Six Media Giants Now Control a Staggering 90% of What We Read, Watch or Listen to [Infographic]

Note: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn’t own AOL, so Huffington Post isn’t affiliated with them

Hat Tip: Business Insider

Infographic Source: Frugal Dad

These 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy [Infographic]

Hat Tip: Business Insider

Has the Communist Manifesto replaced the Constitution?

By George Hawley | June 9, 2012 | Young Americans for Liberty

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union imploded two years later, Americans sighed a breath of relief. Seemingly overnight, our debilitating fear that a horde of T-72’s would blitz through the Fulda Gap evaporated; the world realized a nuclear holocaust would not be the Cold War’s coup de grace. What’s more, the Cold War’s conclusion freed millions of souls from Soviet oppression. We were right to be relieved. American conservatives, who were eager to take credit for USSR’s demise, were feeling particularly triumphant at that time. We had finally reached the “end of history,” and “democratic capitalism” reigned supreme. It remains to be seen, however, whether post-Cold War conservative chest thumping was truly justified.

Although all freedom lovers should celebrate the downfall of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the peaceful death of the Soviet Empire did not necessarily indicate the demise of Marxism as a force in the world. In fact, a strong case can be made that the United States is more Marxist now than ever before. It is true that a socialist revolution did not occur, as Marx predicted, via an apocalyptic struggle between workers and the bourgeoisie, but a socialist revolution of sorts nonetheless occurred. To those who believe Marxism has been relegated to “the dustbin of history,” I can only point to the words of Marx himself. The world we inhabit is not so different from the one Marx envisioned.

Born in Crisis

The Meaning Of The Constitution

By Edwin Meese III | September 16, 2009 | Heritage Foundation

The Constitution of the United States has endured for over two centuries. It remains the object of reverence for nearly all Americans and an object of admiration by peoples around the world. William Gladstone was right in 1878 when he described the U.S. Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Part of the reason for the Constitution’s enduring strength is that it is the complement of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for a government that exercises legitimate power by “the consent of the governed,” and it defined the conditions of a free people, whose rights and liberty are derived from their Creator. The Constitution delineated the structure of government and the rules for its operation, consistent with the creed of human liberty proclaimed in the Declaration.

Justice Joseph Story, in his Familiar Exposition of the Constitution (1840), described our Founding document in these terms:

We shall treat [our Constitution], not as a mere compact, or league, or confederacy, existing at the mere will of any one or more of the States, during their good pleasure; but, (as it purports on its face to be) as a Constitution of Government, framed and adopted by the people of the United States, and obligatory upon all the States, until it is altered, amended, or abolished by the people, in the manner pointed out in the instrument itself.

By the diffusion of power—horizontally among the three separate branches of the federal government, and vertically in the allocation of power between the central government and the states—the Constitution’s Framers devised a structure of government strong enough to ensure the nation’s future strength and prosperity but without sufficient power to threaten the liberty of the people.

Occupy Wall Street v. The Tea Party: A Picture is Worth 1000 Words [Infographic]

Design: Ty Mortensen

Content: James Sinclair

25 Signs That Middle Class Families Have Been Targeted For Extinction

Staff Report | April 16, 2012 | The Economic Collapse Blog

The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out, and most people don’t even realize what is happening.  Every single year, millions more Americans fall out of the middle class and become dependent on the government.  The United States once had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class is rapidly shrinking and government dependence is at an all-time high.  So why is this happening?  Well, America is becoming a poorer nation at the same time that wealth is becoming extremely concentrated at the very top.  At this point, our economic system is designed to funnel as much money and power to the federal government and to the big corporations as possible.  Individuals and small businesses have a really hard time thriving in this environment.  To most big corporations these days, workers are viewed as financial liabilities.  Most corporations want to reduce their payrolls as much as possible.  You see, the truth is that most corporations want to be just like Apple.  If you can believe it, Apple makes $400,000 in profit per employee.  Big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and provide for your family.  Their goal is to make as much money as possible.  And most of the control freaks that run our bloated federal government don’t care much about middle class families either.  To many politicians and federal bureaucrats, middle class families are “useless eaters” that are constantly damaging the environment with their “excessive” lifestyles.  In this day and age, neither the federal government nor the big corporations really have much use for middle class Americans, and that is really, really bad news for the the future of the middle class family in America.

There are three key factors that are constantly chipping away at the middle class….

-Globalization

-Inflation

-Taxes

Labor has become a global commodity, and American workers are often 10 to 20 times as expensive as workers on the other side of the world are.  Middle class jobs (such as manufacturing, etc.) have been leaving this country at an astounding pace.  Competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely fierce, and this has driven wages down.  The following is from a recent article in the New York Times….

But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

As paychecks have stagnated, the cost of living has continued to escalate.  Middle class families are finding that their paychecks simply do not go nearly as far as they did before.  This is creating a tremendous amount of financial stress in households all over America.

Meanwhile, our politicians are taxing the middle class like crazy.  Most people only focus on federal and state income taxes, but that is only a small part of the story.  As I detailed the other day, our politicians are taxing us in literally dozens of different ways and it is almost always the middle class that ends up getting hit the hardest.

If America wants to be great again, it is going to need a thriving middle class.  But right now the federal government and the big corporations are gobbling up all of the power and all of the money and the middle class is shrinking rapidly.

If current trends continue, eventually there will not be much of a middle class left.

The following are 25 signs that middle class families have been targeted for extinction….

#1 Over the past several decades, millions upon millions of middle class Americans have been systematically turned into government dependents.  Back in 1960, social welfare benefits made up approximately 10 percent of all salaries and wages.  In the year 2000, social welfare benefits made up approximately 21 percent of all salaries and wages.  Today, social welfare benefits make up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages.

#2 Unemployment is at epidemic levels and the vast majority of the new jobs that have been “created” in recent years have been low paying jobs.  Of those Americans that do have a job at this point, one out of every four works a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

#3 The “working poor” is a group that is rapidly growing in this country.  If you can believe it, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

Read the full article here.

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Digging Deeper Into Who Controls The World

By Susan Jennings | February 10, 2012 | Activist Post

As we delve deeper into world control, more information arises that helps us understand the current global situation.  Many people are unaware of the interconnectedness between the largest global companies.Eighty percent of the world’s wealth appears to be earned by a “core” of 1,318 corporations, which in turn are being controlled by only 147 companies. Seventy-five percent of these companies are financial institutions — and the top companies on the list are the Federal Reserve banks.

The Federal Reserve created 26 to 29 trillion dollars’ worth of bailouts for their own companies between 2007 and 2010. This was revealed in their own audit statements, and confirmed by United States Congressmen and prominent financial analysts. (Source)  Please note that the Federal Reserve, created in 1913, is a private corporation controlled by international bankers. (Source)

Anytime the ‘Fed’ prints money-Federal Reserve Notes, the American taxpayer is charged interest on the amount printed.  Alan Greenspan admitted that “the Federal Reserve is an independent agency . . . there is no other agency of government who can overrule actions we take.”

As they understood the extreme dangers to our life and liberty, our founding fathers were adamantly opposed to a central privately controlled bank. 

This global control occurs in multiple ways:

1. Different companies having the same board members (this also includes members of the same family who may be on different boards).
2. The ongoing movement between government leaders into private sector executive/board positions or lobbying positions for companies they formerly regulated and visa versa (Tim Geithner – former New York Federal Reserve Bank President becomes Obama administration’s Treasury Secretary).
3. Stock or bonds held in other companies (Goldman considering keeping majority of Facebook shares in Initial Public Stock Offering).
4. The division of competing brand names owned by the same company (Proctor and Gamble).
5. Funding through private foundations for various associations (The American Medical Association since 1910 and National Education Association are heavily funded by the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations.  Hmmm…helpful when you want to control public health and education).
6. The ease with which those in power move between the fewer and fewer global companies and political offices.

The majority of radio, television and large Internet companies has become concentrated into the hands of just few companies.  Fifty independent companies once comprised the media as of 1983.  Now, Time Warner-CNN/TBS/TNT/AOL/Fortune/People; News Corp-Fox/New York Post/Wall Street Journal/MarketWatch.com; Walt Disney-ABC/ESPN/Miramax//Pixar; Bertelsmann-Most EU stations/Random House/National Geographic magazines; Viacom-CBS-Simon & Schuster/Comedy Central/BET/Paramount; and GE-NBC/Telemundo/MSNBC/ decide what is news. (Source) Such consolidation creates the ability to easily manipulate the masses via television, radio and printed media.  This includes global news, political information, science, health and social values — which we have all seen go down the toilet.  The desensitization to dead bodies &amp, increasing violence, glorification of anti-social behavior, i.e. the ones doing the most lying/cheating/stealing are the winners; the invasive surveillance systems to acclimate the public to a complete loss of privacy, and the lack of unbiased, actual reporting on critical events.

As a result, the NDAA, SOPA and PIPA legislation have all had a positive slant on them in Mainstream Media. The NDAA wipes out the 4th Amendment right to due process; and the latter two proposed laws remove our free access to websites, giving the government the right to take down Internet sites at will.  Thus, their interests seem to be solely in maximizing their profits no matter the detrimental effects on the environmental, social and health of all life.  All the while maintaining control of the global population through massive manipulation.

Read the full article here.

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Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

By Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie | October 24, 2011 | New Scientist

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Read the full article here.

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The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]