaceutical companies if they market products for profit over people’s health.

  • Establish a national program to remove lethal products from consumption, such as cigarettes, GMO foods, and chemically treated processed food manufactured to increase shelf life at the expense of human health.

  • Establish a secure invested national trust for the protection of each person’s Social Security, and federal insurance against any depletion of this fund due to governmental fiscal borrowing.

6. Legislative Bill of Rights

  • Impose constitutionally, or at the state level, a one person-one vote criteria and remove the financial purchase of campaigns through Citizens United.

  • Amend the Dodd Frank Act to secure depositors' funds as an asset they own in the bank, and as such cannot be used as part of a bail-in process by which up to 25% of the public's deposits could be liquidated to pay banks' mismanaged bankruptcy obligations.

  • Remove the artificial role of the Federal Reserve Board and print national currency in the U.S. Treasury, without any obligations of interest to buy our own national currency for our use in our economy.

  • Create a Secretary of Culture to recognize and celebrate the diversity of people’s cultures within the United States.

7. Employment Bill of Rights

  • Each person is entitled to a job as a human right, without imposed bias based on race, economic community, religion or political status.

  • Each person is entitled to a living wage to provide for his/her family.

  • The national economy is obligated to serve as a foundation for jobs for the people of this country, and exporting production to lower wage countries at the expense of the U.S. worker constitutes an Act of Violence.

8. Voting Justice Bill of Rights

  • Each citizen in the United States has a right to vote in all elections throughout this country.

  • A new Voting Rights Act is necessary to ensure equal voting participation for each citizen.

  • A transparent voting process is necessary to ensure voting place integrity.

  • Voting precincts should reflect the people, population and community

9. Business Bill of Rights

  • All businesses should contribute to their tax obligation as an equal contribution percentage based on their revenue and profit margins.

  • Each business is obligated to provide health, social security contributions, and fair wages and working conditions to their employees.

  • Products must adhere to standards that create manufactured goods which are non-toxic to consumers and workers.

10. Federal Budget Bill of Rights

  • All obligated moneys to Social Security, Medicare and education must be maintained at a level enabling quality services to be provided to each person, and no bill or internal governmental authority may reduce these fiscally obligated moneys.

  • Significant federal research and development funds are obligated to create major renewable energy projects as a strategy to stop destructive climate change.

  • Community banking or Public Banking methodology, using the Bank of North Dakota system, must be established to ensure reduced external borrowing and interest obligations, by establishing an internal lending system that is interest free.

11. Technology Bill of Rights

  • Establish citizen privacy protection on the Internet as a basic constitutional safeguard against government agency illegal surveillance.

  • Establish a Secretary of Technology in the President’s cabinet to institutionalize the importance of Internet technology within our society.

12. International Trade Bill of Rights

  • Integrate trade with all countries around the world with a specific emphasis on our major trading partners.

  • Protect federal, state, local and tribal governments from legal interaction with international trade partners regarding financial agreements that may reduce laws protecting our own citizens in regard to health, environment and wages.

  • Authorize the United States to join the International Criminal Court in which our country is equally responsible for any illegal actions in a mutual court of international law.

13. Military Industrial Complex Bill of Rights

  • Replace hegemony international policy with accommodation policy in foreign relations.

  • Research proactive military action costs regarding invasions, bombing and military aid to ground forces, all of which have created the largest mass migration crisis in world history.

  • Cease and desist from supplying criminal insurgents who have become, through the use of U.S. supplied arms, money and air support, the new global terrorists.

Young people have the energy and vision to seek a national virtual referendum of, by and for the People, recognizing and acknowledging that people are unrepresented by their Congress and government, and demanding that the time for change is now.

 

 

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