- The Countries Where "Made In America" Really Matters
With President Trump’s America First agenda, we thought it would be useful to understand which other nations value America highly.
As Statista’s Martin Armstrong details, the Made-In-Country-Index (MICI) 2017 has shed light on the reputation of products produced in 49 countries (plus the EU) worldwide. In the overall ranking, the U.S. placed in a ‘could do better’ joint 8th with France and Japan.
The infographic below takes a look at the countries in which ‘Made in USA’ is determined to have the best reputation of all of the surveyed labels.
You will find more statistics at Statista
In total there are eight countries full of respect for U.S. made goods, including Brazil, Argentina, India, and of course the United States itself. For perspective, the top rated label is ‘Made in Germany’ which finds itself the most popular in thirteen countries.
- Russia Conspiracy Theorists May Want To Take A Look At John Podesta
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Dot connectors, Twitter diagram creators and newly minted Russia-conspiracy sleuths from sea to shining sea take note.
Since anything connected to Russia is now considered treasonous, I’ve got a great story for you to sniff out.
It relates to John Podesta, but somehow I doubt you’ll be interested in this one…
The Daily Caller reports:
John Podesta, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 national campaign chairman, may have violated federal law by failing to disclose the receipt of 75,000 shares of stock from a Kremlin-financed company when he joined the Obama White House in 2014, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
Joule Unlimited Technologies — financed in part by a Russian firm — originally awarded Podesta 100,000 shares of stock options when in 2010 he joined that board along with its Dutch-based entities: Joule Global Holdings, BV and the Stichting Joule Global Foundation.
When Podesta announced his departure from the Joule board in January 2014 to become President Obama’s special counsellor, the company officially issued him 75,000 common shares of stock.
The Schedule B section of the federal government’s form 278 which — requires financial disclosures for government officials — required Podesta to “report any purchase, sale or exchange by you, your spouse, or dependent children…of any property, stocks, bonds, commodity futures and other securities when the amount of the transaction exceeded $1,000.”
The same year Podesta joined Joule, the company agreed to accept 1-Billion-Rubles — or $35 million — from Rusnano, a state-run and financed Russian company with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.
Anatoly Chubais, the company CEO and two other top Russian banking executives worked together with Podesta on the Joule boards. The board met six times a year.
Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director said because of the Kremlin backing, it was essential Podesta disclose the financial benefits he received from the company.
“I think in this case where you’re talking about foreign interests and foreign involvement, the collateral interest with these disclosure forms is put in the forefront of full disclosure of any foreign interest that you may have,” he told TheDCNF in an interview.
The existence of the 75,000 shares of Joule stock was first revealed by the Government Accountability Institute report issued last year.
But Podesta didn’t pocket all the shares. Correspondence from Podesta to Joule instructed the firm to transfer only 33,693 shares to Leonidio Holdings, a brand-new entity he incorporated only on December 20, 2013, about ten days before he entered the White House.
Leonidio is registered in Delaware as a limited liability corporation. Podesta listed the address of his daughter, Megan Rouse, in the incorporation papers. His mother and father also appear to be co-owners of Leonidio.
TheDCNF made multiple inquiries to OGE and received no reply. TheDCNF inquiries to Mr. Podesta were not returned.
Personally, I doubt any of the above is a huge deal, and I certainly don’t think Podesta is working for Vladimir Putin under the table. However, just imagine the hysteria if the above narrative could’ve been connected to anyone in Trump’s orbit. It would’ve been plastered on the front page of The Washington Post and The New York Times with headlines like, “More Financial Ties Emerge Between Those in Trump’s Orbit and Putin.”
Naturally, you won’t see this story hyped because it doesn’t fit the corporate media narrative, and the narrative is all they care about.
- Dick Cheney Says Russian Meddling in American Election Could Be Considered 'An Act of War'
Congratulations democrats! This is the moment in your life when you come to realize you’ve become one and the same as everything you’ve always hated about humanity. You and Dick Cheney, professional neocon war monger, are in agreement that Russia waged war against America this past election, by way of hacking into John Podesta’s email box and then providing that information to Wikileaks to publish and help humiliate an already beleaguered democratic party.
Bear in mind, the black hats in the CIA have yet to actually prove to the American people an actual connection between Wikileaks and the Russian government. The only evidence they’ve publicly provided us with is laughable circumstantial evidence — backed up and supported by a sundry of unnamed sources deep from within our intelligence apparatus. But we should strongly consider going to war with a super nuclear power — because strategically — that’s the best way to end this charade of humanity once and for all.
But here’s Dick Cheney, the man who started it all — war in the middle east — which has cost the lives of at least 1.3 million people (some estimate the total deathtoll could be as high as 4 million since the wars began after 9/11). Total treasury expenditure from the American pleb is in excess of $5 trillion — but it’s probably more. Some might say Dick Cheney is the single worst human to walk the face of the earth since Pol Pot.
Nevertheless, he’s in agreement that Russian’s actions against our ‘democratic process’, one that was overtly rigged against Bernie Sanders, proven in the Wikileaks, was ian act of war. Fall in line little ducks, poor fat little ducks, and sign up your kids to fight in the coming Moscow offensive — to defend the honor of John “Pizza map” Podesta.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
- Insider Reveals How DARPA Will Control Our Minds: "If Even 20% Of This Is True…"
Things are so far gone, that we have no idea, warns SHTFplan.com's Mac Slavo, people have virtually no sense of how deeply we are being steered off the path.
Our very opinions, the information we receive, and the way in which our brains determine the strength of our opinions is all being skewed by algorithms, and by deliberate manipulations.
Science fiction is behind the curve of what they are actually attempting right now. A few more years of censorship and editing of content through social media, and a few more years of total integration with technology, and humanity may no longer be recognizable.
It certainly won’t be free unless some very raw facts are quickly faced and dealt with.
DARPA Insider Reveals the Coming Hive Mind Control Grid: “If Even 20% Of What This Guy Says Is True…”
The video below features a keynote by Dr. Robert Duncan regarding what can only be described as our coming hive mind control grid. He isn’t just talking about advances in transhumanism, the singularity, or artificial intelligence. He’s talking about how to control the minds of everyone on the planet and evolving humanity in a technological sense… whether they like it or not.
Duncan professes with shame that he worked on “Voice of God” weapons for the US Department of Defense, weapons which can make people think they are hearing voices in their heads in an attempt to control them. He says such weapons were tested back during Desert Storm and were quite effective at getting Iraqi soldiers to lay down arms without a shot fired.
And that’s just what they had 20+ years ago. Can you imagine what they’re working on today?
Duncan also touches on Project Blue Beam, remote neural monitoring, smart dust, and electronic telepathy technology which uses extremely low frequency waves.
Despite attempting multiple times to put a “positive spin” on this information as he nervously delivers it, what this man is saying really can’t be spun in a positive way, not with these kinds of technology in the hands of the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower once gravely warned us about. Duncan notes scientists “are brainwashed into believing that everything we are doing is of benefit to mankind, but look who pays our bills? The military. It’s all for war, it’s all for control, for government control…”
If even 20% of what this guy has to say is true…
Just… you’ve got to see this for yourself.
- Chinese Elites Scramble To Apply For US 'Golden Ticket' Visa
As members of Congress in Washington debate raising the minimum required to obtain a U.S. immigrant investor visa from $500,000 to $1.35 million, Bloomberg reports concern about the hike has set off a scramble among wealthy would-be participants in China.
China’s wealthy, using not-always-legal means to skirt capital controls to get their money out and at the same time gain residency in the U.S., are continuing to dwarf all others as the largest participants in the EB-5 program, despite heightened measures by the Chinese government.
Chinese investors, several thousand a year, have made up as much as 85 percent of the annual EB-5 investor total, according to U.S. data provided by Rosen Consulting and the Asia Society. In 2015, China overtook Canada as the biggest foreign buyer of U.S. homes.
Because Chinese individuals are limited to exchanging $50,000 worth of yuan a year, a 10th of what the EB-5 program requires, Bloomberg reports that some agents are advising clients who don’t already have assets offshore to use a means nicknamed "smurfing" to move their money.
"Our suggestion to the client is to open three to four personal accounts in the U.S. or line up three to four friends’ accounts, so they can split the money and wire it to different personal accounts without being put on a blacklist by the Chinese authorities," said a Shanghai-based real estate agent who gave the surname Dong.
"It may require a trip to the States to do so to facilitate the process."
While the government in Beijing spent much of 2016 working to stop its citizens sending money abroad in order to stabilize its declining currency and foreign reserves, Chinese investors’ use of EB-5 continued anyway, totaling $3.8 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to data from the U.S. State Department.
EB-5 started decades ago as a way to create jobs in needy U.S. neighborhoods by attracting foreign investment. But it has run into political opposition amid charges the program is benefiting billionaire developers and being dominated by wealthy Chinese.
"EB-5 has been a key program for capital flight that has been abused by Americans and Chinese people seeking to game the system," said Andrew Collier, an independent analyst in Hong Kong and former president of Bank of China International USA.
While there’s no suggestion of wrongdoing by developers that receive funding from EB-5 (including the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who is seeking $850 million in EB-5 fundingrefinance and reconstruct its New York office building at 666 Fifth Avenue), a series of Securities and Exchange Commission cases against EB-5-linked immigrant investor centers led the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to announce last week that they would audit the centers amid concern about fraud.
Changes to the EB-5 minimum would affect property developers who rely on the program as a funding channel, said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer at Marketfield Asset Management in New York.
"Any interruption of the program or reduction in Chinese participation would have a meaningful effect on a development cycle that is already showing signs of strain in certain key U.S. cities," he said by email.
- Foundation – Fall Of The American Galactic Empire
Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
“Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
I read Isaac Asimov’s renowned award winning science fiction trilogy four decades ago as a teenager. I read them because I liked science fiction novels, not because I was trying to understand the correlation to the fall of the Roman Empire. The books that came to be called the Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation) were not written as novels; they’re the collected Foundation stories Asimov wrote between 1941 and 1950. He wrote these stories during the final stages of our last Fourth Turning Crisis and the beginning stages of the next High. This was the same time frame in which Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Orwell wrote 1984. This was not a coincidence.
The tone of foreboding, danger, dread, and impending doom, along with unending warfare, propels all of these novels because they were all written during the bloodiest and most perilous portion of the last Fourth Turning. As the linear thinking establishment continues to be blindsided by the continued deterioration of the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions in the world, we have entered the most treacherous phase of our present Fourth Turning.
That ominous mood engulfing the world is not a new dynamic, but a cyclical event arriving every 80 or so years. Eight decades ago the world was on the verge of a world war which would kill 65 million people. Eight decades prior to 1937 the country was on the verge of a Civil War which would kill almost 5% of the male population. Eight decades prior to 1857 the American Revolution had just begun and would last six more bloody years. None of this is a coincidence. The generational configuration repeats itself every eighty years, driving the mood change which leads to revolutionary change and the destruction of the existing social order.
Isaac Asimov certainly didn’t foresee his Foundation stories representing the decline of an American Empire that didn’t yet exist. The work that inspired Asimov was Edward Gibbon’s multi-volume series, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1789. Gibbon saw Rome’s fall not as a consequence of specific, dramatic events, but as the result of the gradual decline of civic virtue, monetary debasement and rise of Christianity, which made the Romans less vested in worldly affairs.
Gibbon’s tome reflects the same generational theory espoused by Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning. Gibbon’s conclusion was human nature never changes, and mankind’s penchant for division, amplified by environmental and cultural differences, is what governs the cyclical nature of history. Gibbon constructs a narrative spanning centuries as events unfold and emperors’ successes and failures occur within the context of a relentless decline of empire. The specific events and behaviors of individual emperors were inconsequential within the larger framework and pattern of historical decline. History plods relentlessly onward, driven by the law of large numbers.
Asimov described his inspiration for the novels:
“I wanted to consider essentially the science of psychohistory, something I made up myself. It was, in a sense, the struggle between free will and determinism. On the other hand, I wanted to do a story on the analogy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but on the much larger scale of the galaxy. To do that, I took over the aura of the Roman Empire and wrote it very large. The social system, then, is very much like the Roman imperial system, but that was just my skeleton.
It seemed to me that if we did have a galactic empire, there would be so many human beings—quintillions of them—that perhaps you might be able to predict very accurately how societies would behave, even though you couldn’t predict how individuals composing those societies would behave. So, against the background of the Roman Empire written large, I invented the science of psychohistory. Throughout the entire trilogy, then, there are the opposing forces of individual desire and that dead hand of social inevitability.”
Is History Pre-Determined?
“Don’t you see? It’s Galaxy-wide. It’s a worship of the past. It’s a deterioration – a stagnation!” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The Foundation trilogy opens on Trantor, the capital of the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire. Though the empire appears stable and powerful, it is slowly decaying in ways that parallel the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Hari Seldon, a mathematician and psychologist, has developed psychohistory, a new field of science that equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics, allowing for the prediction of future events.
Psychohistory is a blend of crowd psychology and high-level math. An able psychohistorian can predict the long-term aggregate behavior of billions of people many years in the future. However, it only works with large groups. Psychohistory is almost useless for predicting the behavior of an individual. Also, it’s no good if the group being analyzed is aware it’s being analyzed — because if it’s aware, the group changes its behavior.
Using psychohistory, Seldon has discovered the declining nature of the Empire, angering the aristocratic rulers of the Empire. The rulers consider Seldon’s views and statements treasonous, and he is arrested. Seldon is tried by the state and defends his beliefs, explaining his theory the Empire will collapse in 300 years and enter a 30,000-year dark age.
He informs the rulers an alternative to this future is attainable, and explains to them generating an anthology of all human knowledge, the Encyclopedia Galactica, would not avert the inevitable fall of the Empire but would reduce the Dark Age to “only” 1,000 years.
The fearful state apparatchiks offer him exile to a remote world, Terminus, with other academic intellectuals who could help him create the Encyclopedia. He accepts their offer, and sets in motion his plan to set up two Foundations, one at either end of the galaxy, to preserve the accumulated knowledge of humanity and thereby shorten the Dark Age, once the Empire collapses. Seldon created the Foundation, knowing it would eventually be seen as a threat to rulers of the Empire, provoking an eventual attack. That is why he created a Second Foundation, unknown to the ruling class.
Asimov’s psychohistory concept, based on the predictability of human actions in large numbers, has similarities to Strauss & Howe’s generational theory. His theory didn’t pretend to predict the actions of individuals, but formulated definite laws developed by mathematical analysis to predict the mass action of human groups. His novel explores the centuries old debate of whether human history proceeds in a predictable fashion, with individuals incapable of changing its course, or whether individuals can alter its progression.
The cyclical nature of history, driven by generational cohorts numbering tens of millions, has been documented over centuries by Strauss & Howe in their 1997 opus The Fourth Turning. Human beings in large numbers react in a herd-like predictable manner. I know that is disappointing to all the linear thinking individualists who erroneously believe one person can change the world and course of history.
The cyclical crisis’s that occur every eighty years matches up with how every Foundation story centers on what is called a Seldon crisis, the conjunction of seemingly insoluble external and internal difficulties. The crises were all predicted by Seldon, who appears near the end of each story as a hologram to confirm the Foundation has traversed the latest one correctly.
The “Seldon Crises” take on two forms. Either events unfold in such a way there is only one clear path to take, or the forces of history conspire to determine the outcome. But, the common feature is free will doesn’t matter. The heroes and adversaries believe their choices will make a difference when, in fact, the future is already written. This is a controversial viewpoint which angers many people because they feel it robs them of their individuality.
Most people don’t want to be lumped together in an amalgamation of other humans because they believe admitting so would strip them of their sense of free will. Their delicate sensibilities are bruised by the unequivocal fact their individual actions are virtually meaningless to the direction of history. But, the madness of crowds can dramatically impact antiquity.
“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” – Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Many people argue the dynamic advancements in technology and science have changed the world in such a way to alter human nature in a positive way, thereby resulting in humans acting in a more rational manner. This alteration would result in a level of human progress not experienced previously. The falsity of this technological theory is borne out by the continuation of war, government corruption, greed, belief in economic fallacies, civic decay, cultural degradation, and global disorder sweeping across the world. Humanity is incapable of change. The same weaknesses and self- destructive traits which have plagued them throughout history are as prevalent today as they ever were.
Asimov’s solution to the failure of humanity to change was to create an academic oriented benevolent ruling class who could save the human race from destroying itself. He seems to have been well before his time with regards to creating Shadow Governments and Deep State functionaries. It appears he agreed with his contemporary Edward Bernays. The masses could not be trusted to make good decisions, so they needed more intellectually advanced men to guide their actions.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda
In Part Two of this article I will compare and contrast Donald Trump’s rise to power to the rise of The Mule in Asimov’s masterpiece. Unusually gifted individuals come along once in a lifetime to disrupt the plans of the existing social order.
- Trump Asks Why Intelligence Committee Isn't Probing The Clintons
Following a day of drama involving the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, who has been under constant onslaught by Democrats ever since his disclosure last week that Trump had indeed been the object of surveillance, and whose Democrat peer at the Intel panel, Adam Schiff, on Monday night called for Nunes to recuse himself, moments ago Trump waded into the news cycle when he asked on Twitter why the House Intelligence Committee is not investigating the Clintons for various ties of their own to Russia. He then slammed the ongoing anti-Russian witch hunt, saying “the Russia story is a hoax.”
“Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech, money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ‘reset,’ praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!” Trump wrote in two tweets Monday night.
Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017
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…money to Bill, the Hillary Russian “reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017
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Trump’s rhetorical questions come amid a news cycle which as discussed on various occasions today has focused on the Republican chair of the Intel Committee, Nunes, who is under fire for briefing Trump about classified material he reviewed last week without sharing the information with committee Democrats. On Monday it was revealed that Nunes had secretly visited the White House grounds one day before announcing incidental surveillance of President Trump’s transition team. His visit raised questions about whether the White House could have been was the source of the intelligence Nunes reviewed.
Democratic lawmakers have now called on Nunes to recuse himself from the committee’s probe into Russia’s interference in the United States presidential election. Nunes on Monday evening said the chairman would not step aside from the investigation.
The republican lawmaker has claimed that his findings had no relevance to the Russia probe, even as the committee examines the unmasking and leaking of surveillance information as part of that investigation.
* * *
In a follow up tweet, Trump took another stab at the House Freedom Caucus, who he said snatched “defeat from the jaws of victory” – following Friday’s failure to repeal and replace plan for ObamaCare. That followed a Sunday tweet in which he said the conservative House Freedom Caucus, along with the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America, had “saved” Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare.
The Republican House Freedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After so many bad years they were ready for a win!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017
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Finally, Trump brought it full circle, touching on Friday’s failure to repeal Obamacare, saying “the Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds – not long. Do not worry, we are in very good shape!
The Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds – not long. Do not worry, we are in very good shape!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017
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- The Next Clash Emerges: Trump-Ryan Deeply Divided Over Tax 'Cuts'
After failing to achieve Republican agreement over healthcare reform, The Washington Post reports that while President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan both want to rewrite the tax code, they are deeply divided over how much tax relief to give the middle class.
As WaPo details, Trump proposed a plan that would have reduced taxes drastically, especially for the wealthy but also for the poor and working class. Meanwhile, Ryan and his colleagues put together a plan that was equally generous to the rich but that would give poor and middle-class taxpayers less of a break. The speaker's plan would even have increased taxes on some in the upper middle class. The richest 0.1 percent of households would receive similar benefits from both politicians: an average of $1.4 million per household a year under Ryan's plan and $1.5 million annually under Trump's plan.
After a decade, 99.6 percent of the tax relief Ryan proposed would have accrued to the wealthiest 1 percent of the country. In Trump's plan, 50.8 percent of the relief would have gone to that group, according to analyses by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Most notably given the divisions within the Republican Party (i.e. fiscal conservatives rejection of the healthcare reform bill), Trump's plan would be extremely costly for the government, reflecting his conservative populist comments in the past that suggest he would be willing to put the federal government deeper into debt to fund breaks for the middle class.
Ryan's plan would instead simplify and streamline the tax code in accordance with conservative orthodoxy, eliminating the goodies for households with modest incomes that Trump would preserve or expand.
It's not all bad though as the two tax plans have important features in common, as WaPo's Max Ehrenfreund reports,
In terms of taxes on the rich, both plans would reduce the marginal rate paid by the wealthiest taxpayers on individual income from 39.6 percent to 33 percent.
The two plans would repeal some of the taxes that Obamacare imposed on the rich, and both plans also repeal the estate tax, which rich families pay when one of their members dies. Repealing the tax would return $300 billion or so to those families over a decade, according to the center, depending on the details of the plan.
Meanwhile, both plans would increase the amount that many families can earn without paying taxes.
The biggest reason for the discrepancy in the effects of the plans on the middle class is how Ryan's proposal would affect imports and exports.
The plan includes a complex and controversial provision known as a "border adjustment", which some economists think would increase prices for goods and services imported from overseas.
Eric Toder, an economist at the Tax Policy Center, said the group's initial analysis of this aspect of the plan treated it as a kind of tax on households' purchases, but many experts believe that Ryan's proposal would not have that effect over the long term.
Ryan's plan would be better for the middle class on that more optimistic assumption. “When we do it that way, there actually is a bit of a cut for the middle class,” Toder said.
So get ready America, it will be hard for Trump to temper his on-again, off-again support for Speaker Ryan if this division grows – and ironically, Trump may find more support from the other side of the aisle for his 'middle-class tax cuts' as the GOP splinters further.
- Thousands Of Americans Are Fleeing The Big Cities
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Why are so many people suddenly moving away from major U.S. cities? Recently, I wrote about the mass exodus that is happening out of the state of California, but the truth is that what is happening there is just part of a national phenomenon. The populations of some of our largest cities are steadily shrinking, and many experts are completely mystified by the seismic demographic shifts that we are now witnessing. Of course there are a whole host of reasons why people would want to move away from huge cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland. For some families, it simply comes down to wanting a better life for their children. But as you will see below, there are others that believe that things in this country are about to take an apocalyptic turn, and the big cities will not be a place that you want to be when economic collapse, rioting, looting, civil unrest and crime are all spiraling out of control.
According to data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago took the prize for the biggest population loss from 2015 to 2016, and it was followed by Detroit and Baltimore…
The counties containing Chicago, Detroit and the independent city of Baltimore were the biggest population losers in the United States from 2015 to 2016, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.
Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is the county seat, had the largest population loss of any county in the country from 2015 and 2016.
Cook County alone had a “domestic migration” loss of more than 66,000 people. That is a staggering number of people to lose in a single year.
Cleveland and Milwaukee were also very high on the list, and some are pointing out that all of these cities are in relatively colder climates and are all struggling economically.
So you certainly can’t blame people living in these cities for wanting to find somewhere warmer and more economically prosperous to live.
But others that are moving away from large cities are deeply concerned about where things are ultimately headed in this country. It doesn’t take a genius to see that anger, frustration and hatred are rising all around us, and many believe that conditions are ripe for civil unrest and civil conflict. In fact, best-selling author Doug Casey believes that we could soon see a “civil war” that is set off by a “financial collapse”…
Best-selling author Doug Casey wrote “Crisis Investing” at the time when the U.S. political landscape was transitioning from the Carter Administration to the Reagan Administration. Now, Casey sees a coming crisis that is equal or worse than the Civil War. Casey explains, “In the U.S. right now, there seems to be so much antagonism it’s almost like pre-Civil War. There is actually hatred in the U.S. at this point. It used to be the Republicans and Democrats could disagree, but they could have a civil conversation about a difference of opinion. Now, it’s active hatred between these two groups. This is not going to end well.”
Casey thinks the coming financial collapse will be the trigger. Casey says, “It’s going to come down eventually. I am worried about that, but we are in a situation where the country seem like it is just before a civil war. It will be more serious than just a financial collapse, and it is likely to be set off by a financial collapse.”
Without a doubt, our financial system is certainly primed for a financial collapse, and when things get really, really bad in this country how will people respond?
Many have decided that they want to get away from the major population centers before we find out the answer to that question.
For example, not too long ago the Chicago Tribune ran a story about why so many preppers are moving to the Great Northwest. One of the individuals profiled was an ex-resident of California named Trevor Treller who moved up to north Idaho prior to the recent election…
Trevor Treller, 44, who carries a small Smith & Wesson pistol on his hip, moved to north Idaho last year from Long Beach, California, and recently paid a little less than $400,000 for a defensible three-bedroom house on five wooded acres.
Treller, a sommelier at a local resort, said Obama was a key factor in his decision. He said the president has inflamed racial tensions in America, presided over a dangerous expansion of the national debt, been “hostile” to Second Amendment rights and failed to curtail the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
Treller said any one of those factors could lead to crippling chaos, so he and his wife have laid in food, weapons and ammunition and are installing an iron gate across their long gravel driveway.Of course it isn’t just ordinary Americans such as Treller that are deeply concerned about what is coming.
Less than a week ago, CNN ran an article entitled “Billionaire bunkers: How the 1% are preparing for the apocalypse“…
Many of the world’s elite, including hedge fund managers, sports stars and tech executives (Bill Gates is rumored to have bunkers at all his properties) have chosen to design their own secret shelters to house their families and staff.
Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Company, says 2016 sales for their custom high-end underground bunkers grew 700% compared to 2015, while overall sales have grown 300% since the November US presidential election alone.
So why are Bill Gates and his billionaire friends so interested in buying luxury survival bunkers if everything is going to be just fine?
Can someone explain that one to me?
Everywhere you look, retail stores are closing and economic warning signs are flashing red, but those that sell survival bunkers to the elite are making tremendous amounts of money.
And I certainly wish that I could afford one of these survival bunkers, because they sound quite appealing…
One of those shelters, Vivos xPoint, is near the Black Hills of South Dakota, and consists of 575 military bunkers that served as an Army Munitions Depot until 1967.
Presently being converted into a facility that will accommodate about 5,000 people, the interiors of each bunker are outfitted by the owners at a cost of between $25,000 to $200,000 each. The price depends on whether they want a minimalist space or a home with high-end finishes.
The compound itself will be equipped with all the comforts of a small town, including a community theater, classrooms, hydroponic gardens, a medical clinic, a spa and a gym.
These elitists plan to ride out the coming American apocalypse in style while the world above them is literally going insane.
Meanwhile, most of the general population continues to be completely oblivious to what is about to happen to them, and so the events that are coming will close upon them suddenly like a trap and there will be no escape.
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