The 99% Manifesto: A Return to Democracy and a Middle Class
1) Corporations are not people.
Corporations are entities created by people to conduct business. Period
2) Corporations are in business to efficiently produce goods and services for public consumption.
Profits are the reward for successfully accomplishing this goal and not the goal unto themselves.
3) The federal government was designed by our founding fathers with three branches – the legislative, executive and judicial, each counterbalancing the other. No branch was designed to operate with unlimited power, but rather to work in concert with the other powers for the public good.
A nation also functions with three main groups – its citizenry, businesses and government. When all three groups are relatively equal in power, the nation prospers. The United States has seen the balance of power between its groups radically shift, with corporations holding the upper hand over both the citizenry and government.
The government is the citizens’ venue by which to counterbalance and regulate corporations. No individual can match a corporation’s power. Without input from its citizens, the government thus becomes the handmaiden for the corporations to exploit as they wish. Therefore, control the supply of money (Federal Reserve) and you control the government, its laws and the masses. The Zionist own the Federal Reserve.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is what the Declaration of Independence proclaims regarding our most basic rights. The massive transfer of wealth to the top 1% of Americans (the Zionist) dramatically impedes upon the rights of the remaining 99% to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This trend must not only be stopped, but immediately and dramatically reversed.
5) The two great economic systems of the 20th Century were free market capitalism and communism. Capitalism focuses completely on individual wealth, regardless of the effect on the rest of society. Communism (socialism) focuses on society as a whole, ignoring the extraordinary work of individuals.Society functions best when everybody is able to have all of their needs met, regardless of occupation, and when individuals can prosper by creating wealth benefiting all of society. This means taking the best that capitalism and socialism has to offer. Both systems used in their extreme form have caused great suffering for millions. The United States of the 1950’s and 1960’s blended both systems to create the most prosperous society ever known to mankind.
6) Corporations and the Zionist have advocated shrinking the federal government without providing any real justification for this idea. They have two unstated purposes for this goal.
First is the more obvious goal of seriously reducing, if not eliminating, income taxes, both on a corporate and individual level.
Second and more insidiously, is the unstated goal of privatizing all government services so as to effectively eliminate the government and thus the only venue by which the citizenry can collectively wield power. Without a strong federal government, corporations (the Zionist) will hold absolute power over the United States and its populace.
Corporations seek to privatize traditional government services so as to increase their wealth.
Why else has the trend toward private prisons and private contractors to help fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan become so pronounced?
Why this sudden hate proliferation against immigrant’s by a nation made great by immigrants?
Why did George W. Bush push so hard to privatize Social Security several years ago?
With effectively complete privatization, not only do corporations gain tremendous wealth, but they also effectively silence any opposition from the general public, unable to exercise any control over corporate excess.
7) Corporations often complain of government regulation, saying that it hinders business growth. Some also state that, as a “private” concern, government has no business regulating business.
Every person in the United States is a private individual, yet is publicly subject to the laws that make for a civil society. Almost no one, including the wealthy, accept anyone breaking the law as an individual in the spirit of being a “private” individual, not held accountable to the rest of society. To maintain any sense of civilization, we must all answer to one another for our actions that can harm others.
Yet corporations often proclaim themselves as above the concerns of society, (Zionist Conspiracy) citing the need to efficiently grow their business. For them, regulations, designed to protect all individuals from corporate excess, simply obstruct the goals of the shareholders, namely maximizing profits.
Corporate actions seriously impact all of society, necessitating regulations to ensure that individuals and our environment are not harmed.
Corporations are no more “private” concerning their actions than individuals are. Therefore, they are subject to the same laws governing their actions that people are.Some people complain of government bureaucracy and proclaim corporations as being superior because they’re more efficient. Used with malicious intent, efficiency can grievously damage a society. The Zionist are certainly VERY efficient in their deceit!
8) Some have noted that Americans amassed extraordinary personal debt in recent years by going on a “wild spending spree”. However, nobody mentions this in conjunction with the fact that U.S. wages have essentially stagnated over the last few decades.
Corporate and government leaders have assured the public during this time, especially the last decade, that taxes on the wealthy and corporations need to be reduced so that they can create more jobs for Americans.
That we must completely close our borders, as our economic woes stem from illegal immigration and not the Wall Street Zionist fraud that has pillaged more than 43 trillion dollars from our national treasure! These leaders have promised that, with sufficiently low taxes, the American economy will take off and widespread prosperity will once again grace our fair land.
The workers of this nation have believed this, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
What’s happened is that the corporations have amassed great wealth through lower taxes without passing these benefits on the rest of the nation. They’re hoarding trillions in cash with no plans to spend it other than as a personal war chest for the advancement of their Zionist agenda.
Corporations have no motivation to hire Americans, yet they continue to ask for more tax cuts to “trickle down” these savings to the populace. The key word is “trickle”. A steady flow prospers all, but a trickle is designed to leave the masses thirsty and in perpetual debt.
Many people have bought into the tax cuts for the wealthy propaganda and still expect that to bring prosperity to the workers of this nation, even though this result has demonstrably not happened. Instead, the wealthy have used tax cuts to hoard increasing sums of wealth for themselves and their causes. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results. So why do so many of the 99% still insist in believing in tax cuts for the wealthy?
Certain presidential candidates espouse flat tax rates, making the idea of everybody paying the same rate as fair to all.
That only continues the same trend, taking from the majority and giving it to the wealthy in hopes of seeing the money flow back to the majority.
What evidence exists that it’s ever going to happen with the overseas job market and job saving technology so easily available?The reason personal debt increased so alarmingly is that people were striving to maintain a well-established standard of living while expecting general prosperity to return to this nation.
Only when the Wall Street investment banks "collapsed" in 2008, as a consequence of the largest MBS Ponzi scheme in the history of humanity, did it become apparent that the expectations of good economic times were seriously out of whack with reality.
Only then did consumers, faced with a clear picture of possible economic disaster, make the hard and necessary choice to cut back on consumer spending to save their own personal economies/family.
For the last few decades, especially the last one, the corporate and government leaders have sold the public down the river while funneling much of America’s wealth to the top 1%ers, the Zionist. Even now, they’re asking for more tax cuts for the wealthy to reverse the tide. These tax cuts will only exacerbate the flow of money to the same foreign nationals.
The only way for the middle class to regain its strength is to abolish the Federal Reserve, increase taxes on the corporations and the higher earners, leaving taxes alone (if not reducing them) for everybody else. “Trickle down” economics has been an unmitigated disaster for the majority of Americans. Money must flow directly into the pockets of the workers, empowering them to reassert their own prosperity.
9) Corporations and wealthy Americans (Zionists) have amassed power and wealth not seen since 1929. They have essentially monopolized the political process in this nation, stifling the public’s ability to pass legislation beneficial to the citizenry as a whole.
Therefore, as has been suggested by various parties for many years, it is mandatory that all political campaigns be 100% publicly financed. All private contributions, regardless of the source (including from the candidates themselves), will become illegal. This financing change must apply wholly at the federal, state and local levels across the entire nation.
By applying this uniformly across all political institutions, everybody will equally be “denied” their right to free speech and will have no cause to claim discrimination. Voting is the equalizing exercise of free speech.
10) Corporations have granted extremely generous salaries to their CEO’s and other officers. These salaries have often been paid as a reward for laying off workers, shrinking the work force and dismantling organized labor, despite ongoing profitability.
As a measure to give corporations pause before paying such exorbitant salaries, a law limiting the deductibility of employees’ salaries must be enacted.
One million dollars per year is more than enough for anybody to live on comfortably and is a good limit to allow full deductibility for tax purposes. Using $50,000 for the average corporate worker, this assumes a ratio of 20:1 of CEO to average worker pay, well within the norms of most other industrialized nations.
All salary expense above $1 million per employee per year shall be fully taxable to the payer. This covers all forms of compensation, including but not limited to salary, bonuses, stock options, severance pay and deferred compensation.This measure applies to all employees, not just corporate executives. It covers professional athletes, entertainers, hedge fund managers and all other professions.
While this won’t end the paying of exorbitant salaries (expected to decrease under this proposal), it will provide revenues for the public good as compensation for the continued transfer of wealth to the top 1%ers.
11) American workers have seen their standard of living erode for the last three decades, especially so in the last one. Many Americans remain unemployed, not knowing when their next job will come.
In recent years, corporations have consistently reduced American work forces in favor of shipping jobs overseas and eliminating jobs through technology. Despite record profits and nearly trillions available in cash, increased corporate hiring of Americans is nearly non-existent.
Given this, corporations should not be rewarded for shipping jobs overseas and using cheap labor to manufacture their goods. All costs of overseas operations that could be performed in the U.S. shall be declared as non-deductible for tax purposes. This includes plant, labor and other related expenses.
The additional expense of manufacturing overseas will better level the playing field and give corporations additional incentive to manufacture their goods in the U.S., employing American workers. Granted, much work will remain overseas, but the federal government will reap additional revenue and many jobs will return to the United States.
12) Corporations have frequently fired American workers despite making substantial profits. This is a clear example of placing profits over all other considerations. A strong organized labor is required where single workers’ rights can be protected by a power sufficiently balanced to the power of the corporation.
To justify layoffs, corporations will be required to pay a fine to the federal government for each U.S. worker laid off during a fiscal year in which the company enjoys a pre-tax profit of at least 5%, not including the fines themselves. The fine should be substantial, in order to discourage layoffs when the company is prospering. Using a fine of $10,000 per worker, a corporation would pay $10 million to the government for laying off 1,000 workers. A reasonably profitable corporation laying off 30,000 U.S. workers would pay an additional $300 million in fines. The $10,000 figure is a suggested minimum and may be substantially higher.
This provision protects American jobs and saves American workers from losing their jobs just to protect outrageous profits.
13) Corporations use lobbyists to exercise their will by persuading the government to pass legislation benefiting their interests. Individuals do not have the same access to their legislators. Only large groups of individuals have any chance of getting legislation passed benefiting the general public. Organized labor must serve as a balance in representation of the interest of workers and the general public before the legislative bodies. Lobbyist that represent foreign national interest, such a AIPAC, must be prohibited from influencing government, those found responsible of doing so must be tried for criminal acts on behalf of a foreign nation.
14) Many have denounced the government subsidies paid to Big Oil and Big Agriculture along with other industries. At one time, it made sense to support these industries to support their survival and growth, essential to the public good.
That time has long since passed. Subsidies to Big Oil and Big Agriculture represent nothing but pure profit to these industries and no longer represent the public good. There has been no new refinery built in more than 40 years, yet profits have been criminally high, insuring price gauging and speculation by reducing supply through strategic refinement shortages.
These are but self-generated shortages with the sole purpose of continuously feeding absurd profits by way of speculation and limited supply vs. consumer demand. Big oil companies must be held accountable for these self-created refinery oil shortages and the tax subsidies they have pillaged from our national treasury!
Subsidies to clean energy are vitally necessary for the United States to compete with China and other clean energy producers. Given our need to protect our environment and become more energy efficient, these subsidies are wholly within the public interest.
All subsides to Big Oil and Big Agriculture, along with other unnecessary big business subsidies, must immediately end, the money pillaged from our national treasure must be used for the establishment of modern refineries that would allow the price of refined material to drastically reduce in price. Furthermore, the antiquated refineries’ currently in operation, pose a very serious threat to our environment. This information is very well known by the Big Oil companies. Any environmental damage caused by the failure of any of these refineries should cause their Board of Directors to be held criminally and civilly responsible for any damages incurred.
15) Wall Street and Big Banks created the housing crisis that plunged our economy into the Great Recession. Their actions, designed to create great wealth for themselves, greatly increased housing values for several years until 2008.
As a consequence, countries across the world were defrauded by Wall Street and the rating agencies that they own. Mortgage Backed Securities (worthless paper) was represented by Wall Street to investors, in our nation and across the world, as triple A+ investments comparable to US Treasury Bills that have the full backing of the United States Treasury.
Massive REMIC status Internal Revenue Code fraud was perpetrated; Statutory trusts were created to give the appearance of an actual trust where the mortgages would/should been deposited, yet never were; blatant appraisal fraud was encouraged by the purported “lenders” with the criminal intent of continuing to fuel the MBS Ponzi Scheme.
To date, millions of Americans have been illegally foreclosed on; the judicial system has sided with the biggest violators of contract law in our nation’s history. Yet NOT ONE Wall Street/Banking criminal has been prosecuted for a conspiracy that has brought the world economy to its knees, and possibly pushed our great nation to the edge of collapse . Those homeowners buying homes during that period paid artificially high prices for their homes and are now struggling to keep the payments up on homes no longer worth the purchase price.
To recharge the economy and to fairly support these homeowners, the federal government must immediately and without reservation refinance these homes using today’s very low interest rates and at the TRUE current home values. Not only does this action provide more cash for the homeowners to spend, boosting economic growth, but it also provides justice for homeowners who overpaid for their homes based upon the greed/fraud of Wall Street and Big Banks. Furthermore, all mortgages and mortgage assignments must be recorded within the county of the property and not through a centralized mortgage repository. The recording fees must be paid directly to the Clerk of Court in which the property is mortgaged. MERS must be immediately abolished and held criminally accountable for all illegal obtainment of property as a consequence of wrongful foreclosure on properties to which they never held legal title. Furthermore, all courts, be they state and/or federal courts, must allow the borrower who’s mortgage was securitized without authorization nor consideration, the due process right of litigation against the purported “lenders” in adversarial bankruptcies and/or lawsuits/counter lawsuits. A REMIC trust will not be immune to prosecution if the mortgage was not deposited into the REMIC trust by the date indicated in the Purchase & Servicing Agreement, the Mortgage Pooling and Loan Servicing Agreement, and/or did not comply with the REMIC rules and regulations governing the MBS. The wanton violation of the right to due process against those that have been defrauded by purported “lenders” and Wall Street Ponzi schemes, is unconstitutional and any judge found guilty of so doing may be prosecuted for Misprision of a felony, if fraud has been alleged and an evidentiary hearing has been denied.
16) State and local governments, under tremendous financial pressure, are burdened with enormous pension costs.
These costs are forcing these governments to reduce or eliminate services vital to the public good.
The most recent Wall Street Ponzi schemes have defrauded states out of billions of dollars in pension funds, in the belief that they were investing in high yield secure investment vehicles.
Both Wall Street conspirators and the rating agencies that contributed to the fraud by providing Wall Street with fraudulent triple “A+” ratings, are guilty of fraud and conspiracy to defraud. The people of these United States retain the right to legal civil and/or criminal prosecution of the parties involved in a scheme that has defrauded the world and brought our economy to the verge of collapse. Pensions are not a luxury nor are they a privilege.
Most state employees accept lower wages in exchange for a more stable work environment and a retirement pension they can rely on in their retirement years. Therefore; Any pension funds lost, as a direct consequence of investment and/or Wall Street fraud, is prosecutable as a criminal and/or civil offense, and the states have the first right to recovery against the offender.
All efforts must be made to rein in the pension costs, including revising pensions currently being paid to retirees.
Most pensions are modest in amount, but the high profile pensions are the source of financial pressure.
17) Another form of excessive wealth damaging to the public is “pain and suffering” payments beyond demonstrated damages awarded to plaintiffs in various lawsuits. Often the payers are insurance companies, who, rather than being punished for the transgression, simply pass the cost on to its customers, who have nothing to do with the lawsuit. Paying for “pain and suffering” is a legitimate concept, but is sometimes taken to excess.
Therefore, to minimize the damage to non-involved premium payers, punitive damages must be limited to a maximum of $5 million per person. While a rare event, excessive punitive payments can also inflict undue hardship on cash strapped municipalities struggling to balance their budgets.
18) The United States has long held a double standard concerning ordinary crime vs. white collar crime.
White collar crime has always been regarded as a lesser evil than violent crime, regardless of the damage done.
The wealthy have written the laws regarding white collar crime, minimizing punishment in order to protect themselves and their fellow wealthy citizens.
The general public has little say in how white collar crime should be treated.
Someone breaking into a home and stealing hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of goods will likely be incarcerated for ten to twenty years.Yet, a businessman caught stealing millions of dollars through stock market manipulation or other non-violent methods will likely be imprisoned for only a few years, along with making restitution and paying a fine far less than their total wealth.
A billionaire can shrug off a $10 million fine, but 20 years in prison is equal for everybody.
White collar crime must be treated as an extremely serious offense, the severity of the punishment meted in proportion to the economic damage done.
Not only must the financial penalties be highly substantial, but the prison sentences lengthy, including life sentences without the possibility of parole, for the worst offenders.
One could argue that Bernie Madoff, who created over $50 billion of combined economic damage to many individuals, should have been executed for his crimes.
This would not only fairly punish him for his extraordinary crimes but would also serve as an example to all other white collar miscreants, showing that the general public is dead serious about dealing with financial malfeasance.
19) Employers posting “Jobless need not apply” or other similar statements on their job postings must be prosecuted for discrimination to the fullest extent of the law.
These actions, along with the offending employers, must be publicized and the companies boycotted by the general public. Such heinous and blatant discrimination runs counter to the sense of fair play that this nation was built on.
20) This manifesto is intended to wake up the American public to the reality of the state of America today.
The Occupy Wall Street and other related protests are but the first step in educating the populace about the remedies needed to restore democracy and the middle class to this nation.
This document provides a starting point of action with many more vital tasks for the public to accomplish.
This is the most urgent mission we have faced since the Second World War.
Let’s restore democracy and middle class prosperity to our beloved nation, the United States of America NOW!
and not only U.S.A. but all the Nations...
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