by Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
Does government manipulate us? Well, of course they do. Nothing really new about that of course, but in recent years it has reached almost an art form.
They salt major speeches and events with supporters. They manipulate data and massage the numbers to make things look better, or at least not as bad as they are. Look at the unemployment percentage. If they can’ t make the data look palatable, they change the criteria on the data that is included/excluded. Don’t include those that have quit looking for work. They somehow are not considered unemployed anymore.
Government takes actions that they would arrest you or I for taking. Gun running for example. Failure to do their job in supporting our officials overseas. Let them be murdered, it doesn’t matter. Really?
The housing crisis was designed by government by regulations requiring sub-prime lending. People didn’t have to be credit worthy, or even have the means to pay the interest and principle they borrowed.
Squandering our tax dollars on unneeded travel (first class of course) and taking every one with them from hair dressers to personal chefs to friends and family. Then, almost every bill working its way through the process of becoming law gets loaded with pork belly spending on all kinds of non-essential things. All designed to pay off supporters or to buy votes.
The current manipulations include a seriously inflated stock market. By forcing the interest down to artificially low levels it forces investors into the stock market to try to find a reasonable yield on their investment money.
