by Mickey Huff
Censored Story #8: Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent
In our present economic system, two out of every five dollars spent on ordinary goods and services ends up in the bank accounts of the most well-to-do institutions and individuals on the planet. This is essentially due to the fact that banking itself is a private, for-profit enterprise beholden only to the lenders, financiers, and bondholders who run it. A study conducted by German professor Margrit Kennedy, and brought to the attention of alternative media readerships by financial author and attorney Ellen Brown, noted that while 1 percent of the world’s population now owns 42 percent of the wealth, the bottom 80 percent yield to such hidden charges that bolster the very wealthy merely for sitting on their assets.20
Many harbor the false understanding that interest is paid only on a debt that has not been satisfied within a particular time frame. Yet the prices of many goods and services, from running water to sewer and garbage collection, include interest charges necessary to keep money in circulation and banks solvent. The higher up the wealth chain a family is, the greater the chance that they take in more interest than they pay out. Within our monetary system, Kennedy explained in her study,
we allow the operation of a hidden redistribution mechanism which constantly shuffles money from those who have less money than they need to those who have more money than they need. This is a different and far more subtle and effective form of exploitation than the one Marx tried to over-come.21
Indeed, not only is this a stealth form of confiscation, “baked into the cake,” it’s an extremely regressive wealth transfer, unwittingly forfeited by the least well-off.
Left unregulated and to its own devices, the present financial system will weave its way into almost all facets of everyday existence. Kennedy and Brown’s solution, of which the latter has written extensively, involves de-privatizing the banking system that holds the 99 percent captive and making those interest payments and fees something the public once again owns.
Such an undertaking doesn’t have to be national in scope. While Iceland’s electorate provides an important example of economic enfranchisement and resilience stemming from its full-scale rejection of private banks’ unwarranted claims on the public purse, North Dakota’s booming economy, low unemployment, and consistent state budget surpluses are due to the fact that it possesses a state-owned bank.22 While North Dakota is rich in natural resources, “[a]ccess to credit is the enabling factor that has fostered both a boom in oil and record profits from agriculture in” the state, Brown noted. “The Bank of North Dakota does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capital and liquidity requirements. It participates in loans, provides guarantees, and acts as a sort of mini-Fed[eral Reserve] for the state.”23
Beyond North Dakota, Montana’s example has inspired fifteen states to consider legislation that would change banking policy or establish public banks that could contribute to ending Wall Street’s control over Main Street and the cycle of indebtedness that hinders economic development and further jeopardizes living standards.24 The fact that such profit schemes exist to fleece the broader public, as tens of millions across the US lack the simple means to adequately feed themselves, should be cause for serious alarm. Yet such activities and conditions are seldom the focus of corporate media overwhelmingly concerned with the latest murder rampage, “terrorist” threat, or celebrity breakup.
Censored Story #13: A Fifth of Americans Go Hungry
As suggested thus far, the United States, once regarded as the upholder of freedom and prosperity, has been rotting from within over the past several decades and now has in many respects the distinctive qualities of an unindustrialized peripheral country. This observation is confirmed in unemployment numbers reminiscent of the Great Depression—as much as 23 percent—yet allayed in the public mind through the deceptive bookkeeping methods of federal government statisticians.25
In this way, an August 2012 Gallup Poll revealed that 18.2 percent of the public find it routinely difficult to feed their families. Nevertheless, both the US House of Representatives and Senate are proposing cutbacks in the Supplemental Nutrition Insurance Program (SNAP) that may reduce or eliminate aid to as many as 1.8 million already struggling people. Such measures will only further America’s already precipitous decline toward conditions resembling Dickensian England. “In 15 states,” Mike Ludwig wrote at Truthout, “at least 1 in 5 Americans polled in the first half of 2012 reported struggling to pay for food during the past 12 months.”26 Recall that just forty years ago a majority of families looked forward to the security of a modestly expanding income in accord with rising GDP and accompanied by little-to-no debt.
The proposed cuts come at a particularly difficult time as food prices increased in the wake of the most severe drought in fifty years. Opponents of the reductions point to how such measures will hit the most vulnerable especially hard—particularly seniors, children, and working poor families. Even in light of those grave socioeconomic disparities, brought on largely through a corrupt financial system, misplaced economic priorities, and the abandonment of honest governance, those comprising the 1 percent and working in its interests are quick to resist even modest attempts to level the playing field, such as an extremely small tax on investment transactions.
Censored Story #23: Transaction Tax Helps Civilize Wall Street and Lower the National Debt
The prospect of a modest tax on the routine stock transactions that benefit the financial industry and super elites has been discussed in Congress over the past several years as a potential means of revenue. Such a tax at a proposed rate of 0.03 percent (three cents for every $100 of equity value traded) could generate $350 billion in revenue over a ten-year period for a severely indebted and overstretched federal government forced to curtail programs for the most disadvantaged.
Even though such a measure would likely receive broad support from a public well aware of wealth and income disparities between the 99 percent and their ultra-wealthy counterparts, it has received little coverage in corporate media for obvious reasons. This blackout suggests the ways that such media serve their corporate masters. By keeping such anticipated legislation buried, the public has no way of knowing about it, much less advocating their congresspersons for its passage.
The traditional “buy and hold” investor who purchases securities for the long haul would barely notice the small tax. Instead, “high frequency traders” who buy and sell gargantuan volumes of equities and derivatives throughout the course of a day in order to benefit from often modest, split-second fluctuations in price would be the ones to feel the tax most keenly. In other words, the tax would fall most heavily on the likes of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and the various hedge funds taking in massive profits through their hefty buy-and-dump transactions and attendant market manipulation as government regulators awaiting passage from their positions through the revolving door to industry often look the other way.
JAMES F. TRACY, PHD, is associate professor of media studies at Florida Atlantic University. His scholarly and critical writings have appeared in a wide variety of aca-demic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and analysis outlets. Tracy is the editor of Union for Democratic Communications’ journal Democratic Communique. He is also a regular contributor to the Center for Research on Globalization’s website Glob-alResearch.ca, and a contributor to Project Censored’s 2012 publication, Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution.
Notes
1. Matthew G. Miller and Peter Newcomb, “Billionaires Worth $1.9 Trillion Seek Advantage in 2013,” Bloomberg, January 2, 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-01/billionaires-worth-1-9-trillion-seek-advantage-in-2013.html.
2. “Globally Almost 870 Million Chronically Undernourished,” United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, October 9, 2012, http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/161819/icode/.
3. Brandon Roberts, Deborah Povich and Mark Mather, “Low Income Worki
ng Families: The Growing Economic Gap,” Working Poor Families Project, Winter 2012–13, http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Winter-2012_2013-WPFP-Data-Brief.pdf.
4. Robert Kuttner, The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 21.
5. Ibid.
6. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956); William G. Dom-hoff, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
7. “Confidential Memorandum: Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” Lewis F. Powell Jr. to Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., August 23, 1971, 19–21. Available at http://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=5971, accessed May 27, 2013.
8. For more on this theme, see Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne’s “Exposing the Financial Core of the Transnational Capitalist Class,” ch. 9 in this volume.
9. David Noble, “Prologue,” in Global Productions: Labor in the Making of the “Information Society,” ed. Gerald Sussman and John Lent (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998), ix-x.
10. David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009).
11. Peter Phillips and Kimberly Soeiro, “The Global i Percent Ruling Class Exposed,” in Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution, Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth with Project Censored (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 235–258. Also see Phillips and Osborne, “Exposing the Financial Core,” ch. 9 in this volume.
12. Carl Herman, “1% Hide $21 Trillion and US Big Banks Hide $10 Trillion; Ending World poverty: $3 Trillion,” Washington’s Blog, July 24, 2012, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/i-hide-21-trillion-us-big-banks-hide-10-trillion-ending-world-poverty-3-trillion.html.
13. Andrew Gavin Marshall, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This Is What Corporate Governance Looks Like,” Truthout, November 20, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12857-the-trans-pacific-partnership-this-is-what-corporate-governance-looks-like.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Kevin Zeese, “Obama’s ‘Employment Creation’ Program: Massive Outsourcing of American Jobs,” Global Research, September 10, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-employ-ment-creation-program-massive-outsourcing-of-american-jobs/5304005.
17. Ibid.
18. George Monbiot, “Bang Goes the Theory,” Monbiot.com, January 1_4, 2013, http://www.mon-biot.com/2013/01/14/bang-goes-the-theory/.
19. Ibid.
20. Ellen Brown, “It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World,” Global Research, November 8, 2012, /www.globalresearch.ca/its-the-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-the-world/5311030. Originally posted at Web of Debt, November 8, 2012, http://webofdebt.word-press.com/2012/11/08/its-the-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-the-world/.
21. Margrit Kennedy, Interest and Inflation Free Money: Creating an Exchange Medium that Works for Everybody and Protects the Earth (Seva International, 1995), 10, http://kennedy-bibliothek.info/data/bibo/media/GeldbuchEnglisch.pdf.
22. On Iceland, see Censored stories #9 and #19 and the Censored News Cluster, “Iceland, the Power of Peaceful Revolution, and the Commons,” in this volume.
23. Ellen Brown, “North Dakota’s ‘Economic Miracle,’ It’s Not Oil,” YES! Magazine, August 31, 2011, http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-north-dakota-miracle-not-all-about-oil.
24. “State-Owned Financial Institutions 2012 Legislation,” National Conference of State Legislatures, January 16, 2013, http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/banking/state-owned-financial-institutions-2012-legis.aspx.
25. The unemployment rate was roughly 25 percent in 1933—the most severe year of the Depression. This is an estimate as the US government did not collect such statistics until 1940. Irving Bernstein, “Americans in Depression and War,” US Department of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/chapter5.htm. Independent economist John Williams used the Bureau of Labor Statistics U6 alternate measure of unemployment that includes all able-bodied and employable workers, including “short-term discouraged,” “marginally attached,” and “part-time” workers, to arrive at a figure of 13.6 percent. Williams includes long-term discouraged workers to arrive at a much higher figure of 23 percent. John Williams, “April Employment and Unemployment, M3 and Monetary Base,” Shadow Government Statistics, May 3, 2013, http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-521-april-employment-and-unemployment-m3-and-monetary-base. See also John Williams, “Alternate Employment Charts,” May 3, 2013, http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts.
26. Mike Ludwig, “Millions Go Hungry as Congress Considers Food Stamp Cuts and Drought Threatens Crops,” Truthout, August 23, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/11067-millions-go-hungry-as-congress-considers-food-stamp-cuts-and-drought-threatens-crops.
CENSORED NEWS CLUSTER
Human Rights and
Civil Liberties
Susan Rahman and Donna Nassor
Censored #5
Hate Groups and Antigovernment Groups on Rise across US
Brian Levin, “U.S. Hate and Extremist Groups Hit Record Levels, New Record Says,” Huffington Post, March 8, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-levin-jd/hate-groupssplc_b_1331318.html.
Mark Potok, Intelligence Report: The Year in Hate and Extremism, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2013, http://www.splcenter.org/home/2013/spring/the-year-in-hate-and-extremism.
LaurieInQueens, “‘Patriot’ Groups At All-Time High, Hate Groups Up Again: Report,” National Memo, March 7, 2013, http://www.nationalmemo.com/patriot-groups-at-all-time-high-hate-groups-up-again-report/.
Student Researchers: Sunnie Ayers (Sonoma State University); Jackson Hand and Amanda Baron (College of Marin)
Community and Faculty Evaluators: Ben Parry (Sonoma State University); Andy Lee Roth (College of Marin)
Censored #10
A “Culture of Cruelty” along Mexico–US Border
Erika L. Sánchez, “Ripped Off by Smugglers, Groped by Border Patrol: The Nightmares Women Migrants Face,” AlterNet, June 26, 2012, http://www.alternet.org/immigration/156035/ripped_off_by_smugglers,_groped_by_border_patrol%3A_the_nightmares_women_mi-grants_face?page=entire.
No More Deaths, “A Culture of Cruelty,” September 21, 2011, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/cultureofcruelty.html.
Student Researcher: Marylyn Phelps (Santa Rosa Junior College)
Faculty Evaluator: Susan Rahman (Santa Rosa Junior College)
Censored #20
Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade, Documents Reveal
John Glaser, “Israel Counted Minimum Calorie Needs in Gaza Blockade, Documents Reveal,” Antiwar.com, October 17, 2012, http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/17/israel-counted-minimum-calorie-needs-in-gaza-blockade-documents-reveal.
“Israel Forced to Release Study on Gaza Blockade,” BBC News, October 17, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19975211.
“Israel Set Calorie Limit during Gaza Blockade,” Al Jazeera English, October 18, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/10/20121017115529845399.html.
“Israel Calculated Palestinian Calories for Gaza Blockade,” Ma’an News Agency, October 17, 2012, http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=529743 .
Student Researchers: Mohamed Duple (College of Marin); Liliana Valdez-Madera (Santa Rosa Junior College)
Faculty Evaluator: Susan Rahman (College of Marin)
Censored #25
Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Immigrants without Their Consent
Alistair Dawber, “Israel Gave Birth Control to Ethiopian Jews without Their Consent,” Independent, January 27, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html.
Ali Abunimah, “Did Israel Violate the Genocide Convention by Forcing Contraceptives on Ethiopian Women?” Electronic Intifada, January 28, 2013, http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-
israel-violate-genocide-convention-forcing-contraceptives-ethiopian-women.
Beth Brogan, “Israel Admits Forced Birth Control For Ethiopian Immigrants,” Common Dreams, January 29, 2013, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/29-0.
Student Researchers: Shanti Williams (College of Marin); Elizabeth Saechao (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluator: Andy Lee Roth (College of Marin); Noel Byrne (Sonoma State University)
INTRODUCTION
We have come so far since the 1965 Civil Rights Act, people frequently assert from across the political spectrum in the United States. But is it true? That is debatable. Although people can now sit together at lunch counters and on buses, research also documents huge increases in black and brown people incarcerated for offenses—including various types of drug possession—that have only recently been considered crimes for which the offender must serve time.1 The US incarcerates people at a rate that is higher than ever—with lifelong repercussions for those subject to imprisonment, not least of which is the denial of their civil liberties.2
Each of the independent news stories in this Censored News Cluster deals with hatred, racism, bigotry, and hegemony. These stories show how the maintenance of power, in the US and in Israel, partly depends on the ability and willingness of the powerful to restrict or violate the human rights and civil liberties of those they deem “Other.”
