The Middle and Working Class Manifesto 4th Edition

The Middle And

Working Class Manifesto

(fourth updated edition)

By Rev. Paul J. Bern

copyright 2011, 2018 by

Rev. Paul J. Bern d/b/a

PJB Publishers, Atlanta, Ga.

https://www.authorrevpauljbern.com

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Introduction

The New American Declaration of Independence

An Open Letter From Your Federal Government

Explaining the Manifesto Part 1:

Stating the Problems

Chapter One: The American Economic Crisis Part 1:

The Underemployment Nightmare

Chapter Two: The American Economic Crisis Part 2:

The Great Foreclosure Robbery

Chapter Three: The American Economic Crisis Part 3:

The Ticking Time Bomb of Inequality

Chapter Four: Fall of An Empire Part 1:

The American Police State

Chapter Five: Fall of An Empire Part 2:

Passing The Tipping Point

Chapter Six: Fall of An Empire Part 3: R.I.P. U.S.A.

Chapter Seven: Apocalypse Soon?

Explaining The Manifesto Part Two:

Realistic Solutions Worth Striking And Protesting For

Chapter Eight: The Eight Fundamental Rights of Mankind

Chapter Nine: The Doomed War On Drugs

Chapter Ten: If Only This Class War Will End With No One Else Getting Hurt

Chapter Eleven: The Peaceful Revolution

Chapter Twelve: The Revolution's Over. Now What?

Introduction

When in the course of current events the constituency of the United States finds itself oppressed and hemmed in by that very political body which purports to governs us, and when the working people of this great country which I love so much finds itself with its backs against the wall due to circumstances and situations which are beyond our control, it naturally become the patriotic duty of every concerned American to stand up to and to oppose that which suppresses and restricts the God-given freedoms spelled out in our US Constitution, and to draw a line in the sand of civilization that guarantees the health, wealth and prosperity of us all. As peaceful and law-abiding citizens, we have been governed by the rule of law which is summarized in a document that working Americans continue to revere, none other than the Constitution of the United States, in keeping with the time-honored traditions passed down to us by our founding fathers.

But lately our sacred Constitution has been bastardized and prostituted not only by those in power within the federal government, but more directly by the armies of corporate lobbyists who have invaded Washington and seized control of our executive, legislative and judicial branches for the sole express purpose of engineering a bloodless coup de etat that is being carried out not by bullets but by vast sums of money that are at once immoral, illegal, and a veritable avalanche of green and greedy corruption. The sole express purpose of this financial invasion is to forcibly liquidate the middle and working classes in this great country of ours. This is being done deliberately and with sinister calculation by the wealthiest Americans from Wall Street to a myriad of corporate boardrooms all across America for the sole express purpose of focusing and concentrating all available wealth into the kleptocracy of the top 1% of wage earners and business owners all across America. In fact, I further submit and will document that the result is currently forcing an ever-increasing number of working Americans from all walks of life into ever-increasing poverty.

With mass under-employment, a veritable storm of foreclosures and student loan defaults, increasingly unaffordable healthcare, and with higher education rapidly becoming further out of reach for the middle class and particularly for the poor, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the middle and working class here in the good old USA is finding itself surrounded and besieged by an army of the usurpers within our country. As a direct result, more and more working Americans, the people who are the backbone of the US economy, are finding themselves moving in with friends and family members to stave off what would otherwise be a pandemic outbreak of homelessness and despair. In point of fact, there are now more college-educated people living in homeless shelters or in their cars – if they are lucky enough to still own a vehicle – than at any other time since the Great Depression of the 1930's. And that is a social injustice.

Indeed, the circumstances and situations that the middle and working classes in the US find themselves in today are a series of gross social injustices that demands a sharply focused and well-coordinated response from the entire populace, a rebuttal and decisive counterattack designed and intended to right, correct and re-balance US political power back into the hands of the overwhelming majority of American citizens to whom it rightfully belongs. There can be no doubt that class warfare has been declared in the US, perpetrated by the wealthy against the middle and working classes, for the sole express purpose of eliminating from society the constitutional majority of working Americans, with the end result being the complete and merciless liquidation of middle and working class wealth, general prosperity, and even our health. This has been accomplished by the largest transfer of wealth in all of human history, and it has been manifested in four different ways.

First, the employment of working Americans, particularly of the US working class, has been decimated by closing down manufacturing facilities and shipping jobs overseas to the third world for pennies on the dollar. The result of this has been a drop-out of many millions of older American workers, and those who had jobs in the American manufacturing sector, which was once the world's largest and whose direct result was victory in World War Two, are very likely to never return. One direct effect this has had is the gradual elimination of labor unions in this country, and the US labor movement is now on life support as a result. All the wages of the blue collar sector of the US economy are now redirected into the pockets of the top 1% of the American populace in terms of net wealth, not to mention the benefits and retirement pensions of these same people who made these corporations into the mega-companies that they are today.

Second, the retirement savings of the middle and working classes have been severely compromised or even liquidated altogether by the crooked and devious manipulations of Wall Street bankers, market speculators, hedge fund managers and corporate boards of directors who engineered the largest swindle in human history back in 2008. This criminal act resulted in the US government bailout known as TARP, an $850 billion bank robbery of the US Treasury conceived and carried out by the same Ponzi-schemers who ran the US economy into the ground in the first place. The cost of this bailout has been put on the backs of the middle and working classes, their children and grandchildren, and has generated a federal government budget deficit that has exceeded $21 trillion dollars as I write this, a staggering sum that threatens to bankrupt the country and destroy the formerly good credit rating of the United States.

In only one generation, our great country that I love so much has been transformed from the world's greatest lender to its greatest borrower, with the majority of this debt being financed by China and Japan before that. One of these days China is going to get tired of lending us money and will at that point call in the debt, which America will not be able to repay, particularly if China refuses to accept US dollars as a form of repayment. I shudder to think of what will happen next, with China taking large chunks of American collateral to satisfy this crushing debt load. This would probably even lead to Chinese troops on our western shores in a worst case scenario. The final collapse of the US economy would inevitably follow.

Third, the largest transfer of wealth in human history is being enforced by runaway prices for college and university tuition that are being deliberately engineered by wealthy elitists for the sole express purpose of putting higher education financially out of reach for an increasing majority of the American middle class. And those who do make it into colleges or universities are finding themselves buried under an overwhelming pile of student loans, some of which are so huge that they end up well into six figures, larger even than some home mortgages. These student debt loans are so enormous that an increasing number of graduates find themselves moving back in with their parents, or sharing living quarters with friends and acquaintances, when they finally do graduate. These same hard-working graduates are now increasingly finding that they can't find suitable employment upon graduation, or are winding up in menial jobs that pay so poorly they can't repay their student loans. This ruins their credit ratings, making it impossible to find employment that pays a living wage.

Fourth, the largest transfer of wealth in human history is being reinforced by a healthcare system that has become so expensive that over 50 million Americans can no longer afford health insurance. This has left an increasing percentage of working Americans one accident or catastrophic illness away from bankruptcy, and all without remedy. As more and more US workers find themselves unable to afford health coverage, an increasing number of people are putting off doctor and/or dental visits and not refilling needed prescriptions for purely financial reasons, and the physical and mental health of these hapless individuals slowly erodes away as a direct consequence.

I find myself among these people that I have just described. I have actually lived all the things I just wrote about, and so I decided to write this book as a way to fight back against an entrenched political and economic system that is rigged from top to bottom. I was a computer and information technology professional by trade. I was in that vocation for over twenty years, and I have five diplomas hanging on my wall that I have accumulated over the years of my employment. Unfortunately, they are collectively worth nothing to me, since I was in my fifties at the time these things occurred to me. Despite my professional success in the past, I found myself forced into an involuntary retirement for nearly a decade. What I have had instead is a series of temporary jobs with lackluster pay, no security and no benefits.

As time has gone on, this has wreaked havoc on my life both professionally and financially. Things became so bad and so unstable that I have suffered through two periods of being homeless, once for three weeks in 2005, plus a second agonizing and soul-crushing period of four months in 2008. I found that the older I got the more difficult it became to find any suitable employment. In spite of all the hardship that I have endured, I have been fortunate in several ways. First of all, my Christian faith has seen me through these hard times and it has kept me strong. Although I realize that not everyone believes as I believe, my faith in Christ has literally kept me from losing my mind and giving up on myself and my circumstances. As the Bible says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and again it is written, If God is for us then who can be against us?". Consequently my Christian faith has caused me to not lose hope even in the face of impossible odds and difficult circumstances and situations.

My story is not unique – far from it. There are tens of millions of formerly middle class people just like me all across the country who find themselves in similar circumstances to mine, to varying degrees of severity. Many have not been as fortunate as me. They have lost jobs like I have, been forced out into the street due to the epidemic of foreclosures throughout the land, had their cars repossessed leaving them with no way to get to work assuming that they are lucky enough to still have jobs, and are hounded by collection agencies for debts great and small. They have no access to health care except to show up at the local emergency room with no way to pay the bill, putting them even deeper into debt than they already are. They have watched their pensions and their retirement savings evaporate due to market manipulations by unscrupulous financial managers who earn obscene bonuses whether they succeed or fail, and all at the expense of their clients. Either that or they have spent their savings during interminably lengthy periods of unemployment after their jobs were downsized or out-sourced overseas to the third world, never to return again. And their children, the ones lucky enough to be able to go to college, are graduating with crushing student loan debts that will take decades to repay if they can be repaid at all, depending on whether they can find suitable work or not.

What good is a four-year degree if you wind up flipping hamburgers, selling shoes or digging ditches? Meanwhile, the best jobs, the best educations, and the best incomes are reserved for the wealthy and their families. The same goes for the best health care, the nicest cars and boats and even airplanes, and the best retirement plans. All of this and more are systematically being procured by the top 1% of wage earners in the US at the expense of everybody else. It's steak for them and beans for the rest of us, and the portions for the middle and working classes are getting ever smaller each day. There is no question whatsoever that class warfare has been declared by the rich, powerful and well-connected, and all at the expense of over 95% of the rest of America. I think it's time to fight back and fight back very hard, and that is why I wrote this book!

This book and its author are the new voice of dissent in middle America. It is not right-wing nor is it from the left, but rather it is written from from the standpoint of middle America and from the vantage point of the oppressed multitudes who are crying out for relief and rescue from the perilous circumstances and life-threatening situations that working Americans from all walks of life find themselves in. This book is a wailing civil defense siren ringing out across the land that I love. It is a warning buzzer on the basketball court of life signifying that a new middle class team of endless depth is now taking the court, sending the wealthy and powerful to the showers so that the stench of corruption can be washed from them because they so desperately need it. It is the national anthem of true American patriotism being played before the start of a baseball game signaling that the new expansion team from middle America is about to take the field. This book is an air raid siren sounding out across the land of the rich and powerful as a warning that the middle and working class counterattack is about to commence. No more will we stand and stare or sit and grumble about having our houses, jobs, cars, savings, health, higher education and our retirements forcibly taken away wholesale while an ever greater portion of American wealth is concentrated into the hands of a small minority of multimillionaires.

It is time for the middle and working classes to put our collective foot down and sayno more. The time has arrived for us to take back our country by any and all means possible. It is time for political power to be taken out of the hands of corporate America and their invading hordes of lobbyists who would presume to take over our country by means of economic warfare, and to place it back into the hands of we the people, the true owners of this great country of ours. And we will do so knowing that history and our founding fathers are on our side, because they left us with a sacred document known as the Constitution of the United States that guarantees us that right (see article 1 section 2 of the Constitution of the United States). Our free speech and freedom of expression that are guaranteed under the First Amendment, as well as our right to keep and bear arms and to form militias that are guaranteed under the Second Amendment, will not be compromised or trampled upon.

We will demonstrate in the streets, we will besiege government buildings, we will bombard our congressional representatives and senators with phone calls and emails, we will form new political parties, we will organize and build labor unions, we will blockade wealthy neighborhoods, we will organize peaceful public events and non-violent sit-ins, we will call general strikes and consumer boycotts, and we will not stop until the balance of power in this country undergoes a paradigm shift back into the hands of hard-working Americans, as well as those who want jobs and can't find them. We will fight from the highest mountains, from the lowest valleys, from the rooftops of buildings; we will fight in the cities and in the countryside, from the Jersey shore to the beaches of the west coast, and from the Canadian border down to the border with Mexico. We will not stop until we get our country back, and we shall never surrender. If the government mistakenly labels us as domestic terrorists, which we most certainly are not, then we shall call ourselves freedom fighters and American patriots. We shall fight with non-violent civil disobedience, we shall – so far as it is possible – demonstrate and march peacefully throughout the land, until we get our country restored to us, the workers of America, to whom it rightfully belongs.

Let there be no mistake, America is ripe for mass civil disobedience, even for outright revolution. The conditions and circumstances in which the middle and working classes find ourselves has become intolerable. Personally, I am a very patient and thoughtful man. I work hard each day to be slow to speak and quick to listen because I know from experience that there is much wisdom to be derived from living my life this way. But by the same token, I am a Christian man whose patience is at its end. Just as surely as Jesus preached against the political and religious establishment of His day, in like manner I will do the same in the present day in order to emulate the man I regard as my personal Savior. So, if you truly care about the deteriorating state of our nation, if you are really concerned about the issues that we are faced with collectively as a people, and if you want to make a stand against social and economic injustice, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It is my sincere hope that, after reading it, you will be inspired to take decisive action against the rich and powerful who are slowly enslaving us all.

THE UPDATED AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

When in the course of human history it becomes necessary for the American People to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to the existing political system, and to assume among the powers of the Earth the unconditional equality to which the laws of God and of nature entitle them, a decent respect to the unconditional rights, stated as civil rights issues, as well as the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all mankind is created with an unconditional equality, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in a clean, nurturing and peaceful environment. In order to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men and women, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, to such an extent that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it becomes the right of the American people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new internet-based American government of Direct Democracy, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form so as to seem to the American people to be most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence dictates that governments long established should not be changed for whimsical or transient reasons. The American people have for a long time suffered through hard economic times even though these hard times have been unbearable, out of a sense of patriotism and civic duty, maintaining a peaceful servant's heart rather than revolt against the injustice that surrounds them. But when a long series of civil and human rights violations, illegal and immoral usurping of power and other abuses by those who the American people have entrusted to govern reveals a premeditated plan to reduce the American people to poverty so that a certain elite may rule by political and economic domination in such a way that bypasses or neutralizes the law of our land, the United States Constitution, it is their fundamental human right and their duty as American citizens to throw off such a government, and to provide anew for their future security through the establishment of a new but very small, Internet-based, paperless and interactive Direct Democracy that will be designed to replace the old federal republic. Such has been the patient suffering the citizens of the 50 states and other American territories, and this suffering has become the mother of necessity which forces and compels us to alter our current system of government. The history of current and recent presidential administrations is an example of a history of civil rights abuses, gross economic inequalities and other usurpation of power with the prime objective of having absolute control over the US economy and its people while gradually having increased limitations on our Constitutional rights. To prove this, let certain facts be made known to a formerly free America regarding the US federal government.

The People's List of Charges Against the Federal Government

The US government has refused to pass laws that provide for the common good of American citizens and legally residing foreign nationals. Instead, it has passed laws allowing domestic spying against US citizens without a warrant from a judge in direct violation of the fourth amendment.

The US government has utterly neglected to exercise due diligence to governing and to the welfare of its people, by allowing a national debt to accrue that is well in excess of $21 trillion dollars, by allowing through gross negligence an imbalance of foreign trade that has exceeded another $20 trillion dollars, so that through enormous amounts of deficit spending and economic malfeasance the US government is effectively bankrupt.

The US government has refused to pass laws making the USA energy independent, and instead have used their connections in the global petroleum industry as well as unsavory alliances from overseas, to solidify the stranglehold that the oil industry has throughout the world, compromising the national security of the United States of America.

The US government has called the legislature, or allowed it to be called, at unusual hours and uncomfortable times in order to fatigue Congress into compliance with regard to passing numerous legislative measures, usually without giving our Congressional representatives time to read the legislation they are voting on. The sole purpose of forcing this kind of legislation through Congress is for the aggrandizement of certain deeply embedded special interests from the American political, corporate, financial and business establishments.

The US government has harassed, intimidated, prosecuted and convicted innocent American citizens for their opposing with firmness and conviction the federal assault on the fundamental rights of we the people as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States by arresting and holding in solitary confinement certain individuals who have exposed certain high crimes and misdemeanors to the media, and especially to the Internet.

The US government has been criminally negligent to defend the borders of the United States, on our shores, on the north, or on the south, from the dangers of invasion from without, from the dangers of terrorist infiltration, and also from illegal immigration and other imported workers that eliminates many possible job opportunities for working Americans. In the meantime, the US government wages an economic and/or class war against the American middle and working classes, and also against the poor, from within America's borders instead, in the misguided belief that he who governs best governs absolutely, in a flagrant violation of the Constitutional rights of American citizens.

The US government has erected a multitude of new offices in the form of a huge and prohibitively expensive federal bureaucracy without the consent or approval of the American people. It has sent out swarms of armed officers and undercover operatives whose sole purpose of existence is to harass, spy upon, intimidate, shake down and rough up unarmed American citizens while enforcing their existence through the illegal collection of unjust taxes and by the illegal diversion of fines and seizures collected through the judicial system.

The US government has kept standing armies among us, even in times of peace, while outlawing the formation of armed local militias and prosecuting its members, whose right to existence is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The US government has made the US military independent of and superior to formal civilian authority through the creation of a vast military-industrial complex, and has militarized police forces throughout the US for the sole express purpose of compromising or outright elimination of our Constitutional rights.

The US government has conspired with certain fanatical elements within it to subject the American people to a legal jurisdiction foreign to the US constitution by way of a presidential assassination on November 22, 1963, in a way that is unacknowledged by US laws, while engaging in foreign wars that are contrary to the best interests of the American people.

For shielding US troops and certain contractors from prosecution for any murders and other war crimes that were committed while engaged in illegal occupations of certain countries against the civilian population of the country being invaded:

For imposing federal income taxes on the American people without their consent instead of a far more equitable national sales tax:

For depriving the American people of the benefit to a speedy trial by jury as it is guaranteed by the 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution of the United States:

For allowing the transport of US citizens overseas without the benefit of due process in order to be tried for certain unproven crimes in foreign countries:

For failing to enforce US boundaries to the point of dereliction of duty on the part of those who are charged with US border security:

For altering fundamentally the form of US government by allowing a former democracy that operated within