False Econnomy and New Debtor Prisons
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Transcript of False Econnomy and New Debtor Prisons
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Introduction by Peter Brave-Heart (22/02/13)
I was reading the following article this week on Joseph Candel’s
Endtime site:- www.endtimeinfo.com
The following article is by itself very good, but what really got my
attention was when I followed the LINKS to other articles
mentioning the RETURN of ****“DEBTOR PRISONS”,
(included below.)
*******************************************************
10 Signs We Live in a False Economy
It’s time to admit that we live in a false economy. Smoke and mirrors
are used to make us believe the economy is real, but it’s all an
elaborate illusion.
Out of one side of the establishment’s mouth we hear excitement
about “green shoots”, and out of the other side comes breathless
warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts by
the Fed.
We hear the people begging for jobs and the politicians promising
them, but politicians can’t create jobs. We see people camped out to
buy stuff on Black Friday indicating the consumer economy is
seemingly thriving, only to find out everything was bought on
credit.
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The corporate media does their best to distract us from seeing
anything real. We see the media glorify Kim Kardashian who got rich
by being famous, and became famous merely by being rich. She got
front page coverage on Huffington Post this week because her cat
died. Enough said.
Meanwhile the financial media makes the economy seem complicated
and they ban anyone who speaks truthfully about the economy from
their airwaves.
Is it any wonder why people are angry and confused about the
economy?
Well, hopefully these signs that we live in a false economy will help
clear up some of that confusion.
1. Fake Jobs: It’s not just that the “official” unemployment numbers
are a fraud, the actual jobs are fake as well. Ask yourself how many
professions actually produce something of value? 80% of jobs could
disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect basic human survival or
happiness in the least. Yes, in our society we need money to survive –
and jobs equal money – but that doesn’t mean a “job” has any actual
benefit to society. More on this in the next point…
2. Problems Create Jobs, Not Solutions: We can’t fix real problems,
because it would destroy more fake jobs. We can’t end the wars and
bring all of the personnel home when the jobless rate is already
suffering. We can’t end the War on Drugs because where would the
DEA agents, prison guards, the court system, parole officers, and the
rest of their support staff work. We can’t simplify the tax code
because the bookkeepers, CPAs, accounting professors, and tax
attorneys would be unemployed. We cannot reduce the bureaucracy
of government or streamline healthcare because paper pushers have
few other notable skills. We can’t stop spying on Americans because
it now employs millions of people. We can’t restrict the Wall Street
casino, or hardly anyone will be left with a job. Finally, what will
happen to university jobs when people either realize their product is
not worth the cost or they discover they can get the same education
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online for nearly free? In other words, we need these manufactured
problems to create phony employment.
3. Money Has No Value: Money is the biggest illusion of all. Our
money is loaned into existence with arbitrary interest rates by a
private monopoly. It is an IOU. It only has value because a law says it
has value, and that value fluctuates based on how much supply is in
the economy which, again, is controlled by a for-profit monopoly. Its
actual value is zero since it is just a piece of paper with fancy ink on
it. The only things with real value to humans are skills (labor), tools
and materials, food and water, and energy.
4. The Fed Now Buys 90% of the Nation’s Debt: Speaking of
money, the Federal Reserve loans money to the US government who
issues bonds to cover their spending. Those bonds are sold on the
open market through auctions to investors who believe in the ability
of the United States to make good on those bonds. Apparently, the US
has no more investors because the Fed is now buying 90% of new
Treasury bonds. This is called monetizing debt, or, essentially,
monetizing money. That’s what a Ponzi scheme does. This acts to
keep interest rates artificially low because they’d have to raise them to
attract outside “investors”. In layman terms, our whole monetary
system is a paper tiger, a house of cards, or whatever metaphor you
want to use for fake.
5. What is the Value of Anything? The price discovery mechanism,
or the process to determine the value of an asset in the marketplace,
has become so convoluted that determining the genuine value of
anything has become nearly impossible. Between government
subsidizes for things like food, fuel, education, housing, insurance and
even cars; taxes, regulations and laws; the manipulation of the value
of money and interest rates; Wall Street gambling on commodities;
what is the real value of something? For example, why does an ounce
of marijuana (a weed that can grow anywhere) cost up to $500? Is
that the real value based on labor and materials, and supply and
demand? Of course not. Its value is inflated mainly due to laws and
regulations.
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6. Failure is Rewarded: You know we live in a false economy when
failure is rewarded and success is penalized. Citizens everywhere are
being told they need to tighten their belts, work harder so we can
bailout the failed government, banks, insurance companies and even
car companies. And when we work harder and achieve some success,
they tax it heavily to indefinitely pay for these fraudulent institutions.
Yet this infinite money creation and taxation is light years from
solving the root cause of the problem. The reality is that the banks’
solutions are the problem, enriching the investor class at the expense
of the middle class. Global bankers are playing with taxpayer money
– and the money of many future generations – in a global casino
royale that is destined to fail so they can take the people’s assets.
They are all-in; but their money is fake, and our assets put at risk are
real.
7. Corporate entities have the same rights as humans, but not the
same punishments: When the Supreme Court ruled that corporations
have free-speech rights of people, it was one of the final nails in the
coffin of the republic. Monied interests can now openly finance
elections and buy the legislation they need to operate with impunity.
Corporations may be comprised of humans, but they are not subjected
to the same standard of humanity. It was profoundly argued in the
article What if BP Were a Human Being? that judged by common
standards of morality, decency, and previously agreed-upon
definitions of criminality, BP would be judged a psychopathic killer
… and immortal. Ditto for the rest leading the predatory corporate
pack; the most obvious being defense contractors. And since these
corporations are now joined at the hip with government itself, what
does that make government? By changing definitions, they are
attempting to change reality. But that still doesn’t make it the truth.
8. People buy things they don’t need with money they don’t
have: In a type of trickle-down debt whirlpool, the government’s
rampant spending without sufficient assets to back it up is mirrored in
the behavior of the American consumer. Despite inflation, rising
unemployment, and a continued collapse in real estate, it hasn’t
stopped credit spending. The Associated Press just reported that for
the month of October:
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Americans swiped their credit cards more often in October and
borrowed more to attend school and buy cars. The increases drove
U.S. consumer debt to an all-time high.
The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased their
borrowing by $14.2 billion in October from September. Total
borrowing rose to a record $2.75 trillion.
Borrowing in the category that covers autos and student loans
increased by $10.8 billion. Borrowing on credit cards rose by $3.4
billion, only the second monthly increase in the past five months.
Most troubling is the type of borrowing highlighted. The worst
possible borrowing would be these negative-return investments such
as student loans, credit cards, and cars. It is magical thinking taken to
the highest degree.
9. Entrepreneurs are punished: It has become nearly impossible to
make a simple living on your. America has become a land filled with
bureaucratic red tape that actively thwarts small business creation and
criminalizes independence. There is perhaps no better example of this
than the attacks waged against the ultimate entrepreneurial endeavor
of self-reliance: the family farm. Through collectivist models such as
Agenda 21, long-running family farms are being shut down and
supplanted with “protected zones.” In the most recent case, a family
oyster farm was shut down based on provably false scientific data that
aimed to demonstrate negative environmental and economic impacts.
It was completely fake, ending an 80-year local business that
generated 50,000 tourists per year and employed 30 full-time local
residents. In many of these cases the federally stolen property winds
up in the hands of developers who have no interest in a true local
economy. It is an inherent part of any false economy to create
dependence where none should exist at all. A five-minute video that
can be seen here sums up the American economy of illusions and the
death of the American Dream.
10. Engineered Slavery: Do you think slavery died in the 1800s?
Think again. Economic hitmen (lenders) have successfully enslaved-
by-debt everything from nations, entire industries, state and local
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governments and nearly every person on the planet. And they bought
your servitude with money they never had, they simply created it out
of thin air. Even if an individual doesn’t have any bank financing or
credit cards, they still pay the private Federal Reserve through
inflation and income taxes. As author of Confessions of an Economic
Hit Man, John Perkins, would say: the time has come for the banks to
collect their “pound of flesh” from average citizens by way of higher
taxes, less social services, and taking your pensions — “austerity.”
For an enlightening explanation of how economic hitmen work their
dark magic please watch this video. If you’re still confused, see
these 10 signs you might be a slave. Another, more obvious, form of
engineered slavery is ****prison labor. Laws and regulations are
specifically created to add to the prison population which enriches the
corporations that own them, while local communities actually become
poorer and more dangerous
As George Carlin said, “It’s called the American Dream, because you
have to be asleep to believe it.” It would be bad enough if it were
contained to only one country, but we are now experiencing a global
collective dreaming that fantasizes about a government figuring
things out just in the nick of time. However, in the real world, the
collapse has begun in earnest. Until we are committed to counter the
10 points above, we will remain in the grip of an hallucination.
However, there are encouraging signs through protests worldwide,
alternative currency movements, and myriad creative solutions in the
most affected countries like Iceland, Greece, and Spain that people
are beginning to shake off their sleep, look in the mirror and realize
that the dream economy they have been sold was designed to make
them seek solutions in entirely the wrong direction.
*************************************************
Follow-up Links on DEBTOR PRISONS
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World's Prison Capital is Also #1 in For-Profit Prisons
Joe Wright
Activist Post
The world's prison capital is not the United States, per capita,
although it leads the world for its overall prison population. One state
far outdoes America itself and incarcerates nearly double the national
average.
First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's
incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10
times Germany's. The U.S. prison business has become the essence of
predatory corporatism: it privatizes profits and socializes losses. This
combination has led to a situation where correctional facilities have
very little incentive to correct the behavior of those who reside within
their walls, but every incentive to ensure that new bodies arrive as fast
as possible, and keep them in a state of indentured servitude.
Naturally, this is exactly what is happening in Louisiana, as the vast
majority of inmates are not housed in state-run prisons, but in those
owned by private corporations. The social fallout has been profound.
Corrections Corporation of America has led the charge toward
creating a sound business model for those who would profit from
crime and punishment since it won the first private prison contract
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from Tennessee in 1984. CCA has expanded nicely, recently
submitting letters to 48 states with an offer to buy their prisons: "In
exchange ... for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance
that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full." (Source)
America already holds 25% of the world's prison population, with the
number of these prisoners held in private prisons rising dramatically
over the past 10 years from 2,000 housed in 5 private prisons, to more
than 60,000 housed in 100. It is a number expected to rise to 360,000
prisoners over the next decade. Moreover, as the economy declines,
there has even been a revival in debtors prisons,
Our Future In Chains: The Debtors Prison System Returns
Michael Edwards
Activist Post
The recent story of breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay being thrown
in prison for a $280 medical bill that was sent in error has thankfully
gone viral. It has brought much-needed attention to the insanity of
reinstating the concept of debtors prisons.
Debtors prisons have a sordid history that was thought to be best left
behind in Medieval Europe and in Charles Dickens' fictionalized
accounts of the 19th-century hellholes of Victorian England.
America was not to be outdone, however, debtors prisons were
widespread in the United States as well, and stories of the conditions
in New York's debtors prisons could make one question if repayment
of debts was really the purpose; violent criminals were much better
clothed and fed. In fact, history shows that terror and slavery have
always had a close relationship with debt, and it follows a path from
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the Romans right through to 17th-century England, and into America
from English common law. However, America chose to abolish her
debtors prisons a full 36 years before England; first in New York in
1831, and by 1833 the rest of the America had followed.(1)
Now, debtors prisons seem to be making a comeback in America.
An article in the Star Tribune in Minnesota titled, "In jail for being in
debt," exposes the growing number of citizens going to jail at the
behest of banks and a welcoming judicial system. They write:
It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in
the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being
thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some
of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest
warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four
years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court
data has found.
In our modern era of debt servitude, a PR Push has been designed to
reintroduce a serious discussion of debtors' prisons as a sound
solution. What goes beyond alarming is that the full-fledged return of
debtors prisons might be seen as both appropriately terrifying, as
well as a profitable investment opportunity and politically sound
decision to be made by state governments struggling with their own
looming bankruptcies, and a Federal government struggling
politically with the concept of a jobless recovery that is not
materializing.
A de facto debtors prison has already been largely accepted in the
case of "deadbeat" parents when a failure to pay child support puts
them in civil contempt of court. It is this civil contempt charge that is
now beginning to take on an expanded definition to include those who
owe for much smaller infractions. When a court order to pay a debt is
issued and ignored, it then qualifies as a civil contempt of court. At
that point, the judge becomes a literal dictator with the ability to
imprison a person indefinitely for the violation. The Constitution
explicitly prohibits incarceration for failure to pay debts, but it is
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the violation of a court order that gives judges free rein to impose
draconian punishments. In this way, an end-run around the
Constitution can become frighteningly commonplace.(2)
America already has a record-high ratio of people in prison, with no
signs of the trend reversing as private corporations like Wackenhut
Corporation, referred to as a "Free Market in Human Misery," have
long been enlisted to turn government directives into shareholder
profit. One might even deign to call it blatant fascism in its purest
form, as government legislation leads offenders directly into private
company coffers. The prison-industrial complex has already
capitalized on government actions like The War on Drugs. A prime
example is how The California Correctional Peace Officers
Association helped fuel the prison-building boom as a cozy
relationship was established on Capitol Hill through influence
peddling.(3)
Profiting from the suffering of the poor while bailouts and bonuses
await the over-leveraged banksters, car companies, and state
governments, sets up a prison-industrial complex with a class
warfare component that is the domestic mirror of the military-
industrial complex sent abroad. This domestic prison system
seems to be the only industry left to build upon, and it is here that
things become truly frightening. For the federally-owned prison
system complex, Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR), more
incarceration means a growing supply of cheap labor and a
skewing of unemployment numbers, as these inmates are often doing
jobs they couldn't even find if they were job hunting on the outside.
But it is the private prison system, with its web fully woven
throughout the U.S. government, that stands to profit the most from
the return of debtors' admission.(4)
The largest private prison conglomerate in the U.S. is Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), which controls more than 47% of all
private prison and jail beds nationwide and is able to produce a 13-
15% return annually on new real estate investments. Wackenhut
(now subsumed into G4S, the largest security company in the world)
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was of course started by an FBI agent, George Wackenhut, who is
famous for developing millions of dossiers on America's "potential
subversives" in the sixties, and was exposed as being an integral
player within the shadow CIA.(5)
These major security conglomerates are at the top of a growing
pyramid of for-profit, international detention center operators that has
Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs simply fawning over the solid,
long-term investment potential. Similar to war, when there is a profit
to be made off of incarceration, only more incarceration can be
expected to follow. The U.S. government certainly seems to be
working hard to ensure that the numbers of poor continue to
increase, as they are well aware that that programs designed to help
the downtrodden are an abject failure every time.
The massive government debts that must be repaid directly into the
hands of the Federal Reserve-led banking cabal must lead us to an
inescapable conclusion: More money is to be made from slavery in
the United States, than from freedom.
Other Articles Cited 1. Jill Lepore, "I.O.U. - How We Used to Treat Our Debtors," The
New Yorker (April 13, 2009): 35.
2. Wendy McElroy,
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2229
3. Seth Sandronsky,
http://www.counterpunch.org/sandronsky05032005.html
4. Christian Parenti, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=852
5. John Connolly, "Inside the Shadow CIA," SPY Magazine
(September, 1992): Volume 6.
Child Debt prisons were formally abolished in the early 1800s.
Perhaps more troubling is the heightened criminalization of children
for behavior which previously was considered merely a nuisance, not
something worthy of handcuffs and the big house.
A human product clearly has been created and fostered by a
system which values the worth of potential inmates as greater than
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their worth as free human beings. This has led to a captive
population that can be put to work creating goods for a multitude of
industries for as little as 25 cents per hour, effectively creating a
growing resurgence in open slavery; all while a misinformed
majority believe that more people under lock and key translates to
safer neighborhoods, towns and cities.
The above trends all have converged in Louisiana, and yet have
dispelled the myth that more prisoners leads to more safety for the
wider society at large. In a comprehensive article for the Times-
Picayune of New Orleans, Cindy Chang writes:
In the past two decades, Louisiana's prison population has doubled,
costing taxpayers billions while New Orleans continues to lead the
nation in homicides.
This is the exact type of incongruent outcome that has been noted
across the board even economically, where the supposed cost-saving
measures of a streamlined private enterprise should theoretically
trump bloated state government bureaucracy. However, this is only to
assume that we are looking at a real free-market system. What we see
instead is collusion between state governments that respond to the
lobbying efforts of a prison industry dominated by select mega
corporations.
The states write the legislation that paves the way for more criminals
to be guaranteed lengthier stays within prison walls where corporate
profits can be reaped for shareholders. It is the worst of both worlds.
And for those who care about the treatment and rehabilitation of
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the inmates who are set for release back into society, the belief that
private industry can do a better job is a belief that also falls flat.
Despite state-run prisons being generally short-staffed, overcrowded,
and underfunded, Louisiana's per-day value on its human commodity
within the private prison model is $24.39 - far lower than its state-run
counterpart. A focus on maximizing profits has led to a bare-bones,
near concentration-camp existence where cost cutting is paramount.
This has tremendous social implications, as private prison inmates are
mostly serving non-life terms for mostly non-violent offenses,
whereas state prison inmates are the most violent, often serving life
terms:
In a cruel irony, those who could benefit most are unable to better
themselves, while men who will die in prison proudly show off
fistfuls of educational certificates.
(...)
Their facilities are cramped and airless compared with the spacious
grounds of state prisons, where inmates walk along outdoor
breezeways and stay busy with jobs or classes.
In addition to the above, the history that Chang documents of how
Louisiana became the world's prison capital through the expansion of
the for-profit prison network perfectly illustrates the corporatist
mindset:
In the early 1990s, when the incarceration rate was half what it is
now, Louisiana was at a crossroads. Under a federal court order to
reduce overcrowding, the state had two choices: Lock up fewer
people or build more prisons.
It achieved the latter, not with new state prisons -- there was no
money for that -- but by encouraging sheriffs to foot the construction
bills in return for future profits. The financial incentives were so
sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought after, that new prisons
sprouted up all over rural Louisiana.
The national prison population was expanding at a rapid clip.
Louisiana's grew even faster. There was no need to rein in the growth
by keeping sentencing laws in line with those of other states or by
putting minor offenders in alternative programs. The new sheriffs'
beds were ready and waiting. Overcrowding became a thing of the
past, even as the inmate population multiplied rapidly.
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As we see the nation's prison populations swell, and observe the
concurrent swelling of corporate prison bottom lines, we must look at
the ramifications to judge if this is a model worth supporting.
With the highest percentage of its citizens locked up in a for-profit
system, Louisiana should be a safe, economically prosperous state if
this model is effective in aggressively removing all of the bad
elements that threaten society. What we see, however, is the exact
opposite: Louisiana is one of the most poverty stricken, uneducated,
and dangerous states in the union. The next generation is effectively
punished as well by having one or both parents locked away, while
the funding needed to potentially break the cycle is diverted toward
building more lockups:
Louisiana spends about $663 million a year to feed, house, secure and
provide medical care to 40,000 inmates. Nearly a third of that money
-- $182 million -- goes to for-profit prisons, whether run by sheriffs or
private companies.
'Clearly, the more that Louisiana invests in large-scale incarceration,
the less money is available for everything from preschools to
community policing that could help to reduce the prison population,'
said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a
national criminal justice reform group.
A nation that still purports to be the Land of the Free simply cannot
continue to say that slogan with a straight face when it has literally
invested in slavery. A predatory system -- even if some believe it only
preys on other predators -- can only lead to a ruined social landscape
like that of Louisiana; a state which should be more properly viewed
as a canary in the coal mine for what lies in wait for the rest of
America should it fully embrace the monetary value of a prison
society.
**************************************************
Conclusion by Peter Brave-Heart:-If anyone has any doubts
about the possibility of all that is mentioned above about
DEBTOR PRISONS, and you have not already seen the real
TRUTH of 9/11, then please see the following testimony by over
15
1000 experts, the ones who build the skyscrapers etc. I think that
you will conclude that any organization that is so evil as to cause
9/11 to happen to their own citizens is literally capable of doing
anything bad!
(ATTACK ON THE WORLD Trade Centre 9/11
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/911-explosive-evidence-experts-speak-out/
The Plans of the ELITE could be, to not only bankrupt the world,
causing millions to be in broke financially in a moment; but as in the
above story of the woman not paying her $280 medical bill being
threatened with jail, even worse causing millions to become literal
FINANCIAL SLAVES OF THE COMING World Government LIVING IN
EITHER Debtor Prisons or one of the many FEMA Concentration
Camps they have been building in the USA. There are millions of
young people who are greatly in debt around the world, in order to
study at university. This could make them a TARGET FOR THE ELITE’S
PLANS TO ENSLAVE THE FREE, especially in AMERICA.
As the Bible says “Owe No Man ANYTHING..” Also “The Borrower is
the SLAVE of the lender..
Feel free to contact us at:- [email protected]