DISCOVERING AMERICA AS IT IS

By Valdas Anelauskas

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Y. N. Kly

Introduction: My Journey to the Land of Misery and Plutocracy

Chapter 1: The Best System the Moneyed Can Buy

Economic Inequalities Hamstring Political Liberty
America’s Wealth Gap Leads Industrialized World
Rising Economic Tides Lift the Yachts, Not the Rowboats
How Government Promotes Economic Inequality
Balanced Budget: Unbalanced Beneficiaries
          The Capital Gains Tax
          Inheritance Taxes

The Stock Market: The Turf of the Wealthy
Capitalism at its Most Extreme
Defending the Indefensible

Chapter 2 The Tears of the Poor

Drawing the Poverty Line
The Threat of Poverty Has Spread Throughout America
Comparing Poverty in America to Poverty Elsewhere
The Poverty Trap
The Cost of Basic Needs Escalates
Like the Hamster in the Wheel...
Entering an Era of Declining Hope
The Myth of the Middle Class
Lifetime Debts Replace Lifetime Savings
Living on Borrowed Time
Record Bankruptcies
What Social Security Net?
Living in Fear of Illness
The Medical-Industrial Complex
Agribusiness and Rural Despair

Chapter 3: Lives That End At Birth

Child Poverty Is Not an Act of God
No Investment in Next Generation
Preschoolers: America’s Poorest Population
The Geography of Child Poverty
When You Work Your Heart Out, and Your Children Stay Poor...
Young Families in Economic Free Fall
Hunger Haunts Children All Their Lives
International Law and the Inalienable Right to Food
Infant Mortality: A Social Problem With Health Consequences
What About the Prenatal Care Rights of the Unborn?
Bitter Fruit of the Poverty Tree
“Medically Homeless” Children
Usual Scapegoats Don’t Account For Bad Statistics

Chapter 4: The Destruction of Family Values

Promoting Family Values While Destroying Families
Overburdened Women
Who’s Bringing Up America’s Kids?
Hooked on Television
Hooked on Drugs
Children Who Want to Die
The Rise of the Fatherless Family
          Soaring Divorce Rates
            Children Born to Unmarried Mothers
Gender-Based Poverty
Teenage Pregnancy
Abuse and Death at the Hands of Caregivers
A Society Stacked Against Parenthood
The Wonder of Childbirth: Just Another Disability?
Capitalist Countries Are Not All the Same
The Treatment of Children: A Measure of Moral Standing

Chapter 5: The Sorry State of Education

Learning Disadvantage Begins Before Birth
Learning... to Live with Head Lice
The Dumbing of America
International Competitivity Flops
Bad Living Conditions, Bad Grades
Amazing Ignorance
Immigrant Kids' Grades Sink As They Assimilate
Underachieving, and Proud of It
Schooling as Indoctrination
The Boob Tube as Teacher?
Graduating Illiterate
Fast Food for the Mind
Functional Illiteracy: Half the Adult Population “Pre-Modern”
Tuning Out, Dropping Out
Ignorant America Lags Industrialized World
Flawed Education Plagued by Deceit and Denial
The Flight to Home Schooling
Teacher Incompetence: The Blind Leading the Blind
The Advantages of “Learning Disability”
Students Who Don’t Study
The Education Staircase Out of Poverty: Still Climbable?
The Repercussions of Educational Failure

Chapter 6: Third World Housing in First World America

Homelessness Soars Across America
America’s Street Families Creating Homelessness
Teetering On the Edge of Homelessness
Rental Costs Out of Reach to Millions
A New Nightmare in Suburban America
Nobody Wants to House the Poor
“Lucky Not to be Homeless”
“Fair Market Rent" Drives Workers to Shelters
Shelter That Kills
What Market-Oriented Housing Means
Future Calamity in the Making

Chapter 7: Desperate People Do Desperate Things

A Nation Terrorized by Crime
Washington: The Capitol of Crime
A Ticking Crime Bomb
A Nation Armed to the Teeth
Crime Just Another Way of Making It
The Slaughter of the Innocents
Kids Killing Kids
Growing Up Brutalized
Schooling in a Climate of Fear
In Elementary School — And Armed
Gang Violence: The Reverse Side of Powerlessness
The Coming Tidal Wave of Juvenile Crime
Youth Violence Random, Remorseless and — ‘Inexplicable’
Programmed Insensitivity
A Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System
The Insanity of the War on Drugs
Freed to Kill
Criminality at the Heart of the Social System
No Place Safe

Chapter 8: Socialism for the Rich

Beefing Up Welfare to Corporations
Corporate Tax Freeloaders
Executive Excess
The CEO as The Terminator
Executive Pay: The Sky’s No Limit
Why Control Executive Pay When You Can Subsidize It?
Free Enterprise for the Poor
Standing Tough Against European Labor Extravagance
A Steady Attack on the Cost of Labor
          Uncompensated Overtime
          Benefits Packed to Death
          Downsizing Health Insurance
          Nothing at the End of the Line
American Unions: “Collective Begging”
The American Way for Everybody

Chapter 9: The Sinking of American Labor

Unemployment: Fudging the Figures
Ruthless Corporate Downsizing
Now Skilled Workers Bear the Brunt of Unemployment
Job Creation or Job Deflation?
Two, Three, Many Jobs
The End of Leisure
Living to Consume
Technology and the Theft of Tomorrowland
Entering An Era of Mass Anxiety

Chapter 10: Ending Welfare, Keeping Poverty

Welfare as Americans Knew It
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
          Assistance for Families with Dependent Children
          Dumping Aid to Disabled Children
          Attacking Benefits to Legal Immigrants
          Food Stamp Reduction: Biting Back the Crumbs
Projecting the Consequences
Welfare Outlives Its Usefulness to American Capitalism
Conscience, Hypocrisy and the Clinton Administration

Chapter 11: Workfare: Arbeit Macht Frei

What Welfare Is in a Civilized Society
Slavery Makes a Comeback in America
Selling Workfare to the American Public
How Workfare “Works” in New York
Forcing Labor Outside Basic Employment Standards
Government Subsidies Spur Conversion to Workfare
Striking It Rich in the Welfare-Biz
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Using Sanctions to Purge the Welfare Rolls
Closing the Basement Door
A Symbol of the Workfare Tragedy
Workfare Management: Nazi Echoes

Chapter 12: Oppressed Minds

The Media: Successfully Fulfilling Its Prime Directive
Demonizing the Poor / Eulogizing the Rich
Leading the Industrialized World in Mean-Heartedness
Social Darwinism: Cruelty in the Name of Natural Law
Where is the Resistance?
The Illusion of Democracy
Elections Provide No Grip on Policy
Two Heads of the Same Beast
Money and the Electoral System
Voters Abandon “Democratic Rights”
Maintaining the Status Quo
The Repression of Domestic Dissent

Chapter 13: The New World Order Takes Shape

Building Blocks: Conquered Domestic Nations
          American Indians
          Enslaved Africans
A Taste for Empire
          Invasion, Occupation and Colonization
          Carrying the Big Stick
The War is Over: Long Live the War
          Nuclear Weapons Forever
          Developing Alternatives to the Big Blast
          Bolstering the CIA
         
Arms Sales: Maintaining the Status Quo at a Profit
What’s Good For America is Good For the World
America to World: Look at Iraq
          We’re Talking About Oil. Got It?
          The War of Economic Strangulation
          The Silent Holocaust
Because We Are America
Rogue Superpower
America to Yugoslavia: Whatever It Takes
          Pretext
          Sub-Text
Restoring the Rule of Force
The Real ‘Future Shock

Endnotes:

Index:


Author Bio

Valdas Anelauskas was born into a wealthy landowning family in Lithuania. His father fought in the Lithuanian resistance and spent 10 years -- longer than Soltsenitsyn --- in the Russian Gulag.. As a Lithuanian nationalist, Valdas Anelauskas was involved in the resistance movement for Lithuanian independence almost from birth. He was first arrested by the KGB at the age of 14, and later joined the broader dissident movement for human rights as an independent journalist in the anti-Soviet samizdat. He wrote for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe; some of his articles were also used by the London Times, Associated Press and others. In 1988, on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he renounced his Soviet citizenship and was ejected from the Soviet Union soon after. Upon his arrival in the U.S. as a high profile political dissident, Anelauskas initially cooperated with several right wing organizations seeking the collapse of the Soviet Union, among them the notorious Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, the World Anti-Communist League, and others. He addressed the 17th annual Conservative Political Action Conference as a featured speaker, alongside Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, Eliot Abrams, Robert Bork and other leading conservative spokespersons. When he discovered the elitist nature and goals of American conservative organizations, his association with them terminated. Recalling his earlier activities with shame and chagrin, Anelauskas now regards himself as the naive victim of American propaganda, and of officials of its various agencies. and institutions, who sought to achieve, not human rights, but power, by the Soviet demise. As in his days as an anti-Soviet dissident, Valdas Anelauskas remains, to this day, a fearless seeker of truth and a staunch defender of all human rights -- not simply the civil and political rights which he sought for his native Lithuania, but the full gamut of international human rights, including socio-economic and cultural rights as well. He speaks and writes in four languages. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, and travels frequently in Europe.


Points Of Interest

• This book sheds light on the use and abuse of unsuspecting foreign human rights activists by US officials, agencies and conservative groups as they seek to forward US foreign policy objectives through human rights complaints.

• Anelauskas' revelations punch holes through the public policy platitudes surrounding the Republican Contract With America, and reveal in shocking terms the impact recent public policy has had upon the American body politic. Even more significant than present effects are the projections that are drawn from these "facts on the ground."

How does American capitalism treat its citizens, compared to capitalism in other countries in Europe and elsewhere? Anelauskas provides copious amounts of up-to-the -minute comparative documentation on indicators of social well being in health, education, housing, the environment, etc., not only concerning the U.S., but also concerning a range of European and other capitalist countries. His extensive sources (80 pages of citations) range from government statistics, mainstream newspapers and business publications, to studies by international organizations, highly reputed non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and institutes.


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