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Once the newly elected president and Democratic majority Senate steered the country away from the “Fiscal Cliff” the Tea Party Republicans dragged the country through in early January 2013, the Republicans set a new series of roadblocks and manufactured crisis in their effort to take the country to the brink. In 2011, President Obama negotiated a continuing budget resolution with the Republicans in order to avoid a government shutdown. Even then, the Republicans were so determined to either derail the economy or shut down the government that by the time they reached an agreement on the budget, the country’s credit rating was downgraded from a triple “A” rating to a minus. At that time, the President negotiated the so-called sequester with the Republicans in good faith, with the idea that the cuts in the budget sequester were so severe that the Republicans in Congress would never allow them to go into effect automatically, without making some effort to manage those cuts in order to avoid hurting the most vulnerable American citizens. Before the sequester took effect in the spring, budget wonks and analysts estimated that those cuts would take away food from the hungry and the elderly by cutting funds from critical programs, such as meals on wheels and food stamps. One.org compiled the following figures:

171,900 people would not have AIDS medication, resulting in 39,200 deaths and 77,200 more children becoming orphans

1.2 million fewer insecticide-treated mosquito nets, leading to over 3,200 deaths from malaria

836,800 fewer Pentavalent vaccines would be available for children, resulting in 8,900 more deaths from completely preventable diseases

As of today, we are in a brand new crisis. For the federal government, the fiscal year ends on September 30 each year. Therefore, Congress is mandated under the Constitution to pass a budget to cover the government’s expenses for the new fiscal year. This budget includes all expenditures from the Pentagon to social security and federal employees. Congress has been threatening for months to shut down the government unless the President agreed to one concession or another. But an interesting happened. This year, the end of the federal government fiscal year happens to coincide with the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act. For decades, Washington has tried unsuccessfully to find a solution to cover the millions of Americans who have been uninsured. As the cost of health insurance skyrocketed, the number of uninsured Americans increased, and hospital emergency rooms became the main avenue by which most of the uninsured received health care services. There are many reasons why a person may not have health care coverage. Many young people get thrown off their parents’ health insurance once they turn eighteen. Insurance companies had been free to deny coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions, and sometimes simply suspended coverage for people who are sick after they have used a certain amount of coverage. The price of not having health care coverage adds up to a life and death situation. 

Even though hospitals are mandated by federal law to take care of patients who need critical care, regardless of their ability to pay, they are not required to do any more than may be necessary to save a patient’s life. As a result, a person who shows up in the emergency room sick, but not in critical condition, will receive treatment but also sent a bill to pay out of pocket. The costs of health care have driven many people into bankruptcy. In addition, individuals without medical insurance are more likely to suffer from fatal conditions that do not get discovered early enough for doctors to save their lives. In 2010, the Democrats were able to pass the Affordable Health Care Act, which is one of the agenda items that President Obama ran on during the 2008 presidential election and again in 2012. The Republicans are clearly attempting to implement the failed and repudiated agenda that their Congressional candidates and Mitt Romney offered to the country last November.

While the president was being inaugurated in January 2009, the Republicans were making plans to torpedo his administration. The Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell said openly,“ our first priority is to make President Obama a one-term president.” In 2010, the Republicans joined hands with their rising Tea Party flank, a toxic mix of non-Republican Republicans and hang their hat on the Affordable Health Care Act, which they called “Obamacare.” They misled the electorate about the law: It’s a job-killer; it’s socialism; it’s taking away your freedom; it’s a train wreck; it has 2000 pages; the IRS is going to decide if you should live or die; the will be death panels. None of it is true. In fact, now that the law is ready to go into effect, Republicans have been desperately telling Americans to not sign up for health care. Those Republicans could not care less if you were to get sick and did not have health insurance. But they poisoned the atmosphere enough to win the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid-term elections.

As we approached a deadline for funding the government, right-wing Tea Party Republicans demanded that their leaderless House Speaker John Boehner de-fund the Health Care Law as a condition for funding the government. Boehner is a speaker in name only. Since 2010, he has had absolutely no control whatsoever over the Southern band of Tea Party radical Congressmen who were sent to Washington from their districts to do one thing and one thing only, that is to disrupt and topple the government of the United States. These so-called lawmakers do not believe in education, science, mathematics, or democracy. Today, one of their colleagues said on MSNBC that “they [Tea Party Republicans] led people to believe that they can de-fund the President’s Health Care Law; That’s not intellectually honest.” The truth is that those right-wingers have neither the intellect nor the honesty to realize that they are working against the interests of the country, never mind their constituencies. 

On Thursday, Boehner (R-Ohio) tried a last minute maneuver to get his wild flock to let go of their fight to defund the Health Care Act or shut down the government. He offered them to wait and start the same fight over again when it comes time to raise the federal debt limit to pay the government’s bill by the October 17 deadline. Boehner was trying to weasel his way out of this fabricated emergency that blood thirsty Republicans have created for the country as a whole. But the hard-liners in his Tea Party caucus refused to budge. The House sent a bill to the Senate with provisions to defund the Affordable Health Care Law. When the bill reached the Senate, Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) threw a temper tantrum. Cruz took to the Senate floor and held a ridiculous filibuster for nearly twenty hours, only to join the rest of the body and vote to advance a new Senate bill, which stripped the health care defunding language after which the bill passed the Senate. The new bill has been sent back to the House of Representatives, but at this time, no one believes that the House will have sufficient time to vote on a bill to fund the government before the deadline at midnight October 1st. Cruz’ action prompted Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to take to the Senate floor and accused Cruz of blocking the vote and delaying it until Friday so he could “turn this into a show” for his supporters from the Tea Party movement and conservative political organizations.

President Obama has publicly stated that he will not negotiate over paying the country’s debt, or while the country is being held hostage by right-wing Republicans. The President called the Republicans’ threat to shut down the government "irresponsible." President Barack Obama repeated Thursday that he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling and will not sign any bill that defunds or delays the health-care law. He directly denounced the Republicans for what he said were tactics that would endanger the full faith and credit of the country. "You don't mess with that," he said in a speech in Largo, Md. The US News headlined the platform upon which the Republicans are fighting tooth and nails to defund the President’s Affordable Health Care Law as, “The Imaginary threat of the Budget Deficit.” In an article today in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Schlesinger quoted Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning, writing:   

There was an election

Elections have consequences in a democratic republic

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 “The federal budget deficit narrowed from more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product at the end of 2009 to 5.7 percent of GDP for the 12 months ended March 31 -- the smallest gap in four years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With tax collections rising and spending growth slowing down, the deficit is on track to drop to 4 percent of the $16 trillion U.S. GDP for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to a May forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. It will shrink to 3.4 percent of GDP next year, the Congressional Budget Office - CBO says, close to the 3.3 percent average over the past 30 years,” [according to Bloomberg data].

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the government will be unable to pay all its obligations sometime in late October.

Looking back on the Clinton Era government shutdown in 1995- 1996, a government shutdown would result in the suspension of certain services provided by the federal government, and in a delay in others. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more significantly the consequences may be felt, and the more far-reaching those effects may be. In a government shutdown, services that are considered “essential” remain open. Those include:  police, fire fighting, armed forces, utilities and corrections.

Social Security Checks will go out

Public safety and national security: open

All other government services will shut down

Coastal service: open

Medicare and Medicaid payments delayed

National parks closed

Military pay delayed or shutdown

Federal employees furloughed

The House of Representatives is scheduled to remain in session this weekend to take up the bill the Senate sent them today. In response to the Senate passage of the continuing resolution to keep the government open until November, House Speaker John Boehner said, "I do not see that happening," meaning passing a bill in the House that the President can sign in time to prevent a government shutdown. It has become evident that the Republicans never had any ideas about how to govern, but yet they have run out of the zero idea that they have had. The in-fighting among the Republicans has been bloody; it has been an all-out war between moderate Republicans and right-wingers. They have been splattering blood from the South to Capitol Hill, so they are trying to bloody the President in the process. Boehner said he did not expect a government shutdown and many moderate GOP lawmakers are anxious to avoid one. They obviously fear that voters will blame the Republican Party for the consequences of a shutdown, similar to what happened when radical Republicans, under former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, shut down the government in 1995-1996 during the Clinton administration. As of this writing, it is not clear whether or not the House of Representatives will be able to free itself from the dead weight of the Tea Party carcass in order to pass a bill that the President can sign to keep the government functioning, even at the level of the minimalists in the GOP. 

First, let me say that this article is probably the second on out all of the articles that I have posted here and on my blog extensions, where I will be writing at the first person. If you look at all of the articles on this blog, you will see that I write very formally, like in a book, but not just any book – the kind of writing you find in serious academic books. However, in this article and others in this series, I will be writing about police and hospitals, and therefore I will be writing more informally. I write formally for a reason: I do not want to contribute to dumber. But these two issues are too important, and are very personal to me. I despise liars; but even more so, I refuse to give a pass to lying cops and hospital workers. These are two categories of people whose lies can cause serious damages. In fact, people who work in these two professions should be held to higher standards and accountable for their actions. Police, in particular should not lie, ever, at any time, for any reason. If they want to lie they can do that on their own time – at home. The reason is, police departments in this country hold so much latitude and discretion that they’re bending the parallels and tipping the equator. But instead of using such awesome power for the good of the people, they misuse and abuse it. So long as they continue to get away with this, they will have no reason to stop. Today, in this country, a police officer could be found standing over a dead body, holding the bloody knife, and their DA buddies, BFF judges, and ignorant jurors, would find that they did nothing wrong. Now fasten your seat belt because I am about to turn the first person writing button on, and it is up close and personal.    

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I am a Black immigrant woman with three children, and have been married for 29 years. Despite serious problems with my husband and damage he had caused our family, I am still married to him, because it was his personal problems that was wreaking havoc and causing me great hardships. But he was never abusive in a domestic violence type way or under the court’s definition of domestic abuse, until 3 and half years ago. Don’t worry, I never betrayed my principles; my husband knows that I am writing this blog right now and knows what’s in it. I believe in full disclosure. There was a pattern to this; I would ask him to acknowledge the wrong he’s done to me; he’d start parsing his words like in a tactical military avoidance kind of way. I would get upset; He would try to outdo my upset; that would get me more upset; then he would go enlist the children to his side with all sort of lies about why the argument started: your mother is crazy - she needs to be committed. Since the children are on the third floor of the house, as soon as I see him go up there I would stand at the bottom of the stairs and could hear all of it. Many times these arguments would happen after he’s had a few drinks. I can’t drink alcohol – Sometimes I wish I could -- but I have an acute Gastro condition, so I can’t. Then the argument would escalate until I consider it too verbally abusive. One time he pushed into the closet; he’s grabbed me and pushed and showed. Don’t take me wrong, I never stood there idle or cry, but I only weight about 90 pounds on a good day. So, before I get really hurt, I would call the police.

I called the police 4 times in 2012 (I don’t have to deal with that anymore, because my husband came close to dying last June from a catastrophic illness of unknown origin). The first three times they came, they made him sit in their patrol cars while he called someone to pick him up. While in their cruiser, they chitchatted with him, one of them even shared a carrot with him. And each time, they would first take his story before they even talk to me. In other words, by the time they get to speak with me they already recorded his lies. On the fourth call, he was arrested. But the next time the argument and the yelling and name-calling started, I told him I was calling the police. So he preemptively went to the police station and spoke with them. I didn't know that, and since the police station is so close to our house, I walked there to tell them what happened. Even though he had left, I wanted it documented. At the time, I had a broken wrist and my orthopedic surgeon had just prescribed me 40 Percocet just 4 days earlier.  Because of my stomach problems and my very - very low weight I can’t take too many medicines. Also, the pain killers Percocet and Vicoden particularly don’t agree with me. If I take a whole pill, I feel like I dying: I feel faint—not a good feeling. So, I always take a half.  And sometimes that’s all I take in a day. I just don’t like this medicine. But that day, he had raided the medicine bottle, and the 40 Percocet were gone. So, as a fool, or a really naive and innocent-minded person, I brought the empty medicine bottle and the empty alcohol bottles he had been drinking to the police station to show (at least in my mind) what was at the core of these problems.

An Andover police officer whom I have spoken with before, and frankly a person I like, because he looks so genuine. He shows his emotions; when he disagrees with something I say, like “that’s a lie,” he gets all excited and he starts raising his voice. I felt that was very human. The first time I spoke with him it was springtime and he told me we can sit on the bench outside and talk. He was a Sergeant at the time, and he told me he’s a veteran. He either fought in the Golf war or in Iraq. I was impressed, but yet again, I’m always looking for an excuse to like people. I guess “I was born that way.”  When I got to the police station on the day of the incident in question, Sargent Guy was on duty, I didn't know he was there, so I was glad when he came out to speak with me. Go ahead, you can call me a fool for trusting a policeman, but I refuse to give up on everybody just because I might be dealing with a not so good person. Besides, my roads in life have been lined with angels, so I have absolutely no reason to change and become a misanthrope. In any case, I showed Sargent Guy the empty bottles and told him what had happened. He said, “I think you should have that wrist checked, since you said that he pulled your arm.” My wrist had just come out of the hard cast and Dr. Brady had transited me to a brace. So, I said, yes – maybe it’s a good idea. Now Lieutenant Guy left and the paramedics came where I was seated. In Andover, the fire department where paramedics are housed is across the hall from the police, just a few feet away. The paramedics asked me if I could get on the stretcher, I said yes and climbed on it. But since it’s so awkward dealing with ambulance people when you’re not like near death, I decided to make small talks and pleasantries. I told them how I respected paramedics because when I took care of my mother with strokes, heart attacks, and congestive heart failures in my home for almost 10 years, paramedics were my lifeline. At the time, I lived in North Andover, which is now separate from Andover. They used to be one town, but like all “good” marriages, they broke up and went their separate ways. Anyway, next thing I know, the men took me to a mental institution, in the not so holy – Holy Family Hospital in Methuen. Well, after I talked to Lugo on the second day and threatened to sue her and the hospital if I was not let out of there rat hole immediately,  I was out there within hours. That did not fix the fact that I had been essentially falsely imprisoned. The loss of freedom is a violation of the XIV Amendment of the Constitution. And the fact remains that Steward Holy Family Caricas Hospital is as holy as the priests who molested dozens of children. I am a devout Catholic, and taught in Catholic schools. Therefore, if anyone should understand the meaning of the word 'holy' , I should be one who knows.

 

Dr. Susan Lugo who was the attending psychiatrist tried to slime her way out of the straight jacket I had prepared for her, by saying, the only reason she did not discharge me the first day was for my own protection, because since this started with a domestic abuse complaint, she was afraid that if she sent me back home, I would be at risk from my husband. This lousy excuse makes no sense at all. However, I was still perplexed about why I ended up there. I could not imagine that Sargent Guy had  caused this. The paramedics didn't tell me they were taking me to that hospital under the emergency commitment law. The closest hospital is Lawrence General. So, there was something very curious going on.  But for the one day I was there, I took time to read the voluminous handbook they threw by the window, as if someone with a real mental illness was going to read anything like that. In fact, the person who was in the same room with me was yelling all night and day about something or somebody chasing her. But somewhere in the huge handbook, which was littered with typos and grammatical offenses, I came across a section, which the state requires, whereby people who are put in places like that against their will can contact a lawyer. So, I called a lawyer and told him what had happened; he told me what to do, but I had already written a note to Dr. Susan Lugo, informing her that I wouldn't eat a thing until I am let out there, in addition to filling a complaint with the Board of Registration in Medicines against her personally. There is another useless institution: The Board of Registration in Medicines. So, I am now in a locked place, just like a jail. Imagine what would have happened if I showed any kind of emotions or express signs of being upset, which I had legitimate reasons to be. But I understood that this type of institution has a fundamental self-interest in keeping people locked up, crazy or not - it's called collecting health insurance money. Don’t take me wrong, I know that they will deny every bit of this. But that is a part of corruption. Not only was I being locked up in the mental ward of this hospital, when the doctor sat down to talk to me – after I threatened to sue her—she said, “I'm getting discharge papers ready for you to go home right away;" Then she proceeded to say, "You have a problem with pot.” I said what.You tested positive for marijuana, she said. Number one, I never believed that any government has any business telling people what they can and cannot put in their own bodies. But the bigger problem is that I would not recognize the so-called “pot” if someone was robbing it on my nose, since I've never seen the thing in my life. If anything, I should have been using the stuff; I heard that it makes people eat, and I hardly eat. In fact, I don't like to eat; it feels like a bother. So, there go the health care standards: giving people false positive test results for drugs they do not use. This is one in dozens of reasons why I will be writing the series I announced earlier: “Good Doctors – Bad Doctors & Hospitals that can kill you.”

While I was talking with Dr. Lugo, I tried to make her understand who I am, because I am very esoteric and therefore not easily understood by others. So I told her that I was initiated at 19 years by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi one-on-one, in person, in transcendental meditation and the study of meta-physics, worked on radio here in the US and abroad while I was teaching, and have traveled widely in South America, Europe, and North America. For that, this fraudulent psychiatrist wrote into the records, “the patient appears to suffer from ‘delusion’ of grandeur.” You can see why the woman is a fraud. Even if I had made up these things I told because somehow they came from some delusion of grandeur, delusion of grandeur is not a mental health emergency, neither is it a condition for which anyone ever gets hospitalized and committed to a mental institution. So, once I was home, I wrote complaint letters to the Commissioner for the Department of  Public Health,  Department of Mental Health, The Board of Registry in Medicine, my Health Insurance Company – asking them to not pay that hospital—and I wrote separate complaints to the Board of Directors of the so unholy – so not-family-like, Steward Holy Family Caricas Hospital. As for the individuals on that Board of Directors, they’re probably the same people who sit on Mitt Romney’s vulture Ben Capital. There is also the useless shell Caricas group commission located in Washington DC, which is supposed to have some type of quality control responsibility over that hospital. But from my communication with that particular  body, I realized that they are nothing but another shadow organization. Once corruption enters an institution it spreads like mold; it’s pervasive and it permeates every aspect of an organization. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of nitwits out there who will be ready and willing to defend Andover Police and that hospital, but I have records of everything and the records speak for themselves.

All of this was triggered by the misuse and abuse of a little known Massachusetts law, Chapter 123 Section 12 – “Emergency restraint and hospitalization of persons posing risk of serious harm by reasons of mental illness.” It is credible to believe that this law was written with good intention, and it used very carefully by ethical psychiatrists as a preventative measure, but only as a last resort, to commit people who pose actual "serious" risks to themselves and others. But of course, police in this country never saw a law they couldn't get their cronies in the legislative branch to write them in. Consequently, police are given power under this law, which – by the way – they never actually use this law to help people with real mental illness. There are plenty of people with serious mental illness on the streets. So, I must give it to Andover police: it was wicked cleaver to use that law to try to get me to stop calling them for domestic violence. After all, I am not only a tiny Black woman with an accent, I’m also very unassuming. As a meta-physician, I am supposed to be unassuming. I do have a few words of caution: if you’re going to engage in combat, particularly when it comes to standing up for your rights, expect to sustain some wounds – even serious ones. Those are badges of honor, but they still don’t feel good. Standing up for one’s individual rights is a hand-to-hand combat. The person, people, or institutions that are corrupted enough by power to end up violating your rights, are also corrupt enough to inflict serious damages upon you. This is not for the faint of heart, but like I suggested at the beginning, this will not be a defense either in the final analysis.

Anyway, it was the Department of Public Health Commissioner’ Office who wrote me a letter outlining the lies Sargent Guy wrote in his report that night: I was belligerent with the EMTs; I looked like I was a risk to myself; I took 40 Percocet in 4 days and I might have been drinking. As for the “belligerent” lie, according to the DPH letter, the EMTs reported that. Lying police is bad – lying EMTs is not cool, but it was Haverhill Massachusetts EMTs who got caught in a State audit buying certification instead of attending the re-certification class. It was also the Haverhill Fire Department who tried to frame my then 12-year son for a fire he had absolutely nothing to do with. There’s also the problem of those town mayors and managers being puppets of their police departments, like Jim Fiorentini of Haverhill. Back to the letter from DPH, since I found out about those lies, I've tried to get both departments to acknowledge the lying on the records and to apologize. I don’t believe in second chances, I believe in 1000 chances, giving people as many chances as possible to do the right thing. Andover Police ran out the clock. I did speak with Sargent Guy recently about this, but he had all sorts of excuses: there was another officer there that night and they both wrote reports, so the DPH letter might have referred to things that other officer wrote; I bully them and always come and say “oh, I’m going to blog about you.” This must be a first for policemen with guns and bombs, batons and tear gas, to say that a civilian bullied them. I thought that was hilarious. But there’s another just a bit of a small problem: my website is so new it’s not even funny. There’s absolutely no way I could have been talking about blogging when it didn't occur to me to get myself a website until February 18 of this year, and the incident I’m talking about took place on February 8, 2012. After you get a domain, it takes Google 3 to 4 weeks to include your website in the search engine, because they have a verification process. Then you have to build the website, which takes times. As a result, this website did not get its first ranking on Alexa until May, four months ago. These small details alone back up my assertion that Lt. Guy was making up excuses when what I wanted was an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology. I have come to believe that one of the courses in police academy curriculum is how to lie. Police lie when it's not necessary and they lie about lying. Obviously, they can prove to the public that this is not the case.

I believe in full disclosure and live by the rules of moral and ethics. Therefore, I made sure to inform the Andover Fire and Police departments, as well as the Andover Town Manager, that I was trough trying to find out if anyone there was big enough to admit to lying and consequently I would be posting this article today. I do not agree that you can contort the truth, torture it, dress it up, stretch it, embellish it with phony accessories and lipstick, and twisting it around, and having it still remaining the truth. The truth is absolute. Many people confuse facts with the truth, but facts may or may not add up to the truth. Sometimes the facts can even get on the way of the truth, because what we call facts are largely colored by individual perception and interpretation and subjectivity of what we see, hear, or experience. In my book, there is the absolute truth, and anything other than that is a lie. But nobody lies like police. They are expert liars. But in the midst of this rotten basket of apples, I have found what I refer to as officers and gentlemen. I met one of those recently. His name is Mark, and I wish that I knew his last name. I define officers and gentlemen by their behavior and the manner in which they try to remember the “serve and protect” part of their jobs. This type of policeman stands out; they are model police officer. Police must stop lying because they’re putting crooks out of business. There’s not enough room in the lying industry for all those people. Stay Tuned.

 

CC_Photo_Google_Images 

Before we discuss what content marketing may or may not be and who is winning or losing, let us take a look at what brought about this marketing strategies and how it works. It is not yet clear where this phenomenon may be heading, given that our own research shows that the content marketing fever that is throwing the internet into delirium is fairly new and started to take hold about a half a year ago. What is undoubtedly obvious is that content marketing has been a strategic response to Google’s algorithmic changes and updates on the part of bloggers, website owners, and marketing professionals. Each of these groups, although no in the same business, have teamed up around the all-important overall search engine optimization or SEO stratagem that The constant Google changes and updates have required of any internet business entrepreneurs who want to say in business and more consequentially, be successful. The ability of a business to remain relevant and viable is a critical in business development, planning, management, and marketing and advertising. However, notwithstanding the absolute necessity for businesses to retain and operate on the basic of ethical standards, legitimate business executive also understand the need to be pro-active in their approach to trend and changes in the market, rather than to be reactive, thus always shifting strategies to start heading in the whichever direction that the winds of the market may start blowing. In truth, unlike what many of those internet business appear to think, Google’s changes and updates have not been intended to target websites or blogs for penalties and punishments, rather Google’s primary objectives have been to integrate mathematical and scientific principles and models  into the search engine search results with the goal of improving the overall use and the functions of the internet and consequently making users’ searches and search results  more precise and thus more efficient. This process has been defined as search engine optimization of SEO. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

 SEO is a user-oriented program that happens to benefit websites by forcing webmasters and website operators and bloggers to also optimize their webpages, blog posts, and publications. It is not know who first coined the term “content marketing.” However, it is reasonable to believe that the concept originated from internet marketers that saw an opportunity in the Google SEO changes and update, and marketed the concepts to websites as the new best SEO trend. Today on the internet, some publishers and internet marketing practitioners are pushing this trend as the new best business model for websites and bloggers. It is true that Google has drastically changed the internet, although not always for the better. Nonetheless, as far as standardizing, Google’s appearance on the worldwide web and the company’s role in research, development, and in planning and implementing big-picture visions has been impressive, remarkable, and valuable to raising standards globally and at all levels for users, websites, and merchants alike. This being said, those who get too carried away in this latest Google change-induced content marketing system should think carefully of the potential for adverse consequences in the long-run.  Google has been laser-focused on changing the infrastructure of the Internet on a global scale. Moz.com explains how Google developer Matt Cutts refers to these updates and changes as “Data refreshers.” In May 2003, Google announced the initiation of Google bots (“Freshbot” and “Deepcrawler.” This change directly affected backlink marketing and implementation. But the most impactful effects of this change may have been in the Google’s shift from cumulative indexing to daily indexing of webpages. The impact of these early changes were documented in drops in websites ranking and page rank, due to a change in the way the new Google bots evaluated backlinks, including internal, inbound, and external links. What was even more dramatic is that on August 6, 2013, Google added an upgrade in search results called "in-depth articles." Google analysts and experts, explain this in-death articles search results optimization as writing that is “evergreen” meaning new, fresh, and “long-form,” meaning substantive. If you look at any of the content brokerage website, you will find all these buzz words in their requirements and Q&A. MozCast tracked links to three articles based on this Google update and find that those articles show up in 3% of the tracked searches. In response to these developments, the backlink market and websites changed or adjusted their link building strategies to conform to the new Google’s standards for successful back-linking and search engine results. Needless to say that Internet businesses, website, and Internet marketers, all, have been re-active in their strategies. This is precisely the peril of the new content marketing hysteria that is being passed for a marketing strategy. 

The Ethical Sub-Standard of Content Marketing 

 Before we get to the real business thinking behind content marketing, we must first define the word content. We know what marketing is: It is a coordinated group of activities designed to communicate with consumers and present them with products, ideas, and services in ways that are persuasive enough to convince them to engage in transactions that are profitable for the company that is selling such ideas, products, or services. But content marketing functions differently. No one is being persuaded to engage with or transact with content. Instead, content marketing is a wink-wink team effort, to be king, between knowing and consenting web-based business interests to beat Google’s SEO stratagem. So, in reality, still to be kind, content marketing is really a scheme, if one can find any positive definition in any dictionary for the work scheme. Let us back up this admitted declaration with this fact, when Google went after shell-website for “keyword stuffing,” the practice of littering useless and irrelevant webpage content with search engine keywords, the industry was trapped. As a result, dummy websites and internet marketers needed a way out. That way was to change course, and what would look better than to now litter blog and webpages with SEO-targeted keyword content? At least that is the thinking behind the content market.

Content Marketing  - What Is Involved 

 The word content entails an array of literary (writing), creative (art and design), technology (graphics, and audio and video), and commercial (informational and anything else and tools) products.  Thus, the paradox of narrowing content as written articles containing media inserts, because what it is in fact being heralded as content marketing is no more than articles written by “writers” to be sold and used  primarily for search engines, in hope that users will find them and like the content or even care about it. This strategy serves the purpose of dressing up previously unabashed shell-websites in new and improved sheep clothing, and it can attract visitors to websites and blogs. But deception by any name is still wrong. Users whose queries yield a specific result may find themselves reading an article with the keywords they put into the search engine, rather than what it is they really started out to find. To be fair, users are being deceived by webmasters and search engine giants, including Google. For example, the majority of users are not aware that many of the results on their search pages are from Google-sponsored ads. Google might argue that it gives some indication to users on search pages about its sponsored ads. However, the language Google uses to make its so-called disclosure on search pages is ambiguous at best, and definitely obscure.   Facebook is guilty of the same offense. Facebook is doing whatever it takes to make money, a part of that is to exploit the self-adulation, self-worshiping, cult of personality culture. Therefore, Facebook is contributing to nothing positive, but rather taking advantage of the worst aspects of society.

Content Marketing Websites Editors – A Profile in Self-Importance                                       Photo_bizzfillings.com

 With the collapsing of traditional book publishers, daily newspapers, and magazines, the profile of the content marketing website editor appears in the analyticall mirror as a former editors of books, journals, newspapers, and magazines, combined with former journalists, college professors, authors, and plain business entrepreneurs who see a new market opportunity and are taking advantage. Based on our research deep within this world, all of those people, with a few exceptions, have two things in common: they treat writers miserably and demand everything from writers, while dropping them peanut shells. Again, with a few exceptions, those so-called editors are arrogant, self-centered, and utterly unprofessional. Those are the same people who guide writers to write in “the first or third voice,” as if there was any such thing in the rules of grammar, which specifically dictates speech in the first, second, or third person, as the noun or pronoun subjects are the only parts of speech that can speak, and not a voice. In any event, it is just miserable to witness such unprofessional self-important and exploitative individuals hiding behind a virtual screen and treating skilled writers with automated “deny and reject” when the internet has more poor writing than there poor people dead or alive. 

The content marketing world is basically ruled by articles brokers who serve as middlemen between website owners, bloggers, merchants, and businesses in need of written articles, and writers in need of an income. Businesses are not philanthropic enterprises. The goal of running a business is to make a profit. Unlike prior Era economic environments, however, the entire new global economy is based upon vulture capitalism. The model of this economic system is that somebody has to win and everyone else is on their own. The latter are the losers. They lose by having potential or duly earned income and benefits retained or taken away from them.  In this instance, the winners are the content website brokers who make profits selling other people’s writings and pay them pennies on the dollars. It is not uncommon to browse content-selling websites and find articles listed for as little as $5.00. Who exactly would write anything for $5.00? With the availability of voice -activated technology and other computer writing gadget and software, one has to believe that many of those $35.00- 800 word articles are made of scrambled rewriting from previously written work. And nothing says that those articles are being generated by real writers. Another way content websites exploit writes is through pay-per-click (PPC) posting. You post an article on www.example.com, the website places ads around your article and “if” a reader clicks on your ad, the writer get  1 cent or 2  for the article, or we will say - to be precise-- for the PPC.. The problem is that even though some of those sites provide writers with “analytics,” which should show how many people have read their postings, writers have no ability to assess the validity of those figures, which are internally generated and could easily be self-serving. Further, the writer has no method by which to assess what percentage of the 1 cent earned represents the website’s overall profit from the ads, or even if the website is telling the whole story about the number of clicks on ads for any given articles. In addition, the writer has no control over what ads are placed on any given post.  This is important in the sense that some sponsored ad may be more profitable than others.

                                                                                                                     Photo_newmediarockstars.com

Legitimate Content Acquisition Needs 

 Many categories of people have a legitimate need to get their writing done by someone else. Businesses have been hiring freelance writers since the beginning of time. With the major financial, development, operational, management, and maintenance facets  that required the attention of a business owner, there simply are writing tasks and assignments that must be outsourced to allow a business to focus on customer services, operational efficiency and productivity,, as well as growth and profit. Similarly, bloggers and some website owners have certain legitimate needs to sub-contract for written articles and other forms of content. Many bloggers are involved in larger projects that require large investments of time. And some bloggers schedule their blogs to publish daily, in which case they would find themselves behind schedule unless they outsource some of their work. Moreover, some website owners truly need outside write to boost their website standing on Google’s pages and in Alexa Ranking. If you run a real estate, travel, shopping, gaming, financial, or manufacturing websites, or any number of product and sale-based websites, chances are you not only are not a writer, but you also need all the time you can fin to focus on growing your business, and a blog is just one way to attract customers, a smart business owner would hire the services of a writer to handle the writing needs of the company. None of this, though, provides any excuse for any business leader to participate in any scheme or to contribute to exploit writers who, too, need to earn a living. Ethical business owners know exactly where to find writers who write for a living. The content fuss has nothing to do with accessibility to rich and well developed articles, but everything to do with using content mill and sweatshops to buy good copies at cheap gig prices. Google’s Algorithms will eventually catch up with this scheme, too, and those who persist in this practice rather than upgrading their article acquisition standards may end up paying a higher price in Google PageRank and Alexa Websites Rankin.

 WHY YOU SHOULD YOU GET YOUR WRITING DONE HERE? 

  

Jesus is betrayed by Judas (Iscariot) & Arrested by Roman Guards in the Garden of Olive

 What would Jesus say or do, where He to return to this world today? Would we know if He were to be walking among us now? What would happen to Christ if He were to return to this world and preach the same teachings against injustice, wickedness, oppression, greed, and corruption? Would He be crucified (let us say imprisoned or even put to death) all over again? 

Former South African President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate,  Nelson Mandala, who has always been known to be a pacifist, advocating non-violent descent against the White oppressive minority government in South Africa under the system of Apartheid, was imprisoned for 25 years. President Reagan used to refer to him as a terrorist. And Mandela is only one example of individuals who continue risking their lives all over the world today in a constant struggle against social, political, and economic injustice.

Jesus’ mission on earth was simple; His teaching was direct, and at time edgy, and could be summarized as follows:

     1. He was The Son of God, will die, and will rise from the dead and ascend to heaven where he would live as One with            The Father in The Unity of the Holy Spirit

     2. He came to renew the covenant with a message of hope, salvation, and of eternal life. To accomplish this,

        Jesus updated the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and taught them to his crowd

         of followers in the Sermon on the Mound in the form of the eight Beatitudes. For examples, while the First                            Commandment orders men "I am the Lord, your God, Thou shall have no other gods before me," in the                                    corresponding Beatitude, Jesus told the crowd, "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of 

         heaven." similarly, Jesus renewed the Golden Rule, "Do onto to others as you would have them do onto you," 

         by teaching to "love your neighborhood like you love yourself."

     3. The righteous will (shall) inherit the (land) Kingdom of Heaven

     4. The wicked must change their ways, and because “The Father” is all forgiving, they will be forgiven if they chose to              live in righteousness.

     5. Man should serve The Lord rather than serving men and things.

     6. We should be merciful, peacemakers, and should comfort those need comforting, and stand up against unfairness                  and injustice.

                                                                            Google Images_CC

Following a day of prayer, Jesus came to his followers and picked 12 among to be his disciples (his apprentices).Having predicted his own fate, in order to ensure "the Word of His Father" reaches the people of the world for generations to come, Jesus passed his teachings and message onto the 12. And  before his death, he commissioned them as Apostles (messengers of Good News or "the Gospel"). The 12 original Apostles were Simon - the fisherman, to whom Jesus gave the name Peter, and later, before his death, named the Head of His Church ” Among the others were Jesus' brothers James and Andrew, Judas (Jude), Philip, John, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew,James (the son of Alpheus), Simon “The Zealot, and Judas Iscariot known for betraying Jesus by turning him to the Romans for some pieces of Gold.

Jesus chose to teach his message through story-telling and by examples. To illustrate his teaching about loving your neighbor as you love yourself, Jesus told the story of the businessman from Somaria who found the sick and helpless man lying on the road. And unlike all the travelers who passed the man earlier and continued on their way without trying to help, this man who became know as the Good Samaritan, stopped and tried to help by giving the man water and assistance.However, when his first aid effort failed to work, the Samaritan went further to put the man on his horse and took him to an Inn where he paid to have the man cared for before he went on to finish the rest of his journey. He accumulated no wealth. He healed the sick, raised people from the dead, and when needed, he walked on water, and turned it into wine. But based on his conviction in his own message and by the courage of his conviction, Jesus also took very strong stands against the powerful and the establishment, which ultimately led to his crucifixion. One must wonder what might have been done to Jesus, were he to return and renew his mission in today’s world. Around the world today, government of all kinds, from empires like Rome to totalitarian regimes, such as Russia and China, to dictatorship sand so-called democracy, all, have used demoralization to oppress and even kill people who, at their own risks and peril, denounce the status quo, and stand up against social unfairness, injustice, and corruption. Jesus was crucified for engaging in exactly those types of activities. He was teaching the less-powerful and the disenfranchised about God’s plan of salvation and eternal life for them. But in doing so, his message exposed the injustices that the power-base and the rich and the influential were perpetuating upon the people. In addition, what was even more threatening to governors, leaders, and elders, was that the crowd of Jesus’ followers was growing larger every day, because the people heard his message, saw his Godly nature, and wanted to follow his teachings. What would be done to him today - would he have been designated an agitator? Would he have been considered an anarchist who brought with him a procession of followers triumphantly into Jerusalem, when he knew what was waiting there for him, since his message has turned the Jewish establishment against him and made the Roman power base nervous? Or might Jesus have been called a radical terrorist for doing today exactly what he did 2013 year ago? For there is no suffering, injustice, and oppression, or wickedness that existed in Jesus’ time, that is not at least exponentially worse, or more prevalent and insidious in today’s society.

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Believing with conviction and faith in what he was teaching, Jesus was defiant to the point where when he was brought before Pontiff Pilate, he was offered what might have been the first plea deal in the history of “injustice systems.” Knowing that Jesus committed no crime for which he should be put to death, Pilate offered Jesus to make what would have amounted to a false confession. He told Jesus to admit that he really was not the Messiah, the Son of God that he had been proclaiming to be. For all we now know, this could have just been a trick to humiliate Jesus, destroy his credibility among his followers, and then still put him to death anyway. But Jesus literally signed his own death warrant by rejecting Pilate’s plea offer.

Pontiff Pilate Stands in Judgement of Jesus 

Photo_Source_CC                                                                         

Pilate tried a different trick. Since the tradition at the time was to offer the crowd to pick a prisoner to pardon before the routine execution by crucifixion during the feast of Passover, the Pontiff asked the crowd to choose between the known criminal, Barabbas, and the accused criminal Jesus Christ. But the Chief Priests and the Jewish Elders persuaded the crowd to ask for the release of the known criminal, Barabbas. Pilate’s motivation and strategy were two-fold. Politically, he was seeking to appease the crowd, but during his judgment of Jesus, his wife had sent him a message that she could not sleep all night the previous night because she was having visions that she was being judged because they were about to crucify a righteous man, meaning Jesus Christ.  (Matthew 17: 15-13). At the end, Pilate was driven to do the political thing under pressure from the governors and the crowd, which had been brainwashed by the propaganda against Jesus. Who might we be propagandizing today and demonizing for the purpose of unfairly targeting them for oppression, harsh treatment, and death? We must consider this question, given that political motivation, and tactics, corruption of power, and the imprisonment and execution of people based on their message rather than criminal act, have not changed since they days of Jesus.

We also know that Jesus has shown anger and took strong stands against acts of injustice and corruption. He did not hesitate and spontaneously intervene when the crow was getting ready to stone Mary Magdalene to death for reasons that are at best despicable. He walked among the sick, the poor, and the broken hear-ted. In fact, biblical records show that in the Temple alone, Jesus showed great anger on three separate occasions.  For examples, we know from John 2:16 that Jesus flew into a rage at the Temple of Jerusalem and called the men cheats, and thieves, and overturned tables. The Temple was and still is a holy place in Jerusalem where people would travel very far to pray. But the Jews divided the Temple into two areas, and open one of those areas to non-Jews who were then allowed to set tables and sell goods in a market-like setting.  This part of the Temple was called “The court of the Gentiles” and was outside the main part of the Temple. In the main part of the Temple, only Jews were allowed. The problem was that the people in authority retained the power to provide birds and other animals for “sacrifice,” while the people could not bring their own. This established a system whereby people were required to exchange their own money into the special Temple money, which they needed in order to purchase what they needed. In the eyes of Jesus, those who worked on these money exchange and exploitation tables had compromised the primary function of worship of the Temple, which he called “My Father’s House” and caused those who had been given stewardship over the Temple to lose their way.

The parallels, today, of the influential and the powerful abusing the trust and the very power that they derive from the people to cheat, and steal, and oppressed the less-powerful, are astounding.  First, let us establish that oppression does not only come in the form of chains. Government, and commercial and special interest groups can, and do, either jointly or independently, use their influence to oppress society or groups of people, by erecting economic barriers and other obstacles to upward mobility, by passing unjust laws, and implementing oppressive social policies. We know that when Jesus became angry in the Temple, on one of those three occasions, he called the leaders of the Jewish spiritual groups that boasted to practice the laws of Moses, ''Pharisees.” The word stands for ''separate,” but it has come to symbolize hypocrites who blatantly betray every principle they claim to stand on. Who are the Pharisees of today? Are they the so-called Christians who are demanding a stop to anything that can help the poor, the disabled, children, and those who have been systematically marginalized and kept outside of the framework of the social contract?  In very recent days, video recordings have been televised showing people who consider themselves “Christians,”  saying things like, “People who don’t work are lazy;” “If you don’t work, you shouldn't eat.”  And we are all aware of former Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, talking about his so-called 47%, saying, “I can’t worry about those people; they refuse to help themselves.”

Jesus preached a message of peace. However, he did not parse his words; He was direct, and sometimes even inflammatory. When a rich man made his way through the crow and asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”  Jesus told him to follow the commandments. But the man continued to inquire, and Jesus told him to “sell all your worldly possession and give to the poor…” And then, Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Clearly Jesus was speaking in parables, which was one of his teaching styles, but what he really meant was that wealth is an earthly and material possession that has no relevance in life as a continuum, unless such wealth is used to contribute to fulfill God’s Will.  Everyone has the right to believe in anything they want. But our life on earth is a short journey, most of which is an illusion. Eternity, on the other hand, is a long time. Nonetheless, since some people have a hard time believing in things they cannot experience in the present, we can at least make a few non-prophecies prophecies.  For examples, we can make a prophecy with 100% accuracy that nobody will be called king, Sir, boss, or any such thing outside of this physical sphere. We can also safely make a prophecy that the Trump Tower will not be hooked behind Donald Trump’s hearse and dragged to be left with him wherever they might be taking him after he is gone. And our final prophecy is that none of the world’s millionaires and billionaires will have their money packed up and buried with them. So, perhaps, there is something to this eternity thing, and should that be the case, it would make sense to take the side of caution and live by those basic principles that were left for us. No one will be able to plead ignorance, or claim any exceptions. We have been forewarned. The words have not only been  written, the message has also been widely disseminated through a variety of channels and by all means of communication available to mankind.

We now live in the year 2013 A.D. (Anno Domini  or the Year of the Lord, starting with year 1 of the birth of Jesus Christ), about 1,980 years from the year of his death. During the BC period, there were no instant cameras, no surveillance camera, no cell phone cameras. therefore,it is safe to assume that no picture of Jesus was ever taken, and no portrait of him is known to have been drawn. There is the story about the Holy Grail, but its origin remains inconclusive. Due to the unavailability of graphic images depicting Jesus in his time, artists have agreed in the ways in which they have represented the various stories of Jesus, but the lack of visual documentation is reflected in the various artistic depictions. Here are a sample of how three different artists represented the Ascension of Jesus.

         Photo_testimoniesoftheavenandhell.com     Photo_lcrawfords-manymansions.com       Photo_flickr.com               

  Here is the Franciscans' vow by Which they Live

Don't forget the grandparents, even if the day had passed. And if you make any purchase by clicking on this ad, half of the money from the sale will go to our Emergency Charity Fund for People in Crisis.                                                                                     

Read more post like this one on this blog. We also are a network blog with extensions on over a dozen website. Search for the "Writers' Posts," but we also have articles on websites that we just write for.

1.      Take steps to establish, and to promote your work, as a strong and reliable writer. Whether you are a topic writer, or you are versatile, meaning that you can write on multiple subjects in various styles, make sure to get acquainted with the subject matter and get the facts for each article you are writing.

 

2.      Marketing is a time-consuming operation. Plan your marketing strategy over time, and work through your plan by trying to accomplish a task or two per day. Even more crucial, do not be discouraged by rejection, or by “your submission was declined” notices. Such notices may have little to do with your writing and more closely related to the company’s editorial guidelines, market share, and types of audience.

 

3.      Evaluate your work regularly to identify areas that need improvement, toward making necessary adjustments to fit the demand of the market. Stay up-to-date on new trends, if not ahead of the curve. Acquire the necessary tools to facilitate your personal functionality and optimize your productivity in the trade.

 

4.      Research areas where you lack the skills to profit from your writing. If you have poor marketing skills, and you cannot outsource that task, browse the web and read up on marketing strategies for content writers and freelancers. You will find hundreds of articles on the subject. Select a few strategies to focus on and make a plan to implement them consistently.

 

5.      Be patient and determined. Writing is a creative process, and one that can bring frustration in and of itself. Do not be a perfectionist, or over-critical of your own writing. If you are not sure of a piece you wrote, or simply do not feel comfortable with it, that is not a reason to scrap it and start over. Review, rewrite, and edit your work until you are satisfied with it.

 

6.      Submitting your articles on the wrong topics to the wrong channel can be a waste of your time. Few editors will tell you the exact reasons why your article was declined. As a result, a rejection email that may be associated with the topic of the article rather than your writing will contribute to negatively affecting your effort.

 

7.      Select your titles carefully. You want your title to highlight the content of the article to the reader and to the editor. In addition, in today’s Google SEO environment, publishers are very keen on keyword attractive titles for search engines.

 

8.      Plan your article with a short introduction that lets the reader know what to expect in the body of the piece. This should not start with “This article is about." Rather, your introduction should set up a problem in search of a solution, a theory to be proven, or a challenge to popular beliefs. In any event, introductions are meant to be thought- provoking, and they aim at creating anticipation and interest in the story. Successful writers use their introductory segment to draw in the reader, and then use the body of the text to captivate, and hold the reader’s attention.

 

9.      Do not write for keywords or to sell your brand or products. Readers want information, and they can quickly flag infomercial and irrelevant self-serving articles. As a writer, your credibility is worth its price in gold, and you would not want to jeopardize it for the sake of self-promotion or shortcuts. Demonstrate knowledge and expertise in your writing, but avoid advertisement, exaggeration, and hyperbolas.

 

10.  Avoid writing overly lengthy articles. However, do not raise issues or ask questions for which you have no answers or suggestions. Develop your topic to conclusion. This may require you to write a longer article, in which case, break up your article into segments with headings and sub-headings. Use bullets, numbers, and shorter paragraphs. You may not succeed in persuading your readers, but never leave them looking for the ending. 

For most Americans, a police state refers to certain countries living under dictatorship or totalitarian regimes, such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. Americans have been trained to think of the concept of the police state to mean that group of countries and any other that the American government decides to add to the list. But, there is a minor problem. In totalitarian countries, the people are pretty much free to live their lives as they wish, so long as they stay out of the government business. Totalitarian states are by definition government whose

 primary objective is self-preservation and                                                                   Photo_pr.wire.com

perpetuation. And most Americans may be surprised to learn that citizens in 

those countries are never subjected to some of the government policies and police tactics that are described in this article.

America incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. In fact, the U.S. has more prisoners than some countries have people. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it incarcerates nearly 25 percent of the world’s prison population. To put this in perspectives, China’s population today is estimated at approximately 1.5 Billion people; India has a population of over 1.1 Billion, compared to the U.S. population of 309,349,689 Million, based on the 2010 Census.  Between 1970 and 2000, the U.S. prison industrial complex grew by more 1, 720,000 more prisoners to some astounding and indecent 3,000.000.000 prisoners. The growth rate in the incarceration of American is rooted in many evils, including old historical racist practices. The U.S. also has the undistinguished distinction of being among the small league of countries in the world with the death penalty, including Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo, and some others in Asia and Africa. At the end, at the foundation of this grotesque, uncivilized, inhuman, and dishonorable State are what follows:

The puritan elements that brought us slavery and have sought to cleanse society of everything that they perceived as being immoral or irreligious continue to play a major role in advocating for laws to isolate those who do not obey and live by their religious beliefs. In the 1990’s we had the moral majority with its sets of rules for Americans to follow, from how to raise children, to sex before marriage, to abortion, and religion. The Religious Right known in past decades as Christian Conservatives, Evangelical Christians, or yet again as Religious Fundamentalists, and now the Tea Party, have never ceased to lobby the government for legislation to enforce bible-based value and inject religious beliefs into the political system in an effort to impose that value system upon the rest of the country. They have consistently promoted policies to de-regulate corporations and to regulate entertainment and individual behavior. They want prayer in schools and other public places. In states where they have succeeded in electing legislative majorities, they have placed bans on abortion and gay marriage, and passed laws to commission more arrests, build more prisons, and hand more severe sentences for lesser offenses.                       

                                         Greedy Corporations in Collision with the Criminal Injustice System

2. From Slavery to Segregation to Prison: Black Oppression Transitions

After slavery was abolished, America found a new system of oppression and new ways to extend disparities and mistreat its Black population. The system instituted separate-but- equal. During and post-slavery between, between 1600 and the 1950’s, America consistently demonized, dehumanized, and treated its Black citizens as dangerous undeserving others who should be extricated. Beginning in the 1960’s, the forces of oppression found new ways to oppress Black citizens, by passing new laws, many specifically targeted toward Blacks and designed to warehouse massive numbers of people. Blacks were targeted for policy changes in criminal justice on grounds that they are the root causes of all of the country’s social ills, including mental illness and other diseases, economic distress, political turmoil, and the degeneration of society at large. The Confederacy was on the move.

3. The Criminalizing of America                                                                               tumblr_Photo [Share]

In addition to this targeted program, conservatives groups banned together with corporations to develop brand new series of crimes. Various civil infractions were turned into criminal offenses overnight. This change was particularly acute in motor vehicle regulations where law enforcement had the most discretion and states began to train their eyes on motorists’ wallets to fill their coffers. Police officers hide underneath bushes and hung a top of tree branches to ensnare unsuspecting motorists. US citizens witnessed a bonanza of police arrests, criminalization, and a "prison boom." The construction of jails and prisons became the new “New Deal.” Police Departments around the country indulged and Democrats cowered. Hundreds of thousands of Americans packed courtrooms around the country each day increasing court revenue for the state giving more power to police. With vast discretionary power at their disposal and a boiler-plate of charges ranging from disorderly conduct, to being “uncooperative,” and “belligerent,” Police misconduct, abuse, and brutality, became rampant. Post 9/11, police departments became militarized and ever more powerful. Rather than using this power to protect Americans against enemies within, police deployed their increased power to turn millions of Americans into criminals. Prosecutors who had always enjoyed near absolute immunity, took advantage of this fiesta to use all tricks in the books and some not on the books to railroad people through the system. The Innocent Project has documented thousands of cases where people had been wrongfully convicted on false testimony by law enforcement or informants, mistaken identification, corrupt forensic evidence, coerced confessions, and incompetent counsel. Yet more people who are accused of crimes end up pleading guilty for fear that if they go on trial and found guilty, regardless of their innocence, they are likely to be handed a longer and more severe sentence. Today, aside from the millions in prison, millions more have either gone through the criminal justice system, are on probation, or have been given criminal records. Millions of White Americans also have been caught up in this exploitative and evil system of oppression and injustice. Unless, this trajectory is changed, in the next decades, most Americans will have a criminal record, or they will know someone who has been through the criminal justice system, or they will remain at risk of being charged with crime.

                                                                    4. The Cynical Tough-on Crime Political and Predatory Scheme

Scholars Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson have documented and argued "that conservative politicians have worked for decades to alter popular perceptions of crime, delinquency, addiction, and poverty and to promote policies that involve 'getting tough' and 'cracking down.'" The role that conservatives in the Republican Party have played in the insidious policy of tough-on-crime and the prison boom can be traced back to the past ten presidential cycles. There is no doubt that this policy was particularly aimed at criminalizing and incarcerating Black Americans in mass. Conservative Rights are masters in using propaganda to shape public opinion for political gains. First, they released self-serving studies and statistics to show that Blacks commit most crimes, which is a myth. Then, they came up with slogans, such as Black-on-Black crimes, and practiced word association by continuously using crime in the same sentence with Blacks. In the 1988 elections, Republican candidate, George H. Walker Bush, took this racist movement to a higher level, by using a Black paroled Massachusetts prisoner, Willie Horton, as a symbol of crime in the country. For the past 40 years, Republicans have worked shamelessly to shape public's perception of crime as an evil brought onto society by the Black population. As part of this effort to get votes, Republicans made a double-play by working tirelessly to redirect State policy away from social welfare. 

5. The Failed Ploy Called the War on Drugs

The failed 40-year war on drugs was nothing but a stand in for a modern Jim Crow. According to published report, Blacks, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and 13 percent of drug users, get arrested 38 times for every 1 time a White person is arrested on drug offenses. After President Reagan escalated the so-called war on drugs in the 1980’s, the United States prison and jail population grew from 500,000 to over 2 million, a 150% increase. Blacks make up 59 percent of all those convicted of drug violations.  Compared to the rest of the population, Blacks are 10.1 times more likely than Whites to be sent to prison for violating drug laws. The same reports indicate that in that war against the people, 1 in every 100 American adults has put behind bars. In the past 30, years, drug arrests have more than tripled reaching more than 1.63 million arrests in 2010. More than four out of five of these arrests were for mere possession, and forty-six percent (750,591) were for simple marijuana possession.

6. ThePrivatization of U.S. Prisons

Today, nearly ten percent of US prisons and jails have been privatized. Wackwenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) and Cornell Corrections, Inc. represent two of the largest prison contractors in the country. Other profiteers in the prison industrial complex include The GEO Group, and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Together, these companies make billions of dollars in prison profits from prisoner labor. These predators have systematically corrupted the justice system and unleashed their greed for profit, ruining millions of lives, destroying families, and tearing the fabric of society. In the name of their bloody bottom line, these corporations have teamed up with groups, such as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is famous for promoting voter suppression laws, tax cut for corporations, and gun laws, such as stand-your-ground throughout the South. These companies have peddled their influence, and gamed and poisoned the system with proposals to buy prisons from money-strapped states. These companies operate American prisons like labor camps where prisoners work for 25 cents an hour to produce goods that are then shipped for sales all over the world.

                                                                       Photo_justice.org

With the ruling of Judge Shira A. Scheindlin striking down the racist policies of stop-and-frisk that was put in place a decade ago by New York Mayor, Michel Bloomberg, and Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of the Obama’s administration’s set of reform in the criminal justice system, major changes may be marching on. As the struggle to protect Civil Right and guarantee Due Process of lawfor all Americans marches on, the forces of repression switch the oppression machine to high gear. Many human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and other grassroots organizations and some segments of the media, have been at the vanguard of this fight, but the task is monumental. In addition to Scheindlin’s ruling on Monday and the Attorney General’s declaration of policy changes, the Civil Rights movement, which had been MIA for the past three decades, is showing some signs of revival. Except for a small remnant in the persons of the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson assisted by other pastors, Civil Rights movement through the 1980’s and the late 2000’s was splintered and nearly dismantled. The LGBT movement has broadened and strengthened the Civil Rights movement of today. However, more rights are at risks and even more are being violated every day. This requires continued vigilance and a working coalition. The country must capitalize on the progress that has been made by continuing to reject the conservative Right’s regressive agenda and move toward greater progress. The prison industrial complex may be last bastion, but it must be demolished.

On Monday August 12, 2013, Federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin struck down New York’s stop-and-frisk “policy” ruling that the New York Police Department tactics of violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city. In her ruling, Judge Scheindlin effectively rejected New York Mayor’s Michael Bloomberg and his administration’s argument that the tactics plays a major element in fighting crime in the city.

New York Appalling and racist stop-and-frisk scheme

[Google Images]

On Monday August 12, 2012, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed into law one of the nation’s most sweeping Voter ID laws. This law would require voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls. It shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. It ends pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day voter registration.