When I saw the movie "Saving Mr. Banks" during one of my interminably-long plane rides back from Syria (http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2014/06/syria-iraq-captain-phillips-isis.html), I liked it so much that I actually went out and bought a copy of the 1964 "Mary Poppins" Disney classic it was based on -- the one with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke frolicking across the rooftops of London.
And much to my surprise, I discovered that Mary Poppins might have been one of the world's first hippies. Who woulda thought! And what was even more amazing is that Mary Poppins was one of the first people to warn us about the dangers and perfidy of big bankers and big banks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxyB29bDbBA
And fortunately for those of us living here in America one hundred years later, Elizabeth Warren has now become the new Mary Poppins -- also warning us about the dangers and perfidy of big bankers and big banks.
If only Americans would start paying attention to Elizabeth Warren as much as they paid attention to Julie Andrews!
"Hey, Elizabeth!" I also want to shout on the rooftops like Dick VanDyke, "voters aren't listening to you!" Maybe if Disney studios made a movie about you too? Then maybe voters would finally start to listen.
According to Warren, the American middle class has been absolutely decimated by the banking and credit-card lobbies. http://billmoyers.com/segment/elizabeth-warren-on-americas-invisible-crisis/
And yet voters still keep falling for all those glossy ads and happy lies that still keep getting pro-big-bank candidates elected to the White House and Congress even though voters can clearly see that they themselves are losing their jobs, having their homes repossessed, becoming slaves to their student loans and getting ripped off bigtime by credit-card debt. But then I guess that those syrupy ads actually do prove that "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" after all.
In the heroic country of Iceland, their well-informed voters have vigorously fought back against bankster greed and have even re-written their constitution in order to make lending-bubbles and bank fraud illegal. http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/icelanders-overthrow-government-and-rewrite-constitution-after-banking-fraud-no-word-from-us-media/
But in America, the opposite happens. Here in America our very own government, the very one that bank lobbyists have chosen for us to elect, is handing over billions of our very own hard-earned dollars to big banks just as fast as it can. And Congress is always writing new bankruptcy laws that favor banksters over the middle class every time. Mary Poppins would be livid, of course, but nobody else seems to even notice these days -- except for Elizabeth Warren.
And even the Federal Reserve is dancing over the rooftops in glee as it too gives away our money to the banksters just as fast as it possibly can, singing "Step in Time" as gleefully hands over giant bags of taxpayers' money to Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank and Goldman Sachs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-b_GJ4ltk
And the Federal Reserve's chim chem cher-ee chummy coverups are going through the roof too. http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed
Plus the Senate just vetoed a bill that would have given students a break from paying up to 12% interest on their college loans too. According to Warren, "This isn't complicated. It's a choice – a choice that raises a fundamental question about who the United States Senate works for. Does it work for those who can hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists to protect tax loopholes for billionaires and profits for the big banks? Or does it work for those who work hard, play by the rules, and are trying to build a future for themselves and their families?"
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26034-im-calling-their-bluff
Not to mention the hidden (and not-so-hidden) fees that banks gleefully charge us customers for no reason at all. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/03/wells-fargos-illegal-overdraft.html
To try to completely understand how banksters and their toadies in Congress and the Department of Justice are robbing the rest of us blind, you just gotta watch this video of Bill Moyers interviewing bank-fraud expert Thomas K. Black. Seriously. You really should watch this: http://vimeo.com/107916659
In this video, Black describes how Obama was elected by the banking industry and how Obama has totally paid back his debt to the banksters by handing them all "get out of jail free" cards. Is being elected president really worth selling us Americans out to the banksters? Apparently so.
"There's no threat to capitalism like capitalists," continues Black. "They are destroying its underpinnings. And when dishonest people gain an advantage in the marketplace, bad ethics drive good ethics out. This is why we need the rule of law." Doesn't Thomas K. Black sound just like Dick VanDyke, er, I mean Burt the Chimney Sweep here -- as Black proposes that it's high time to sweep clean our banks.
And now let's talk about America's ratings on the so-called "Misery Index" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misery+index. Apparently America rates higher on the misery charts now than it ever has, even back in the Great Depression -- and probably even as high as did Mary Poppins's 1910 London. Thanks a lot, banksters.
Isn't it time that American voters finally join up with Elizabeth Warren and Mary Poppins -- and tell big banks and banksters to go "fly a kite!"
PS: Speaking of money, look how much of it is being spent in the Middle East -- and not here at home where it is needed!
According to a recent blog-post at thehill.com, the first official estimates of the ISIS price tag from the Pentagon showed that, "the costs of intervention between mid-June and late-August was $7.5 million per day. At that rate, the U.S. has spent $850 million on operations against ISIS as of October 8, adding up to about $2.74 billion per year. The Pentagon has since revised the estimate up to as high as $10 million per day, or $3.65 billion per year. In reality, both of those numbers are quite likely to be underestimates of what’s to come." http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/220152-america-deserves-to-know-the-price-tag-for-isis
Looks like the US military is just as bad as the US banksters when it comes to cleaning out America's pocketbooks -- after they both have put us to sleep with false promises and false news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewopnA6H7E.
What we Americans really need to do these days is to once again take Mary Poppins's advice and "Stay Awake"! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yC_voMY6kY
