Exposing The Truth

Immunize Your Child or Lose Benefits, Parents Told

November 28, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Starting July 1 of 2012, Australian parents will be stripped of family tax benefits if their child is not fully immunized.

Once the immunization alterations take effect next year, families who refuse vaccinations will also be refusing up to $2,100 per child in benefits.

It seems that this is just one attempt by the Australian government to force vaccinations on children before potentially making it a federal law.

Forced Vaccinations Should be Illegal

Vaccinations are surrounded with quite a bit of negative history. The flu vaccine alone has been tied to convulsions, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and a number of other negative health effects. Gardasil is also a heavy hitter when it comes to serious health problems, with the vaccine leading to many deaths and thousands of hospitalizations. With that being said, how can a government penalize your for not subjecting yourself to these potential dangers?

This tactic executed by the government is simply a way to push vaccines on the population without making full immunization mandatory by law. Being told you must be fully immunized to receive a benefit is not so different from being told you won’t receive any benefits if you have high cholesterol and don’t take Lipitor. The withholding of benefits tactic is pushed by the idea that not only will millions of kids be protected, but a massive amount of money will be saved in healthcare costs. So why not make pharmaceutical drugs mandatory to keep people “healthy”? The truth is the last thing that Australia and most other nations need is more government regulation.

What is Full Immunization?

You may be wondering what full immunization even is, especially if you are planning to have a child. Here is a schedule provided by the Australian government which shows the vaccination requirements for attaining the Family Tax Benefit Part A Supplement. In order for parents and families to experience various childcare benefits, this schedule should be followed – as far as the government is concerned.

According to the schedule, 5-7 vaccines should be administered at the 2, 4, 6, and 12 month mark as well as at 4 years. One vaccine which is administered almost every immunization period is the hepatitis B vaccine. Unfortunately this vaccine has been tied to infant death, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune disorders.

It is also important to note that the Cochrane Database Review, the gold standard within the evidence-based medical model for determining the effectiveness of common medical interventions, does not lend clear scientific support to the theory that flu vaccines are safe or effective.

Shockingly, these authoritative reviews reveal that there is actually a severe lack of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of influenza vaccines in children under 2, healthy adults, the elderly, and healthcare workers who care for the elderly.

Some other changes should be known regarding future vaccine immunization changes. Starting July of next year, the immunization check will be changed from two and five years of age to one year of age. In addition, children will be required to be vaccinated against meningococcal C, pneumococcal, and chicken pox, all for the first time starting in July of 2013.

Taking a Stand

This government incentive to get vaccinated is only one small move in the game. It is only until enough people stand up and refuse injection for themselves and their children when the next move will be made. If injection becomes federal law, we will undoubtedly see great opposition. Just as no pharmaceutical drugs should be mandatory for the “health and safety” of the population, no vaccinations should be mandatory either. Everyone should always possess the freedom of choice.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/immunize-your-child-or-lose-benefits.html

Filed Under: Health, Welfare Benefits Tagged With: Australia, School, Vaccine

Occupy Wall Street: The hidden meaning behind protests

November 18, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

For nearly our entire history as a country, Americans have shared a social contract.

As police crack down on protests in New York City and elsewhere, what does OWS say about America?

It went something like this:

One of the cultural characteristics that makes America great is the fact that we celebrate winners in our society. We look at people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and we say to ourselves, “If I work hard enough, I can be like them.”

So we look in the mirror each morning and ask, “How am I doing? Am I working hard enough? Do I have the right education, skills and talent to succeed in this country?”

We don’t blame the rich for their successes, this cultural norm goes, because we know they worked hard and got what they deserved.

Instead, Horatio Alger-like, we turn these impulses inward in the name of self-improvement. We turn the success of others into models for our own behavior. We do not direct our personal frustrations and hostilities onto others.

This cultural reality in the US — this shared belief that hard work leads to economic success — has helped promote political stability and propel economic growth through the decades.

This idea has helped hard-working Americans grow richer, regardless of where they started and is perhaps the most important economic contribution the US has made to human society.

The critical assumption here, of course, is that the system needs to be fair. The rules of the game need to apply to all.

And that’s where the trouble starts.

The Occupy Wall Street movement represents a reversal of this largely unstated social contract in this country.

Right on cue, protesters nationwide are reacting to this change in this longstanding social contract. They are massing. They are demanding change. They are standing up to what has become — to the perceptions of far too many Americans — a rigged game.

A glance at the many protest signs from around the country makes the point:

“Robin Hood was right.”

“This country was built by men in denim and will be destroyed by men in suits”

“I am a human being, not a commodity”

“I can’t afford a lobbyist. I am the 99 percent”

In short, the social contract in America is broken. The optimistic glue that has successfully held together so much diversity, so many disparate dreams, for so long, is coming undone.

This is the unspoken message behind the Occupy Wall Street movement — in New York, Boston, Oakland, Portland and in all the other unhappy cities around the US. Its echoes can be heard around the world, from Tahrir Square, to London, to Tokyo, to every other place where economic inequality is today rearing its ugly head.

This is the larger point that so many people are trying to make, in so many different places.

Understanding this root cause is critical to addressing the problem, and finding a potential solution.

Unfortunately, the 99 percent and the 1 percent appear to be miles apart, and this is particularly true in the US right now.

Read the following statement attributed to Dennis Gartman, author of the popular financial industry newsletter the Gartman Letter, that was published Thursday on the FT Alphaville blog:

“We celebrate income disparity and we applaud the growing margins between the bottom 20% of American society and the upper 20% for it is evidence of what has made America a great country. It is the chance to have a huge income… to make something of one’s self; to begin a business and become a millionaire legally and on one’s own that separates the US from most other nations of the world. Do we feel bad for the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US? Of course not; we celebrate it, for we were poor once and we are reasonably wealthy now. We did it on our own, by the sheet dint of will, tenacity, street smarts and the like. That is why immigrants come to the US: to join the disparate income earners at the upper levels of society and to leave poverty behind. Income inequality? Give us a break? God bless income disparity and those who have succeeded, and shame upon the OWS crowd who take us to task for our success and wallow in their own failure. Income disparity? Feh! What we despise is government that imposes rules that prohibit or make it difficult to make even more money; to employ even more people; to give even more sums to the charities of our choice. That is what we despise.”

Yes, Gartman is tapping into this rags to riches tradition in America. But his argument — which is a common refrain among those fighting for the staus quo — ignores what every child on every playground in the US intuitively knows: the rules of the game have to be fair.

Prior to this chaotic moment in our history, most Americans could turn their personal frustrations into productive energy. They could work harder. They could plot, plan and dream about riches. And, god bless America, millions succeeded in these endeavors.

But this social contract only worked if there was reasonable hope that these human energies would produce results. This only worked, in other words, if fairness was the norm.

This is also the larger point that Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — the heavyweight champion of the world of free markets — made regularly.

In his seminal 1960 work Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman wrote the following:

“The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the “rules of the game” and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

In 1970, Friedman was at it again, this time on the social responsibilities of business as it relates to profit:

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, Friedman believed, business was the best mechanism for producing social harmony.

According to most OWS protesters, this is precisely the problem: the American system is no longer free or fair (bankers win). The rules of the game no longer apply equally to all (lobbyists hired by the most powerful write the laws). The government’s umpire role is non-existent (Washington is staffed with former Goldman Sachs CEOs who bail out banks instead of helping “regular people”).

Of course, Friedman was the first to argue — highly effectively — that less government is better. Smaller and more efficient government is better for the economy, better for people and better for society. Anyone who has waited hours in line for a driver’s license or any other government service can attest to that.

But goverment has a role to play, even if it’s a limited one, of allowing a sense of fairness back into the American story.

Vitriolic rampage against government only creates more division. Vilification of the less well-off is no answer to this country’s rising inequality problems. Triumphalism from society’s winners breeds abhorrence from the rest.

Taken together this toxic mix of anger, frustration, and rising contempt by all threatens everything that America — the most successful economic engine the world has ever produced — once represented for all.

Source: https://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/111117/occupy-wall-street-the-hidden-meaning-behind-protests

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Downloads, Economy, Education, Federal Reserve, Health, Imperialism, Income Inequality, Justice, Libya, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Oil, Police, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Spirituality, Symbolism, Taxes, USA, War, Weapons, Welfare Benefits

Four ways the poor get screwed that everyone takes for granted

November 17, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Even if we’re not in the 1%, lots of us still benefit every day from policies that burden the less financially fortunate.

I’m not in the 1%. At the lower end of what I think of as the upper middle class, I nevertheless take daily advantage of a raft of systems intended to ensure that people who have less money than I do pay more than I do. Since my economic advantages result from public policy, it’s fair to call them taxes, levied on people least able to afford them and applied upward for the benefit of people like me. Since the glory days of feudalism are long over, and we don’t like to revel in high position, matters are arranged to keep me and people like me from noticing the systemic nature of our economic advantage.

Here, therefore, are four quotidian things we deal with half-consciously every day that move money upward and keep it there:

1. ATM’s. Some readers have reason to think the lowest amount that can be withdrawn from an ATM is a twenty-dollar bill. Others have reason to know that in less privileged parts of town, ATM companies set the machines to dispense ten-dollar bills, with ads calling attention to the fact. The reason is fairly obvious: many people’s balances and obligations don’t permit them to withdraw $20 at one time, and ATM companies and storeowners don’t want to miss out on collecting fees in such a large — and these days, and in those neighborhoods, such a growing — population.

The up-front fee for withdrawing $10 is the same as the up-front fee for withdrawing other amounts. That gives me a distinct, recurring financial advantage over less well-off neighbors. This morning, for example, on my way to the subway, I withdrew $120 at a local ATM, paying $1.75 on the transaction — around 1.5%, a reasonable fee for the convenience. I usually take out as much cash as I can when using an ATM not at my bank. It saves money. And if I keep a certain balance in my account, I pay no transaction fee to my own bank for using the ATM.

An up-against-it neighbor, by contrast, made a ten-dollar withdrawal, paying the $1.75 fee too. Where my cost was less than 2%, his was 17.5%. If his bank account is less “preferred” than mine, he’s paying his bank a fee on the transaction too, a fee not announced at the ATM. The act of taking out cash costs him proportionally more than ten times what it costs me, and possibly far more. Because I can afford it, my money is cheap to get. Because he can’t, his is expensive.

Changing that situation would require a law changing how ATM fees work. That law’s nonexistence is an act of financial-regulation policy. I’m not in the 1%, but that famous — or infamous — banking-government connection is operating to my financial benefit.

2. Subway Cards. My pockets full of cheaply accessed folding money, I proceeded this morning to the subway station to buy a MetroCard, which is how we pay for public-transportation in New York City. When you put more than $10 on a MetroCard, you receive a 7% bonus. I put $80 on the card, the maximum. That way I get what I think of as two free rides, plus part of another one.

The fantasy that I’m getting nearly three free rides, on top of 35.5 rides that I think I purchased for $80, is predicated on the false premise, advertised by the Metropolitan Transit Association, that subway fare is $2.25 per ride. In reality, the fare is capped at $2.25 per ride for a round trip — but it isn’t set there. Nothing’s free: the fare per ride varies, of course, depending on how much you put on the card.

Fares go down for those who can afford more, up for those who can afford less. If you can afford only a round-trip card, your fare will indeed be $2.25 each way. If you put a large amount on the card — and, a key consideration, if you can tolerate the concomitant risk of losing that card — you can get your subway fare down to about $2.00 per ride.

In other words, after some hasty scribbling, I find that a 7% bonus for those with the most to spend equates with a 12.5% extra charge for those with the least. The rationale for this policy, I think, is that the bonus “incentivizes” me to use public transportation (though not being in the 1%, I have no helicopter), to keep living in the city, to support the tax base, etc. Various choices I’m described as enjoying make me eligible, as a matter of public policy, for programmatic benefits not granted those with fewer choices.

I know there are reduced-fare subway programs, which, along with other relief programs like food stamps, give people with fewer resources ways of getting easier terms on essential goods and services. You have to apply for such government programs, and at first glance that seems natural enough. Yet the program I’m in, every bit as much a government program as the relief one — the program that charges poorer people to benefit me — requires no application.

3. American Express. When I was buying that MetroCard this morning, I decided not to use the cash I was lucky enough to withdraw from my ATM at such a comparatively low discount. I used my American Express card instead.

Many of us who are not in the 1% have American Express cards. They cost money to own, since the financial advantages of owning them are tangible. My neighbor — the same one who withdrew money from the ATM at more than ten times my cost, and then spent 12.5% more per subway ride than I did — had to take the money to pay for his MetroCard out of his pocket, or out of his bank account via debit, right there at the point of purchase.

But no money came out of my pocket or account when I bought my MetroCard. That money won’t leave my virtual coffers until I get the AmEX bill and get around to paying it, and until my check then clears. So if my money is in a money market, for example, it’s actually making me yet more money while my AmEx bill waits to be paid. The “float” on my single MetroCard purchase may be negligible — but the more times and ways I postpone payment this way, the more money I keep, in the short term, to grow for the long term.

Plus I am “awarded” “points” by American Express for every dollar I’ve thus postponed spending. That makes it cheaper for me than for those who can’t afford the card to fly in a plane, to rent a car, etc. Membership has its privileges: nonmembers paying more.

And AmEx is a service I pay for, not a line of high-interest credit I access. Should that neighbor of mine, when buying his MetroCard, decide he needs to hold onto his expensive cash withdrawal, and not further lower his precarious balance via debit, and should he therefore use a credit card for his subway ride, he will pay up to another 20% more on the subway fare than I do.

4. Sales and Sin Taxes. As the MetroCard bonus is framed not as a tax on those who can’t afford it but as a benefit for those who can, sales taxes and sin taxes go the other way: they admit to being taxes, but they don’t admit to being overwhelmingly for the benefit of the better-off.

Sales tax is a “flat” tax, like the ATM fee, notoriously regressive. Government’s dunning the buyer of a $60 pair of jeans with a 5% sales tax, say, regardless of whether the buyer makes $20,000 or $2,000,0000 per year, places a disproportionately greater responsibility on the poorer buyer for contributing to the public revenue. In New York, therefore, the state doesn’t tax the purchase of essential items like clothing priced under $55. And the same percentage is charged for a $60 or a $600 pair of jeans — so the person who can afford a more expensive pair does therefore pay more. You have to be buying something like a yacht to see the rate itself go up, and not being in the 1%, I’m not buying one of those. Sales taxes thus benefit me in ways not immediately obvious when paying them.

The tobacco excise, too – a “sin” tax — should be seen as a regressive tax that masquerades as something else. The tobacco excise comes cloaked in concern for the health and welfare of smokers: the tax is rationalized as a disincentive, in this case, from doing something bad for health.

But in New York City, the price of a pack of cigarettes can exceed $15.00, and New York State collected $10 billion in tobacco taxes over the last six years. It’s no secret that at this point long-term smokers come in large numbers from the disadvantaged; it’s no secret that they’re not indulging a luxurious habit out of some perverse choice but feeding a flat-out addiction. If they buy cartons, they can save, but buying cartons, like putting $80 on a MetroCard or beating down the ATM discount, takes cash flow.

They could quit, of course, and it’s easy enough to say they should — but can anyone seriously believe that if smoking hadn’t become, partly through public policy efforts, overwhelmingly a behavior of people with lower incomes, and if the upper middle class were still chain-smoking like it’s 1962, that taxes on cigarettes would be anywhere near where they are now? The regressive taxation involved in tobacco has made the hard core of low-income smokers’ quitting economically undesirable for everyone else.

That situation works out well for me financially. Because I don’t smoke, I rely on a large group of underclass addicts with little real choice in the matter to pay a significant portion of the revenue that funds civil services I use. If people who are now shelling out the cigarette tax were to stop smoking — or if we banned the sale of this product we claim to find so destructive — I’d be paying more.

That’s not likely to happen. Once again, those with less money are paying more of theirs so that I can keep and grow more of mine.

I don’t own that helicopter or that yacht.

And I’ve seen the graphs.

I’ve seen that line representing possession and growth turn vertiginously upward when it gets above my level and enters the 1%.

I can only imagine what goes on up there, so far over my head.

Here in the upper parts of the 99%, government and the financial industry work together to keep me only dimly aware of the persistent economic edge they give me every day.

Source: https://www.alternet.org/economy/153043/4_Ways_the_Poor_Get_Screwed_That_Everyone_Takes_for_Granted/?page=entire

Filed Under: Banks, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Education, Employment, Health, Income Inequality, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Taxes, USA, War, Welfare Benefits

How Conservatives exploit the myth of “Wealthy Elderly” to justify gutting social security

November 17, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Right-wingers somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget

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The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question.

The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. This index differed from the official measure in several ways; most importantly it includes the value of government non-cash benefits, like food stamps. It also adjusts for differences in costs by area and takes account of differences in health spending by age.

While this new measures showed a slightly higher overall poverty rate the most striking difference between the new measure and the official measure was the rise in the poverty rate among the elderly. Using the official measure, the poverty rate for the elderly is somewhat lower than for the adult population as a whole, 9 percent for the elderly compared with 14 percent for the non-elderly adult population. However with the new measure, the poverty rate for the elderly jumps to 14 percent, compared with 13 percent for non-elderly adults.

By this higher measure, we have not been nearly as successful in reducing poverty among the elderly as we had believed. While Social Security has done much to ensure retirees an income above the poverty line, the rising cost of health care expenses not covered by Medicare has been an important force operating in the opposite direction.

The other report suggests that this situation could get worse in the years ahead. The Pew Research Center released a study on wealth by age cohort. While many observers (including me) focused on the change in wealth over the last 25 years, what is perhaps more striking about this study are the levels of wealth it reported.

The report showed that the median wealth for a household over age 65 is $170,500. This measure includes everything that they own, including equity in their home. With the median house selling for roughly $170,000, this study implies that the typical household over age 65 would essentially have enough money to pay off their mortgage. They would then have nothing else to live on except their Social Security.

The situation looks even worse for the near elderly: the cohorts between the ages of 55 to 64. (Wealth typically peaks in these years, so these people are unlikely to have more wealth when they cross age 65.) The median wealth for this group was reported as $162,000. Using the Pew findings, the typical household in the 55 to 64 year old cohort would fall 5 percent short of the money needed to pay off the mortgage on the median home.

Alternatively, if they were to use this wealth to buy an annuity at age 65, it would be sufficient to get them an annuity of roughly $10,000 a year or just over $800 a month. This would supplement Social Security income that comes to less than $1,200 a month for a typical worker. The monthly premium for Medicare Part B is $100, which would leave $1,100 from a monthly Social Security check for a typical retiree.

Note that this calculation assumes that they have no equity in their home so they would either being paying rent or still paying off a mortgage out of this money. It is also worth remembering that the Medicare premium is projected to rise considerably more than the cost of living each year. This means that as retirees age, rising Medicare premiums will be reducing the buying power of their Social Security check each year. And this is the median; half of all seniors will have less income than this to support themselves.

This is the group that the Very Serious People in Washington want to target for their deficit reduction. While the Very Serious People debate whether people who earn $250,000 a year are actually rich when it comes to restoring the tax rates of the 1990s, they somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget. There is a logic here, but it ain’t pretty.

Source: https://www.alternet.org/story/153079/how_conservatives_exploit_the_myth_of_%22wealthy_elderly%22_to_justify_gutting_social_security/?page=entire

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Jobcentre staff ‘sent guidelines on how to deal with claimants’ suicide threats’

November 15, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Employees ‘receive six-point plan telling them to take each threat seriously’ as clamp on benefits takes effect

Staff working for jobcentres and other Department for Work and Pensions contractors have been given guidelines on how to deal with suicide threats from claimants as the squeeze on benefits takes hold.

A document sent to jobcentre staff in April details what it calls a “new policy for all DWP businesses to help them manage suicide and self-harm declarations from customers”.

The guidelines include a “six-point plan” for staff to follow which says: “Some customers may say they intend to self-harm or kill themselves as a threat or a tactic to ‘persuade’, others will mean it. It is very hard to distinguish between the two … For this reason, all declarations must be taken seriously.”

The internal document was sent to the Guardian by a senior jobcentre employee who has worked for the DWP for more than 20 years. It was accompanied by a letter from the source that said: “Absolutely nobody has ever seen this guidance before, leading staff to believe it has been put together ahead of the incapacity benefit and disability living allowance cuts.”

The employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “We were a bit shocked. Are we preparing ourselves to be like the Samaritans? The fact that we’ve dealt with the public for so many years without such guidance has made people feel a bit fearful about what’s coming.”

The DWP said that the new guidelines were not related to any recent policy changes and had been in development since 2009. “This guidance is about supporting our staff and ensuring we can help our customers.

“It is right that a customer-facing organisation that serves over 20 million, including the most vulnerable in our society, has guidance such as this in place.”

The team leader said the guidance had alarmed people in their team: “We’ve suddenly got this new aspect to our job. The bigger picture is people here are wondering how savage these cuts are going to be. And we’re the frontline staff having to deal with the fallout from these changes. ”

Julie Tipping, an appeals officer for Disability Solutions, represents claimants who try to overturn decisions made following work capability assessment tests that they are fit for work.

She says that in the last year, two of her clients have made “real attempts” at suicide after a decision was made that they were fit for work. Both were taken to hospital and subsequently sectioned.

“It’s real and true. A lot of people think these people are crying wolf to get their money, but that’s not the case. They are suffering from real problems and can’t face it any more.”

Tipping said the pressure on vulnerable clients was “the cumulative effect of all these welfare changes. The test is simply not fit for purpose for assessing mental health problems. That’s on top of moving people on to jobseeker’s allowance, and all of the conditionality and risk of sanctions that goes with that.”

The Guardian revealed last month that some jobcentres were setting targets for advisers to stop people’s benefits for not meeting conditions attached to their jobseeker’s allowance.

A whistleblower said that the pressure on staff was leading to vulnerable claimants being targeted for sanctions. The targets have since been removed. But thousands of claimants of incapacity benefit and employment support allowance are being reassessed to see if they should be considered fit for work and moved on to jobseeker’s allowance.

Another jobcentre adviser said: “People have been coming off sickness benefits and thrown onto jobseeker’s allowance. It’s problematic because some customers are clearly not fit to work, and they are clearly very distressed. When you sense this you feel really upset because the system is allowing them to get like this and you feel part of the processing machine.”Eleanor Lisney, of Disabled People Against Cuts, said that the thought of being moved on to jobseeker’s allowance was like a sword hanging over the heads of disabled groups and she feared an increase in related suicides.

Source:

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