tweeking the edges

This article should be read once a week until everyone understands and
agrees with the message.

Carl Jarvis

On 12/6/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges
> Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> ________________________________________
> Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> By Steven W. Thrasher [1] / The Guardian [2]
> December 5, 2015
> The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed "income
> inequality", but that's neither a strong nor accurate enough phrasing. I
> have never heard poor people complain about "income inequality"; poor
> people
> complain about being screwed out of housing [3] , or about working more
> hours for less pay [4] or about having to choose between medicine and food
> [5].
> "Inequality" sounds like something that happens by accident and can be
> remedied by fiddling around the edges. It is not as if the rich are a
> little
> more equal and the poor a little less equal, and if we shift a bit we'll
> all
> come out in the middle. What we've been calling "income inequality" might
> be
> better understood as a war waged by US political and economic policy on the
> poor.
> A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies [6] issued this week
> analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans [7] and found that
> "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire
> African American population in the United States". That means that 100
> families - most of whom are white - have as much wealth as the 41,000,000
> black folks [8] walking around the country (and the million or so [9]
> locked
> up) combined.
> Similarly, the report also stated [6] that "the wealthiest 186 members of
> the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population" of the
> nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down [10]: 186
> overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding
> 55,000,000 [11] Latino people.
> The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident,
> and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic
> system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally
> disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic
> hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very
> chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
> President Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty didn't angle to take
> anything from the rich so that the poor could see equality. It was designed
> to keep some of the poor just alive enough that they wouldn't rebel, and
> designed to let other poor people perish as an object lesson to the rest of
> us to keep scampering.
> Income inequality is better termed structural racism. White people earn
> more
> money with less education [12] than black people and consistently have half
> the unemployment [13] of black people. And, as new research [14] has shown,
> "family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with
> extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago,
> according
> to research published by the New Republic [14] - an era when it wasn't
> unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon
> widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
> Income inequality is better viewed as structural sexism. Women earn 78
> cents
> on the dollar [15] overall compared to white men, but black women only earn
> 64 cents and Latinas 56. Women are also routinely [16] discriminated
> against
> economically for bearing children.
> Income equality is better viewed as structural child abuse. In the United
> States, one in five [17] children needs government help to eat. As Aisha
> Sultan recently wrote [18]in the Education Writers Association, if a
> 30-child classroom looked like the nation at large, seven of the children
> would be living in poverty, six would be victims of abuse and one would be
> homeless. These kids aren't just unequal; they are never offered the
> opportunity to achieve equality.
> Income inequality is better viewed as economic genocide, which shortens the
> lives of the poor. As the New York Times bluntly put it [19] last year,
> "where income is higher, life spans are longer". For one of the most
> jarring
> examples of how this plays out, look no further than the Ferguson Report
> [20], which shows how just in St Louis County, the average life expectancy
> ranges from 91 in the whitest neighborhood to 56 in the poorest, blackest
> neighborhood.
> Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will
> choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing - just look at Mark
> Zuckerberg [21] and his much-derided plan to "give away" [22] 99% of his
> Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any
> more
> than "giving away" of $100m [23]helped children in Newark schools.
> Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income
> inequality" will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more
> access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's
> tools [24], even when you're the master; but more to the point, who would
> tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [25]
> [26]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/economy/inequality-fundamental-us-capitalism-tweakin
> g-edges-will-accomplish-nothing
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-w-thrasher-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gentrification-doesn-poor-report-shows-a
> rticle-1.2393396
> [4]
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-h
> ours
> [5]
> http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/america_despises_its_elderly_why_seniors_hav
> e_to_choose_between_food_and_medicine_partner/
> [6] http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/
> [7] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/2/#version:static
> [8]
> https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special
> _editions/cb12-ff01.html
> [9] http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
> [10] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broke+down
> [11]
> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-grow
> th-surge-cools/
> [12]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white-high-school-dro
> pouts-are-wealthier-than-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates-can-a-new-poli
> cy-tool-fix-that/
> [13]
> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/04/black-unemployment-falls-below-10-
> still-twice-the-rate-for-whites/
> [14]
> https://newrepublic.com/article/116462/family-wealth-lasts-ten-fifteen-gener
> ations
> [15] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/equal-pay-day-2015/
> [16]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/when-bosses-discriminate
> -against-pregnant-women/380623/
> [17] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-16.html
> [18] http://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/when-grit-isnt-enough
> [19]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/income-gap-meet-the-longevity-gap
> .html
> [20]
> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/the-ferguson-commission
> -wont-bring-social-change-black-lives-matter-will
> [21] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/gallery/mark-zuckerberg
> [22]
> http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-donate-massive-fortune-to-own-blin-17
> 45573343
> [23]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squande
> red-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html
> [24] http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordedismantle.html
> [25] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Inequality is
> Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing
> [26] http://www.alternet.org/
> [27] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges
> Will
> Accomplish Nothing
>
> Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> By Steven W. Thrasher [1] / The Guardian [2]
> December 5, 2015
> The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed "income
> inequality", but that's neither a strong nor accurate enough phrasing. I
> have never heard poor people complain about "income inequality"; poor
> people
> complain about being screwed out of housing [3] , or about working more
> hours for less pay [4] or about having to choose between medicine and food
> [5].
> "Inequality" sounds like something that happens by accident and can be
> remedied by fiddling around the edges. It is not as if the rich are a
> little
> more equal and the poor a little less equal, and if we shift a bit we'll
> all
> come out in the middle. What we've been calling "income inequality" might
> be
> better understood as a war waged by US political and economic policy on the
> poor.
> A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies [6] issued this week
> analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans [7] and found that
> "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire
> African American population in the United States". That means that 100
> families - most of whom are white - have as much wealth as the 41,000,000
> black folks [8] walking around the country (and the million or so [9]
> locked
> up) combined.
> Similarly, the report also stated [6] that "the wealthiest 186 members of
> the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population" of the
> nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down [10]: 186
> overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding
> 55,000,000 [11] Latino people.
> The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident,
> and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic
> system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally
> disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic
> hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very
> chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
> President Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty didn't angle to take
> anything from the rich so that the poor could see equality. It was designed
> to keep some of the poor just alive enough that they wouldn't rebel, and
> designed to let other poor people perish as an object lesson to the rest of
> us to keep scampering.
> Income inequality is better termed structural racism. White people earn
> more
> money with less education [12] than black people and consistently have half
> the unemployment [13] of black people. And, as new research [14] has shown,
> "family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with
> extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago,
> according
> to research published by the New Republic [14] - an era when it wasn't
> unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon
> widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
> Income inequality is better viewed as structural sexism. Women earn 78
> cents
> on the dollar [15] overall compared to white men, but black women only earn
> 64 cents and Latinas 56. Women are also routinely [16] discriminated
> against
> economically for bearing children.
> Income equality is better viewed as structural child abuse. In the United
> States, one in five [17] children needs government help to eat. As Aisha
> Sultan recently wrote [18]in the Education Writers Association, if a
> 30-child classroom looked like the nation at large, seven of the children
> would be living in poverty, six would be victims of abuse and one would be
> homeless. These kids aren't just unequal; they are never offered the
> opportunity to achieve equality.
> Income inequality is better viewed as economic genocide, which shortens the
> lives of the poor. As the New York Times bluntly put it [19] last year,
> "where income is higher, life spans are longer". For one of the most
> jarring
> examples of how this plays out, look no further than the Ferguson Report
> [20], which shows how just in St Louis County, the average life expectancy
> ranges from 91 in the whitest neighborhood to 56 in the poorest, blackest
> neighborhood.
> Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will
> choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing - just look at Mark
> Zuckerberg [21] and his much-derided plan to "give away" [22] 99% of his
> Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any
> more
> than "giving away" of $100m [23]helped children in Newark schools.
> Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income
> inequality" will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more
> access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's
> tools [24], even when you're the master; but more to the point, who would
> tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [25]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[26]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/economy/inequality-fundamental-us-capitalism-tweakin
> g-edges-will-accomplish-nothing
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-w-thrasher-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gentrification-doesn-poor-report-shows-a
> rticle-1.2393396
> [4]
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-h
> ours
> [5]
> http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/america_despises_its_elderly_why_seniors_hav
> e_to_choose_between_food_and_medicine_partner/
> [6] http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/
> [7] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/2/#version:static
> [8]
> https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special
> _editions/cb12-ff01.html
> [9] http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
> [10] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broke+down
> [11]
> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-grow
> th-surge-cools/
> [12]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white-high-school-dro
> pouts-are-wealthier-than-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates-can-a-new-poli
> cy-tool-fix-that/
> [13]
> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/04/black-unemployment-falls-below-10-
> still-twice-the-rate-for-whites/
> [14]
> https://newrepublic.com/article/116462/family-wealth-lasts-ten-fifteen-gener
> ations
> [15] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/equal-pay-day-2015/
> [16]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/when-bosses-discriminate
> -against-pregnant-women/380623/
> [17] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-16.html
> [18] http://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/when-grit-isnt-enough
> [19]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/income-gap-meet-the-longevity-gap
> .html
> [20]
> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/the-ferguson-commission
> -wont-bring-social-change-black-lives-matter-will
> [21] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/gallery/mark-zuckerberg
> [22]
> http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-donate-massive-fortune-to-own-blin-17
> 45573343
> [23]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squande
> red-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html
> [24] http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordedismantle.html
> [25] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Inequality is
> Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing
> [26] http://www.alternet.org/
> [27] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>

Re: [blind-democracy] Gun Industry Executives Say Mass Shootings Are Good for Business

"Gun Industry Executives Say Mass Shootings Are Good for Business".
These mouthings from murderers only go to the point that weapon
manufacturers are not concerned about the safety of Americans. It's
all about *Profit*.
Endless war? Fuck the People. It's good for business. Who cares
about the people?
Little children and average every day folks, like your grandma or
grandpa, murdered as they sit in restaurants or stroll the Malls.
To us Working Class folks it hurts deeply when the murderers strike
our Home-Land, but we shrug and go back to our mindless entertainment
when it is happening in other Lands.
Allowing the Weapons Barron's to control our lives puts the blood of
all the world's murders on our hands. We are guilty through failure
to take the guns away from those evil War Mongers who are profiting at
the expense of so much suffering.

Carl Jarvis

On 12/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Fang writes: "The Intercept reviewed investor transcripts for gun
> companies,
> ammunition manufacturers, and sporting stores, and found many instances of
> industry executives discussing mass shooting incidents and the resulting
> political dynamics as lucrative."
>
> Gun sales continue to break records. (photo: Cengiz Yar Jr.AFP/Getty
> Images)
>
>
> Gun Industry Executives Say Mass Shootings Are Good for Business
> By Lee Fang, The Intercept
> 03 December 15
>
> Behind closed doors, speaking with investors and Wall Street analysts, the
> gun industry views mass shootings as an opportunity to make lots of money.
> Ordinary people are despairing about the frequency of tragic events like
> the
> murderous rampage in San Bernardino on Wednesday, or the Planned Parenthood
> massacre last week. And the cycle of mass killing, media frenzy, and
> political stalemate starts anew each time.
> But meanwhile, gun sales continue to break records, a fact that has not
> gone
> ignored by financial analysts.
> The Intercept reviewed investor transcripts for gun companies, ammunition
> manufacturers, and sporting stores, and found many instances of industry
> executives discussing mass shooting incidents and the resulting political
> dynamics as lucrative.
> Here's how it works. Following a mass shooting, there is talk of gun
> control, which the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates
> attack
> as an assault on the Second Amendment. Notably, gun and ammunition
> manufacturers often donate, either directly or as a portion of each sale,
> to
> the NRA. The fear of losing gun rights leads to panic buying, which brings
> greater profits to gun retailers, gun companies and their investors.
> Gun Distributors
> "The gun business was very much accelerated based on what happened after
> the
> election and then the tragedy that happened at Sandy Hook," Ed Stack, the
> chief executive of Dick's Sporting Goods, a leading gun and ammunition
> retailer, said in September 2014 at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing
> Conference. Stack noted that the industry saw "panic buying" when customers
> "thought there were going to be some very meaningful changes in our gun"
> laws. The new sales "didn't bring hunters in" but rather "brought shooters
> into the industry," he added.
> In 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff
> members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
> Last year, Tommy Millner, the chief executive of Cabela's, a retailer that
> sells guns, boasted at an investor conference in Nebraska that his company
> made a "conscious decision" to stock additional weapons merchandise before
> the 2012 election, hoping Obama's reelection would result in increased
> sales. After the election, the Newtown mass shooting happened, and "the
> business went vertical . I meant it just went crazy," Millner said,
> according to a transcript of the event. Describing the "tailwinds of
> profitability," Millner noted Cabela's "didn't blink as others did to stop
> selling AR-15 platform guns," and so his company "got a lot of new
> customers." The AR-15 is a high-powered assault rifle based on the
> military's M-16 model but without the full automatic capacity,
> Steven Miller, the chief executive of Big 5 Sporting Goods, another gun
> retailer, was asked by investor analysts in 2013 to describe the state of
> the market during a conference call that year. The "real surge" in firearm
> sales, Miller said, "took place following the tragedy in Sandy Hook."
> Gun and Ammunition Manufacturers
> Smith & Wesson chief executive James Debney, speaking to the Roth Capital
> Partners conference in 2013, explained that "the tragedy in Newtown and the
> legislative landscape" resulted in sales that were "significantly up." The
> "fear and uncertainty that there might be increased gun control," Debney
> said, "drove many new people to buy firearms for the first time.
> "You can see after a tragedy, there's also a lot of buying," Jeff Buchanan,
> the chief financial officer of Smith & Wesson, told investors at the RBC
> Capital Markets conference in September of this year. Buchanan noted that
> the political landscape of 2016 is uncertain, but that fear of gun control
> could be on the horizon.
> Michael Fifer, the chief executive of Sturm Ruger, one of the largest
> gunmakers in America, discussed the role of politics in gun sales during a
> conference call with investors in 2013. "If you look back at historical
> patterns back in late '08, early '09, you saw a huge spike in accessory
> sales which then tapered off, and then we saw it again with the really
> tragic events at Sandy Hook that started again as soon as the politicians
> started talking about restricting legal gun use," Fifer said.
> Wall Street Analysts
> Market analysts, including consultants who often hold executives
> accountable
> to investors, have been keen to ask gun companies about how they are able
> to
> respond to surging sales following mass shootings.
> Gautam Khanna, an analyst with Cowen & Co., a market research firm,
> interviewed Mark DeYoung, then the chief executive of ATK, an ammunition
> manufacturer, at the Cowen Aerospace conference in 2013. Khanna asked
> DeYoung if he would make pricing decisions based in part by the "Newtown
> shooting tragedy."
> DeYoung responded that "obviously we are all shocked" by "what happened in
> Newtown and what happened in Aurora, Colorado, and what happened in Tucson,
> Arizona, with Gabby Giffords." But, he added, the company will continue to
> "respond to market pressures," including increases in demand. On a separate
> conference call that year, DeYoung noted that certain "spikes" in demand
> have driven sales.
> James Holmes killed 12 people and injured more than 70 others after opening
> fire in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012.
> In 2011, Jim Barrett, a financial analyst, asked Ruger's Fifer during a
> call
> with investors if the "recent shooting incident in Tucson" - referring to
> the shooting that year of Rep. Gabby Giffords - "has stirred gun owners and
> prospective gun owners to go visit the stores?"
> Bob Sales, another analyst, asked Fifer how his company was preparing for
> future gun sales, given that "a combination of the election in 2012 and the
> Sandy Hook incident . spurred a massive binge of gun buying."
> On a conference call with investors, Millner, the chief executive of
> Cabela's, fielded a question about the Aurora mass shooting from an analyst
> with Imperial Capital, who asked him if the incident had "any impact on
> your
> business." Millner responded, "I would say that the trends that you read
> about in the press, we are experiencing at least thus far since the
> incident."
> The business rhetoric around mass shootings "doesn't surprise me at all,"
> says Ladd Everitt, the director of communications of the Coalition to Stop
> Gun Violence. Everitt noted that the National Rifle Association, which is
> funded by gun manufacturers, often uses similar language following mass
> shootings.
> "This just shows the guys in the suits understand this and are utterly
> cynical about it."
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Gun sales continue to break records. (photo: Cengiz Yar Jr.AFP/Getty
> Images)
> https://theintercept.com/2015/12/03/mass-shooting-wall-st/https://theinterce
> pt.com/2015/12/03/mass-shooting-wall-st/
> Gun Industry Executives Say Mass Shootings Are Good for Business
> By Lee Fang, The Intercept
> 03 December 15
> ehind closed doors, speaking with investors and Wall Street analysts, the
> gun industry views mass shootings as an opportunity to make lots of money.
> Ordinary people are despairing about the frequency of tragic events like
> the
> murderous rampage in San Bernardino on Wednesday, or the Planned Parenthood
> massacre last week. And the cycle of mass killing, media frenzy, and
> political stalemate starts anew each time.
> But meanwhile, gun sales continue to break records, a fact that has not
> gone
> ignored by financial analysts.
> The Intercept reviewed investor transcripts for gun companies, ammunition
> manufacturers, and sporting stores, and found many instances of industry
> executives discussing mass shooting incidents and the resulting political
> dynamics as lucrative.
> Here's how it works. Following a mass shooting, there is talk of gun
> control, which the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates
> attack
> as an assault on the Second Amendment. Notably, gun and ammunition
> manufacturers often donate, either directly or as a portion of each sale,
> to
> the NRA. The fear of losing gun rights leads to panic buying, which brings
> greater profits to gun retailers, gun companies and their investors.
> Gun Distributors
> "The gun business was very much accelerated based on what happened after
> the
> election and then the tragedy that happened at Sandy Hook," Ed Stack, the
> chief executive of Dick's Sporting Goods, a leading gun and ammunition
> retailer, said in September 2014 at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing
> Conference. Stack noted that the industry saw "panic buying" when customers
> "thought there were going to be some very meaningful changes in our gun"
> laws. The new sales "didn't bring hunters in" but rather "brought shooters
> into the industry," he added.
> In 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff
> members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
> Last year, Tommy Millner, the chief executive of Cabela's, a retailer that
> sells guns, boasted at an investor conference in Nebraska that his company
> made a "conscious decision" to stock additional weapons merchandise before
> the 2012 election, hoping Obama's reelection would result in increased
> sales. After the election, the Newtown mass shooting happened, and "the
> business went vertical . I meant it just went crazy," Millner said,
> according to a transcript of the event. Describing the "tailwinds of
> profitability," Millner noted Cabela's "didn't blink as others did to stop
> selling AR-15 platform guns," and so his company "got a lot of new
> customers." The AR-15 is a high-powered assault rifle based on the
> military's M-16 model but without the full automatic capacity,
> Steven Miller, the chief executive of Big 5 Sporting Goods, another gun
> retailer, was asked by investor analysts in 2013 to describe the state of
> the market during a conference call that year. The "real surge" in firearm
> sales, Miller said, "took place following the tragedy in Sandy Hook."
> Gun and Ammunition Manufacturers
> Smith & Wesson chief executive James Debney, speaking to the Roth Capital
> Partners conference in 2013, explained that "the tragedy in Newtown and the
> legislative landscape" resulted in sales that were "significantly up." The
> "fear and uncertainty that there might be increased gun control," Debney
> said, "drove many new people to buy firearms for the first time.
> "You can see after a tragedy, there's also a lot of buying," Jeff Buchanan,
> the chief financial officer of Smith & Wesson, told investors at the RBC
> Capital Markets conference in September of this year. Buchanan noted that
> the political landscape of 2016 is uncertain, but that fear of gun control
> could be on the horizon.
> Michael Fifer, the chief executive of Sturm Ruger, one of the largest
> gunmakers in America, discussed the role of politics in gun sales during a
> conference call with investors in 2013. "If you look back at historical
> patterns back in late '08, early '09, you saw a huge spike in accessory
> sales which then tapered off, and then we saw it again with the really
> tragic events at Sandy Hook that started again as soon as the politicians
> started talking about restricting legal gun use," Fifer said.
> Wall Street Analysts
> Market analysts, including consultants who often hold executives
> accountable
> to investors, have been keen to ask gun companies about how they are able
> to
> respond to surging sales following mass shootings.
> Gautam Khanna, an analyst with Cowen & Co., a market research firm,
> interviewed Mark DeYoung, then the chief executive of ATK, an ammunition
> manufacturer, at the Cowen Aerospace conference in 2013. Khanna asked
> DeYoung if he would make pricing decisions based in part by the "Newtown
> shooting tragedy."
> DeYoung responded that "obviously we are all shocked" by "what happened in
> Newtown and what happened in Aurora, Colorado, and what happened in Tucson,
> Arizona, with Gabby Giffords." But, he added, the company will continue to
> "respond to market pressures," including increases in demand. On a separate
> conference call that year, DeYoung noted that certain "spikes" in demand
> have driven sales.
> James Holmes killed 12 people and injured more than 70 others after opening
> fire in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012.
> In 2011, Jim Barrett, a financial analyst, asked Ruger's Fifer during a
> call
> with investors if the "recent shooting incident in Tucson" - referring to
> the shooting that year of Rep. Gabby Giffords - "has stirred gun owners and
> prospective gun owners to go visit the stores?"
> Bob Sales, another analyst, asked Fifer how his company was preparing for
> future gun sales, given that "a combination of the election in 2012 and the
> Sandy Hook incident . spurred a massive binge of gun buying."
> On a conference call with investors, Millner, the chief executive of
> Cabela's, fielded a question about the Aurora mass shooting from an analyst
> with Imperial Capital, who asked him if the incident had "any impact on
> your
> business." Millner responded, "I would say that the trends that you read
> about in the press, we are experiencing at least thus far since the
> incident."
> The business rhetoric around mass shootings "doesn't surprise me at all,"
> says Ladd Everitt, the director of communications of the Coalition to Stop
> Gun Violence. Everitt noted that the National Rifle Association, which is
> funded by gun manufacturers, often uses similar language following mass
> shootings.
> "This just shows the guys in the suits understand this and are utterly
> cynical about it."
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>

Re: [blind-democracy] WikiLeaks Releases Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Secret Documents

What is the percentage of information within our Federal Government
that is so secret that the American People are not permitted to know
about, before our so called democracy is removed from the Public's
control?
How can we be, "We, The People", when we do not have a clue as to what
is going on in our name?
What will it take for the American People to wake up to the fact that
we are no longer Citizens? At best we are Consumers. At worst we are
Servants or Subjects held ignorant of the dealings of the government.
When I hear phrases like, "Justice for All", I have to wonder just
who, "All" is.



Carl Jarvis


On 12/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> v
> Excerpt: "WikiLeaks releases new secret documents from the huge Trade in
> Services Agreement (TiSA) which is being negotiated by the US, EU and 22
> other countries that account for 2/3rds of global GDP. Coinciding with the
> ongoing climate talks in Paris, today's publication touches on issues of
> crucial relevance including the regulation of energy, industrial
> development, workers' rights and the natural environment."
>
> Wikileaks. (image: Guardian UK)
>
>
> WikiLeaks Releases Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Secret Documents
> By Press Release | WikiLeaks
> 03 December 15
>
> Today, Thursday, December 3, 10am EST, WikiLeaks releases new secret
> documents from the huge Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) which is being
> negotiated by the US, EU and 22 other countries that account for 2/3rds of
> global GDP. Coinciding with the ongoing climate talks in Paris, today's
> publication touches on issues of crucial relevance including the regulation
> of energy, industrial development, workers' rights and the natural
> environment. WikiLeaks is also publishing expert analyses of the documents.
> The Trade In Services Agreement is the largest trade treaty of its kind in
> history. The economies of the 52 countries involved in the negotiation,
> which is being led by the United States, are mostly the supply of services.
> According to World Bank figures, services comprise 75% of the EU economy,
> 80% of the US economy and the majority of the global economy. Notably
> excluded in the TiSA negotiations are the emerging economies and the BRICS
> (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
> The "Energy Related Services Annex Proposal: Questions and Answers"
> document
> sets out TiSA designs to create an international market in energy-related
> services for foreign suppliers. While heads of state prepare to sign
> climate
> accords in Paris, TiSA negotiators are meeting behind closed doors in
> Geneva
> to forge new limits on energy regulation.
> The "Annex on Environmental Services" reveals that TiSA will aim to ensure
> that national environmental protections within TiSA countries will be
> "harmonized down", promoting the interests of multinational companies
> providing water purification, sanitation and refuse disposal services over
> worker safety, public health and the natural environment. Assessing the
> agreement, Friends of the Earth calls TiSA "an environmental hazard",
> pointing out that public services of an environmentally sensitive nature
> are
> in danger of being privatized. Commenting on the "Annex on Road Freight
> Transport and Related Logistical Services", the International Transport
> Workers Federation (ITF) calls TiSA a "race to the bottom," observing that
> the Annex joins other Annexes published by WikiLeaks to form an overarching
> trade liberalization agenda, fragmenting the trucking industry, opening up
> sensitive areas of the transport sector to international competition, and
> contributing to the ongoing privatization of public services, undercutting
> workers' rights, public health and safety, and the ability of national
> governments to plan and direct their own industrial and infrastructural
> development.
> While the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and
> Investment Pact (TTIP) have received attention, the TiSA is the largest
> component of the United States' "Big Three," the triumvirate of strategic
> neoliberal trade deals being advanced by the Obama administration.
> Together,
> the three treaties form not only a new legal order hospitable for
> transnational corporations, but a new economic "grand enclosure", which
> excludes China and all other BRICS countries.
>
> READ MORE
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Wikileaks. (image: Guardian UK)
> https://wikileaks.org/tisa/press.htmlhttps://wikileaks.org/tisa/press.html
> WikiLeaks Releases Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Secret Documents
> By Press Release | WikiLeaks
> 03 December 15
> oday, Thursday, December 3, 10am EST, WikiLeaks releases new secret
> documents from the huge Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) which is being
> negotiated by the US, EU and 22 other countries that account for 2/3rds of
> global GDP. Coinciding with the ongoing climate talks in Paris, today's
> publication touches on issues of crucial relevance including the regulation
> of energy, industrial development, workers' rights and the natural
> environment. WikiLeaks is also publishing expert analyses of the documents.
> The Trade In Services Agreement is the largest trade treaty of its kind in
> history. The economies of the 52 countries involved in the negotiation,
> which is being led by the United States, are mostly the supply of services.
> According to World Bank figures, services comprise 75% of the EU economy,
> 80% of the US economy and the majority of the global economy. Notably
> excluded in the TiSA negotiations are the emerging economies and the BRICS
> (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
> The "Energy Related Services Annex Proposal: Questions and Answers"
> document
> sets out TiSA designs to create an international market in energy-related
> services for foreign suppliers. While heads of state prepare to sign
> climate
> accords in Paris, TiSA negotiators are meeting behind closed doors in
> Geneva
> to forge new limits on energy regulation.
> The "Annex on Environmental Services" reveals that TiSA will aim to ensure
> that national environmental protections within TiSA countries will be
> "harmonized down", promoting the interests of multinational companies
> providing water purification, sanitation and refuse disposal services over
> worker safety, public health and the natural environment. Assessing the
> agreement, Friends of the Earth calls TiSA "an environmental hazard",
> pointing out that public services of an environmentally sensitive nature
> are
> in danger of being privatized. Commenting on the "Annex on Road Freight
> Transport and Related Logistical Services", the International Transport
> Workers Federation (ITF) calls TiSA a "race to the bottom," observing that
> the Annex joins other Annexes published by WikiLeaks to form an overarching
> trade liberalization agenda, fragmenting the trucking industry, opening up
> sensitive areas of the transport sector to international competition, and
> contributing to the ongoing privatization of public services, undercutting
> workers' rights, public health and safety, and the ability of national
> governments to plan and direct their own industrial and infrastructural
> development.
> While the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and
> Investment Pact (TTIP) have received attention, the TiSA is the largest
> component of the United States' "Big Three," the triumvirate of strategic
> neoliberal trade deals being advanced by the Obama administration.
> Together,
> the three treaties form not only a new legal order hospitable for
> transnational corporations, but a new economic "grand enclosure", which
> excludes China and all other BRICS countries.
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>