Wall Street has worked with Congress to loot our country and much of the rest of the world. Wall Street brokers have become filthy rich stealing everyone's money, and they pay kick-backs to Congress so that nobody will investigate or prosecute them, or force them to pay back the money they stole. Babies are dying because of what Wall Street did. The Democrats turn away from the little dead baby corpses because they're too busy hauling away their share of the loot.We may be shocked as we watch our neighbors thrown out of work, their jobs sent to third world countries to be done by slave labor. Or we see the for sale signs followed by bank-owned signs throughout our communities, nobody plans to retire anymore, everyone says their savings and retirement money has been stolen by Wall Street, their credit card company just raised their interest rates, insurance premiums go up, food goes up, everything costs more but people can't find work. And it's really not something that most of us can understand, those of us who did not go through the Great Depression, anyway, those of us who were raised to believe that our society was fair, businesses honest, government existed to protect us. Ha!
But as bad as things are or may get in this country, it's a lot worse in other countries. The effect of the market, currency, real estate, stock, and financial manipulation, conspiracy, collusion, theft and fraud by the people on Wall Street, in conjunction with our politicians in Congress, is going to cause hundreds of millions of people in the world to die. At least One Billion people are suffering from hunger right now because of what the Wall Street criminals have done. Who suffers the most from hunger and malnutrition? Babies and children. One child dies from hunger every six seconds. Yet the Democrats have refused to investigate, prosecute, seize the assets, indict, imprison the Wall Street criminals who are mostly responsible for the economic devastation in the world. Dead Babies don't get the Democrats' attention. They're too busy counting their bribes.There is enough food in the world, right now, to feed everyone. We could immediately eliminate hunger and malnutrition with the food we have on hand. But the problem is that the rich won't share the food with the poor. The number of people suffering from hunger right now is greater than the total population of the U.S., Canada, and Europe all combined. Try to imagine every single person, old men and women, babies, children, pregnant women, your family and siblings and spouse and children and parents, all being hungry, every one in our country being hungry and not having enough food every single day. Try to imagine that.
We keep hearing that the "popular" charities are having trouble fundraising because of the recession or depression in this country. Museums, zoos, school programs. But there is an institutional system of programs which provides meager aid to the poorest people very year, just enough to keep them alive, and this year there is not enough aid to stave off massive starvation.
Right now, the United Nations is reporting that because food-aid is down due to the poor economy in the world, more than One Billion people in the world will face unrelieved hunger this year.
One Billion people. 60% of them are women. A child dies every six seconds because of hunger. And nobody really cares. These are people who are being systematically exterminated by starvation not because there is not enough food in the world, but just because the rich people have taken way more than their share, and the politicians take bribes to look the other way, step over the bodies of the dead and dying on the way to their private jets and bags of gold.
Think of all the rich people who take their money, usually without paying taxes, and hide it in private charities where they can keep it forever, without paying any taxes, as long as they pay out 5% per year. Like Bill Gates, for example, who hides his money in his private charity so he doesn't have to pay taxes on it. Instead, he does a little PR photo op to convince the world he's really a generous guy, but he keeps most of his money, while a billion people go hungry. If he wanted to help, he would give away his money. Or people like Bill Clinton who has reportedly collected almost a billion dollars from rich people, from foreign countries, from the princes and oil sheiks of Saudi Arabia, from corporations after he left office, and he puts his money into his own "private" charity while a billion people starve.
How about Warren Buffett, who keeps saying that he plans to give away all his money when he dies. I don't believe a word he says. But for anybody who does believe him, ask this question: Why doesn't he give his money away now, so that one billion people don't starve to death this year? All these people who publicly insist that they don't want the money, they're such philanthropists all they want to do is to help others, they'll give it all away when they die, but in the meantime they hide the money in private charities so they can avoid paying taxes, and pay out the absolute minimum, 5% per year, to keep their money tax-free.
It works like this: Let's say somebody earned $200 million this year. They are allowed under our tax laws (written for the benefit of rich people) to put half of that, $100 million, into a new bank account that they label under their own name - Joe Citizen, charity. They don't pay taxes on that money. As long as they pay out 5%/year to some charity, they get to keep the rest of their money. Pretty good con, huh, and all the rich people use it. If they really wanted to be charitable, they would give away all the money in their charity. Instead, they keep all their money, and pay out the absolute minimum that is required under the tax laws. If our government taxed the rich and shut down these tax scams, maybe there wouldn't be so many people starving to death in the world. We could use that money to feed the hungry.
And why isn't there a world tax? Why aren't people required to pay taxes to help the nations which have been exploited and plundered for centuries by the western world? Because the poor people don't have a voice, and because nobody cares that they are hungry, and that their children die.
What about agri-business, modern miracles, inventions, science, medicine, all these things we hear about that are supposed to be so amazing? What difference does it make when a Billion People are going to starve this year. For these people, they get nothing. Agribusiness, once promoted as a system to improve farming throughout the world, has instead concentrated food production in the hands of a few corporate CEOs who increase the prices for seed, wipe out local farmers, and watch the people die of starvation if they can't pay the outrageous prices charged by the corporations. Same for medical, same for water, same for everything.
The fact is that we produce enough food for everyone, but a few corporations, like Monsanto, have control of the seeds and food production, and use that monopoly control to keep raising the costs of everything. People are dying of hunger -- a child dies every six seconds from hunger -- because the corporations keep raising the price of food to increase the bonuses they pay to their CEOs and corporate insiders. Corporate theft causes people to die, causes babies to die.
Why is it with all the modern miracles we hear about, things just keep getting worse? The answer is that more and more of the world's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, and the majority of people have nothing. Not even a bite to eat. We should take that money back from the rich people, and distribute it to everyone else. That's the only solution.
"Despite a record level of people suffering from hunger, food aid is at a 20-year low due to the poor global economy, United Nations officials said today. The result: More than 1 billion people across the world will face hunger this year. "
"'For the world's most vulnerable, the perfect storm is hitting with a vengeance,' said U.N. World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran. So far this year, the agency has received less than half of the $6.7 billion it needs to feed 108 million people in 74 countries, Sheeran said."
... "Iron deficiency, the most common form of malnutrition, affects billions worldwide. It can impede brain development."
"Vitamin A deficiency affects 140 million pre-school children in 118 countries. It is the leading cause of child blindness and can make people more susceptible to diseases. It kills one million infants a year, according to UNICEF."
"Iodine deficiency affects 780 million people worldwide. Babies born to iodine-deficient mothers can have mental impairments. "
... "While enough food exists to feed the world's entire population, the WFP estimates that the number of hungry in the world tops 1 billion, or about one in every six people - more than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union combined. "
"The statistics (from the WFP) on those facing the results of hunger can be stark:
An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight.
Every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes.
More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women."
While aid programs made inroads in combating hunger at the end of the 20th century, rising food prices have been negating those efforts, causing the number of hungry to rise again everywhere except in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The rising cost of food caused the number of hungry to jump by 75 million people in 2007 and 40 million people in 2008.
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_51443.html
I'm sure most people already give a little to a local charity or food bank. But in addition, maybe this year you could send Ten Dollars to Unicef to feed the hungry babies in the world, and send a letter to your Senators telling them to indict, prosecute, seize the assets, throw into prison every scumbucket from Wall Street, fix the tax code and get rid of the tax cons, and make the rich people start paying taxes again. Demand that the Senators take every penny they have received from Wall Street in the last 8 years and donate the entire amount to Unicef. It's all dirty money, obtained through corruption, they should be ashamed of themselves for taking it, but at a minimum they should send it all to save a few more babies from dying. Here's the Unicef link: http://www.unicef.org/
