The New Catch-Phrase is 'The New Gilded Age'

The Supreme Court just made another decision in favor of employers, rolling back worker protections that were borne of blood. As old as they are, the justices seem to have forgotten the coal mine wars. Oh, you never heard of the coal mine wars? This is where the term 'Redneck' originated.

• Supreme Court backs employers over workers in first of two major labor cases 
• We are proud to be 'rednecks'. It's time to reclaim that term 
• The Mine Wars (PBS: American Experience video)
• Trump’s National Labor Relations Board will be anti-labor 

Rent's going up, and so are evictions:

• Decatur evictions are double the statewide rate. Here's a map that shows where they happened. 
• Reframing Evictions as a National Crisis 

Now everyone is starting to talk about "The New Gilded Age."

• Lessons From the Gilded Age 
• A comparison of income inequality and working conditions of present day to the late nineteenth century. Support for the working class peaked and began declining with the Reagan administration, and deregulation is accelerating.
• 'The Alienist' Stars on How TNT's Drama Shines a Light on New York's ... 
• The cast of 'The Alienist' reflects on their roles in the setting of New York in the 1890's, and mention the "timeliness" of the story.
• Montana's Primary Tonight Could Be a Testament to the New Gilded ... 
• Esquire report on a carpetbagging east coast real estate developer who was able to run in the state because an old law protecting fair politics in the state was erased by the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision.
• In the second Gilded Age, the mansions get bigger, and the homeless ... 
• Karma reaches a five hundred million dollar home in the hills of Bel Air in the form of a wildfire started from a portable stove at a homeless encampment.
• America's Second Gilded Age: More class envy than class conflict 
• Nine specific events from present day and the past are presented as indicators of our current economic and social status. A surprise about a new project by the creator of Downton Abbey. 
• Wall Street Needs a New Tom Wolfe: John Micklethwait 
• A profile of Tom Wolfe who wrote about Wall Street, among other authors who wrote about our Gilded Ages.
• It's Billionaires at the Gate as Ultra-Rich Muscle In on Private Equity 
• Avarice is leaving millionaires in the dust of bankers drooling for the absurdly wealthy.
• Opinion: Blame tax breaks for loss of historic neighborhoods 
• 15 year tax abatements are giving developers enough time to raze historic homes, build new ones at an extreme tax discount, then flip the properties at the last minute before the tax abatement expires, leaving the new owners hold the bag.
• PACIFIC • These five companies own the future 
• The future of monopolies and price gouging.
• America's new aristocracy: the 9.9% and their delusion of hereditary ... 
• And introduction and summary of a much longer article in the Atlantic about The New Aristocracy.

The pressure is on. What and where the breaking point will be is anyone's guess.

Economy Chicken: Coming Home to Roast

New York Times

Stock Markets Shudder After Chinese Stock Plunge Forces a Trading Halt

Producers in China may have been betting on faked economic reports, overproducing with false expectations. Now their inventories are filling up and they are not getting as many orders.

Fox News (06/2014)

Peter Schiff - No Economic Recovery Since 2008 & Unemployment Numbers Fake

Peter Schiff and Lou Dobbs start the session nailing the basics, but then digress at 1:41 minutes, into blaming Obama and the government, instead of remaining focused on lack of consumer demand due to low wages and fewer work hours.

FinViz

Map of Stock Exchange Performance

An amazing tool for evaluating stocks and seeing the Big Picture.

The Guardian

Don't be fooled by the false economic recovery

A critical analysis of how the economy is reported to the public.

Zero Hedge (02/2011)

Guest Post: How To Fake An Economic Recovery

This got me wondering why people are buying over-priced farm land that won't yield enough per year to break-even on the loan payment. It turns out they might be anticipating something that will change in the near future. Something that will make commodity prices skyrocket.

Salon (11/2014)

Robert Reich: Americans are convinced the game is rigged

It all comes back to lack of consumer demand due to low wages, fewer work hours, student debt, etc.

Town Hall

The Weakest Economic Recovery in Modern Times

Because the 1% wanted to go global, they tied most of the world together financially and OOPS!

Well, Everyone has been decrying a fake economic recovery for years now. Some who try to sell us their gold, others because they actually dig into the numbers and suffer the headaches of research.

The powers that be have been force-feeding us skewed sugar-coated numbers for decades, but everyone under their skin knows it's BS!

The motivation for doing so is probably bait to try and motivate with their Snake Oil, consumption and investment in things we can't afford or don't need.

*What's Economy Chicken? I searched online for some visual representation of "chickens coming home to roost." I Photoshopped it into a bad pun,

I think we all have had enough of being lied to by the main-stream media and the Financial Sector.

The Pot War: How John Morgan saved Florida and possibly Ohio from a Pot Monopoly

Ring of Fire

Florida Personality Destroyed Cannabis Amendment in 2014 – Ohio Suffered The Same Fate

The story of John Morgan

Ballotpedia

Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative, Issue 3 (2015)

The voting results and details of the ballot measure.

The Washington Post

Big Pot rising: The marijuana industry’s first full-time lobbyist makes rounds on Capitol Hill

Michael Correia, lobbyist for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA)

The Cap times

If the Koch Brothers support marijuana legalization, why not Scott Walker?

The source for the corporate take-over of Pot through restrictive legislation may be here.

The Nation

The Real Reason Pot Is Still Illegal

Opponents of marijuana-law reform insist that legalization is dangerous—but the biggest threat is to their own bottom line.

Think Progress

Reversing Course, ALEC Supports Reform Of Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Meanwhile, ALEC is working to remove Cannabis market inhibiting penalties, some which it helped create.

AmericaBlog

Smart ALEC: Dem activism moves to the states, big-time

Progressive Activists are working to repeal a lot of ALEC initiatives, but they are not building protective burms behind them.

Time Magazine

Why Legal Weed is Working in Colorado

Opponents use the same arguments that are the consequences of alcohol abuse.

The slumbering behemoth has awoken in Ohio over the issue of legalizing Cannabis.

In the first link, I found what seems to be a possible saboteur of the effort to legalize Cannabis in Ohio, but as I explored more of the sources I found something that demonstrates clearly just how much control is exerted over the so-called "free market" by the billionaires who, it seems, are now attempting to gain monopolistic control over Cannabis.

The main-stream media wrote off the defeat in Ohio as some sort of moral decision on the part of the public for the same excuses that were used to keep alcohol illegal during Prohibition.

The evidence is clear that Colorado and Washington were expected to fail in their experimental legalization, but the results have garnered the attention of billionaire oligarchs would would like nothing better than to take complete control of the Cannabis industry.

So who are the real enemies of the freedom for anyone to grow Pot? This war has many fronts: The supposed moral front who don't seem to mind alcohol which is worse than Pot but still fear Pot; the drug companies who see it as competition; the Law Enforcement Industrial Complex that sees Pot as an easy way to make money through fines, forfeitures and incarceration; and the Plutocrat billionaires who want complete control over cannabis but also want to freely distribute it without consequences.

You can bet some corporation is right now trying to patent Cannabis.

UPDATE: Bill Search Results at GovTrack.