The Great Malaise Drags On

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Economia

Photo Credit: Economia

In the US, median incomes have continued their seemingly relentless decline; for male workers, income has fallen to levels below those attained more than 40 years ago. Europe’s double-dip recession ended in 2013, but no one can responsibly claim that recovery has followed. More than 50% of young people in Spain and Greece remain unemployed. According to the International Monetary Fund, Spain can expect unemployment to be above 25% for years to come.

The real danger for Europe is that a sense of complacency may set in. As the year passed, one could feel the pace of vital institutional reforms in the eurozone slowing. For example, the monetary union needs a real banking union – including not just common supervision, but also common deposit insurance and a common resolution mechanism – and Eurobonds, or some similar vehicle for mutualizing debt. The eurozone is not much closer to implementing either measure than it was a year ago.

One could also sense a renewed commitment to the austerity policies that incited Europe’s double-dip recession. Europe’s continuing stagnation is bad enough; but there is still a significant risk of another crisis in yet another eurozone country, if not next year, in the not-too-distant future.

Matters are only slightly better in the US, where a growing economic divide – with more inequality than in any other advanced country – has been accompanied by severe political polarization. One can only hope that the lunatics in the Republican Party who forced a government shutdown and pushed the country to the brink of default will decide against a repeat performance.

Read more from this story HERE.

10,988,269: 2013 Closes With Record Number on Disability Getting Highest-Ever Monthly Benefits

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks

The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,988,269 in December, up from the previous record of 10,982,920 set in November, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.

The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record of $1,146.43 in December, up from a previous high of $1,130.34 in December of last year.

Spouses of disabled workers also got a record average monthly benefit of $308.13 in December, up from a previous high of $304.31 in August. Children of disabled workers also received a record average monthly benefit of $341.42 in December, up from a previous high of $337.13 in May.

As CNSNews.com reported earlier this month, the number of Americans getting disability benefits now exceeds the entire population of Greece, which is 10,772,967, according to the CIA World Factbook.

The record 10,988,269 total disability beneficiaries in December, included a record 8,942,584 disabled workers (up from 8,941,660 in November), 1,888,624 children of disabled workers, and 157,061 spouses of disabled workers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Slithers Again Toward ‘New World Order’

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Can ordinary citizens protesting on the Internet block the Obama administration’s plan to ram through Congress one of the most ambitious globalist, “free-trade agreements” ever negotiated?

Very quietly, opposition is building on the Internet to oppose legislation that may be introduced as soon as Jan. 8. The measure would grant President Obama what is known as “fast track authority” to ram through Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership with limited debate and no opportunity to propose amendments. The international trade agreement, negotiated largely in secret by the Obama administration, is regarded by globalist free traders as a cornerstone of the emerging “New World Order.”

A Facebook page has been created to call for a “Anti-TPP Twitter Storm” on New Year’s Day beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

“Anti-TPP Twitter Storm Wednesday 1/1/14 @ 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST, the whole world will tweet and post an ANTI-TPP hashtag (to be announced) with posts about why people should stop the Trans Pacific Partnership,” the Facebook page reads.

“The goal of this ‘hashtag storm’ is to get this hashtag trending on both Twitter and Facebook, so we can inform the public about the dangers of the Trans Pacific Partnership and agitate people to ACT to stop the TPP. Join us and help expose the corporate coup known as the Trans Pacific Partnership.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Building Explodes in Downtown Minneapolis

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Jim Leinfelder / NBC News

Photo Credit: Jim Leinfelder / NBC News

Fourteen people were injured — six of them critically — in a building explosion in Minneapolis that sent flames shooting 20 feet into the air Wednesday morning, authorities said.

The ferocity of the blaze pushed back firefighters, who had to battle the flames from the outside with hoses. Not everyone was accounted for, officials said.

The three-story building on Cedar Ave. South housed a halal market and 10 apartments adjacent to a mosque, which was also damaged. Rescuers rushed there after a blast and fire were reported at 8:16 a.m.

“When crews arrived, there were victims already outside the structure. There was heavy fire on the second and third floors,” Fire Chief John Fuertel said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Disturbing Surveillance Video Shows Bystanders Walking Over Dead Body in Convenience Store Entrance (+video)

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Opposing Views

Photo Credit: Opposing Views

Disturbing surveillance video shows the body of 24-year-old Jheryl Wright lying in the doorway of a convenience store in Kalamazoo, Michigan while customers walked by unaffected.

Wright had been gunned down at the entrance of the convenience store just minutes before what’s shown in the video, and according to reports, the store clerks didn’t even check to see if he was alive or dead. People came in and out of the store, stepped over him, and acted as if there wasn’t a dead body in front of them.

“He was a father figure, provided for his family,” said Wright’s uncle Barry. “He wasn’t a troublemaker. He wasn’t some street-type thug. I can’t say a bad thing about him.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Bret Bohn: Medical Prisoner Over 60 Days in Anchorage, Alaska

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Free Patriot

Photo Credit: Free Patriot

While many of us had Christmas and New Years, the family of 26-year-old Bret Bohn has held a vigil across the street from Providence Hospital, Anchorage, Alaska as they have most of this fall. Fighting some of the coldest temperatures of the season, they have held a vigil in an attempted to have their son released from the hospital.

It has been 60 days. There has been no diagnosis, no second opinion, and Providence has custody of him.

The hospital won’t let his parents in to see him. Other family members are being given very limited access. He has requested release and does not want to go to Boston for treatment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bill Gates Told that His Charity Pledge is ‘Worthless’

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Bill Gates is the richest person in the world — but one retired New York hedge-fund mogul thought the software pioneer’s Giving Pledge was “practically worthless.”

Robert W. Wilson, a well-known philanthropist who had given away $600 million of his fortune as of 2013, abruptly turned aside Gate’s 2010 request that he sign the Giving Pledge.

The pledge pushes billionaires to give away a bulk of their fortune while they are alive, or in their will.

Wilson found especially problematic the pledge’s loophole that allowed signers to gift their wealth to a family-controlled foundation.

“And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards,” Wilson wrote to Gates in a June 2010 e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the website BuzzFeed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Legal Recreational Pot Industry Opens in Colorado

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

Crowds were serenaded by live music as they waited for the nation’s first legal recreational pot shops to open. They ate doughnuts and funnel cakes as a glass-blower made smoking pipes. Some tourists even rode around in a limo, eager to try weed but not so eager to be seen buying it.

And when the sales began, those who bought the drug emerged from the stores, receipt held high and carrying sealed shopping bags, to cheers.

“I’m going to frame the receipt when I go home, to remind myself of what might be possible: Legal everywhere,” said musician James Aaron Ramsey, 28, who did some time in jail for pot possession in Missouri and played folk tunes with his guitar for those in line.

Activists hope he’s right, and that the experiment in Colorado will prove to be a better alternative to the costly American-led drug war, produce the kind of revenue that state officials hope and save the government costs in locking up drug offenders.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Deputies Release Leftist Collaborator with Twin Towers Jihadis

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

President Barack Obama’s appointees won an early prison release for a progressive lawyer who collaborated with the Muslim jihadi leader of the 1993 attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

The 1993 attack failed to topple the building, but it did kill six Americans. The jihadi plotters had hoped the first tower would collapse and destroy the second tower in the process, killing all the Americans in both structures.

The failed attack was a model for Osama bin Laden’s successful atrocity in 2001, when his Muslim jihadis killed 3,000 New Yorkers.

The released left-wing lawyer, Lynne Stewart, 74, was sentenced in 2005 to a decade-long sentence for acting as a courier for her jihadi client, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was jailed in 1995 for urging the Twin Towers attack.

Stewart’s allies said she should be released from prison because she’s suffering from cancer and is expected to die in 18 months. The 3,006 Americans who burned to death, were crushed by steel and concrete debris or leapt out of the Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks, were not available for comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Freed Ailing Ex-Terror Trial Lawyer Arrives in NYC

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A dying former civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case but released early from prison has arrived in New York City.

Lynne Stewart’s attorney says she landed Wednesday afternoon at LaGuardia Airport, where she was greeted by supporters and relatives.

Read more from this story HERE.