“States are going to sit and watch federal accountability implode. We’re seeing the end of an era.”
Go on wit yo bad self, Montana. Resist!! I don't know about you, friends, but I'm ready for the revolution. Rediculous to hear Duncan call NCLB a "slow-motion train wreck,” then turn around and propose an even more egregious system. The Blueprint is wack, don't believe the hype!
-Patricia
By SAM DILLON | NY Times
August 14, 2011
HELENA, Mont. — As hundreds of schools here and across the nation faced being labeled failures under the federal No Child Left Behind law, Montana education officials defiantly informed Washington this spring that they would stop raising testing targets as the law requires, despite warnings that doing so could cost the state millions of dollars in federal aid.
But in an agreement to be announced here on Monday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will allow Montana to keep most of the schools off the law’s blacklist, and the state will pay no penalty.
With several other Western states also rebelling against the requirement that 100 percent of American students be proficient in English and math by 2014, some education officials and experts see signs that years of federal dominance of public school accountability may be drawing to a close.
“Pretty soon all the schools will be failing in America, and at that point the law becomes meaningless,” said Larry K. Shumway, superintendent of public instruction in Utah. “States are going to sit and watch federal accountability implode. We’re seeing the end of an era.”
It is no secret that the Obama administration dislikes many provisions of the No Child law, which President George W. Bush signed in 2002 and vigorously enforced, in court and with fines against states — including Texas, his own.
Mr. Duncan has called the law a “slow-motion train wreck,” tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to rewrite it, and last week promised to provide waivers this fall to states that sign on to the president’s school improvement agenda, with criteria similar to those in his Race to the Top grant competition.
Mr. Duncan says he is still devising the new waiver policy, and his office denied waiver requests lodged by Arkansas and Kansas this spring.
But when officials in Montana and a handful of other states simply refused to follow the strictures of the No Child law in recent weeks, his aides quietly helped them find provisions in the law that avoided a public showdown, signaling a more profound shift.
Here in Montana, 158 schools were to be newly labeled failures. But that number fell to three when federal officials allowed the state to redraw its schedule of testing targets, a critical component of the No Child law’s ambitious approach to forcing all schools to show steady progress toward 100 percent proficiency.
“Secretary Duncan is disassembling what was a very strong federal role, and some states’ rights officials and governors smell blood,” said Bruce Fuller, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written academic studies on the No Child law. “This is a big federalist chess game. Until now, Washington has had the stronger position. Going forward, states will be stronger.”
The uprising by states began in April, when Denise Juneau, Montana’s superintendent of public instruction, was calculating how many of her schools would not reach their targets this year.
Of the state’s 821 public schools, 225 had already fallen short. If the targets, which the law calls annual measurable objectives, rose again as scheduled, that number would increase to 383, including many schools that Ms. Juneau said were raising student achievement.
In Bozeman, a university town where at least 90 percent of students scored above proficiency in reading this spring, 8 of the 10 schools would nonetheless have failed to meet rising targets.
On April 25, Ms. Juneau wrote to the education secretary asking for “some alleviation of the strict across the board, one-size-fits-all, absolute bar of 100 percent proficiency.” Six weeks later, she hosted a meeting of school chiefs from 10 rural states and passed around her defiant letter.
”We’re not asking for permission,” Ms. Juneau told the group. “We’re just telling them we won’t raise our annual objectives this year.”
Diane DeBacker, the education commissioner in Kansas whose waiver request federal officials had already denied, did not follow suit. “Kansas is just not that rebel a state,” she said in a June interview. But the superintendents in Idaho and Utah soon sent their own letters to Washington.
“It is our intention to not increase the annual measurable objectives for the 2011 school year,” Mr. Shumway of Utah wrote, bluntly.
“The current federal law has taken Idaho and other states as far as it can,” wrote that state’s superintendent, Tom Luna. “Idaho does not have the luxury of spending time and limited resources on meeting the rigid requirements of an outdated accountability system.”
Melody Schopp, South Dakota’s education secretary, followed a week later with a letter saying she, too, would not lift testing targets, because to do so “would inappropriately label schools as failing.”
Half a dozen other states have joined the chorus in recent weeks, using less defiant language but still asking for relief from the testing mandates, according to Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Others are broadly rewriting their school accountability systems and requesting a new contract with Washington that would give states a more dominant role.
It was in this context of educational insurrection by some states that President Obama and Mr. Duncan developed their waivers initiative. Critics have called it executive branch overreach, challenging Mr. Duncan’s authority to extend waivers, selectively, based in part on states’ approaches to lifting achievement.
But in dealing with Montana and the others, the administration seems to have been searching for pragmatic ways to defuse potentially embarrassing standoffs.
The law requires testing targets to increase at least every three years. Idaho and Utah both raised them in 2008. Michael Yudin, deputy assistant secretary of education, said that action enabled him to approve keeping both states’ targets steady for a third year.
Montana’s case was trickier because its targets had not risen since 2007.
On July 1, Secretary Duncan wrote to Ms. Juneau, warning that “Montana is now out of compliance,” and that the Department of Education could withhold millions of dollars in aid to disadvantaged students. He gave Montana until Aug. 15 to change its stance.
That warning notwithstanding, Ms. Juneau announced on Aug. 5 that she had held the state’s testing targets steady.
That put Montana on a collision course with Washington — until federal officials discovered that when the state rewrote its standards in 2005, it did not use an opportunity provided by the law to redraw its schedule of raising testing targets, said Justin Hamilton, a Department of Education spokesman.
Working with Washington, Ms. Juneau retroactively redrew the schedule. As a result, all but three of the 158 schools she thought were destined for the federal failure list could be spared.
“I consider that a win,” Ms. Juneau said.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Online courses: Task force wants to allow fees
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of California community college students take online classes that require them to pay an access fee to a commercial publisher on top of their registration fee for the course.
Students have complained that this practice forces them to pay twice for the same course and violates the state's college fee law because they can't download, print or keep the electronic texts and materials they've paid for. Some say they are not aware of the mandatory fee until after they've signed up for a class.
Now, rather than recommend the fee be halted or refunded, a state task force studying the issue wants to change the law to specifically allow such online fees. The college system's Board of Governors can change Title 5 governing college fees without Legislative approval.
The debate over appropriate fees for online courses comes as more colleges are relying on off-the-shelf, Web-based classes from publishers that create - and own- the curriculum.
"Instructional delivery systems have changed, so we're making sure that our language is changed," said Barry Russell, vice chancellor of academic affairs with the college chancellor's office in Sacramento, which oversees the state's 112 community colleges.
Task force members
Russell served on the 31-member task force, which met Monday. It included nine vendors representing five publishers that sell online courses, eight faculty members, a handful of college experts in online education, top brass from the college system and one student.
The chancellor's office created the Instructional Materials Fees Task Force last month in response to a Chronicle story about student anger over a $78 fee for an online class at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Students had to pay the mandatory fee to a publisher, Pearson, on top of their $85 registration fee.
"This is a matter that needs to be settled in court - it's illegal," said Fred Rassaii, a Foothill student who complained to campus administrators in April. They rejected his complaint.
"You could swallow the fee if it went to the state, but it's going to private corporations," he said.
Rassaii and others say it's wrong that students have no choice but to pay the fee if they want to take the class. The fee has been compared to the cost of a textbook. But Rassaii said students can choose whether to buy a book, yet are barred from the course if they don't pay the publisher. Even in traditional classrooms, some instructors now require students to do homework online, which can require a fee to an online publisher. Again, students have no choice.
"The homework is worth 20 percent of your grade," Rassaii said.
Same as a workbook
Shaine Johnson, the only student on the task force, said the group concluded that what students get for the fee is comparable to buying a workbook that they use once.
"The technology advanced faster than the law," said Johnson, a student at Los Rios Community College in Sacramento. He is interning at the chancellor's office and was tapped for the task force.
Johnson said that when students register at Los Rios, extra charges are clearly noted.
Told that Foothill students felt blindsided by the fees, he said students should have all the fee information up front.
Kevin Feliciano, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges and a student at Ohlone College in Fremont, said too many students are unaware of extra fees.
"The true cost of an education should be transparent, honest and not done to line the pockets of textbook publishers," he said, adding that the student government will consider a resolution on the fees at its meeting in September.
Meanwhile, the plan to change the law and allow the fee is not yet a done deal.
Once a recommendation is finalized, Chancellor Jack Scott will review it before sending it to the Consultation Council, an advisory board of faculty, staff and others. After that, the Board of Governors will take the final vote.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of California community college students take online classes that require them to pay an access fee to a commercial publisher on top of their registration fee for the course.
Students have complained that this practice forces them to pay twice for the same course and violates the state's college fee law because they can't download, print or keep the electronic texts and materials they've paid for. Some say they are not aware of the mandatory fee until after they've signed up for a class.
Now, rather than recommend the fee be halted or refunded, a state task force studying the issue wants to change the law to specifically allow such online fees. The college system's Board of Governors can change Title 5 governing college fees without Legislative approval.
The debate over appropriate fees for online courses comes as more colleges are relying on off-the-shelf, Web-based classes from publishers that create - and own- the curriculum.
"Instructional delivery systems have changed, so we're making sure that our language is changed," said Barry Russell, vice chancellor of academic affairs with the college chancellor's office in Sacramento, which oversees the state's 112 community colleges.
Task force members
Russell served on the 31-member task force, which met Monday. It included nine vendors representing five publishers that sell online courses, eight faculty members, a handful of college experts in online education, top brass from the college system and one student.
The chancellor's office created the Instructional Materials Fees Task Force last month in response to a Chronicle story about student anger over a $78 fee for an online class at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Students had to pay the mandatory fee to a publisher, Pearson, on top of their $85 registration fee.
"This is a matter that needs to be settled in court - it's illegal," said Fred Rassaii, a Foothill student who complained to campus administrators in April. They rejected his complaint.
"You could swallow the fee if it went to the state, but it's going to private corporations," he said.
Rassaii and others say it's wrong that students have no choice but to pay the fee if they want to take the class. The fee has been compared to the cost of a textbook. But Rassaii said students can choose whether to buy a book, yet are barred from the course if they don't pay the publisher. Even in traditional classrooms, some instructors now require students to do homework online, which can require a fee to an online publisher. Again, students have no choice.
"The homework is worth 20 percent of your grade," Rassaii said.
Same as a workbook
Shaine Johnson, the only student on the task force, said the group concluded that what students get for the fee is comparable to buying a workbook that they use once.
"The technology advanced faster than the law," said Johnson, a student at Los Rios Community College in Sacramento. He is interning at the chancellor's office and was tapped for the task force.
Johnson said that when students register at Los Rios, extra charges are clearly noted.
Told that Foothill students felt blindsided by the fees, he said students should have all the fee information up front.
Kevin Feliciano, president of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges and a student at Ohlone College in Fremont, said too many students are unaware of extra fees.
"The true cost of an education should be transparent, honest and not done to line the pockets of textbook publishers," he said, adding that the student government will consider a resolution on the fees at its meeting in September.
Meanwhile, the plan to change the law and allow the fee is not yet a done deal.
Once a recommendation is finalized, Chancellor Jack Scott will review it before sending it to the Consultation Council, an advisory board of faculty, staff and others. After that, the Board of Governors will take the final vote.
Battle over online class fees moves to Capitol
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Efforts to quickly legalize student access fees for community college cyber-classes - fees that are banned by state law but which may be rampant across California campuses - have hit a snag in the state Capitol.
Darrell Steinberg, president pro tem of the state Senate, has strongly criticized a recent recommendation by a community college task force to change state law to permit such fees, which are charged by publishers capitalizing on the explosive popularity of online courses.
The problem, he told community college leaders, is that the group met behind closed doors, was heavily weighted with publishers, and failed to disclose conflicts of interest.
In his letter last week, the Sacramento Democrat also warned Community College Chancellor Jack Scott and Scott Himelstein, president of the community college Board of Governors that hasty legalization of such fees could open the door to "predatory publisher practices at the expense of students and families." He called for "a full vetting" of the issue with proper public notice and participation.
Open resources
Echoing Steinberg's concerns are advocates of free online curriculum - known as open educational resources - and the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst.
"We want to know how widespread this (fee) practice is," said Paul Steenhausen, a community college specialist at the Legislative Analyst's Office. "This is something the Legislature will review."
Enrollment in online courses has soared in the past decade. In 2000, 115,000 California community college students took at least one such class, but last year more than 600,000 took online courses, according to a report by Steenhausen. While community college enrollment grew by just 1 percent a year in that time, online enrollment climbed by 19 percent a year, the report found.
Now the fee controversy puts California at a crossroads about how to proceed: Should the state make it easier for publishers to provide sometimes costly, off-the-shelf cyber classes, or should lawmakers encourage a greater reliance on free or low-cost curriculum, often developed by professors for broad distribution online?
Pearson, a big publisher that sells online classes to 3 out of 4 California community colleges - says students and faculty strongly benefit from its courses, which provide instant quiz grades and academic feedback, "freeing instructors to spend less time grading and more time working directly with their students," the company said responding to inquiries from The Chronicle.
But advocates of free online instructional materials also have powerful proponents. They say that textbooks in the public domain are increasingly necessary as the costs of college - and books - rise ever higher.
The U.S. Department of Education endorses free curriculum as a matter of policy, and this year began requiring community colleges that rely on federal grant money earmarked for developing online curriculum to offer it at no cost to students.
Push for lower fees
In California, former state Senate leader Dean Florez heads a foundation called 20 Million Minds, which works to lower the cost of college texts through the use of open educational resources. It's across the street from the state Capitol, and Florez hasn't hesitated to tell his former colleagues that it's a bad idea to let publishers charge for access.
"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation," he said. Permitting the fees "has the potential to create a very, very bad precedent."
"It's not just about academic affordability or fee stability. It's bigger. It's the potential for open educational resources to be put into the mix," Florez said.
The fee controversy came to light in June after The Chronicle published a story about student anger over a $78 fee for an online math class at Foothill Community College in Los Altos Hills. To enroll, students had to pay the fee to Pearson on top of their $85 registration fee to the college, effectively doubling the price of the course.
College officials defended the publisher's fee as a legitimate charge for instructional materials. Yet state law prohibits such fees unless students can keep the materials they've purchased.
Students said they couldn't download, store or print the electronic textbook they paid for, and that their access code had an expiration date. Jason Jordan, a senior vice president at Pearson, confirmed that students "can't download it and keep it. It's a purely Web-based application."
Fred Rassaii, a Foothill student who first complained to campus officials about the fee in April, believes every student who has paid such a fee - perhaps thousands statewide - is owed a refund.
'Multibillion-dollar fleecing'
"Students are being robbed," he said. "It's not limited to California. We're talking about a multibillion-dollar fleecing of American students."
Rassaii called Steinberg's effort "a good start."
Foothill College was once a hub of advocacy for free courseware - and many professors still use it. Hal Plotkin, a former trustee of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, was a huge proponent and now serves as a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education.
Although the Obama administration has taken no position on the fee issue, Plotkin said he was "greatly heartened" to see Steinberg's letter, which also urged the college leaders to consider "other online educational resources that may be lower in cost or free to students."
Chancellor Scott and Board President Himelstein have not yet replied to the letter.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Efforts to quickly legalize student access fees for community college cyber-classes - fees that are banned by state law but which may be rampant across California campuses - have hit a snag in the state Capitol.
Darrell Steinberg, president pro tem of the state Senate, has strongly criticized a recent recommendation by a community college task force to change state law to permit such fees, which are charged by publishers capitalizing on the explosive popularity of online courses.
The problem, he told community college leaders, is that the group met behind closed doors, was heavily weighted with publishers, and failed to disclose conflicts of interest.
In his letter last week, the Sacramento Democrat also warned Community College Chancellor Jack Scott and Scott Himelstein, president of the community college Board of Governors that hasty legalization of such fees could open the door to "predatory publisher practices at the expense of students and families." He called for "a full vetting" of the issue with proper public notice and participation.
Open resources
Echoing Steinberg's concerns are advocates of free online curriculum - known as open educational resources - and the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst.
"We want to know how widespread this (fee) practice is," said Paul Steenhausen, a community college specialist at the Legislative Analyst's Office. "This is something the Legislature will review."
Enrollment in online courses has soared in the past decade. In 2000, 115,000 California community college students took at least one such class, but last year more than 600,000 took online courses, according to a report by Steenhausen. While community college enrollment grew by just 1 percent a year in that time, online enrollment climbed by 19 percent a year, the report found.
Now the fee controversy puts California at a crossroads about how to proceed: Should the state make it easier for publishers to provide sometimes costly, off-the-shelf cyber classes, or should lawmakers encourage a greater reliance on free or low-cost curriculum, often developed by professors for broad distribution online?
Pearson, a big publisher that sells online classes to 3 out of 4 California community colleges - says students and faculty strongly benefit from its courses, which provide instant quiz grades and academic feedback, "freeing instructors to spend less time grading and more time working directly with their students," the company said responding to inquiries from The Chronicle.
But advocates of free online instructional materials also have powerful proponents. They say that textbooks in the public domain are increasingly necessary as the costs of college - and books - rise ever higher.
The U.S. Department of Education endorses free curriculum as a matter of policy, and this year began requiring community colleges that rely on federal grant money earmarked for developing online curriculum to offer it at no cost to students.
Push for lower fees
In California, former state Senate leader Dean Florez heads a foundation called 20 Million Minds, which works to lower the cost of college texts through the use of open educational resources. It's across the street from the state Capitol, and Florez hasn't hesitated to tell his former colleagues that it's a bad idea to let publishers charge for access.
"As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation," he said. Permitting the fees "has the potential to create a very, very bad precedent."
"It's not just about academic affordability or fee stability. It's bigger. It's the potential for open educational resources to be put into the mix," Florez said.
The fee controversy came to light in June after The Chronicle published a story about student anger over a $78 fee for an online math class at Foothill Community College in Los Altos Hills. To enroll, students had to pay the fee to Pearson on top of their $85 registration fee to the college, effectively doubling the price of the course.
College officials defended the publisher's fee as a legitimate charge for instructional materials. Yet state law prohibits such fees unless students can keep the materials they've purchased.
Students said they couldn't download, store or print the electronic textbook they paid for, and that their access code had an expiration date. Jason Jordan, a senior vice president at Pearson, confirmed that students "can't download it and keep it. It's a purely Web-based application."
Fred Rassaii, a Foothill student who first complained to campus officials about the fee in April, believes every student who has paid such a fee - perhaps thousands statewide - is owed a refund.
'Multibillion-dollar fleecing'
"Students are being robbed," he said. "It's not limited to California. We're talking about a multibillion-dollar fleecing of American students."
Rassaii called Steinberg's effort "a good start."
Foothill College was once a hub of advocacy for free courseware - and many professors still use it. Hal Plotkin, a former trustee of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, was a huge proponent and now serves as a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education.
Although the Obama administration has taken no position on the fee issue, Plotkin said he was "greatly heartened" to see Steinberg's letter, which also urged the college leaders to consider "other online educational resources that may be lower in cost or free to students."
Chancellor Scott and Board President Himelstein have not yet replied to the letter.
Latino Teachers Needed For Classroom Role Models
I'm glad that this piece by Joy Resmovits in the Huffington Post underscores the importance of Latino/a teachers. There's not a whole lot of research on this but there definitely is some. In particular, Ana Maria Villegas' research comes to mind. Latina teachers gravitate to hard-to-staff schools and they're more likely to remain within them longer, thus addressing both the bedeviling recruitment and retention issues of public schools. Aside from the role modeling that most of us know matters, it therefore makes sense from an efficiency perspective to recruit and hire them.
-Angela
Latino Teachers Needed For Classroom Role Models
by Joy Resmovits
8/13/11 05:20 PM ET
One day during his first week teaching fourth grade in San Antonio’s largely Hispanic Bonham Academy, David Nungaray -- a Teach for America teacher whose parents emigrated from Mexico -- posed a question:
"How many of you think you may want to go to college?" Nungaray asked.
Within seconds, almost every student had his or her hand in the air. Except one.
"I’m going to go to jail," the student said.
When Nungaray probed further, the student responded that his father had gone to jail. Why wouldn’t he?
From that point on, Nungaray emphasized college attainment to all of his students, but paid extra attention to the one who said he was jail-bound. He explained, "I told him every day, 'Good morning. You’re smart, you’re creative, you’re intelligent. You can do this.'"
A few weeks later, after a day spent wearing Nungaray’s Chapman University fraternity paraphernalia, the student had updated his goal sheet, saying he wanted to attend Chapman like Nungaray, who was a first-generation college student himself. By year's end, the student updated his goal sheet again: he was aiming for Yale.
But this student was lucky. His chances of having a teacher like Nungaray were very slim. According to recent census data, 22 percent of all public school students are Latino, but only seven percent of teachers are. And only two percent of teachers are, like Nungaray, black or Latino males.
"I know there’s an added impact with shared background at an elementary school level," said Nungaray, who even had his fourth graders filling out mock college applications by the end of the year. "I talk about my family and my background. This is a going-back-to-my-roots experience -- I teach in a setting that reminds me of where I grew up. The impact I’ve had can be attributed to this shared background with my students."
While there’s little definitive research linking student performance to teacher ethnicity, the sense that shared cultural backgrounds is a bellwether for classroom motivation is making the U.S. government and influential education organizations seriously examine the disparity between the exploding number of Latino students in classrooms and the small number of Latino teachers leading them.
"We know that students benefit when they can learn from teachers who look like them and who can be strong role models," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told The Huffington Post. "That’s why recruiting more Latino teachers is part of our overall effort to strengthen the teaching profession and ensure that students are learning from a diverse group of great teachers."
Education officials and policymakers are engaged in a polarized, ideological debate about teacher quality and the ability of teachers to help overcome poverty. As those thoughts are translated into state laws, a generation of teachers prepares to retire, providing what Duncan and the Department of Education with what they see as an opportunity to create a new breed of teacher.
One piece of that puzzle is recruiting enough minority and Latino teachers so that the people standing in front of the classroom begin to look like their students.
"No one believes that only Latino teachers can teach Latino kids, but there's no getting around it: Latino teachers can play a really important role model role," said Juan Sepúlveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. "If there are Latinos in front of the classroom that share a common culture, they can understand what students are going through."
Experts attribute the incongruence between the number of Latino students and their teachers to the small pool of college-educated Latino professionals. For example, the achievement gap between Latino and white students in math at grades 4 and 8 is 20 points on the National Association for Educational Progress exam. Only thirteen percent of Latinos have Bachelor's degrees.
That circular problem is what Nungaray sought to address with his students. When he spoke to the mother of the allegedly jail-bound student, he said, her goals and expectations for him were lower to begin with. "She said she never thought her child would be remotely speaking about going to college," Nungaray said. "She thought it wouldn’t be a possibility. She had given into expectations that others had set."
"There’s so few of us in general in the educational pipeline, so the pool is really small," said Enrique Murillo, a professor of education at California State University, San Bernardino, commissioner of the California Student Aid Commission and executive director of Latino Education & Advocacy Days. "It stems from the overall crisis in Latino education. The main crux here is that there’s a mismatch between school and home, and Latino educators are bridge builders that help close that mismatch."
The disparity "has created a cultural and linguistic gulf," he said, that particularly hurts students who take English as a second language.
According to Angela Valenzuela, an education professor at University of Texas at Austin, a growing pool of research ties Latino role models to learning. A 2003 report found a few studies on the correlation of Latino teachers and student achievement based on non-test factors concluded that students of color perform better when taught by teachers similar origin. Another study found that minority teachers have higher expectations for students from the same ethnic group.
While researchers continue to assess the depth of the problem, government and non-government organizations work to reach a solution.
Forty percent of Teach for America's students, said Amanda Fernandez, the organization's vice president for diversity and inclusiveness, are Latino. "We need to have the best representation that we can," she said. To that end, TFA is partnering with groups like New Futuro to help find more Latino teachers. TFA also recruits in universities with high Latino populations, and will have 700 Latino teachers in its 9200-member corps next year. That representation has grown ten percent annually since the 2006-2007 academic year, hopefully leading up to a goal of having ten percent of all TFA teachers be Latino by 2015.
Sepúlveda said that the government is trying to address the shortage by recruiting teachers through the online portal teach.gov.
"We can project that our best bet is that in the next five to six years, there will be another million teachers at the other end of the baby boom generation who will be retiring," he said. "It's a window of opportunity for us as a country to help create the next generation of teachers. From the Obama administration side, we said, 'Let's get prepared for that, let's target efforts to young students in general -- particularly minority groups with large numbers in public schools.'"
That's what Nungaray is hoping for. "I created my own definition of success as a male who’s Latino and first-generation on my own because there was no one really, not even my parents with the best intentions, who could necessarily guide me there," he said.
-Angela
Latino Teachers Needed For Classroom Role Models
by Joy Resmovits
8/13/11 05:20 PM ET
One day during his first week teaching fourth grade in San Antonio’s largely Hispanic Bonham Academy, David Nungaray -- a Teach for America teacher whose parents emigrated from Mexico -- posed a question:
"How many of you think you may want to go to college?" Nungaray asked.
Within seconds, almost every student had his or her hand in the air. Except one.
"I’m going to go to jail," the student said.
When Nungaray probed further, the student responded that his father had gone to jail. Why wouldn’t he?
From that point on, Nungaray emphasized college attainment to all of his students, but paid extra attention to the one who said he was jail-bound. He explained, "I told him every day, 'Good morning. You’re smart, you’re creative, you’re intelligent. You can do this.'"
A few weeks later, after a day spent wearing Nungaray’s Chapman University fraternity paraphernalia, the student had updated his goal sheet, saying he wanted to attend Chapman like Nungaray, who was a first-generation college student himself. By year's end, the student updated his goal sheet again: he was aiming for Yale.
But this student was lucky. His chances of having a teacher like Nungaray were very slim. According to recent census data, 22 percent of all public school students are Latino, but only seven percent of teachers are. And only two percent of teachers are, like Nungaray, black or Latino males.
"I know there’s an added impact with shared background at an elementary school level," said Nungaray, who even had his fourth graders filling out mock college applications by the end of the year. "I talk about my family and my background. This is a going-back-to-my-roots experience -- I teach in a setting that reminds me of where I grew up. The impact I’ve had can be attributed to this shared background with my students."
While there’s little definitive research linking student performance to teacher ethnicity, the sense that shared cultural backgrounds is a bellwether for classroom motivation is making the U.S. government and influential education organizations seriously examine the disparity between the exploding number of Latino students in classrooms and the small number of Latino teachers leading them.
"We know that students benefit when they can learn from teachers who look like them and who can be strong role models," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told The Huffington Post. "That’s why recruiting more Latino teachers is part of our overall effort to strengthen the teaching profession and ensure that students are learning from a diverse group of great teachers."
Education officials and policymakers are engaged in a polarized, ideological debate about teacher quality and the ability of teachers to help overcome poverty. As those thoughts are translated into state laws, a generation of teachers prepares to retire, providing what Duncan and the Department of Education with what they see as an opportunity to create a new breed of teacher.
One piece of that puzzle is recruiting enough minority and Latino teachers so that the people standing in front of the classroom begin to look like their students.
"No one believes that only Latino teachers can teach Latino kids, but there's no getting around it: Latino teachers can play a really important role model role," said Juan Sepúlveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. "If there are Latinos in front of the classroom that share a common culture, they can understand what students are going through."
Experts attribute the incongruence between the number of Latino students and their teachers to the small pool of college-educated Latino professionals. For example, the achievement gap between Latino and white students in math at grades 4 and 8 is 20 points on the National Association for Educational Progress exam. Only thirteen percent of Latinos have Bachelor's degrees.
That circular problem is what Nungaray sought to address with his students. When he spoke to the mother of the allegedly jail-bound student, he said, her goals and expectations for him were lower to begin with. "She said she never thought her child would be remotely speaking about going to college," Nungaray said. "She thought it wouldn’t be a possibility. She had given into expectations that others had set."
"There’s so few of us in general in the educational pipeline, so the pool is really small," said Enrique Murillo, a professor of education at California State University, San Bernardino, commissioner of the California Student Aid Commission and executive director of Latino Education & Advocacy Days. "It stems from the overall crisis in Latino education. The main crux here is that there’s a mismatch between school and home, and Latino educators are bridge builders that help close that mismatch."
The disparity "has created a cultural and linguistic gulf," he said, that particularly hurts students who take English as a second language.
According to Angela Valenzuela, an education professor at University of Texas at Austin, a growing pool of research ties Latino role models to learning. A 2003 report found a few studies on the correlation of Latino teachers and student achievement based on non-test factors concluded that students of color perform better when taught by teachers similar origin. Another study found that minority teachers have higher expectations for students from the same ethnic group.
While researchers continue to assess the depth of the problem, government and non-government organizations work to reach a solution.
Forty percent of Teach for America's students, said Amanda Fernandez, the organization's vice president for diversity and inclusiveness, are Latino. "We need to have the best representation that we can," she said. To that end, TFA is partnering with groups like New Futuro to help find more Latino teachers. TFA also recruits in universities with high Latino populations, and will have 700 Latino teachers in its 9200-member corps next year. That representation has grown ten percent annually since the 2006-2007 academic year, hopefully leading up to a goal of having ten percent of all TFA teachers be Latino by 2015.
Sepúlveda said that the government is trying to address the shortage by recruiting teachers through the online portal teach.gov.
"We can project that our best bet is that in the next five to six years, there will be another million teachers at the other end of the baby boom generation who will be retiring," he said. "It's a window of opportunity for us as a country to help create the next generation of teachers. From the Obama administration side, we said, 'Let's get prepared for that, let's target efforts to young students in general -- particularly minority groups with large numbers in public schools.'"
That's what Nungaray is hoping for. "I created my own definition of success as a male who’s Latino and first-generation on my own because there was no one really, not even my parents with the best intentions, who could necessarily guide me there," he said.
Are School Rankings Fair? The Children At Risk Example
From Ed Fuller's blog, A Fuller Look. School rankings not only reinscribe the perceived utility of the testing system, but they can also potentially really unfairly hurt the teachers, principals, and the children themselves within them.
Reconceptualizing Geography as Democratic Global Citizenship Education
Great piece by Gaudelli and Heilman. Among other things, they critique global learning for mostly being taught in an individualistic manner, neglecting the importance of the social and the political. To be taught in a critical way ("critical pedagogy"),it does not sufficiently move beyond personal experience.
Key quote from within:
Angela
by William Gaudelli & Elizabeth Heilman — 2009
Background: Geography education typically appears in school curricula in a didactic or disciplinary manner. Yet, both the didactic and the disciplinary approach to geography education lack a serious engagement with society, politics, and power, or democratic theory. We suggest, from Dewey, that most students, the social studies, and indeed society are not well served by these approaches, particularly as we confront global challenges that demand geographic knowledge and insight.
Purpose: We propose that geography can and should reflect the interests of students and society and thus be what Dewey calls psychologized through a democratic vision of global citizenship education (GCE). Toward that end, we develop a typology of global education to identify those types most congruent with democratic citizenship (cosmopolitan, environmental, and critical justice) and those less congruent (disciplinary, neoliberal, and human relations). Drawing on our typology, we show how GCE can be a point of synthesis in practice, bringing together global education and reconstituted geographic knowledge.
Research Design: The method of this article is a secondary analysis of literature in democratic theory, global citizenship education, and geography education that synthesizes points of overlap.
Conclusions: Based on this analysis, we recommend that geography curriculum should be remade within a vision similar to GCE so that space and place can be socially understood.
The new global contexts in which we all live and interact demand that we think in new ways about what our world most needs from its citizens. We live in a world in which our geopolitical, environmental, and economic fates are increasingly interconnected, yet fragile. People are fearful about the environment and climate, maintaining economic competitiveness, securing strategic military advantage, and assuring personal and national safety in the United States. The catastrophic events of 9-11 generated momentary goodwill toward the United States because the country was victimized by a heinous international crime. Rather than respond to these events as a violent episode that called for justice and structural reforms, the Bush administration chose a different path. They championed a transformative diplomacy founded in the belief that the world could be remade in the image of the United States, embodied in a free-market utopia in Iraq (Kohut & Stokes, 2006).
The missionlike zeal and “go-it-alone” hubris of the Bush administration in fighting simultaneous wars in southwest Asia has had serious repercussions, however. Notably, historical allies have grown distant, U.S. standing in the world has decreased, and outright hostility has emerged in once-friendly nations like Jordan and Turkey (Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2005). Despite this arguably bleak circumstance, we believe there now exists a unique opportunity to rethink curriculum in the United States in light of the current situation, one that opens up to possibilities of learning about the world rather than remaking it in our image. Although our global challenges are undeniable, they are also fascinating and even hopeful to many who see potential for an increasingly interconnected, interestingly diverse, and mutually enhancing global community.
The state of knowledge about the world among people in the United States, however, presents a serious obstacle to moving toward these larger aims. Many Americans seem to have little critical capacity to understand complex global issues, such as the roots of terrorism or policy options for sustainability, not to mention rudimentary knowledge about the world. The 2006 Geographic Literacy Survey, conducted among high school students by Roper Public Affairs for the National Geographic Education Foundation, showed that not only is conceptual understanding sorely lacking, but there is also a dearth of knowledge related to locations, demographics, economics, and cultural characteristics among U.S. adolescents. For example, a third of those surveyed could not find Louisiana, and 50% could not find New York City on a U.S. map; 20% could not locate the United States on a world map. Three quarters could not identify Iran or Israel, and 54% believed Sudan, the largest country in Africa, to be in Asia. About 45% said China’s population is twice that of the United States, rather than four times greater, and 74% thought English is the most commonly spoken language on the planet. These results are consistent with the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and with the most recent National Geographic survey (GfK NOP, 2006). According to the National Geographic Society Global Geographic Literacy Survey, “Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, fewer than 15 percent of young U.S. citizens surveyed could locate either country and 58% of young Americans cannot locate Japan on a map” (Trivedi, 2002). Given the very real issues we face and the immense power of the United States on the global stage, such ignorance is disturbing and dangerous.
In this article, we argue that the very nature and value of geography and citizenship education need to be reexamined in light of the changing global scene and apparent U.S. apathy about it. We wish to highlight the interplay between seemingly disparate events on the national and global stage, which are linked with the ethics and politics of citizenship that shape citizenship education. Most broadly, we argue that our world faces challenges that are more social, human, civic, and ethical than scientific, mathematical, and technical, and because of this, we call for a new priority to be placed on social studies, geography, and citizenship education. The technical capacity to feed and provide health care for the 1.4 billion people on our planet who live on less than $2 a day exists. We have the technical capacity for green energy and for environmental sustainability, and the scientific wherewithal to assert that racism rests on no biological or genetic grounds. Yet, it is the quality of our politics and ethics, our ability to talk with each other across difference, and the tenuousness of our collective commitment to shared humanity that get in the way of achieving our best national and global possibilities. In the last century, we turned to science and disciplinary knowledge for progress. We suggest, from Dewey, that most students, the social studies, and indeed society are not well served by these approaches. In this century, we must turn to ethics and the qualities of citizenship to realize a better world.
As in other disciplines, there are several paradigmatic ways to approach geography teaching. The most common are didactic and disciplinary approaches. Didactic teachers emphasize memorization, recall, and learning by rote of spatial facts and identifications. A discipline-centered curriculum positions students as budding geographers who attempt to construct (or replicate) knowledge of a discipline to develop geography-informed thinking. These have been the most common forms in K–12 geography education. Didactic geography learning is hardly defensible in and of itself. Disciplinary approaches to teaching geography, although improving geographic learning for some and increasing Advanced Placement course offerings for a few, fail to adequately address the need to place geography in the service of citizenship.
A third and different approach to geography teaching, rare in most places, centers on democratic practice. We argue that this approach is most justifiable as citizenship education for a sustainable and ethical world. A democratic approach to geography education can be thought of through what Dewey describes in My Pedagogic Creed (1897a) as an education that attends to the “two sides”—the social and the psychological. He explains,
I believe that the psychological and social sides are organically related and that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other. We are told that the psychological definition of education is barren and formal—that it gives us only the idea of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the individual to a preconceived social and political status. (p. 75)
A democratic education honors the individual and attends to the personal characteristics, curiosities, and growth of students. Yet, “society is an organic union of individuals,” and all individual development occurs in contexts of families, various forms of communities, and nations. As Dewey (1897a) explains, “powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted—we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents—into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service” (p. 77). Thus, learning worthy of its name must have meaningful social ends.
A Deweyan perspective of democratic theory suggests that subject matter education, like geography, needs to be taught in a way that contributes to both personal and social growth rather than solely for academic socialization. Disciplinary geographic thinking certainly has value, but geography for citizens is only justified in democratic theory to the extent that it contributes to personal development and to the extent that it serves as a “method of social progress and reform” (Dewey, 1897a, p. 77). The worth of geography is not rooted in the nature of the discipline, but instead by the use that we make of it in our lives and in society. In his essay, “The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum,” Dewey (1897b) explains the more specific implications of democratic education for school curriculum:
From the psychological standpoint, we are concerned with the study [a subject matter] as a mode or form of living individual experience. Geography is not only a set of facts and principles, which may be classified and discussed by themselves; it is also a way in which some actual individual feels and thinks the world. It must be the latter before it can be the former. It becomes the former only as the culmination or completed outgrowth of the latter. Only when the individual has passed through a certain amount of experience, which he vitally realizes on his own account, is he prepared to take the objective and logical point of view, capable of standing off and analyzing the facts and principles involved. (pp. 168–169)
We propose in this article that geography can and should use experience and be what Dewey calls psychologized through a democratic vision of global citizenship education (GCE). We begin by illustrating how both didactic and disciplinary approaches to geography education fail to seriously engage with society and politics, moving to consider how geography might engage both the personal and the social and political. We offer a typology of global education to identify those types most congruent with democratic citizenship, namely cosmopolitan, environmental, and critical justice, and those less congruent, such as disciplinary, neoliberal, and human relations global educations. We then explain how GCE can be a point of synthesis for global education that reconstitutes geographic thinking and knowledge in a manner that has great utility for students and society in an increasingly global world.
Read on here.
Key quote from within:
"Geography is an inheritance of efforts to divide the world, to construct places in a static way, to name people and their regions, and, ultimately, to assign value to those people and places. Geography was, in short, a means of empire that was conceived as a bridge between the hard sciences and the humanities (Willinsky, 1998)."
Angela
by William Gaudelli & Elizabeth Heilman — 2009
Background: Geography education typically appears in school curricula in a didactic or disciplinary manner. Yet, both the didactic and the disciplinary approach to geography education lack a serious engagement with society, politics, and power, or democratic theory. We suggest, from Dewey, that most students, the social studies, and indeed society are not well served by these approaches, particularly as we confront global challenges that demand geographic knowledge and insight.
Purpose: We propose that geography can and should reflect the interests of students and society and thus be what Dewey calls psychologized through a democratic vision of global citizenship education (GCE). Toward that end, we develop a typology of global education to identify those types most congruent with democratic citizenship (cosmopolitan, environmental, and critical justice) and those less congruent (disciplinary, neoliberal, and human relations). Drawing on our typology, we show how GCE can be a point of synthesis in practice, bringing together global education and reconstituted geographic knowledge.
Research Design: The method of this article is a secondary analysis of literature in democratic theory, global citizenship education, and geography education that synthesizes points of overlap.
Conclusions: Based on this analysis, we recommend that geography curriculum should be remade within a vision similar to GCE so that space and place can be socially understood.
The new global contexts in which we all live and interact demand that we think in new ways about what our world most needs from its citizens. We live in a world in which our geopolitical, environmental, and economic fates are increasingly interconnected, yet fragile. People are fearful about the environment and climate, maintaining economic competitiveness, securing strategic military advantage, and assuring personal and national safety in the United States. The catastrophic events of 9-11 generated momentary goodwill toward the United States because the country was victimized by a heinous international crime. Rather than respond to these events as a violent episode that called for justice and structural reforms, the Bush administration chose a different path. They championed a transformative diplomacy founded in the belief that the world could be remade in the image of the United States, embodied in a free-market utopia in Iraq (Kohut & Stokes, 2006).
The missionlike zeal and “go-it-alone” hubris of the Bush administration in fighting simultaneous wars in southwest Asia has had serious repercussions, however. Notably, historical allies have grown distant, U.S. standing in the world has decreased, and outright hostility has emerged in once-friendly nations like Jordan and Turkey (Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2005). Despite this arguably bleak circumstance, we believe there now exists a unique opportunity to rethink curriculum in the United States in light of the current situation, one that opens up to possibilities of learning about the world rather than remaking it in our image. Although our global challenges are undeniable, they are also fascinating and even hopeful to many who see potential for an increasingly interconnected, interestingly diverse, and mutually enhancing global community.
The state of knowledge about the world among people in the United States, however, presents a serious obstacle to moving toward these larger aims. Many Americans seem to have little critical capacity to understand complex global issues, such as the roots of terrorism or policy options for sustainability, not to mention rudimentary knowledge about the world. The 2006 Geographic Literacy Survey, conducted among high school students by Roper Public Affairs for the National Geographic Education Foundation, showed that not only is conceptual understanding sorely lacking, but there is also a dearth of knowledge related to locations, demographics, economics, and cultural characteristics among U.S. adolescents. For example, a third of those surveyed could not find Louisiana, and 50% could not find New York City on a U.S. map; 20% could not locate the United States on a world map. Three quarters could not identify Iran or Israel, and 54% believed Sudan, the largest country in Africa, to be in Asia. About 45% said China’s population is twice that of the United States, rather than four times greater, and 74% thought English is the most commonly spoken language on the planet. These results are consistent with the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and with the most recent National Geographic survey (GfK NOP, 2006). According to the National Geographic Society Global Geographic Literacy Survey, “Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, fewer than 15 percent of young U.S. citizens surveyed could locate either country and 58% of young Americans cannot locate Japan on a map” (Trivedi, 2002). Given the very real issues we face and the immense power of the United States on the global stage, such ignorance is disturbing and dangerous.
In this article, we argue that the very nature and value of geography and citizenship education need to be reexamined in light of the changing global scene and apparent U.S. apathy about it. We wish to highlight the interplay between seemingly disparate events on the national and global stage, which are linked with the ethics and politics of citizenship that shape citizenship education. Most broadly, we argue that our world faces challenges that are more social, human, civic, and ethical than scientific, mathematical, and technical, and because of this, we call for a new priority to be placed on social studies, geography, and citizenship education. The technical capacity to feed and provide health care for the 1.4 billion people on our planet who live on less than $2 a day exists. We have the technical capacity for green energy and for environmental sustainability, and the scientific wherewithal to assert that racism rests on no biological or genetic grounds. Yet, it is the quality of our politics and ethics, our ability to talk with each other across difference, and the tenuousness of our collective commitment to shared humanity that get in the way of achieving our best national and global possibilities. In the last century, we turned to science and disciplinary knowledge for progress. We suggest, from Dewey, that most students, the social studies, and indeed society are not well served by these approaches. In this century, we must turn to ethics and the qualities of citizenship to realize a better world.
As in other disciplines, there are several paradigmatic ways to approach geography teaching. The most common are didactic and disciplinary approaches. Didactic teachers emphasize memorization, recall, and learning by rote of spatial facts and identifications. A discipline-centered curriculum positions students as budding geographers who attempt to construct (or replicate) knowledge of a discipline to develop geography-informed thinking. These have been the most common forms in K–12 geography education. Didactic geography learning is hardly defensible in and of itself. Disciplinary approaches to teaching geography, although improving geographic learning for some and increasing Advanced Placement course offerings for a few, fail to adequately address the need to place geography in the service of citizenship.
A third and different approach to geography teaching, rare in most places, centers on democratic practice. We argue that this approach is most justifiable as citizenship education for a sustainable and ethical world. A democratic approach to geography education can be thought of through what Dewey describes in My Pedagogic Creed (1897a) as an education that attends to the “two sides”—the social and the psychological. He explains,
I believe that the psychological and social sides are organically related and that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other. We are told that the psychological definition of education is barren and formal—that it gives us only the idea of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the individual to a preconceived social and political status. (p. 75)
A democratic education honors the individual and attends to the personal characteristics, curiosities, and growth of students. Yet, “society is an organic union of individuals,” and all individual development occurs in contexts of families, various forms of communities, and nations. As Dewey (1897a) explains, “powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted—we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents—into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service” (p. 77). Thus, learning worthy of its name must have meaningful social ends.
A Deweyan perspective of democratic theory suggests that subject matter education, like geography, needs to be taught in a way that contributes to both personal and social growth rather than solely for academic socialization. Disciplinary geographic thinking certainly has value, but geography for citizens is only justified in democratic theory to the extent that it contributes to personal development and to the extent that it serves as a “method of social progress and reform” (Dewey, 1897a, p. 77). The worth of geography is not rooted in the nature of the discipline, but instead by the use that we make of it in our lives and in society. In his essay, “The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum,” Dewey (1897b) explains the more specific implications of democratic education for school curriculum:
From the psychological standpoint, we are concerned with the study [a subject matter] as a mode or form of living individual experience. Geography is not only a set of facts and principles, which may be classified and discussed by themselves; it is also a way in which some actual individual feels and thinks the world. It must be the latter before it can be the former. It becomes the former only as the culmination or completed outgrowth of the latter. Only when the individual has passed through a certain amount of experience, which he vitally realizes on his own account, is he prepared to take the objective and logical point of view, capable of standing off and analyzing the facts and principles involved. (pp. 168–169)
We propose in this article that geography can and should use experience and be what Dewey calls psychologized through a democratic vision of global citizenship education (GCE). We begin by illustrating how both didactic and disciplinary approaches to geography education fail to seriously engage with society and politics, moving to consider how geography might engage both the personal and the social and political. We offer a typology of global education to identify those types most congruent with democratic citizenship, namely cosmopolitan, environmental, and critical justice, and those less congruent, such as disciplinary, neoliberal, and human relations global educations. We then explain how GCE can be a point of synthesis for global education that reconstitutes geographic thinking and knowledge in a manner that has great utility for students and society in an increasingly global world.
Read on here.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Preparing for State Tests, to a Hip-Hop Beat
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: August 11, 2011
The team of six high school girls new to America sat frozen waiting for the next missing lyric, whiteboard and marker at the ready. They glanced toward their classmates, who sat nearby, in two competing teams.
One of their instructors, Sam Sellers, otherwise known as Rabbi Darkside, started a beat. Then Jamel Mims, otherwise known as M.C. Tingbudong, began rapping the lyrics of a song whose rhymes did not contain the familiar curses or boasts, but the vocabulary that New York high school students need to pass their Regents test in American history.
“Follow along closely so it won’t get convoluted,” Mr. Mims, 25, rapped, flicking his wrist to the beat. “The supreme law of the land is called the ...”
He paused. The girls conferred in their native language, Spanish, scrambled for the marker, and hoisted their whiteboard into the air. “The Constitution!” they shouted in English, reading off their answer.
“Righteous,” M.C. Tingbudong said.
In the realm of dry high school material in New York City, perhaps nothing is drier than Regents exams. The multiple-choice questions often read as if they are straight out of a 1950s textbook — and in fact, the language, showcased in the state’s extensive test archives, has remained essentially the same for decades. If there was an opposite of contemporary urban street culture, it might go a little something like this Regents classic:
“Which idea did the founding fathers include in the Constitution that allows Congress to meet the needs of a changing society? 1) federalism 2) separation of powers 3) the elastic clause 4) states’ rights.” (The answer can be found below.)
But instead of treating street culture as something that has no place in a classroom, it is being used as a vehicle to deliver instruction. That is the idea behind Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership that is trying to help hard-to-reach students pass the history Regents tests, which they must do to graduate.
“Linguistically, as far as the communities I work in, there is certainly bias toward them in these tests,” Mr. Mims said after a review class recently. A native of Washington, he also teaches Mandarin and got his rap name while studying rap culture in China. “It’s an effort to bridge the engagement gap,” Mr. Mims said.
Rap is also lyric-intensive, and its rhymes can be used as a device to help with memorizing facts. So the organization, which has attracted $400,000 in donations to develop and implement an arts-based Regents review curriculum, reached out to Mr. Sellers (whose rap name comes from being “the Jewish kid in our group of friends” growing up in Buffalo) and Tracee Worley, a history teacher, performance artist and curriculum designer.
Mr. Sellers, 33, had also taught history, so he was on familiar turf when coming up with two dozen rap songs with rapid-fire lyrics to review global history and American history. Students are given a 250-page workbook in which to fill in the blanks and write answers, and they are supposed to download the songs onto their MP3 players and memorize them at home.
So far, Fresh Prep has shown strong results in the high school where it started with 30 students in 2009 — significantly more students passed that year — and promising results in some classrooms at seven high-poverty high schools where it was used last year, the organization said. But there are still some problems, in part because hip-hop as a review method is hard to teach to a neophyte teacher. Now Urban Arts is revising its strategy to make sure a Fresh Prep artist instructor is always in the room.
“What we found is that when we had instructors who come from a hip-hop pedagogical foundation, the program is implemented with more fidelity,” said Tauheedah Baker-Jones, 33, the manager of the program.
This year, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Mims are teaching a summer class at Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics in Washington Heights, a school for Spanish-speaking immigrants who are so new that they learn history in Spanish, not English, and take a Spanish-language version of the exams.
It is their first time trying Fresh Prep in a classroom of students who are still learning English, and on a recent visit, the energy in the 90-minute class was high, but the vocabulary was tough, and the songs moved quickly:
“First Amendment, that’s freedom of speech, needed that desperately
Freedom of expression, plus church and state separately
Right to bear arms the deuce, Third the quartering of troops
Four: protection from search and seizure unless a warrant is used.”
Too fast for some, even though they were given the written lyrics.
“It’s difficult,” said Yurinda Acevedo, 16, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic in May 2010 and looked slightly embarrassed as she tried to follow along. “The English is not a piece of cake.” She also did not like the music, and had a suggestion: why not set the history to meringue, or perico ripiao, a Dominican form of that art?
But Wilny Estrella, 17, who has been in the United States for two years and, like most of the students in the class, failed her Regents in June, stood up at the end of class to offer a shout-out of recognition to the teachers. “I wasn’t good at history, but in the days I have been here I have learned a lot,” she said.
Saulio M. Tuero, a bilingual social studies teacher, kept score in the fill-in-the-blank lyrics game — which ended in a three-way tie — and helped out in Spanish, translating the concepts for the students. (The answer to the Regents question above is No. 3.)
Normally, Mr. Tuero said, he reviews material in Spanish, and focuses on teaching test-taking strategies. Because the Regents are so predictable over time, “I know every single question on this test,” he said.
It is an experiment for him to try out Fresh Prep and its curriculum, in part because as the Department of Education teacher in the room, he is the one who will be held responsible if the students fail when the history Regents is given again next week.
But half of the 20 students in the class also have yet to pass their English Regents, which includes an essay. And in that sense, he said, the hip-hop history review was playing a double role. “I’m not that worried about getting them to pass this test eventually, but the one thing they don’t get enough of is English,” he said. For his students to even read along with the intricate lyrics, he said, “just doing that is like a major advancement.”
Published: August 11, 2011
The team of six high school girls new to America sat frozen waiting for the next missing lyric, whiteboard and marker at the ready. They glanced toward their classmates, who sat nearby, in two competing teams.
One of their instructors, Sam Sellers, otherwise known as Rabbi Darkside, started a beat. Then Jamel Mims, otherwise known as M.C. Tingbudong, began rapping the lyrics of a song whose rhymes did not contain the familiar curses or boasts, but the vocabulary that New York high school students need to pass their Regents test in American history.
“Follow along closely so it won’t get convoluted,” Mr. Mims, 25, rapped, flicking his wrist to the beat. “The supreme law of the land is called the ...”
He paused. The girls conferred in their native language, Spanish, scrambled for the marker, and hoisted their whiteboard into the air. “The Constitution!” they shouted in English, reading off their answer.
“Righteous,” M.C. Tingbudong said.
In the realm of dry high school material in New York City, perhaps nothing is drier than Regents exams. The multiple-choice questions often read as if they are straight out of a 1950s textbook — and in fact, the language, showcased in the state’s extensive test archives, has remained essentially the same for decades. If there was an opposite of contemporary urban street culture, it might go a little something like this Regents classic:
“Which idea did the founding fathers include in the Constitution that allows Congress to meet the needs of a changing society? 1) federalism 2) separation of powers 3) the elastic clause 4) states’ rights.” (The answer can be found below.)
But instead of treating street culture as something that has no place in a classroom, it is being used as a vehicle to deliver instruction. That is the idea behind Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership that is trying to help hard-to-reach students pass the history Regents tests, which they must do to graduate.
“Linguistically, as far as the communities I work in, there is certainly bias toward them in these tests,” Mr. Mims said after a review class recently. A native of Washington, he also teaches Mandarin and got his rap name while studying rap culture in China. “It’s an effort to bridge the engagement gap,” Mr. Mims said.
Rap is also lyric-intensive, and its rhymes can be used as a device to help with memorizing facts. So the organization, which has attracted $400,000 in donations to develop and implement an arts-based Regents review curriculum, reached out to Mr. Sellers (whose rap name comes from being “the Jewish kid in our group of friends” growing up in Buffalo) and Tracee Worley, a history teacher, performance artist and curriculum designer.
Mr. Sellers, 33, had also taught history, so he was on familiar turf when coming up with two dozen rap songs with rapid-fire lyrics to review global history and American history. Students are given a 250-page workbook in which to fill in the blanks and write answers, and they are supposed to download the songs onto their MP3 players and memorize them at home.
So far, Fresh Prep has shown strong results in the high school where it started with 30 students in 2009 — significantly more students passed that year — and promising results in some classrooms at seven high-poverty high schools where it was used last year, the organization said. But there are still some problems, in part because hip-hop as a review method is hard to teach to a neophyte teacher. Now Urban Arts is revising its strategy to make sure a Fresh Prep artist instructor is always in the room.
“What we found is that when we had instructors who come from a hip-hop pedagogical foundation, the program is implemented with more fidelity,” said Tauheedah Baker-Jones, 33, the manager of the program.
This year, Mr. Sellers and Mr. Mims are teaching a summer class at Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics in Washington Heights, a school for Spanish-speaking immigrants who are so new that they learn history in Spanish, not English, and take a Spanish-language version of the exams.
It is their first time trying Fresh Prep in a classroom of students who are still learning English, and on a recent visit, the energy in the 90-minute class was high, but the vocabulary was tough, and the songs moved quickly:
“First Amendment, that’s freedom of speech, needed that desperately
Freedom of expression, plus church and state separately
Right to bear arms the deuce, Third the quartering of troops
Four: protection from search and seizure unless a warrant is used.”
Too fast for some, even though they were given the written lyrics.
“It’s difficult,” said Yurinda Acevedo, 16, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic in May 2010 and looked slightly embarrassed as she tried to follow along. “The English is not a piece of cake.” She also did not like the music, and had a suggestion: why not set the history to meringue, or perico ripiao, a Dominican form of that art?
But Wilny Estrella, 17, who has been in the United States for two years and, like most of the students in the class, failed her Regents in June, stood up at the end of class to offer a shout-out of recognition to the teachers. “I wasn’t good at history, but in the days I have been here I have learned a lot,” she said.
Saulio M. Tuero, a bilingual social studies teacher, kept score in the fill-in-the-blank lyrics game — which ended in a three-way tie — and helped out in Spanish, translating the concepts for the students. (The answer to the Regents question above is No. 3.)
Normally, Mr. Tuero said, he reviews material in Spanish, and focuses on teaching test-taking strategies. Because the Regents are so predictable over time, “I know every single question on this test,” he said.
It is an experiment for him to try out Fresh Prep and its curriculum, in part because as the Department of Education teacher in the room, he is the one who will be held responsible if the students fail when the history Regents is given again next week.
But half of the 20 students in the class also have yet to pass their English Regents, which includes an essay. And in that sense, he said, the hip-hop history review was playing a double role. “I’m not that worried about getting them to pass this test eventually, but the one thing they don’t get enough of is English,” he said. For his students to even read along with the intricate lyrics, he said, “just doing that is like a major advancement.”
Friday, August 12, 2011
Report: California Latinos Falling Behind in College Completion
by Amara Phillip | Diverse Issues in Higher Education
August 11, 2011
Early in his administration, President Obama laid out an ambitious plan for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. But a recent study suggests that Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group, may be falling behind academically in the nation's most populous state.
“Latino College Completion: California” was released by Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, as part of its Roadmap for Ensuring America's Future initiative. The Roadmap is a collaborative partnership among 60 members of the Increasing Latino College Completion initiative.
The report found that though the percentage of Hispanics with undergraduate degrees grew by 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, Hispanics still lag behind Whites in college completion rates.
From 2007 to 2008, the report finds, Hispanics in California had a graduation rate of 34.6 percent, compared to 47.4 percent of Whites.
Using another metric, the report found that among Hispanics, the completion rate per 100 full-time students was 13.7 percent, below the 14.5 percent needed relative to the adult population with no college degree.
The report suggests that increasing college completion among Hispanics is key to meeting the nation's long-term educational goals, says Deborah Santiago, co-founder of Excelencia in Education.
“We see this as an opportunity because in our broader initiative, we say that the nation can't meet our college goals without Latinos,” she says.
Hispanics have accounted for more than half of the United States' growth in the past decade, growing at a rate of 43 percent — four times that of the population as a whole, according to the United States Census. And in California, where Hispanics are 38 percent of the population, they are expected to become the state's largest ethnic group by 2020.
Santiago says that some of the report's findings can be attributed to the relative youthfulness of the state's Hispanic population. Nearly half of students in California's K-12 system are Hispanic.
“We're in the pipeline,” she says. “We just haven't gotten to the college level yet.”
Yet many Hispanic students are simply being “priced out,” she says, unable to meet the financial demands of a college education, either because of lack of education or resources.
“Research shows pretty clearly that Latinos have less college knowledge,” she says. “Forty percent of Latinos go to college as the first in their family. This tells us that you can't assume that the kitchen table conversation is there.”
The Excelencia report was unveiled on Tuesday at a gathering of local officials at the Westin San Francisco Market Street hotel in San Francisco, Calif. The organization also has released similar reports on Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Among the speakers was Frank Alvarez, president of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, or HSF.
HSF unveiled an expansion of its “Generation 1st Degree” initiative, funded in part by Jacki and Gilbert Cisneros, multi-state lottery winners and former residents of Pico Rivera, Calif.
“The Cisneros gift is just the beginning of the movement within the community of Pico Rivera and its population,” says Alvarez. “They lived there until they won the lottery, and so they felt that they wanted to give something back to their city.”
Though much of the initiative’s funding goes toward scholarships, much of the money will be used to fund educational programs about the importance of college for parents.
Alvarez says that the “Generation 1st Degree” program — which focuses on low-income high-achieving students — starts with the goal of ensuring that each of the nation’s 13 million Hispanic households has at least one holder of a college degree.
“Once the degree is in the household, then it demystifies the whole process,” he says.
August 11, 2011
Early in his administration, President Obama laid out an ambitious plan for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. But a recent study suggests that Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group, may be falling behind academically in the nation's most populous state.
“Latino College Completion: California” was released by Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, as part of its Roadmap for Ensuring America's Future initiative. The Roadmap is a collaborative partnership among 60 members of the Increasing Latino College Completion initiative.
The report found that though the percentage of Hispanics with undergraduate degrees grew by 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, Hispanics still lag behind Whites in college completion rates.
From 2007 to 2008, the report finds, Hispanics in California had a graduation rate of 34.6 percent, compared to 47.4 percent of Whites.
Using another metric, the report found that among Hispanics, the completion rate per 100 full-time students was 13.7 percent, below the 14.5 percent needed relative to the adult population with no college degree.
The report suggests that increasing college completion among Hispanics is key to meeting the nation's long-term educational goals, says Deborah Santiago, co-founder of Excelencia in Education.
“We see this as an opportunity because in our broader initiative, we say that the nation can't meet our college goals without Latinos,” she says.
Hispanics have accounted for more than half of the United States' growth in the past decade, growing at a rate of 43 percent — four times that of the population as a whole, according to the United States Census. And in California, where Hispanics are 38 percent of the population, they are expected to become the state's largest ethnic group by 2020.
Santiago says that some of the report's findings can be attributed to the relative youthfulness of the state's Hispanic population. Nearly half of students in California's K-12 system are Hispanic.
“We're in the pipeline,” she says. “We just haven't gotten to the college level yet.”
Yet many Hispanic students are simply being “priced out,” she says, unable to meet the financial demands of a college education, either because of lack of education or resources.
“Research shows pretty clearly that Latinos have less college knowledge,” she says. “Forty percent of Latinos go to college as the first in their family. This tells us that you can't assume that the kitchen table conversation is there.”
The Excelencia report was unveiled on Tuesday at a gathering of local officials at the Westin San Francisco Market Street hotel in San Francisco, Calif. The organization also has released similar reports on Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Among the speakers was Frank Alvarez, president of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, or HSF.
HSF unveiled an expansion of its “Generation 1st Degree” initiative, funded in part by Jacki and Gilbert Cisneros, multi-state lottery winners and former residents of Pico Rivera, Calif.
“The Cisneros gift is just the beginning of the movement within the community of Pico Rivera and its population,” says Alvarez. “They lived there until they won the lottery, and so they felt that they wanted to give something back to their city.”
Though much of the initiative’s funding goes toward scholarships, much of the money will be used to fund educational programs about the importance of college for parents.
Alvarez says that the “Generation 1st Degree” program — which focuses on low-income high-achieving students — starts with the goal of ensuring that each of the nation’s 13 million Hispanic households has at least one holder of a college degree.
“Once the degree is in the household, then it demystifies the whole process,” he says.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
More States Strengthening Rigor of Assessments
Education Week
Published Online: August 10, 2011
Updated: August 11, 2011
More States Strengthening Rigor of Assessments
By Stephen Sawchuk
A handful of states have increased the rigor of their state assessments since 2007, an analysis released today by the statistical wing of the U.S. Department of Education concludes.
The finding stands in contrast to earlier studies of state proficiency standards—often referred to as cutoff scores—released by the federal agency, which has generally found mixed patterns in the rigor of states’ 4th and 8th grade proficiency standards in reading and mathematics. Its 2009 report, using the same methodology, found dozens of instances between 2005 and 2007 in which states had lowered their expectations for students.
“We’re actually seeing [states] increase the rigor of their cut scores, at least between 2007 and 2009,” Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said during a conference call with reporters. “That doesn’t fit into the narrative of states lowering their bars” in response to the performance pressures of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Published Online: August 10, 2011
Updated: August 11, 2011
More States Strengthening Rigor of Assessments
By Stephen Sawchuk
A handful of states have increased the rigor of their state assessments since 2007, an analysis released today by the statistical wing of the U.S. Department of Education concludes.
The finding stands in contrast to earlier studies of state proficiency standards—often referred to as cutoff scores—released by the federal agency, which has generally found mixed patterns in the rigor of states’ 4th and 8th grade proficiency standards in reading and mathematics. Its 2009 report, using the same methodology, found dozens of instances between 2005 and 2007 in which states had lowered their expectations for students.
“We’re actually seeing [states] increase the rigor of their cut scores, at least between 2007 and 2009,” Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said during a conference call with reporters. “That doesn’t fit into the narrative of states lowering their bars” in response to the performance pressures of the No Child Left Behind Act.
EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Annually, 62 Million People With Zero Net Worth, As the Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion
EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Annually, 62 Million People With Zero Net Worth, As the Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion
Posted on August 10, 2011
Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11
Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III [3]
Introduction [4]
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
I :: Poverty [5]
II :: Food Insecurity [6]
III :: Unemployment [7]
IV :: Declining Income [8]
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have? [9]
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1% [10]
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us [11]
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
VIII :: Debt Slavery [12]
IX :: Inflation [13]
X :: The Beaten Masses [14]
Part Four :: Fascism in America
XI :: Modern Day Slavery [15]
XII :: The Death Toll [16]
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks [17]
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18]. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Introduction
The American public has sustained intensive economic attacks across broad segments of the population. While the attacks have been increasingly severe in scale over the past four years, they have been implemented with technocratic precision. They have been incrementally applied thus far, successfully keeping the population passive and avoiding any large-scale civilian unrest, while effectively reducing living standards for the majority of the population. As you will see in this report, the 55 million Americans that have been hit the hardest have thus far acquiesced due to temporary financial assistance, such as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
The global Economic Elite have been much more strategic in handling the American public, as they are potentially the greatest threat to their continued consolidation of wealth, resources and power. National populations that are not as powerful, and on the periphery of the Economic Elite’s global empire, have been dealt with in much harsher fashion. In many smaller and less powerful countries the dramatic rise in food prices and costs of living have led to all-out revolt — Tunisia, Algeria, Albania and Egypt were among the first to rebel. While the contagion of rebellion has rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, it is also spreading in a decentralized manner throughout most of the world, now threatening popular rebellion throughout Europe. Like the US population, the geographically clustered European nations represent a potentially powerful countervailing force to the Economic Elite’s continued domination.
Within the United States, the technocratic suppression of the population has been extensive. Increasingly severe economic and governmental policies have systematically eroded civilian wealth, power and rights. Intensive propaganda has effectively distracted, confused, isolated, marginalized and divided the US population. Despite the success of these efforts thus far, given the severe, prolonged, unsustainable and escalating level of economic suffering, outbreaks of civil unrest are inevitable. The US population, if a critical mass is reached, represents the greatest threat to the Economic Elite. In this regard, the American people are their primary adversary.
In writing this report, I will clearly demonstrate the severity and scale of the deliberate systemic economic attacks against the US population, in hope that we can urgently build a critical mass of aware and engaged citizens.
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
Snapshot: According to most recent Census Bureau data, from 2005 – 2009, average US household wealth declined by 28% [19]. This represents a loss of $27,000 per household. Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% [19] of US households, have zero or negative net worth.
The Census figures cited above are based on statistics that have been consistently proven to be lowball estimates. The government and corporate media spread propaganda on vital economic statistics that mask the severity of our economic crisis. Deceptive inflation, unemployment, poverty and GDP measures, which cast the illusion of recovery, are easily exposed with some research and a closer look at the data. Throughout this report, we will explore significant examples of government economic propaganda. In several cases, the government has been forced to revise their numbers due to proven inaccuracies. The government’s “revisions” are most always for the worse, and are usually just a footnote correction that the public is rarely ever aware of. All that being said, for many statistics we are forced to use government data, as there are not any other extensive data sets available from alternative sources.
I :: Record Breaking Poverty
The Census Bureau poverty rate is a horribly flawed measurement that uses outdated methodology. The Census measures poverty based on costs of living metrics established in 1955 – 56 years ago. They ignore many key factors, such as the increased costs of medical care, child care, education, transportation, and many other basic costs. They also don’t factor geographically-based costs of living. The National Academy of Science measure, which gets little if any corporate media coverage, gives a much more accurate account of poverty, as they factor in these vital cost of living variables.
The most current Census data revealed that 43.6 million Americans, 14.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009. While that is a staggering number that represents the highest number of American people to ever live in poverty, and a dramatic increase of four million people since 2008, it significantly under-counted the total. Last year, in my analysis [20], extrapolating data from 2008 National Academy of Science findings, I estimated that the number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 was at least 52 million [20]. Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 [21] Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.
The poverty rate for children is even worse. According to Census data, a total of 15.5 million [22] American children lived in poverty in 2009, which is 20% of all children. The number of children in poverty increased 28% since 2000, and jumped 10% from 2008 to 2009. Extrapolating data from the 2009 National Academy of Science poverty rate, in relation to the Census childhood poverty data, the number of American children living in poverty in 2009 is more accurately 18.8 million, which is 24%, or nearly one in four.
Other than this rapidly increasing number children who are in families that have recently fallen into poverty, “every day in America 2,573 babies [22] are born into poverty.”
As the chart to the right shows, even with the lower Census numbers, nine major American cities have a poverty rate over 25%.
It is important to note, based on many key indicators, as you will see throughout this report, the overall poverty totals have increased since 2009. Also consider that the recent deficit reduction plan is going to cut “anti-poverty” programs that currently assist tens of millions of Americans. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that “the poverty rate would double [23] without these programs.” It is predicted that the new deficit deal will cut the funding for these programs in half [24], which, based on these estimates, would bring the total number of Americans living in poverty up to 80 million people, 26% of the population.
II :: Record Breaking Food Insecurity
For another revealing statistic, which has been quickly increasing, we can look at the number of Americans currently surviving off of food stamps. In 2005, 25.7 million [25] Americans needed food stamps, currently 45.8 million people [26] rely on them. As the chart to the right shows, the number of people in need of food stamps has been rapidly increasing year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Congress is cutting the funding [27] for the food stamp program at a time when the Department of Agriculture estimates that an additional 22.5 million [28] people will need them, bringing the total number of Americans in need of food assistance to a stunning 68.3 million people.
III :: Record Breaking Unemployment
While the “official” unemployment rate hovers around 9%, 14 million people, the government’s numbers are deceptively low once again. The only reason unemployment has stayed below 10% for the past few months is because millions of long-term unemployed, and part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, are not included in the baseline government unemployment rate. John Williams, from ShadowStats.com [29], has a consistently proven method of tracking unemployment that provides a much more accurate view of the overall situation. As shocking as it may sound, when you apply his SGS method, counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work. Here is how the SGS rate is calculated:
“The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.”
On top of these shocking figures, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the total population currently working, has fallen to a 27-year low of 63.9%.
Currently, an all-time record 6.3 million [30] people have been unemployed for over six months. As the chart to the right shows, the average time it takes for a person to find a job has also just hit an all-time high of 40.4 weeks [31].
As companies continue to downsize and shift jobs overseas, unemployment is once again accelerating. Private-sector job cuts in July surged 60% to a 16-month high [32]. When accounting for population growth within the total labor force, from December 2007 to present, we have lost 10.6 million [33] jobs.
With the implementation of state and federal budget cuts, public-sector unemployment is accelerating as well. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since August 2008, state and local governments have cut 577,000 [34] jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that cuts in the new deficit deal will lead to an additional 1.8 million [24] job losses.
Of the new jobs that have been added in 2010, 60% [35] of them are in low-wage fields. Since December 2007, the official unemployment rate has masked the fact that 2.8 million [35] of the news jobs created have been part-time jobs.
Breaking down the data, over the last 12 months [36], the National Employment Law Project found that well-paying jobs are rapidly decreasing, while low-paying jobs are helping to mask an increasingly dire employment crisis:
· Lower-wage industries constituted 23% of job loss, but fully 49% of recent growth
· Mid-wage industries constituted 36% of job loss, and 37% of recent growth
· Higher-wage industries constituted 40% of job loss, but only 14% of recent growth
IV :: Declining Income
While the cost of living from 1990 – 2010 increased by 67%, worker income has declined. According to the most recent available IRS data, covering the year of 2009, average income fell 6.1%, a loss of $3,516 per worker, that year alone. Average income has declined 13.7% from 2007 – 2009, representing a $8,588 [37] loss per worker.
The decline in worker income is due to the dramatic increase in CEO pay. CEO pay has consistently increased year-over-year since the mid-1970s. From 1975 – 2010, worker productivity increased 80%. Over this time frame, CEO pay and the income of the economic top 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of the population quadrupled [38]. The income of the top 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) quintupled [38].
To understand the affect CEO pay increases have had on workers’ declining share of income on an annual basis, after analyzing 2008 tax data, leading tax reporter David Cay Johnston summed up [39] the situation with these revealing statistics:
“Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher…. That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week…”
As shocking as that is, over the last two years, workers have lost an even higher share of income to CEOs. In the last year alone, CEO pay skyrocketed by 28% [40]. Looking at 2009, according to a recent Dollars & Sense report [41], workers lost nearly $2 trillion in wages that year alone:
“In 2009, stock owners, bankers, brokers, hedge-fund wizards, highly paid corporate executives, corporations, and mid-ranking managers pocketed—as either income, benefits, or perks such as corporate jets—an estimated $1.91 trillion that 40 years ago would have collectively gone to non-supervisory and production workers in the form of higher wages and benefits.”
As bad as these numbers are, consider that the attack on American workers has increased significantly since 2009. From 2009 to the fourth-quarter of 2010, 88% of income growth [42] went to corporate profits (i.e. CEOs), while just 1% went to workers.
As the NY Times reported in an article entitled, “Our Banana Republic,” from 1980 – 2005, “more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” Again, as bad as that was, since 2005 it has gotten even worse, as Zero Hedge recently reported [43], labor’s current “share of national income has fallen to its lowest level in modern history.” This chart shows how workers’ percentage of income has been rapidly declining:
The bottom line, as statistics clearly demonstrate, these trends are getting worse and the attacks against us, as severe as they have been over the past four years, are dramatically escalating.
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90% of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion [44] in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion that this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion [45] hidden in offshore accounts.
In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.
If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225% increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.
Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000 [46]. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion [28].
Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076% of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million [37] in 2009.
The graph below, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows how much income is earned by a household at any given percentile in income distribution:
The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million [39] in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million [39] each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than 5 times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million [39] workers combined.
In context, overall, the richest 400 people [47] in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. The top economic 1% of the US population now has a record 40% of all wealth [48], and have more wealth than 90% [49] of the population combined.
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
Here is an analysis [50] from an investment manager with mega-wealthy clients breaking down the economic top 0.5% of the population, recently published by William Domhoff, sociology professor and author of Who Rules America? [51]:
“Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the US. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries…. Most of the serious economic damage the US is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it…. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries…. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%.…
In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced….
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the US financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the US political and legislative processes.
They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%….
… the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.”
To get into the top economic 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) of the population, you have to have a household income of over $27 million [52] per year.
If you look at some of the central players who caused this economic crisis, you will see that they are among this Economic Elite group.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had already amassed at least $700 million prior to moving to the US Treasury in 2006. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and a few other top executives at Goldman Sachs just received $111.3 million in bonuses. Blankfein just took home $24.3 million, as part of a $67.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s President Gary Cohn took home $24 million, as part of a $66.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s CFO David Viniar and former co-president Jon Winkelried both took home over $20 million in bonuses.
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit just took home $80 million, in what may eventually total more than $200 million in compensation and bonuses. Coming in at the top of the list is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who just took home $90 million.
If you think people in this income level don’t control the US political process, you are not paying attention. After they caused this economic crisis, they got the government to give them trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, and then, after taking our tax dollars, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. 2009 was an all-time record-breaking year for Wall Street executives bringing in a total of $145 billion [53]. And then, in 2010, they raised the bar even higher, breaking the all-time record set the year before by pulling in another $149 billion [54]. The audacity of it all is stunning.
Finding people more grotesquely greedy than Wall Street executives would seem to be impossible. However, health insurance CEOs are giving them a run for their money. As the LA Times reported [55]:
“Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%….
H. Edward Hanway, former chief executive of Philadelphia-based Cigna, topped the list of high-paid executives, thanks to a retirement package worth $110.9 million. Cigna paid Hanway and his successor, David Cordani, a total of $136.3 million last year….
Ron Williams, the CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc., earned nearly $18.2 million in total compensation, down from $24.4 million in 2008.”
Aetna CEO Ron Williams has recovered from his down year in 2009 by making $72 million [56] in 2010.
Given this level of obscene profiteering within the health care industry, it is not surprising that Americans pay more for medical care than any other nation in the world. In fact, Americans are forced to pay twice as much as most nations, and get lower quality care in return. As health insurance companies admitted, they have been reaping windfall profits because people with health insurance plans still cannot afford to go to the doctors and have stopped going unless it is an absolute emergency. With well over 50 million people unable to afford health insurance and the skyrocketing costs, it is not surprising that over 60% of all personal bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. In fact, 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health insurance.
Within this Economic Elite group, you also have the war profiteering [57] oil companies, which themselves are in large part owned by the big Wall Street banks. The biggest five oil companies, while gas prices have been skyrocketing, reaped $36 billion [58] in profit last quarter. These companies also receive an average of $6 billion [58] per year in tax subsidies.
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
To further demonstrate how the mega-wealthy have seized control our political process, consider that the richest 400 Americans paid 30% of their income in taxes in 1995, but they now pay only 18% [59].
In fact, 1,470 Americans [60] earned over $1 million in 2009 and didn’t pay any taxes.
The average tax rate for millionaires was 22.4% in 2009, down from 30.4% in 1995. The average millionaire saves $136,000 [61] a year due to reduced tax rates.
Looking at the tax rate from a long-term perspective, the amount of money the richest people and most profitable corporations pay in taxes has fallen dramatically since 1955. Corporate tax accounted for 27.3% of federal revenue in 1955. In 2010, corporate tax accounted for only 8.9% [62] of federal revenue. Corporate taxes accounted for 4.3% of overall GDP in 1955, in 2010 they accounted for only 1.3% [62].
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead:
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
The cuts in taxes for the mega-wealthy have led to record wealth inequality and resulted in a record national deficit. Meanwhile, to make up for the deficit that the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population has created, Democrats and Republicans are committed to making draconian budget cuts to vital social services, which target the poor, middle class, elderly and sick, while handing out billions more in corporate welfare annually. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity)
Just as the government has done, to make up for tax revenue lost to the mega-wealthy, Americans have made up for the decline in income by taking on large amounts of debt as well. (Inequality = Debt)
In a severely unequal society, massive debt will always be created, thus forming a vicious cycle of increasing inequality and increasing debt, until the fragmentation of society reaches a breaking point when those in debt cannot afford to pay back their debts without starving to death. We are now reaching that breaking point. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
The Indentured Servant Has Become The Indebted Citizen
As for statistics on Americans being buried in financial debt, the indentured servant has evolved into the indebted citizen. As mentioned before, from 1990 – 2010 costs of living have increased 67%, while wages have stagnated and declined. As the national debt has reached a record $14.6 trillion, total personal debt is now over $16 trillion [63]. Consumer debt is $2.5 trillion. Credit card debt is $805 billion and student debt now exceeds $1 trillion [64].
Obviously, the more severe your debts are, the more you have to cut back in spending and the less money you have to buy new items. (Debt = Austerity)
Meanwhile, a perfect storm circles overhead as society breaks down and falls into an economic death spiral – health care, food and gas costs are skyrocketing, while income and home values are plummeting. (Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over 250 million Americans, another record-breaking number, are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet.
IX :: Inflation
The following charts, from Advisor Perspectives, show the increase in costs of living since 2000:
As you can see, the price of basic necessities are consistently increasing, only clothing (apparel) has declined. The second chart highlights the crucial skyrocketing cost of energy:
The third chart highlights the pernicious skyrocketing cost of education:
The cost of education essentially buries a young person in a debt that they will spend a significant portion of their life attempting to get out of. Given the increasing costs of living, and the decreasing ability to make an expected income from such an expensive level of education, this young demographic will most likely live an entire life locked into spiraling levels of debt that they will never be able to get out of.
Propaganda Inflation
When reporting on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has twice, since 1980, revised their methodology to mask the severity of inflation, similar to how they mask the severity of unemployment. In their Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, they have heavily discounted the measurement weight of energy, food and education – three of the most significant costs for most American households.
To understand the significance in their revised methodology, current “official” CPI is at a 3.6% annual rate. However, if calculated the way it was before former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan altered it in 1980, it would be 11.1% [65], three times worse than officially stated.
So while the government and the Federal Reserve claim that inflation is low, at 3.6% [66] over the past year, food prices have increased 39% [67] and US gas prices have increased 34% [68] over the same time frame.
The increase in gas cost over the past one-year masks the severity of total gas price inflation, which is currently 125% more [68] expensive since December 2008, increasing from $1.67 per gallon to $3.75.
The Hidden Tax
The Federal Reserve’s strategic policy known as Quantitative Easing (QE) has been a significant factor in the rising cost of basic necessities by deliberately stimulating inflation, while decreasing the value of the dollar. Looking at their recent QE2 program, the dollar lost 7.5% [69] of its value from January 2010 through March 2010. From August 2010 through March 2010, the dollar lost 17% [69] of its value. To understand how this acts as a hidden tax, consider if you had $10,000 in the bank, over this time frame you would have lost $1700 in purchasing power. So your $10,000 would now be worth $8300. At the same time, the cost of gas and food drastically increased.
The Phantom Recovery
By decreasing the value of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is also inflating the stock market by creating the impression that stock prices are rising, which, when measured in dollars, they have. However, in real terms, their overall value has decreased. To understand how deceptive this strategy has been in giving the appearance of a rising market, instead of measuring overall stock value in dollars, let’s look at their overall value when measured in terms of gold:
Dow/Gold Chart from January 1, 2003 – August 8, 2011
As investor Michael Krieger explains:
“You can see from the chart above the downtrend of stock prices in real terms is completely intact and they have now hit a new low, below the previous low point in March 2009. In fact, although stocks did temporarily rise in real terms from the low in 2009 for the year as a whole, they were still down 5% in real terms. Then last year, stocks were 14% lower in terms of gold. Finally, despite a brief rally early in 2011, stocks in terms of gold are down 23% year-to-date.”
Dollar Vs. Gold
When comparing the value of the dollar to the value of gold, the dollar has lost a stunning 84% of its value since 2000. In 2000, gold was worth $279 per ounce, as of August 8, 2011, gold is $1,725 per ounce. In fact, the dollar continues to fall in value while gold continues to rise.
Stagflation
All these factors together create a perfect storm of stagflation. As 90% of Americans experience income declines, and the value of the dollar declines, the price of necessities are rising, while the one major asset many Americans have, a house, is also declining in value. Already, thanks to declining home values, 28% of US homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their home is currently worth. With 10.4 million American families having lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007, Amherst Securities, a leading broker/dealer focused on mortgage-related investments, estimates that another 10.8 million [70] homes are at risk of default over the next six years. This will obviously continue downward pressure on home values.
X :: The Beaten Masses
Confronted With Severe Financial Hardship, Why Do Americans Remain Passive?
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern day Economic Elite.
As famed American philosopher John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18], I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99% of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding on to the little that they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian entitled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold on to what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report mentioned above also states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates the severe wealth disparity that we currently have. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
Here is a chart showing the results from their survey:
The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99% of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced or known of this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of it was used for the betterment of society as a whole.
In fact, given modern technology and wealth, not a single American citizen should live in poverty. The statistics clearly demonstrate that we now live in a Neo-Feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are modern day serfs, essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The day the average American fully comprehends how much wealth is consolidated within just the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, there will be a massive uprising and all the paid off politicians will be run out of town.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of one-tenth of one percent of the population. The first step in overcoming your peasant status is to understand that you are indeed a peasant. This is a bitter pill to swallow and most will prefer to, as they have been conditioned to do, continue on their path of media-induced delusion, denial, apathy and ignorance.
However, I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this hidden and obscured fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
Part Four :: Fascism in America
Other than driving large segments of the American population into poverty, and pushing the majority into massive debt and a state of financial desperation, there is an ever darker side to what is unfolding today. The Economic Elite have turned America into a modern day fascist state.
Fascism is a very powerful word which evokes many strong feelings. People may think that the term cannot be applied to modern day America. However, as Benito Mussolini once summed it up: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term fascism also described it as “estato corporativo,” meaning: the corporate state.
Very few Americans would argue the fact that corporations now control our government and have the dominant role in our society. Through a system of legalized bribery – campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and corporations – the most power global corporations dominant the legislative and political process like never before. Senator Huey Long had it right when he warned: “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described fascism: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
The most blatant modern example of this was the bailout of Wall Street, when the “too big to fail” banks got politicians to promptly hand out trillions of tax dollars in support and subsidies to the very people who caused the crisis, without any of them being held accountable.
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
Another shocking example of how far we have descended into fascism is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is a group of corporate executives who literally write government legislation. They have gone as far as setting up a system that imprisons the poor and then puts them to work, instead of paying living wages to non-imprisoned workers. Make no mistake, this is a modern day system of slavery unfolding before our eyes.
At the leadership of ALEC and various other Economic Elite organizations, poverty has essentially become a crime. To demonstrate these attacks against the poor, there was $17 billion cut from public housing programs, while there was an increase of $19 billion in programs for building prisons, “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the poor [71].” Before laws began to be rewritten in 1980, with direct input from ALEC [72], we had a prison population of 500,000 citizens. After laws were rewritten to target poor inner city citizens with much more severe penalties, the US prison population skyrocketed to 2.4 million people.
We now have the largest prison population in the world. With only 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prison population. As I reported previously, in a report entitled, “American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex [71]“:
“The US, by far, has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 308 million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East, the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.”
XII :: The Death Toll
The dramatic increase in poverty has obviously torn many families apart and caused a devastating psychological toll, but consider the increase in deaths as a result of poverty and severe wealth inequalities. This is a very difficult statistic to accurately measure, but Columbia University’s School of Public Health [73] conducted an intensive examination of mortality and medical data and estimated that “875,000 deaths in the US in 2000 could be attributed to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality.”
As a report by Debra Watson sums up [73] the study, “There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.” Indeed, poverty and income inequality have skyrocketed since 2000.
Now, let’s consider the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 31.1 million [74] people lived in poverty in 2000, and according to Columbia’s study 875,000 deaths came as a result. This means that 1 out of every 35.5 people living in poverty die annually as a result of their impoverishment. If you extrapolate this data to the 2009 total of 52.8 million people living in poverty, you get an estimate of 1,486,338 deaths within that year. Even if you use the lower poverty totals from the Census Bureau, 43.6 million people, you get an estimate of 1,228,169 deaths in 2009.
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9% of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.
Compare the million people who die annually as a result of these economic attacks, to the 2,977 that died on 9/11. As someone who lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, as tragic as 9/11 was, these economic attacks are much more severe and damaging to us as a nation, albeit a much slower and unseen death toll. Nonetheless, the result is of genocidal proportions. One can statistically compare the economic attacks on the US to the invasion of Iraq, which some estimate as leading to one million deaths. Once again, many of those deaths came in brutal and spectacular fashion in bombing campaigns known as “shock and awe.” However, the death toll compares to the hidden brutality of a four-year campaign of economic “shock and awe.” Just as Iraq was invaded, the US has been invaded by a global banking cartel.
As shocking as that is to realize, consider that this is happening throughout the world. While the US poverty death rate is probably higher than in most European countries, the Federal Reserve’s economic policies [75] — along with policies from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements — have caused rioting and uprisings over skyrocketing food prices and costs of living throughout the world. The fact of the matter, and very harsh and unfortunate reality of this crisis, is that the global economic central planners are deliberately carrying out genocidal economic policies.
As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, once said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”
When tens of trillions of dollars deliberately flow to the top economic one-tenth of one percent of the global population, while large percentages live in poverty, you have to conclude, in technical terms, that a Neo-Feudal-Fascist state is upon us. The rich have never been richer, while their paid off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.
You can call me extreme, but the reality of this is extreme, these people, the global economic top one-tenth of one percent, are genocidal fascists carrying out a holocaust. Fascism has evolved. There is no need to get blood on your hands while rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps when you can do it through economic policy while sitting in a jacuzzi on a corporate jet, or in a three-piece custom-made Armani, completely detached and insulated from the world in which you plunder.
However, as what happens with all empires, greed and arrogance makes them overreach. The beaten down masses get to a point where they literally can’t live under these conditions. This desperation spreads throughout the population until it reaches a critical mass, then, suddenly, they rise up [75] and the empire begins to collapse… Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, (Northern Africa, the Middle East), Albania, Greece, Spain, Britain (Europe), Wisconsin…
The Economic Elite are overreaching and their empire is collapsing.
The decentralized global rebellion [75] has begun…
Welcome to World War III.
Which side of history do you want to be on?
As a wise old friend once said [76], “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
- David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com [77]. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III [78], will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David[@]AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org [79]
~ We are fighting to remain 100% independent, completely free from partisan influence. If you respect our work, please donate to support our efforts here [80].
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[3] Abstract :: Welcome to World War III: #abstract
[4] Introduction: #intro
[5] I :: Poverty: #poverty
[6] II :: Food Insecurity: #food
[7] III :: Unemployment: #unemployment
[8] IV :: Declining Income: #income
[9] V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?: #elite
[10] VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%: #rules
[11] VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us: #tax
[12] VIII :: Debt Slavery: #debt
[13] IX :: Inflation: #inflation
[14] X :: The Beaten Masses: #passive
[15] XI :: Modern Day Slavery: #slavery
[16] XII :: The Death Toll: #death
[17] XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks: #attacks
[18] The Economic Elite Vs. The People: http://ampedstatus.org/full-report-the-economic-elite-vs-the-people-of-the-united-states-of-america/
[19] declined by 28%: http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/07/SDT-Wealth-Report_7-26-11_FINAL.pdf
[20] my analysis: http://ampedstatus.org/census-bureau-poverty-rate-drastically-undercounts-severity-of-poverty-in-america/
[21] 52,765,000: http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/data/nas/tables/2009/web_tab4_nas_measures_historical.xls
[22] 15.5 million: http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-2011.pdf
[23] poverty rate would double: http://www.offthechartsblog.org/public-programs-keep-millions-out-of-poverty-new-study-shows/
[24] in half: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity
[25] 25.7 million: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=460
[26] 45.8 million people: http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/29SNAPcurrPP.htm
[27] cutting the funding: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/05/congress-mulls-cuts-to-food-stamps-program-amid-record-number-of-recipients.html
[28] additional 22.5 million: http://www.arcamax.com/health/healthtips/s-917916-690577
[29] ShadowStats.com: http://ShadowStats.com
[30] 6.3 million: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/down-not-voices-long-term-unemployed-125453267.html
[31] 40.4 weeks: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/average-length-unemployment-surges-new-all-time-record-404-weeks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)
[32] 16-month high: http://www.challengergray.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?PressUid=184
[33] 10.6 million: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-economy-has-generate-256k-month-until-end-obamas-second-term-regain-lost-jobs-december-2007?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)
[34] 577,000: http://www.thenation.com/blog/162577/after-debt-ceiling-debacle
[35] 60%: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-fed-spent-2-trillion-and-exchange-we-got-650000-temp-leisure-and-retail-jobs
[36] 12 months: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/23/us-economy-trades-high-pa_n_827360.html
[37] $8,588: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-usa-economy-incomes-idUSTRE77302W20110804
[38] quadrupled: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/with-executive-pay-rich-pull-away-from-rest-of-america/2011/06/13/AGKG9jaH_print.html
[39] summed up: http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?OpenDocument
[40] 28%: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/executive-pay-soars-worker-pay-stagnates_n_877519.html
[41] report: http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/0711cypher.html
[42] 88% of income growth: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/30/258388/corporate-profits-recovery/
[43] recently reported: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/attention-marxists-labors-share-national-income-drops-lowest-history
[44] $38.6 trillion: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/rich-are-about-get-very-very-rich-study-finds-global-millionaire-wealth-set-more-double-2020?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+th
[45] $6.3 trillion: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/15/offshore_banking_and_tax_havens_have
[46] $1,000,000,000,000: http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html
[47] richest 400 people: http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020612/understanding-extreme-incomewealth-gap
[48] 40% of all wealth: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?currentPage=all
[49] more wealth than 90%: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IykY6WlUIiA
[50] an analysis: http://ampedstatus.org/who-rules-america-an-investment-manager-breaks-down-the-economic-top-1-says-0-1-controls-political-and-legislative-process/
[51] Who Rules America?: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0078111560
[52] $27 million: http://washingtonindependent.com/107493/americas-super-rich-continue-to-make-mind-boggling-sums
[53] $145 billion: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/01/wall_street_pay_for_2009_will.html
[54] $149 billion: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceopay.cfm
[55] reported: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/11/business/la-fi-insurance-salaries-20100811
[56] $72 million: http://blogs.courant.com/connecticut_insurance/2011/04/aetnas-former-ceo-ronald-willi.html
[57] war profiteering: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/08/leaked-document-bp-rules-iraq-with-stranglehold-over-economy-by-controlling-largest-oil-field/
[58] $36 billion: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/08/the-joke-is-on-us-once-again-big-five-oil-companies-reaped-36-billion-in-profit-last-quarter/
[59] only 18%: http://blogs.forbes.com/robertlenzner/2011/07/25/the-400-richest-americans-pay-an-18-tax-rate/?partner=yahoofeed
[60] 1,470 Americans: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/irs-incomes_n_918458.html
[61] $136,000: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/05-5
[62] 8.9%: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/corporate-tax-rates-then-and-now/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+(The+Big+Picture)
[63] $16 trillion: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
[64] $1 trillion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/student-loan-debt-may-top_n_848093.html
[65] 11.1%: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/07/official-cpi-is-running-36-but-if-it.html
[66] 3.6%: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
[67] increased 39%: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/81577/icode/
[68] increased 34%: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:B8jtf14xQHUJ:www.api.org/aboutoilgas/gasoline/upload/PumpPriceUpdate.pdf+increase+in+gas+cost+over+past+year&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESid6khfTkbgkS7LI6kZSMUKeP2v6gLMdcLTI7TtXvnkbblSVe2Fy9yNJHxWRMvTrP7ESmIsXunshYP4eiX7mVz7Uoh5SLovNFfErCGG7oVRU-eLES-PFBUePgmQIbYe6-DcqKps&sig=AHIEtbQKFTYQdzZpyN1ddpbOiAn_39xJmA
[69] lost 7.5%: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gold-just-1-record-nominal-high-1444oz-risk-dollar-crisis-increases-day
[70] 10.8 million: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/07/this-is-what-a-collasping-ponzi-scheme-looks-like-housing-market-headed-off-a-cliff-as-a-shocking-10-8-million-mortgages-at-risk-of-default/
[71] housing program for the poor: http://ampedstatus.org/analysis-of-the-global-insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-the-coming-american-rebellion-we-are-egypt-revolution-roundup-3/#gulag
[72] direct input from ALEC: http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/gaming_the_system.pdf
[73] Columbia University’s School of Public Health: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jul2011/pove-j13.shtml
[74] 31.1 million: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p60-214.pdf
[75] Federal Reserve’s economic policies: http://ampedstatus.org/analysis-of-the-global-insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-the-coming-american-rebellion-we-are-egypt-revolution-roundup-3/
[76] once said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehc3V1g5pm0
[77] AmpedStatus.com: http://AmpedStatus.com
[78] The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III: http://ampedstatus.com/word-from-the-watchtower-a-hard-rain-is-going-to-fall-introduction-to-the-road-through-2012-revolution-or-world-war-iii/
[79] DavidDeGraw.org: http://daviddegraw.org/
[80] donate to support our efforts here: http://ampedstatus.com/donation.php
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Copyright © 2011 ampedstatus.org. All rights reserved.
Posted on August 10, 2011
Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11
Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III [3]
Introduction [4]
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
I :: Poverty [5]
II :: Food Insecurity [6]
III :: Unemployment [7]
IV :: Declining Income [8]
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have? [9]
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1% [10]
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us [11]
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
VIII :: Debt Slavery [12]
IX :: Inflation [13]
X :: The Beaten Masses [14]
Part Four :: Fascism in America
XI :: Modern Day Slavery [15]
XII :: The Death Toll [16]
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks [17]
Abstract :: Welcome to World War III
Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18]. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far. However, as we have seen throughout the world in recent months, the people are beginning to fight back. The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.
Introduction
The American public has sustained intensive economic attacks across broad segments of the population. While the attacks have been increasingly severe in scale over the past four years, they have been implemented with technocratic precision. They have been incrementally applied thus far, successfully keeping the population passive and avoiding any large-scale civilian unrest, while effectively reducing living standards for the majority of the population. As you will see in this report, the 55 million Americans that have been hit the hardest have thus far acquiesced due to temporary financial assistance, such as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
The global Economic Elite have been much more strategic in handling the American public, as they are potentially the greatest threat to their continued consolidation of wealth, resources and power. National populations that are not as powerful, and on the periphery of the Economic Elite’s global empire, have been dealt with in much harsher fashion. In many smaller and less powerful countries the dramatic rise in food prices and costs of living have led to all-out revolt — Tunisia, Algeria, Albania and Egypt were among the first to rebel. While the contagion of rebellion has rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, it is also spreading in a decentralized manner throughout most of the world, now threatening popular rebellion throughout Europe. Like the US population, the geographically clustered European nations represent a potentially powerful countervailing force to the Economic Elite’s continued domination.
Within the United States, the technocratic suppression of the population has been extensive. Increasingly severe economic and governmental policies have systematically eroded civilian wealth, power and rights. Intensive propaganda has effectively distracted, confused, isolated, marginalized and divided the US population. Despite the success of these efforts thus far, given the severe, prolonged, unsustainable and escalating level of economic suffering, outbreaks of civil unrest are inevitable. The US population, if a critical mass is reached, represents the greatest threat to the Economic Elite. In this regard, the American people are their primary adversary.
In writing this report, I will clearly demonstrate the severity and scale of the deliberate systemic economic attacks against the US population, in hope that we can urgently build a critical mass of aware and engaged citizens.
Part One :: The Economic Devastation
Snapshot: According to most recent Census Bureau data, from 2005 – 2009, average US household wealth declined by 28% [19]. This represents a loss of $27,000 per household. Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% [19] of US households, have zero or negative net worth.
The Census figures cited above are based on statistics that have been consistently proven to be lowball estimates. The government and corporate media spread propaganda on vital economic statistics that mask the severity of our economic crisis. Deceptive inflation, unemployment, poverty and GDP measures, which cast the illusion of recovery, are easily exposed with some research and a closer look at the data. Throughout this report, we will explore significant examples of government economic propaganda. In several cases, the government has been forced to revise their numbers due to proven inaccuracies. The government’s “revisions” are most always for the worse, and are usually just a footnote correction that the public is rarely ever aware of. All that being said, for many statistics we are forced to use government data, as there are not any other extensive data sets available from alternative sources.
I :: Record Breaking Poverty
The Census Bureau poverty rate is a horribly flawed measurement that uses outdated methodology. The Census measures poverty based on costs of living metrics established in 1955 – 56 years ago. They ignore many key factors, such as the increased costs of medical care, child care, education, transportation, and many other basic costs. They also don’t factor geographically-based costs of living. The National Academy of Science measure, which gets little if any corporate media coverage, gives a much more accurate account of poverty, as they factor in these vital cost of living variables.
The most current Census data revealed that 43.6 million Americans, 14.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009. While that is a staggering number that represents the highest number of American people to ever live in poverty, and a dramatic increase of four million people since 2008, it significantly under-counted the total. Last year, in my analysis [20], extrapolating data from 2008 National Academy of Science findings, I estimated that the number of Americans living in poverty in 2009 was at least 52 million [20]. Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 [21] Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.
The poverty rate for children is even worse. According to Census data, a total of 15.5 million [22] American children lived in poverty in 2009, which is 20% of all children. The number of children in poverty increased 28% since 2000, and jumped 10% from 2008 to 2009. Extrapolating data from the 2009 National Academy of Science poverty rate, in relation to the Census childhood poverty data, the number of American children living in poverty in 2009 is more accurately 18.8 million, which is 24%, or nearly one in four.
Other than this rapidly increasing number children who are in families that have recently fallen into poverty, “every day in America 2,573 babies [22] are born into poverty.”
As the chart to the right shows, even with the lower Census numbers, nine major American cities have a poverty rate over 25%.
It is important to note, based on many key indicators, as you will see throughout this report, the overall poverty totals have increased since 2009. Also consider that the recent deficit reduction plan is going to cut “anti-poverty” programs that currently assist tens of millions of Americans. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that “the poverty rate would double [23] without these programs.” It is predicted that the new deficit deal will cut the funding for these programs in half [24], which, based on these estimates, would bring the total number of Americans living in poverty up to 80 million people, 26% of the population.
II :: Record Breaking Food Insecurity
For another revealing statistic, which has been quickly increasing, we can look at the number of Americans currently surviving off of food stamps. In 2005, 25.7 million [25] Americans needed food stamps, currently 45.8 million people [26] rely on them. As the chart to the right shows, the number of people in need of food stamps has been rapidly increasing year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Congress is cutting the funding [27] for the food stamp program at a time when the Department of Agriculture estimates that an additional 22.5 million [28] people will need them, bringing the total number of Americans in need of food assistance to a stunning 68.3 million people.
III :: Record Breaking Unemployment
While the “official” unemployment rate hovers around 9%, 14 million people, the government’s numbers are deceptively low once again. The only reason unemployment has stayed below 10% for the past few months is because millions of long-term unemployed, and part-time workers who are looking for full-time work, are not included in the baseline government unemployment rate. John Williams, from ShadowStats.com [29], has a consistently proven method of tracking unemployment that provides a much more accurate view of the overall situation. As shocking as it may sound, when you apply his SGS method, counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work. Here is how the SGS rate is calculated:
“The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.”
On top of these shocking figures, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the total population currently working, has fallen to a 27-year low of 63.9%.
Currently, an all-time record 6.3 million [30] people have been unemployed for over six months. As the chart to the right shows, the average time it takes for a person to find a job has also just hit an all-time high of 40.4 weeks [31].
As companies continue to downsize and shift jobs overseas, unemployment is once again accelerating. Private-sector job cuts in July surged 60% to a 16-month high [32]. When accounting for population growth within the total labor force, from December 2007 to present, we have lost 10.6 million [33] jobs.
With the implementation of state and federal budget cuts, public-sector unemployment is accelerating as well. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since August 2008, state and local governments have cut 577,000 [34] jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that cuts in the new deficit deal will lead to an additional 1.8 million [24] job losses.
Of the new jobs that have been added in 2010, 60% [35] of them are in low-wage fields. Since December 2007, the official unemployment rate has masked the fact that 2.8 million [35] of the news jobs created have been part-time jobs.
Breaking down the data, over the last 12 months [36], the National Employment Law Project found that well-paying jobs are rapidly decreasing, while low-paying jobs are helping to mask an increasingly dire employment crisis:
· Lower-wage industries constituted 23% of job loss, but fully 49% of recent growth
· Mid-wage industries constituted 36% of job loss, and 37% of recent growth
· Higher-wage industries constituted 40% of job loss, but only 14% of recent growth
IV :: Declining Income
While the cost of living from 1990 – 2010 increased by 67%, worker income has declined. According to the most recent available IRS data, covering the year of 2009, average income fell 6.1%, a loss of $3,516 per worker, that year alone. Average income has declined 13.7% from 2007 – 2009, representing a $8,588 [37] loss per worker.
The decline in worker income is due to the dramatic increase in CEO pay. CEO pay has consistently increased year-over-year since the mid-1970s. From 1975 – 2010, worker productivity increased 80%. Over this time frame, CEO pay and the income of the economic top 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of the population quadrupled [38]. The income of the top 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) quintupled [38].
To understand the affect CEO pay increases have had on workers’ declining share of income on an annual basis, after analyzing 2008 tax data, leading tax reporter David Cay Johnston summed up [39] the situation with these revealing statistics:
“Had income growth from 1950 to 1980 continued at the same rate for the next 28 years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent in 2008 would have been 68 percent higher…. That would have meant an average income for the vast majority of $52,051, or $21,110 more than actual 2008 incomes. How different America would be today if the typical family had $406 more each week…”
As shocking as that is, over the last two years, workers have lost an even higher share of income to CEOs. In the last year alone, CEO pay skyrocketed by 28% [40]. Looking at 2009, according to a recent Dollars & Sense report [41], workers lost nearly $2 trillion in wages that year alone:
“In 2009, stock owners, bankers, brokers, hedge-fund wizards, highly paid corporate executives, corporations, and mid-ranking managers pocketed—as either income, benefits, or perks such as corporate jets—an estimated $1.91 trillion that 40 years ago would have collectively gone to non-supervisory and production workers in the form of higher wages and benefits.”
As bad as these numbers are, consider that the attack on American workers has increased significantly since 2009. From 2009 to the fourth-quarter of 2010, 88% of income growth [42] went to corporate profits (i.e. CEOs), while just 1% went to workers.
As the NY Times reported in an article entitled, “Our Banana Republic,” from 1980 – 2005, “more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” Again, as bad as that was, since 2005 it has gotten even worse, as Zero Hedge recently reported [43], labor’s current “share of national income has fallen to its lowest level in modern history.” This chart shows how workers’ percentage of income has been rapidly declining:
The bottom line, as statistics clearly demonstrate, these trends are getting worse and the attacks against us, as severe as they have been over the past four years, are dramatically escalating.
Part Two :: The Economic Elite
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?
While 68.3 million Americans struggle to get enough food to eat and wages are declining for 90% of the population, US millionaire household wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to an extensive study by auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte, US millionaire households now have $38.6 trillion [44] in wealth. On top of the $38.6 trillion that this study reveals, they have an estimated $6.3 trillion [45] hidden in offshore accounts.
In total, US millionaire households have at least $45.9 trillion in wealth, the majority of this wealth is held within the upper one-tenth of one percent of the population.
If all this isn’t obscene enough, to further demonstrate how the global economy has now been completely rigged, Deloitte’s analysis predicated, based on current trends, that US millionaire households will see a 225% increase in wealth to $87.1 trillion by 2020. Accounting for wealth hidden in offshore accounts, they are projected to have over $100 trillion in total within the next decade.
Most people cannot even comprehend how much $1 trillion is, let alone $46 trillion. One trillion is equal to 1000 billion, or $1,000,000,000,000 [46]. To put it in perspective, last year the entire cost of feeding all 40 million Americans on food stamps was $65 billion [28].
Now consider, according to the latest IRS data, only 0.076% of the population, less than one-tenth of one percent, earned over $1 million [37] in 2009.
The graph below, based on data from the Tax Policy Center, shows how much income is earned by a household at any given percentile in income distribution:
The highest bracket for annual income is $50 million or more. Only 74 Americans are in this elite group. The average income within this category was $91.2 million [39] in 2008. As astonishing as that is, in 2009 they averaged $518.8 million [39] each, or about $10 million per week. This means, in the depths of the recession, the richest 74 Americans increased their income by more than 5 times within this one year. These 74 people made more money than 19 million [39] workers combined.
In context, overall, the richest 400 people [47] in the US have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. The top economic 1% of the US population now has a record 40% of all wealth [48], and have more wealth than 90% [49] of the population combined.
VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%
Here is an analysis [50] from an investment manager with mega-wealthy clients breaking down the economic top 0.5% of the population, recently published by William Domhoff, sociology professor and author of Who Rules America? [51]:
“Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the US. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.
Folks in the top 0.1% come from many backgrounds but it’s infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn’t acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries…. Most of the serious economic damage the US is struggling with today was done by the top 0.1% and they benefited greatly from it…. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries…. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%.…
In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced….
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the US financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the US political and legislative processes.
They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%….
… the American dream of striking it rich is merely a well-marketed fantasy that keeps the bottom 99.5% hoping for better and prevents social and political instability. The odds of getting into that top 0.5% are very slim and the door is kept firmly shut by those within it.”
To get into the top economic 0.01% (one-hundredth of one percent) of the population, you have to have a household income of over $27 million [52] per year.
If you look at some of the central players who caused this economic crisis, you will see that they are among this Economic Elite group.
Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had already amassed at least $700 million prior to moving to the US Treasury in 2006. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and a few other top executives at Goldman Sachs just received $111.3 million in bonuses. Blankfein just took home $24.3 million, as part of a $67.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s President Gary Cohn took home $24 million, as part of a $66.9 million bonus he was awarded. Goldman’s CFO David Viniar and former co-president Jon Winkelried both took home over $20 million in bonuses.
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit just took home $80 million, in what may eventually total more than $200 million in compensation and bonuses. Coming in at the top of the list is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who just took home $90 million.
If you think people in this income level don’t control the US political process, you are not paying attention. After they caused this economic crisis, they got the government to give them trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, and then, after taking our tax dollars, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. 2009 was an all-time record-breaking year for Wall Street executives bringing in a total of $145 billion [53]. And then, in 2010, they raised the bar even higher, breaking the all-time record set the year before by pulling in another $149 billion [54]. The audacity of it all is stunning.
Finding people more grotesquely greedy than Wall Street executives would seem to be impossible. However, health insurance CEOs are giving them a run for their money. As the LA Times reported [55]:
“Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%….
H. Edward Hanway, former chief executive of Philadelphia-based Cigna, topped the list of high-paid executives, thanks to a retirement package worth $110.9 million. Cigna paid Hanway and his successor, David Cordani, a total of $136.3 million last year….
Ron Williams, the CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc., earned nearly $18.2 million in total compensation, down from $24.4 million in 2008.”
Aetna CEO Ron Williams has recovered from his down year in 2009 by making $72 million [56] in 2010.
Given this level of obscene profiteering within the health care industry, it is not surprising that Americans pay more for medical care than any other nation in the world. In fact, Americans are forced to pay twice as much as most nations, and get lower quality care in return. As health insurance companies admitted, they have been reaping windfall profits because people with health insurance plans still cannot afford to go to the doctors and have stopped going unless it is an absolute emergency. With well over 50 million people unable to afford health insurance and the skyrocketing costs, it is not surprising that over 60% of all personal bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. In fact, 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health insurance.
Within this Economic Elite group, you also have the war profiteering [57] oil companies, which themselves are in large part owned by the big Wall Street banks. The biggest five oil companies, while gas prices have been skyrocketing, reaped $36 billion [58] in profit last quarter. These companies also receive an average of $6 billion [58] per year in tax subsidies.
VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us
To further demonstrate how the mega-wealthy have seized control our political process, consider that the richest 400 Americans paid 30% of their income in taxes in 1995, but they now pay only 18% [59].
In fact, 1,470 Americans [60] earned over $1 million in 2009 and didn’t pay any taxes.
The average tax rate for millionaires was 22.4% in 2009, down from 30.4% in 1995. The average millionaire saves $136,000 [61] a year due to reduced tax rates.
Looking at the tax rate from a long-term perspective, the amount of money the richest people and most profitable corporations pay in taxes has fallen dramatically since 1955. Corporate tax accounted for 27.3% of federal revenue in 1955. In 2010, corporate tax accounted for only 8.9% [62] of federal revenue. Corporate taxes accounted for 4.3% of overall GDP in 1955, in 2010 they accounted for only 1.3% [62].
Part Three :: The Perfect Storm Overhead:
(Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest = Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
The cuts in taxes for the mega-wealthy have led to record wealth inequality and resulted in a record national deficit. Meanwhile, to make up for the deficit that the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population has created, Democrats and Republicans are committed to making draconian budget cuts to vital social services, which target the poor, middle class, elderly and sick, while handing out billions more in corporate welfare annually. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity)
Just as the government has done, to make up for tax revenue lost to the mega-wealthy, Americans have made up for the decline in income by taking on large amounts of debt as well. (Inequality = Debt)
In a severely unequal society, massive debt will always be created, thus forming a vicious cycle of increasing inequality and increasing debt, until the fragmentation of society reaches a breaking point when those in debt cannot afford to pay back their debts without starving to death. We are now reaching that breaking point. (Inequality = Debt = Austerity = Civil Unrest)
VIII :: Debt Slavery
The Indentured Servant Has Become The Indebted Citizen
As for statistics on Americans being buried in financial debt, the indentured servant has evolved into the indebted citizen. As mentioned before, from 1990 – 2010 costs of living have increased 67%, while wages have stagnated and declined. As the national debt has reached a record $14.6 trillion, total personal debt is now over $16 trillion [63]. Consumer debt is $2.5 trillion. Credit card debt is $805 billion and student debt now exceeds $1 trillion [64].
Obviously, the more severe your debts are, the more you have to cut back in spending and the less money you have to buy new items. (Debt = Austerity)
Meanwhile, a perfect storm circles overhead as society breaks down and falls into an economic death spiral – health care, food and gas costs are skyrocketing, while income and home values are plummeting. (Inflation + Deflation = Stagflation)
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over 250 million Americans, another record-breaking number, are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet.
IX :: Inflation
The following charts, from Advisor Perspectives, show the increase in costs of living since 2000:
As you can see, the price of basic necessities are consistently increasing, only clothing (apparel) has declined. The second chart highlights the crucial skyrocketing cost of energy:
The third chart highlights the pernicious skyrocketing cost of education:
The cost of education essentially buries a young person in a debt that they will spend a significant portion of their life attempting to get out of. Given the increasing costs of living, and the decreasing ability to make an expected income from such an expensive level of education, this young demographic will most likely live an entire life locked into spiraling levels of debt that they will never be able to get out of.
Propaganda Inflation
When reporting on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has twice, since 1980, revised their methodology to mask the severity of inflation, similar to how they mask the severity of unemployment. In their Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation, they have heavily discounted the measurement weight of energy, food and education – three of the most significant costs for most American households.
To understand the significance in their revised methodology, current “official” CPI is at a 3.6% annual rate. However, if calculated the way it was before former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan altered it in 1980, it would be 11.1% [65], three times worse than officially stated.
So while the government and the Federal Reserve claim that inflation is low, at 3.6% [66] over the past year, food prices have increased 39% [67] and US gas prices have increased 34% [68] over the same time frame.
The increase in gas cost over the past one-year masks the severity of total gas price inflation, which is currently 125% more [68] expensive since December 2008, increasing from $1.67 per gallon to $3.75.
The Hidden Tax
The Federal Reserve’s strategic policy known as Quantitative Easing (QE) has been a significant factor in the rising cost of basic necessities by deliberately stimulating inflation, while decreasing the value of the dollar. Looking at their recent QE2 program, the dollar lost 7.5% [69] of its value from January 2010 through March 2010. From August 2010 through March 2010, the dollar lost 17% [69] of its value. To understand how this acts as a hidden tax, consider if you had $10,000 in the bank, over this time frame you would have lost $1700 in purchasing power. So your $10,000 would now be worth $8300. At the same time, the cost of gas and food drastically increased.
The Phantom Recovery
By decreasing the value of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is also inflating the stock market by creating the impression that stock prices are rising, which, when measured in dollars, they have. However, in real terms, their overall value has decreased. To understand how deceptive this strategy has been in giving the appearance of a rising market, instead of measuring overall stock value in dollars, let’s look at their overall value when measured in terms of gold:
Dow/Gold Chart from January 1, 2003 – August 8, 2011
As investor Michael Krieger explains:
“You can see from the chart above the downtrend of stock prices in real terms is completely intact and they have now hit a new low, below the previous low point in March 2009. In fact, although stocks did temporarily rise in real terms from the low in 2009 for the year as a whole, they were still down 5% in real terms. Then last year, stocks were 14% lower in terms of gold. Finally, despite a brief rally early in 2011, stocks in terms of gold are down 23% year-to-date.”
Dollar Vs. Gold
When comparing the value of the dollar to the value of gold, the dollar has lost a stunning 84% of its value since 2000. In 2000, gold was worth $279 per ounce, as of August 8, 2011, gold is $1,725 per ounce. In fact, the dollar continues to fall in value while gold continues to rise.
Stagflation
All these factors together create a perfect storm of stagflation. As 90% of Americans experience income declines, and the value of the dollar declines, the price of necessities are rising, while the one major asset many Americans have, a house, is also declining in value. Already, thanks to declining home values, 28% of US homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their home is currently worth. With 10.4 million American families having lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007, Amherst Securities, a leading broker/dealer focused on mortgage-related investments, estimates that another 10.8 million [70] homes are at risk of default over the next six years. This will obviously continue downward pressure on home values.
X :: The Beaten Masses
Confronted With Severe Financial Hardship, Why Do Americans Remain Passive?
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern day Economic Elite.
As famed American philosopher John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In The Economic Elite Vs. The People [18], I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99% of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding on to the little that they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian entitled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold on to what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report mentioned above also states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates the severe wealth disparity that we currently have. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
Here is a chart showing the results from their survey:
The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99% of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced or known of this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of it was used for the betterment of society as a whole.
In fact, given modern technology and wealth, not a single American citizen should live in poverty. The statistics clearly demonstrate that we now live in a Neo-Feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are modern day serfs, essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The day the average American fully comprehends how much wealth is consolidated within just the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, there will be a massive uprising and all the paid off politicians will be run out of town.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of one-tenth of one percent of the population. The first step in overcoming your peasant status is to understand that you are indeed a peasant. This is a bitter pill to swallow and most will prefer to, as they have been conditioned to do, continue on their path of media-induced delusion, denial, apathy and ignorance.
However, I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this hidden and obscured fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
Part Four :: Fascism in America
Other than driving large segments of the American population into poverty, and pushing the majority into massive debt and a state of financial desperation, there is an ever darker side to what is unfolding today. The Economic Elite have turned America into a modern day fascist state.
Fascism is a very powerful word which evokes many strong feelings. People may think that the term cannot be applied to modern day America. However, as Benito Mussolini once summed it up: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term fascism also described it as “estato corporativo,” meaning: the corporate state.
Very few Americans would argue the fact that corporations now control our government and have the dominant role in our society. Through a system of legalized bribery – campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and corporations – the most power global corporations dominant the legislative and political process like never before. Senator Huey Long had it right when he warned: “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described fascism: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
The most blatant modern example of this was the bailout of Wall Street, when the “too big to fail” banks got politicians to promptly hand out trillions of tax dollars in support and subsidies to the very people who caused the crisis, without any of them being held accountable.
XI :: Modern Day Slavery
Another shocking example of how far we have descended into fascism is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is a group of corporate executives who literally write government legislation. They have gone as far as setting up a system that imprisons the poor and then puts them to work, instead of paying living wages to non-imprisoned workers. Make no mistake, this is a modern day system of slavery unfolding before our eyes.
At the leadership of ALEC and various other Economic Elite organizations, poverty has essentially become a crime. To demonstrate these attacks against the poor, there was $17 billion cut from public housing programs, while there was an increase of $19 billion in programs for building prisons, “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the poor [71].” Before laws began to be rewritten in 1980, with direct input from ALEC [72], we had a prison population of 500,000 citizens. After laws were rewritten to target poor inner city citizens with much more severe penalties, the US prison population skyrocketed to 2.4 million people.
We now have the largest prison population in the world. With only 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prison population. As I reported previously, in a report entitled, “American Gulag: World’s Largest Prison Complex [71]“:
“The US, by far, has more of its citizens in prison than any other nation on earth. China, with a billion citizens, doesn’t imprison as many people as the US, with only 308 million American citizens. The US per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000. In the Middle East, the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia imprisons 45 per 100,000. US per capita levels are equivalent to the darkest days of the Soviet Gulag.”
XII :: The Death Toll
The dramatic increase in poverty has obviously torn many families apart and caused a devastating psychological toll, but consider the increase in deaths as a result of poverty and severe wealth inequalities. This is a very difficult statistic to accurately measure, but Columbia University’s School of Public Health [73] conducted an intensive examination of mortality and medical data and estimated that “875,000 deaths in the US in 2000 could be attributed to a cluster of social factors bound up with poverty and income inequality.”
As a report by Debra Watson sums up [73] the study, “There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.” Indeed, poverty and income inequality have skyrocketed since 2000.
Now, let’s consider the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 31.1 million [74] people lived in poverty in 2000, and according to Columbia’s study 875,000 deaths came as a result. This means that 1 out of every 35.5 people living in poverty die annually as a result of their impoverishment. If you extrapolate this data to the 2009 total of 52.8 million people living in poverty, you get an estimate of 1,486,338 deaths within that year. Even if you use the lower poverty totals from the Census Bureau, 43.6 million people, you get an estimate of 1,228,169 deaths in 2009.
XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks
The dramatic increase in economic inequality and poverty, along with the unprecedented rise in wealth within the top one-tenth of one percent of the population has not happened by mistake. It is the designed result of deliberate governmental and economic policy. It is the result of the richest people in the world, and the “too big to fail” banks, using the campaign finance and lobbying system to buy off politicians who implement policies designed to exploit 99.9% of the population for their financial gain. To call what is happening a “financial terrorist attack” on the United States, is not using hyperbole, it is the technical term for what is currently occurring.
Compare the million people who die annually as a result of these economic attacks, to the 2,977 that died on 9/11. As someone who lived three blocks from the World Trade Center, as tragic as 9/11 was, these economic attacks are much more severe and damaging to us as a nation, albeit a much slower and unseen death toll. Nonetheless, the result is of genocidal proportions. One can statistically compare the economic attacks on the US to the invasion of Iraq, which some estimate as leading to one million deaths. Once again, many of those deaths came in brutal and spectacular fashion in bombing campaigns known as “shock and awe.” However, the death toll compares to the hidden brutality of a four-year campaign of economic “shock and awe.” Just as Iraq was invaded, the US has been invaded by a global banking cartel.
As shocking as that is to realize, consider that this is happening throughout the world. While the US poverty death rate is probably higher than in most European countries, the Federal Reserve’s economic policies [75] — along with policies from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements — have caused rioting and uprisings over skyrocketing food prices and costs of living throughout the world. The fact of the matter, and very harsh and unfortunate reality of this crisis, is that the global economic central planners are deliberately carrying out genocidal economic policies.
As Che Guevara, a man who took on the global financial elite, once said, “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”
When tens of trillions of dollars deliberately flow to the top economic one-tenth of one percent of the global population, while large percentages live in poverty, you have to conclude, in technical terms, that a Neo-Feudal-Fascist state is upon us. The rich have never been richer, while their paid off politicians make budget cuts for the poor and middle class, and cause the cost of basic necessities to skyrocket.
You can call me extreme, but the reality of this is extreme, these people, the global economic top one-tenth of one percent, are genocidal fascists carrying out a holocaust. Fascism has evolved. There is no need to get blood on your hands while rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps when you can do it through economic policy while sitting in a jacuzzi on a corporate jet, or in a three-piece custom-made Armani, completely detached and insulated from the world in which you plunder.
However, as what happens with all empires, greed and arrogance makes them overreach. The beaten down masses get to a point where they literally can’t live under these conditions. This desperation spreads throughout the population until it reaches a critical mass, then, suddenly, they rise up [75] and the empire begins to collapse… Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, (Northern Africa, the Middle East), Albania, Greece, Spain, Britain (Europe), Wisconsin…
The Economic Elite are overreaching and their empire is collapsing.
The decentralized global rebellion [75] has begun…
Welcome to World War III.
Which side of history do you want to be on?
As a wise old friend once said [76], “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
- David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com [77]. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III [78], will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David[@]AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org [79]
~ We are fighting to remain 100% independent, completely free from partisan influence. If you respect our work, please donate to support our efforts here [80].
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[3] Abstract :: Welcome to World War III: #abstract
[4] Introduction: #intro
[5] I :: Poverty: #poverty
[6] II :: Food Insecurity: #food
[7] III :: Unemployment: #unemployment
[8] IV :: Declining Income: #income
[9] V :: How Much Wealth Do The Economic Elite Have?: #elite
[10] VI :: Who Rules America? Revealing The Economic Top 0.1%: #rules
[11] VII :: Tax Breaks For The Rich, Budget Cuts For The Rest Of Us: #tax
[12] VIII :: Debt Slavery: #debt
[13] IX :: Inflation: #inflation
[14] X :: The Beaten Masses: #passive
[15] XI :: Modern Day Slavery: #slavery
[16] XII :: The Death Toll: #death
[17] XIII :: Deliberate Systemic Attacks: #attacks
[18] The Economic Elite Vs. The People: http://ampedstatus.org/full-report-the-economic-elite-vs-the-people-of-the-united-states-of-america/
[19] declined by 28%: http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/07/SDT-Wealth-Report_7-26-11_FINAL.pdf
[20] my analysis: http://ampedstatus.org/census-bureau-poverty-rate-drastically-undercounts-severity-of-poverty-in-america/
[21] 52,765,000: http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/data/nas/tables/2009/web_tab4_nas_measures_historical.xls
[22] 15.5 million: http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-2011.pdf
[23] poverty rate would double: http://www.offthechartsblog.org/public-programs-keep-millions-out-of-poverty-new-study-shows/
[24] in half: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity
[25] 25.7 million: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=460
[26] 45.8 million people: http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/29SNAPcurrPP.htm
[27] cutting the funding: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/05/congress-mulls-cuts-to-food-stamps-program-amid-record-number-of-recipients.html
[28] additional 22.5 million: http://www.arcamax.com/health/healthtips/s-917916-690577
[29] ShadowStats.com: http://ShadowStats.com
[30] 6.3 million: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/down-not-voices-long-term-unemployed-125453267.html
[31] 40.4 weeks: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/average-length-unemployment-surges-new-all-time-record-404-weeks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)
[32] 16-month high: http://www.challengergray.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?PressUid=184
[33] 10.6 million: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/us-economy-has-generate-256k-month-until-end-obamas-second-term-regain-lost-jobs-december-2007?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)
[34] 577,000: http://www.thenation.com/blog/162577/after-debt-ceiling-debacle
[35] 60%: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-fed-spent-2-trillion-and-exchange-we-got-650000-temp-leisure-and-retail-jobs
[36] 12 months: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/23/us-economy-trades-high-pa_n_827360.html
[37] $8,588: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-usa-economy-incomes-idUSTRE77302W20110804
[38] quadrupled: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/with-executive-pay-rich-pull-away-from-rest-of-america/2011/06/13/AGKG9jaH_print.html
[39] summed up: http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?OpenDocument
[40] 28%: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/executive-pay-soars-worker-pay-stagnates_n_877519.html
[41] report: http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/0711cypher.html
[42] 88% of income growth: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/30/258388/corporate-profits-recovery/
[43] recently reported: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/attention-marxists-labors-share-national-income-drops-lowest-history
[44] $38.6 trillion: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/rich-are-about-get-very-very-rich-study-finds-global-millionaire-wealth-set-more-double-2020?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+th
[45] $6.3 trillion: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/15/offshore_banking_and_tax_havens_have
[46] $1,000,000,000,000: http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html
[47] richest 400 people: http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020612/understanding-extreme-incomewealth-gap
[48] 40% of all wealth: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?currentPage=all
[49] more wealth than 90%: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IykY6WlUIiA
[50] an analysis: http://ampedstatus.org/who-rules-america-an-investment-manager-breaks-down-the-economic-top-1-says-0-1-controls-political-and-legislative-process/
[51] Who Rules America?: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0078111560
[52] $27 million: http://washingtonindependent.com/107493/americas-super-rich-continue-to-make-mind-boggling-sums
[53] $145 billion: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/01/wall_street_pay_for_2009_will.html
[54] $149 billion: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceopay.cfm
[55] reported: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/11/business/la-fi-insurance-salaries-20100811
[56] $72 million: http://blogs.courant.com/connecticut_insurance/2011/04/aetnas-former-ceo-ronald-willi.html
[57] war profiteering: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/08/leaked-document-bp-rules-iraq-with-stranglehold-over-economy-by-controlling-largest-oil-field/
[58] $36 billion: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/08/the-joke-is-on-us-once-again-big-five-oil-companies-reaped-36-billion-in-profit-last-quarter/
[59] only 18%: http://blogs.forbes.com/robertlenzner/2011/07/25/the-400-richest-americans-pay-an-18-tax-rate/?partner=yahoofeed
[60] 1,470 Americans: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/irs-incomes_n_918458.html
[61] $136,000: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/05-5
[62] 8.9%: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/corporate-tax-rates-then-and-now/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+(The+Big+Picture)
[63] $16 trillion: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
[64] $1 trillion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/student-loan-debt-may-top_n_848093.html
[65] 11.1%: http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/07/official-cpi-is-running-36-but-if-it.html
[66] 3.6%: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
[67] increased 39%: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/81577/icode/
[68] increased 34%: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:B8jtf14xQHUJ:www.api.org/aboutoilgas/gasoline/upload/PumpPriceUpdate.pdf+increase+in+gas+cost+over+past+year&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESid6khfTkbgkS7LI6kZSMUKeP2v6gLMdcLTI7TtXvnkbblSVe2Fy9yNJHxWRMvTrP7ESmIsXunshYP4eiX7mVz7Uoh5SLovNFfErCGG7oVRU-eLES-PFBUePgmQIbYe6-DcqKps&sig=AHIEtbQKFTYQdzZpyN1ddpbOiAn_39xJmA
[69] lost 7.5%: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gold-just-1-record-nominal-high-1444oz-risk-dollar-crisis-increases-day
[70] 10.8 million: http://daviddegraw.org/2011/07/this-is-what-a-collasping-ponzi-scheme-looks-like-housing-market-headed-off-a-cliff-as-a-shocking-10-8-million-mortgages-at-risk-of-default/
[71] housing program for the poor: http://ampedstatus.org/analysis-of-the-global-insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-the-coming-american-rebellion-we-are-egypt-revolution-roundup-3/#gulag
[72] direct input from ALEC: http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/gaming_the_system.pdf
[73] Columbia University’s School of Public Health: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jul2011/pove-j13.shtml
[74] 31.1 million: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p60-214.pdf
[75] Federal Reserve’s economic policies: http://ampedstatus.org/analysis-of-the-global-insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-the-coming-american-rebellion-we-are-egypt-revolution-roundup-3/
[76] once said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehc3V1g5pm0
[77] AmpedStatus.com: http://AmpedStatus.com
[78] The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III: http://ampedstatus.com/word-from-the-watchtower-a-hard-rain-is-going-to-fall-introduction-to-the-road-through-2012-revolution-or-world-war-iii/
[79] DavidDeGraw.org: http://daviddegraw.org/
[80] donate to support our efforts here: http://ampedstatus.com/donation.php
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