Kurt Nimmo - Glenn Beck, the Fox News talking heads, and no shortage of Tea Party activists like to characterize Barry Obama as a Marxist. In an article gaining a lot of traction across the blogosphere, Wayne Allyn Root, who considers himself a Libertarian Republican, says Obama is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure in order to turn the U.S. into a socialist/Marxist state.
Obamacare, cap-and-trade, legalizing 12 million illegal aliens, increased taxation, and endless bailouts and stimulus boondoggles, Root argues, are schemes designed to overwhelm the system and pave the way for a Marxist takeover of America.
It cannot be denied these schemes will destroy America. It also cannot be denied they are intentional. However, it has nothing to do with Marxism.
Marx advocated a proletarian revolution. He said that in order to overcome the restraint of private property the working class must seize political power through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Marx said the ultimate goal is a a classless and stateless form of communism beneficial to the interests of the proletariat or the working class.
Is it possible the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs operatives in the Obama administration truly desire a communist revolution as Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root insist?
During the 2008 election cycle, Goldman Sachs donated nearly a million bucks to Obama. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase donated nearly $1.5 million to the Obama campaign while Morgan Stanley pitched in over a half million dollars. “When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain,” the New York Times wrote on July 1, 2008.
Is it possible all these folks are clueless about the supposed Marxist philosophy of Obama? Is it possible transnational corporations and international banks savvy enough to game the system for trillions of dollars support a communist system that would ultimately strip them of that wealth?
Goldman along with the Federal Reserve rule the Obama administration. William C. Dudley was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a partner and managing director at Goldman. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, spent 18 years at Goldman. Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Tim Geithner, is a former Goldman lobbyist. Philip Murphy, nominated for ambassador to Germany, is a former Goldman executive. Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, is a former Goldman employee. Emil Michael, White House fellow, used to be an investment banker at Goldman.
Obama functionaries are connected to the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, two organizations established to implement world government. Tim Geithner, Susan Rice, Pete Peterson, Gen. James Jones, Thomas Donilion, Paul Volker, Dennis Blair, Richard Haass, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and others have connections to the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, the CFR, and Bilderbergers.
“We can be quite sure that somewhere between 400 to 500 high-level members of the Obama administration will be members of the CFR. How can we say that? Because that’s about how many CFR members occupy the current Bush administration (beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, an in-again, out-again member of the CFR board of directors). And about the same number occupied posts in the Clinton administration,” John F. McManus wrote in November of 2008 after Obama was selected to be the front man for the banksters.
Obama’s mischaracterized socialism is a control mechanism created by the bankers. It has nothing to do with liberating downtrodden workers. The Soviet system was financed by Wall Street, as Rep. Louis T. McFadden, chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee throughout the 1920-30s, explained: “The course of Russian history has, indeed, been greatly affected by the operations of international bankers… The Soviet Government has been given United States Treasury funds by the Federal Reserve Board… acting through the Chase Bank.”
The late Antony Sutton’s exhaustive research demonstrates how Wall Street bankers supported and financed the Russian revolution, supported the Soviet Union financially, technologically and military both before and after the Second World War, and also supported Hitler and Nazi Germany financially and military both before and during the Second World War.
The monopoly men who exported jobs from America to slave labor gulags in China and are now in the process of looting the financial system are not dedicated Marxists. The late Gary Allen wrote:
If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want… a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. “Communism” is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world…. first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a “Great Merger,” into an all-powerful world, socialist super-state.
The Obama banker-CFR-Trilat-Bilderberg administration is the process of forging this “Great Merger” and is moving inexorably toward an all-powerful world, socialist super-state. Obama’s socialism will not emancipate the workers of America. It will further impoverish and enslave them.
As we approach the mid-term elections, the deceptive claim that Obama is a Marxist will pick up steam and will be exploited by the Tea Party movement as it attempts to get Republicans masquerading as patriots and constitutionalists elected to office.
Glenn Beck and Wayne Allyn Root need to reexamine and stop chanting the ludicrous Obama is a Marxist mantra and point out what Obama really is — a sock puppet reading a teleprompter for his employer: the control freaks at the international banks and multinational corporations.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Trillions For Wall Street Banksters
Mike Whitney - On Tuesday, the 30-year fixed rate for mortgages plunged to an all-time low of 4.56 per cent. Rates are falling because investors are still moving into risk-free liquid assets, like Treasuries. It’s a sign of panic and the Fed’s lame policy response has done nothing to sooth the public’s fears. The flight-to-safety continues a full two years after Lehman Bros blew up.
Housing demand has fallen off a cliff in spite of the historic low rates. Purchases of new and existing homes are roughly 25 per cent of what they were at peak in 2006. Case/Schiller reported on Monday that June new homes sales were the “worst on record”, but the media twisted the story to create the impression that sales were actually improving! Here are a few of Monday’s misleading headlines: “New Home Sales Bounce Back in June”–Los Angeles Times. “Builders Lifted by June New-home Sales”, Marketwatch. “New Home Sales Rebound 24 per cent”, CNN. “June Sales of New Homes Climb more than Forecast”, Bloomberg.
The media’s lies are only adding to the sense of uncertainty. When uncertainty grows, long-term expectations change and investment nosedives. Lying has an adverse effect on consumer confidence and, thus, on demand. This is from Bloomberg:
The Conference Board’s confidence index dropped to a 5-month low of 50.4 from 54.3 in June. According to Bloomberg News:
“Sentiment may be slow to improve until companies start adding to payrolls at a faster rate, and the Federal Reserve projects unemployment will take time to decline. Today’s figures showed income expectations at their lowest point in more than a year, posing a risk for consumer spending that accounts for 70 per cent of the economy.
“Consumers’ faith in the economic recovery is failing,” said guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, whose forecast of 50.3 for the confidence index was the closest among economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “The job market is slow and volatile, and it’ll be 2013 before we see any semblance of normality in the labor market.” (Bloomberg)
Confidence is falling because unemployment is soaring, because the media is lying, and because the Fed’s monetary policy has failed. Notice that Bloomberg does not mention consumer worries over “curbing the deficits”. In truth, the public has only a passing interest in the large deficits. It’s a fictitious problem invented by rich corporatists (and their think tanks) who want to apply austerity measures so they can divert more public money to themselves. In the real world, consumer confidence relates to one thing alone–jobs. And when the jobs market stinks, confidence plummets. This is from another article by Bloomberg:
“Consumer borrowing in the U.S. dropped in May more than forecast, a sign Americans are less willing to take on debt without an improvement in the labor market.
The $9.1 billion decrease followed a revised $14.9 billion slump in April that was initially estimated as a $1 billion increase, the Federal Reserve reported today in Washington. Economists projected a $2.3 billion drop in the May measure of credit card debt and non-revolving loans, according to a Bloomberg News survey of 34 economists.
Borrowing that’s increased twice since the end of 2008 shows consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the economy, will be restrained as Americans pay down debt. Banks also continue to restrict lending following the collapse of the housing market, Fed officials said after their policy meeting last month” (Bloomberg)
Consumer confidence is falling, consumer credit is shrinking, and consumer spending is dwindling. Jobs, jobs, jobs; it’s all about jobs. Budget deficits are irrelevant to the man who thinks he might lose his livelihood. All he cares about is bringing home the bacon. Here’s a quote from Yale professor Robert Schiller who was one of the first to predict the dot.com and the housing bubble:
“For me a double-dip is another recession before we’ve healed from this recession … The probability of that kind of double-dip is more than 50 per cent. I actually expect it.”
There’s no need for the economy to slip back into recession. It is completely unnecessary. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows exactly what needs to be done; how to counter deflationary pressures via bond purchasing programs etc. He has many options even though interest rates are “zero bound”. But Bernanke has chosen to do nothing. Intransigence is a political decision. By the November midterms, the economy will be contracting again, unemployment will be edging higher, and the slowdown will be visible everywhere in terms of excess capacity. The Obama economic plan will be repudiated as a bust and the Dems will be swept from office. The bankers will get the political gridlock they desire. Bernanke knows this.
On Tuesday, a $38 billion Treasury auction drove 2-years bond-yields down to record lows. (0.665 per cent) Investors are willing to take less than 1 per cent on their deposits just for the guarantee of getting it back. Bond yields are a referendum on the Fed’s policies; a straightforward indictment of Bernanke’s strategy. Three years into the crisis and investors are more afraid than ever. The flight to Treasuries is an indication that the retail investor has left the market for good. It is a red flag signaling that the public’s distrust has reached its zenith.
Presently, big business is awash in savings ($1.8 trillion) because consumers are on the ropes and demand is weak. The government’s task is simple; make up for worker retrenchment by providing more fiscal and monetary stimulus. If private sector and public sector spending shrink at the same time, the economy will contract very fast and recession will become unavoidable. So, Go Big; create government work programs, help the states, rebuild infrastructure and support green technologies. The economy is not a sentient being; it makes no distinction between “productive” labor and “unproductive” labor. The point is to keep the apparatus operating as close to capacity as possible–which means low unemployment and big deficits.
Increasing the money supply does nothing when interest rates are already at zero and consumers are slashing spending. Bernanke has added over $1.25 trillion to bank reserves but consumer borrowing, spending and confidence are still flat on the canvass. The problem is demand, not the volume of money. Bernanke knows what to do, but he refuses to do it. He’d rather line the pockets of bondholders, bankers and rentiers. This is from Calculated Risk:
“This report from the National League of Cities (NLC), National Association of Counties (NACo), and the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) reveals that local government job losses in the current and next fiscal years will approach 500,000, with public safety, public works, public health, social services and parks and recreation hardest hit by the cutbacks.
The surveyed local governments report cutting 8.6 per cent of total full-time equivalent (FTE) positions over the previous fiscal year to the next fiscal year (roughly 2009-2011). If applied to total local government employment nationwide, an 8.6 percent cut in the workforce would mean that 481,000 local government workers were, or will be, laid off over the two-year period.”
The cutbacks will ravage local governments, state revenues and public services. Emergency facilities by the Fed provided $11.4 trillion for underwater banks and non banks, but nothing for the states. The GOP is helping the Fed strangle the states by opposing additional aid for Medicare payments and unemployment benefits. Many cities and counties will be forced into bankruptcy while Goldman Sachs rakes in record profits on liquidity provided by Bernanke. It’s a disaster.
The bottom line? When Wall Street is hurting, money’s never a problem. But when the states are on the brink of default and 14 million workers are scrimping to feed their families, it’s time for belt-tightening. Explain that to your kids.
Housing demand has fallen off a cliff in spite of the historic low rates. Purchases of new and existing homes are roughly 25 per cent of what they were at peak in 2006. Case/Schiller reported on Monday that June new homes sales were the “worst on record”, but the media twisted the story to create the impression that sales were actually improving! Here are a few of Monday’s misleading headlines: “New Home Sales Bounce Back in June”–Los Angeles Times. “Builders Lifted by June New-home Sales”, Marketwatch. “New Home Sales Rebound 24 per cent”, CNN. “June Sales of New Homes Climb more than Forecast”, Bloomberg.
The media’s lies are only adding to the sense of uncertainty. When uncertainty grows, long-term expectations change and investment nosedives. Lying has an adverse effect on consumer confidence and, thus, on demand. This is from Bloomberg:
The Conference Board’s confidence index dropped to a 5-month low of 50.4 from 54.3 in June. According to Bloomberg News:
“Sentiment may be slow to improve until companies start adding to payrolls at a faster rate, and the Federal Reserve projects unemployment will take time to decline. Today’s figures showed income expectations at their lowest point in more than a year, posing a risk for consumer spending that accounts for 70 per cent of the economy.
“Consumers’ faith in the economic recovery is failing,” said guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, whose forecast of 50.3 for the confidence index was the closest among economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “The job market is slow and volatile, and it’ll be 2013 before we see any semblance of normality in the labor market.” (Bloomberg)
Confidence is falling because unemployment is soaring, because the media is lying, and because the Fed’s monetary policy has failed. Notice that Bloomberg does not mention consumer worries over “curbing the deficits”. In truth, the public has only a passing interest in the large deficits. It’s a fictitious problem invented by rich corporatists (and their think tanks) who want to apply austerity measures so they can divert more public money to themselves. In the real world, consumer confidence relates to one thing alone–jobs. And when the jobs market stinks, confidence plummets. This is from another article by Bloomberg:
“Consumer borrowing in the U.S. dropped in May more than forecast, a sign Americans are less willing to take on debt without an improvement in the labor market.
The $9.1 billion decrease followed a revised $14.9 billion slump in April that was initially estimated as a $1 billion increase, the Federal Reserve reported today in Washington. Economists projected a $2.3 billion drop in the May measure of credit card debt and non-revolving loans, according to a Bloomberg News survey of 34 economists.
Borrowing that’s increased twice since the end of 2008 shows consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the economy, will be restrained as Americans pay down debt. Banks also continue to restrict lending following the collapse of the housing market, Fed officials said after their policy meeting last month” (Bloomberg)
Consumer confidence is falling, consumer credit is shrinking, and consumer spending is dwindling. Jobs, jobs, jobs; it’s all about jobs. Budget deficits are irrelevant to the man who thinks he might lose his livelihood. All he cares about is bringing home the bacon. Here’s a quote from Yale professor Robert Schiller who was one of the first to predict the dot.com and the housing bubble:
“For me a double-dip is another recession before we’ve healed from this recession … The probability of that kind of double-dip is more than 50 per cent. I actually expect it.”
There’s no need for the economy to slip back into recession. It is completely unnecessary. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke knows exactly what needs to be done; how to counter deflationary pressures via bond purchasing programs etc. He has many options even though interest rates are “zero bound”. But Bernanke has chosen to do nothing. Intransigence is a political decision. By the November midterms, the economy will be contracting again, unemployment will be edging higher, and the slowdown will be visible everywhere in terms of excess capacity. The Obama economic plan will be repudiated as a bust and the Dems will be swept from office. The bankers will get the political gridlock they desire. Bernanke knows this.
On Tuesday, a $38 billion Treasury auction drove 2-years bond-yields down to record lows. (0.665 per cent) Investors are willing to take less than 1 per cent on their deposits just for the guarantee of getting it back. Bond yields are a referendum on the Fed’s policies; a straightforward indictment of Bernanke’s strategy. Three years into the crisis and investors are more afraid than ever. The flight to Treasuries is an indication that the retail investor has left the market for good. It is a red flag signaling that the public’s distrust has reached its zenith.
Presently, big business is awash in savings ($1.8 trillion) because consumers are on the ropes and demand is weak. The government’s task is simple; make up for worker retrenchment by providing more fiscal and monetary stimulus. If private sector and public sector spending shrink at the same time, the economy will contract very fast and recession will become unavoidable. So, Go Big; create government work programs, help the states, rebuild infrastructure and support green technologies. The economy is not a sentient being; it makes no distinction between “productive” labor and “unproductive” labor. The point is to keep the apparatus operating as close to capacity as possible–which means low unemployment and big deficits.
Increasing the money supply does nothing when interest rates are already at zero and consumers are slashing spending. Bernanke has added over $1.25 trillion to bank reserves but consumer borrowing, spending and confidence are still flat on the canvass. The problem is demand, not the volume of money. Bernanke knows what to do, but he refuses to do it. He’d rather line the pockets of bondholders, bankers and rentiers. This is from Calculated Risk:
“This report from the National League of Cities (NLC), National Association of Counties (NACo), and the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) reveals that local government job losses in the current and next fiscal years will approach 500,000, with public safety, public works, public health, social services and parks and recreation hardest hit by the cutbacks.
The surveyed local governments report cutting 8.6 per cent of total full-time equivalent (FTE) positions over the previous fiscal year to the next fiscal year (roughly 2009-2011). If applied to total local government employment nationwide, an 8.6 percent cut in the workforce would mean that 481,000 local government workers were, or will be, laid off over the two-year period.”
The cutbacks will ravage local governments, state revenues and public services. Emergency facilities by the Fed provided $11.4 trillion for underwater banks and non banks, but nothing for the states. The GOP is helping the Fed strangle the states by opposing additional aid for Medicare payments and unemployment benefits. Many cities and counties will be forced into bankruptcy while Goldman Sachs rakes in record profits on liquidity provided by Bernanke. It’s a disaster.
The bottom line? When Wall Street is hurting, money’s never a problem. But when the states are on the brink of default and 14 million workers are scrimping to feed their families, it’s time for belt-tightening. Explain that to your kids.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
100 million Facebook User Private Details Published Online
MSNBC.com - The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private.
However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised.
The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay to highlight privacy issues, the BBC reported.
Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by more than 2,400 people.
This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled.
Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy settings so their names did not appear in Facebook’s search system can now be found if they were friends with anyone who allowed their name to appear in searches.
However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised.
The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay to highlight privacy issues, the BBC reported.
Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by more than 2,400 people.
This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled.
Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy settings so their names did not appear in Facebook’s search system can now be found if they were friends with anyone who allowed their name to appear in searches.
Demonize The Tea Party Through Association With Republican Establishment
Steve Watson - Democrat leaders have finally realised that anti-establishment sentiment is the driving force behind the Tea Party movement, announcing a plan to demonize it via a national campaign to associate the GOP and the Tea Party as one and the same.
The Associated Press reports:
“Democratic National Committee sources say the party’s strategy is to pose the November midterm elections as a contest between Democrats and a joint GOP-tea party plan for the country.”
The campaign will see grassroots activists painted as tools of the Republican establishment and the GOP associated with “extremist” ideologies.
The official launch of the campaign was made Wednesday by DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.
A website at www.republicanteapartycontract.com, a play on Newt Gingrich’s 1994 GOP “Contract With America”, along with a crudely produced video, mark the direction the DNC is taking.
The video urges viewers to “GET THE FACTS”, as it outlines a 10-point blueprint on what policies Tea Party candidates would enact if voted into power.
The items on the “Tea Party Contract on America” are:
1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act (Health insurance Reform)
2. Privatize Social Security or phase it out altogether
3. End Medicare as it presently exists
4. Extend the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil
5. Repeal Wall Street Reform
6. Protect those responsible for the oil spill and future environmental catastrophes
7. Abolish the Department of education
8. Abolish the Department of energy
9. Abolish the environmental protection agency
10. Repeal the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of senators
These are mostly libertarian rooted positions that various tea party affiliated candidates and incumbents have espoused, except for numbers four and six, which are more direct accusations.
The video features images of Rep. Pete Sessions, who runs the GOP’s effort to elect House candidates, and Republican Caucus Chairman Mike Pence, as well as Senate candidates Rand Paul and Sharon Angle, amongst others.
The idea is clearly to depict such positions as outside of mainstream political thought, yet multiple recent national polls indicate that such a notion is deeply misguided.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has described the campaign as part of an “increasingly desperate strategy that remains ignorant of exactly why independent voters are fleeing them in droves”.
The key flaw in the Democratic campaign is that voters are now painfully aware that it is not the Tea Party and the GOP that are one and the same, it is the two establishment parties.
The Associated Press reports:
“Democratic National Committee sources say the party’s strategy is to pose the November midterm elections as a contest between Democrats and a joint GOP-tea party plan for the country.”
The campaign will see grassroots activists painted as tools of the Republican establishment and the GOP associated with “extremist” ideologies.
The official launch of the campaign was made Wednesday by DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.
A website at www.republicanteapartycontract.com, a play on Newt Gingrich’s 1994 GOP “Contract With America”, along with a crudely produced video, mark the direction the DNC is taking.
The video urges viewers to “GET THE FACTS”, as it outlines a 10-point blueprint on what policies Tea Party candidates would enact if voted into power.
The items on the “Tea Party Contract on America” are:
1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act (Health insurance Reform)
2. Privatize Social Security or phase it out altogether
3. End Medicare as it presently exists
4. Extend the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil
5. Repeal Wall Street Reform
6. Protect those responsible for the oil spill and future environmental catastrophes
7. Abolish the Department of education
8. Abolish the Department of energy
9. Abolish the environmental protection agency
10. Repeal the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of senators
These are mostly libertarian rooted positions that various tea party affiliated candidates and incumbents have espoused, except for numbers four and six, which are more direct accusations.
The video features images of Rep. Pete Sessions, who runs the GOP’s effort to elect House candidates, and Republican Caucus Chairman Mike Pence, as well as Senate candidates Rand Paul and Sharon Angle, amongst others.
The idea is clearly to depict such positions as outside of mainstream political thought, yet multiple recent national polls indicate that such a notion is deeply misguided.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has described the campaign as part of an “increasingly desperate strategy that remains ignorant of exactly why independent voters are fleeing them in droves”.
The key flaw in the Democratic campaign is that voters are now painfully aware that it is not the Tea Party and the GOP that are one and the same, it is the two establishment parties.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
$8.7 Billion Of Iraq Development Money Missing
Kurt Nimmo - The Defense Department is unable to account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in Development Fund for Iraq monies it received for reconstruction in Iraq, reports Federal News Radio today.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) issued a report today that claims a “weakness” in the DoD’s “financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds.” The money vanished “because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds,” explains the Inspector General. “The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.”
DFI revenue is generated from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq, and surplus funds from the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program as well as frozen Iraqi assets, according to SIGIR.
If you believe the money was simply lost through shoddy accounting practices, you may also be interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. Simply put, the money was pilfered.
You may recall then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s admission on September 10, 2001, that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion. This money was supposed to go for our “national defense” against CIA assets like Osama bin Laden and tin horn dictators like Saddam Hussein and the mental case Kim Jong-Il.
It became a non-story of little interest the next day when cave Muslims violated the laws of physics and supposedly attacked us for our freedom. It now basically resides in the corporate media memory hole.
$2.3 trillion amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
Nobody knows exactly where the $2.3 trillion went. But some think it was siphoned off through companies like DynCorp, AMS, and Lockheed Martin, which control the bookkeeping for federal agencies, where fraud is rampant, unchecked and very lucrative for corporate and government insiders, writes Uri Dowbenko. “The fraud is so egregious, in fact, that the sovereignty of the nation itself can be questioned when bogus accounting systems can mask the revenue streams and expenditures of federal agencies to such an extent.”
At the time the money disappeared, Dov Zakheim was the Comptroller of the Pentagon. In addition to serving as a member of the notorious Project for a New American Century, Zakheim was chummy with the military-industrial merchants of death complex. He was an executive at System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor specializing in electronic warfare technologies including remote-controlled aircraft systems.
Fraud and thievery is rampant in Iraq. In June, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in federal property went missing or unaccounted for at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A report from the State Department revealed that 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for and pays nearly $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered to authorized users, according to the Associated Press.
Money slotted for Iraq development — rebuilding what the Pentagon destroyed — has a funny way of disappearing. Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad. More than $9 billion went missing. “The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn’t care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair.
Grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, told Rep. Henry Waxman that if the cash had gone to “ghost employees” he would have known about it. Bremer sheepishly told Rep. Dennis Kucinich he had no idea where the money went.
Instead of launching a criminal investigation and tracking down the thieves, the SIGIR study suggests “that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.”
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) issued a report today that claims a “weakness” in the DoD’s “financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds.” The money vanished “because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds,” explains the Inspector General. “The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.”
DFI revenue is generated from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas from Iraq, and surplus funds from the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program as well as frozen Iraqi assets, according to SIGIR.
If you believe the money was simply lost through shoddy accounting practices, you may also be interested in a bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn. Simply put, the money was pilfered.
You may recall then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s admission on September 10, 2001, that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion. This money was supposed to go for our “national defense” against CIA assets like Osama bin Laden and tin horn dictators like Saddam Hussein and the mental case Kim Jong-Il.
It became a non-story of little interest the next day when cave Muslims violated the laws of physics and supposedly attacked us for our freedom. It now basically resides in the corporate media memory hole.
$2.3 trillion amounts to $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
Nobody knows exactly where the $2.3 trillion went. But some think it was siphoned off through companies like DynCorp, AMS, and Lockheed Martin, which control the bookkeeping for federal agencies, where fraud is rampant, unchecked and very lucrative for corporate and government insiders, writes Uri Dowbenko. “The fraud is so egregious, in fact, that the sovereignty of the nation itself can be questioned when bogus accounting systems can mask the revenue streams and expenditures of federal agencies to such an extent.”
At the time the money disappeared, Dov Zakheim was the Comptroller of the Pentagon. In addition to serving as a member of the notorious Project for a New American Century, Zakheim was chummy with the military-industrial merchants of death complex. He was an executive at System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor specializing in electronic warfare technologies including remote-controlled aircraft systems.
Fraud and thievery is rampant in Iraq. In June, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in federal property went missing or unaccounted for at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A report from the State Department revealed that 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for and pays nearly $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered to authorized users, according to the Associated Press.
Money slotted for Iraq development — rebuilding what the Pentagon destroyed — has a funny way of disappearing. Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad. More than $9 billion went missing. “The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn’t care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele for Vanity Fair.
Grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the former Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, told Rep. Henry Waxman that if the cash had gone to “ghost employees” he would have known about it. Bremer sheepishly told Rep. Dennis Kucinich he had no idea where the money went.
Instead of launching a criminal investigation and tracking down the thieves, the SIGIR study suggests “that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.”
Global Warming 'Will increase Mexico-U.S. Illegal Immigration'
A warming climate could see millions of adult Mexicans migrate to the US as rising temperatures cause a drop in crop yields, according to a study by researchers at Princeton University.
For every 10% of lost crop yields in Mexico, another 2% of Mexicans are likely to leave their country, the study says.
The research draws a clear connection between climate change and immigration - two heavily debated issues in the US.
It says warming may bring between 1.4m and 6.7m Mexicans to the US by 2080.
Many climate experts say human activity is contributing to an increasingly warm planet.
And now a team of researchers led by Michael Oppenheimer says rising temperatures affecting crops through floods, droughts, and stronger storms will induce some workers to relocate.
Farmers migration
"Climate change is expected to cause mass human migration, including immigration across international borders," says the study.
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said a 10% reduction in crop yields would lead an additional 2% of the population to emigrate.
"It has been well established that farmers do tend to want to migrate when they are not doing so well," Mr Oppenheimer told the Reuters news agency.
The study used census data from 1995 to 2005 as well as statistics on climate data and crop production, which allowed the group to calculate a projected rate of migration.
According to a variety of "warming scenarios", the researchers estimated that by the year 2080, between 1.4 million and 6.7 million adult Mexicans (or 2% to 10% of the current population aged 15-65) would seek to emigrate to the US.
Mr Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the findings drew attention to "the need to grapple with greenhouse gases".
Experts say these findings are also relevant to other regions around the world, from Africa to Australia - where Mr Oppenheimer's team predicts migration will become a "significant issue".
The study on Mexican migration comes after last month was declared by scientists to be the hottest June on record.
Roughly 6.7 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants believed to be in the US are from Mexico.
Meanwhile, a new immigration law is set to take effect on 29 July in the US state of Arizona, which will make it a crime to be in the state without immigration papers.
For every 10% of lost crop yields in Mexico, another 2% of Mexicans are likely to leave their country, the study says.
The research draws a clear connection between climate change and immigration - two heavily debated issues in the US.
It says warming may bring between 1.4m and 6.7m Mexicans to the US by 2080.
Many climate experts say human activity is contributing to an increasingly warm planet.
And now a team of researchers led by Michael Oppenheimer says rising temperatures affecting crops through floods, droughts, and stronger storms will induce some workers to relocate.
Farmers migration
"Climate change is expected to cause mass human migration, including immigration across international borders," says the study.
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said a 10% reduction in crop yields would lead an additional 2% of the population to emigrate.
"It has been well established that farmers do tend to want to migrate when they are not doing so well," Mr Oppenheimer told the Reuters news agency.
The study used census data from 1995 to 2005 as well as statistics on climate data and crop production, which allowed the group to calculate a projected rate of migration.
According to a variety of "warming scenarios", the researchers estimated that by the year 2080, between 1.4 million and 6.7 million adult Mexicans (or 2% to 10% of the current population aged 15-65) would seek to emigrate to the US.
Mr Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the findings drew attention to "the need to grapple with greenhouse gases".
Experts say these findings are also relevant to other regions around the world, from Africa to Australia - where Mr Oppenheimer's team predicts migration will become a "significant issue".
The study on Mexican migration comes after last month was declared by scientists to be the hottest June on record.
Roughly 6.7 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants believed to be in the US are from Mexico.
Meanwhile, a new immigration law is set to take effect on 29 July in the US state of Arizona, which will make it a crime to be in the state without immigration papers.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Goldman Sachs Reveals Where Bailout Cash Went
Des Moines Register - Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.
Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.
Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."
He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on ... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."
Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of U.S. taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.
SETTLEMENT: Goldman Sachs admits it misled investors, pays $550M fine
GOLDMAN CONSENT: SEC vs. Goldman Sachs
JUDGEMENT: Final judgement of defendant
Goldman Sachs (GS) received $5.55 billion from the government in fall of 2008 as payment for then-worthless securities it held in AIG. Goldman had already hedged its risk that the securities would go bad. It had entered into agreements to spread the risk with the 32 entities named in Friday's report.
Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the government's bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world's largest insurance company.
Goldman Sachs also revealed to the Senate Finance Committee that it would have received $2.3 billion if AIG had gone under. Other large financial institutions, such as Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, sold Goldman Sachs protection in the case of AIG's collapse. Those institutions did not have to pay Goldman Sachs after the government stepped in with tax money.
Shouldn't Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions "before they collect the taxpayers' dollars?" Grassley asked. "It's a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop insurance, you shouldn't be getting disaster aid."
Goldman had not disclosed the names of the counterparties it paid in late 2008 until Friday, despite repeated requests from Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel.
"I think we didn't get the information because they consider it very embarrassing," Grassley said, "and they ought to consider it very embarrassing."
FINANCIAL REFORM: How Congress rewrote the regulations
FIXED? Will new regulations prevent future meltdowns?
FINANCIAL OVERHAUL AND YOU: Mortgages, debit cards, loans, more
The initial $85 billion to bail out AIG was supplemented by an additional $49.1 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, as well as additional funds from the Federal Reserve. AIG's debt to U.S. taxpayers totals $133.3 billion outstanding.
"The only thing I can tell you is that people have the right to know, and the Fed and the public's business ought to be more public," Grassley said.
The list of companies receiving money includes a few familiar foreign banks, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays.
DZ AG Deutsche Zantrake Genossenschaftz Bank, a German cooperative banking group, received $1.2 billion, more than a quarter of the money Goldman paid out.
Warren, in testimony Wednesday, said that the rescue of AIG "distorted the marketplace by turning AIG's risky bets into fully guaranteed transactions. Instead of forcing AIG and its counterparties to bear the costs of the company's failure, the government shifted those costs in full onto taxpayers."
Grassley stressed the importance of transparency in the marketplace, as well as in the government's actions.
"Just like the government, markets need more transparency, and consequently this is some of that transparency because we've got to rebuild confidence to make the markets work properly," Grassley said.
AIG received the bailout of $85 billion at the discretion of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was led at the time by Timothy Geithner. He now is U.S. treasury secretary.
"I think it proves that he knew a lot more at the time than he told," Grassley said. "And he surely knew where this money was going to go. If he didn't, he should have known before they let the money out of their bank up there."
An attempt to reach Geithner Friday night through the White House public information office was unsuccessful.
Grassley has for years pushed to give the Government Accountability Office more oversight of the Federal Reserve.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Waterloo Democrat, said he would propose that the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations convene hearings on the need for more Federal Reserve oversight. Braley is a member of the subcommittee.
Braley said of Geithner, "I would assume he would be someone we would want to hear from because he would have firsthand knowledge."
Braley also noted that the AIG bailout was negotiated under President George W. Bush, a Republican.
He said he was confident that the financial regulatory reform bill signed by President Obama this week would help provide better oversight than the AIG bailout included.
"There was no regulatory framework in place," Braley said. "We had to put something in place to begin reining them in. I'm confident they will begin to be able to do that."
Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.
Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."
He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on ... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."
Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of U.S. taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.
SETTLEMENT: Goldman Sachs admits it misled investors, pays $550M fine
GOLDMAN CONSENT: SEC vs. Goldman Sachs
JUDGEMENT: Final judgement of defendant
Goldman Sachs (GS) received $5.55 billion from the government in fall of 2008 as payment for then-worthless securities it held in AIG. Goldman had already hedged its risk that the securities would go bad. It had entered into agreements to spread the risk with the 32 entities named in Friday's report.
Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the government's bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world's largest insurance company.
Goldman Sachs also revealed to the Senate Finance Committee that it would have received $2.3 billion if AIG had gone under. Other large financial institutions, such as Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, sold Goldman Sachs protection in the case of AIG's collapse. Those institutions did not have to pay Goldman Sachs after the government stepped in with tax money.
Shouldn't Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions "before they collect the taxpayers' dollars?" Grassley asked. "It's a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop insurance, you shouldn't be getting disaster aid."
Goldman had not disclosed the names of the counterparties it paid in late 2008 until Friday, despite repeated requests from Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel.
"I think we didn't get the information because they consider it very embarrassing," Grassley said, "and they ought to consider it very embarrassing."
FINANCIAL REFORM: How Congress rewrote the regulations
FIXED? Will new regulations prevent future meltdowns?
FINANCIAL OVERHAUL AND YOU: Mortgages, debit cards, loans, more
The initial $85 billion to bail out AIG was supplemented by an additional $49.1 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, as well as additional funds from the Federal Reserve. AIG's debt to U.S. taxpayers totals $133.3 billion outstanding.
"The only thing I can tell you is that people have the right to know, and the Fed and the public's business ought to be more public," Grassley said.
The list of companies receiving money includes a few familiar foreign banks, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays.
DZ AG Deutsche Zantrake Genossenschaftz Bank, a German cooperative banking group, received $1.2 billion, more than a quarter of the money Goldman paid out.
Warren, in testimony Wednesday, said that the rescue of AIG "distorted the marketplace by turning AIG's risky bets into fully guaranteed transactions. Instead of forcing AIG and its counterparties to bear the costs of the company's failure, the government shifted those costs in full onto taxpayers."
Grassley stressed the importance of transparency in the marketplace, as well as in the government's actions.
"Just like the government, markets need more transparency, and consequently this is some of that transparency because we've got to rebuild confidence to make the markets work properly," Grassley said.
AIG received the bailout of $85 billion at the discretion of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was led at the time by Timothy Geithner. He now is U.S. treasury secretary.
"I think it proves that he knew a lot more at the time than he told," Grassley said. "And he surely knew where this money was going to go. If he didn't, he should have known before they let the money out of their bank up there."
An attempt to reach Geithner Friday night through the White House public information office was unsuccessful.
Grassley has for years pushed to give the Government Accountability Office more oversight of the Federal Reserve.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Waterloo Democrat, said he would propose that the House subcommittee on oversight and investigations convene hearings on the need for more Federal Reserve oversight. Braley is a member of the subcommittee.
Braley said of Geithner, "I would assume he would be someone we would want to hear from because he would have firsthand knowledge."
Braley also noted that the AIG bailout was negotiated under President George W. Bush, a Republican.
He said he was confident that the financial regulatory reform bill signed by President Obama this week would help provide better oversight than the AIG bailout included.
"There was no regulatory framework in place," Braley said. "We had to put something in place to begin reining them in. I'm confident they will begin to be able to do that."
Monday, July 26, 2010
Mexican Drug Gangs Invades Texas
Kurt Nimmo - The United States is under attack by narco terrorists invading from the failed state of Mexico and Obama and the federal government are doing nothing about it.
In June, the Mexican drug mafia forced the closure of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. Authorities in Arizona admit that criminals now control a drug and human smuggling corridor that stretches from the border into metro Phoenix. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu explained in June that the Mexican Mafia controls three counties in his state.
Now drug smugglers are repeating the pattern in Texas.
On Saturday, the Cypress Times, an online newspaper in Cypress, Texas, reported that the murderous Los Zetas has crossed into the United States and taken over at least two ranches in the Laredo, Texas area. The owners of the farms have evacuated and were not harmed.
“I can personally vouch that this info came in late last night from a reliable police source inside the Laredo PD,” Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, told the online newspaper. “There is currently a standoff between the unknown size Zeta forces and U.S.Border Patrol and local law enforcement on two ranches on our side of the Rio Grande.”
Kimberly Dvorak, writing for the Albuquerque Examiner, reports that two sources inside the Laredo Police Department have confirmed the incident. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity, writes Dvorak.
The DBKP blog contacted the the Laredo Police Department on Saturday. “We have been advised to say nothing. The Webb County Sheriff is taking the lead on this and they’re advising that they can’t confirm anything either,” a spokesperson told the blog.
On March 30, 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported Mexican drug cartels operated military-styletraining camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.
“Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle,” a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. “Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training courses…. And that’s not something that we have seen before.” In the state of Tamaulipas, Los Zetas train with other mercenaries, including the Kaibiles from Guatemala, the officials said.
Homeland Security consider the Mexican drug cartels as the greatest organized crime threat to the United States.
Los Zetas was founded by an elite force of assassins from Mexican Army deserters and is now integrated by corrupt ex-federal, state, and local police officers. Los Zetas was first hired as a private mercenary army for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, but since February of this year have gone independent and are now enemies of its former partner.
In the first eleven months of 2008, Los Zetas killers were directly responsible for the deaths of 5,300 people, including soldiers, their own operatives, civilians, journalists, and rival drug traffickers.
In 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon supposedly declared war on the drug cartels. Since Calderon’s declaration, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Mexico due to drug violence. In June of this year alone hundreds of people in Mexico died from drug-related violence.
Last week CBS News said Mexico’s drug Mafia had adopted “al-Qaeda tactics” after a car bomb exploded across the border from El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juárez, killing two federal officers and a musician and injuring 11 people, including several bystanders. In late June, the El Paso City Hall was struck by gunfire from a deadly narco terrorist attack across the border in Juárez.
In May, Obama announced that 1,200 troops would be sent to the border to crack down on smuggling and drug cartel violence. Critics have called it political posturing in the run-up to November congressional elections and a response to Arizona’s recently passed immigration law.
Republicans in Texas consider the deployment of 250 troops in their state an insult. “The National Guard troops are not an adequate or long-term solution — they’re only a Band-Aid,” a spokeswoman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White told the Star-Telegram. “Maybe Texas should sue the federal government for not doing its job,” added U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville.
Senator Kyl of Arizona said in June that Obama is refusing to secure the border until Congress passes so-called immigration reform. “The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said at a town hall organized by a local Arizona Tea Party.
In June, the banksters admitted they fund the Mexican drug Mafia. Wachovia and Bank of America have moved money for Mexican drug smugglers.
“The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years,” Bloomberg reported. “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case, told Bloomberg.
Bankster participation has also financed the Mexican Mafia’s expansion into Texas and Arizona.
 | |
 | |
| Los Zetas crossed the border near Laredo, Texas, and reportedly seized two ranches in the area indicated by the orange square above. | |
Now drug smugglers are repeating the pattern in Texas.
On Saturday, the Cypress Times, an online newspaper in Cypress, Texas, reported that the murderous Los Zetas has crossed into the United States and taken over at least two ranches in the Laredo, Texas area. The owners of the farms have evacuated and were not harmed.
“I can personally vouch that this info came in late last night from a reliable police source inside the Laredo PD,” Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, told the online newspaper. “There is currently a standoff between the unknown size Zeta forces and U.S.
Kimberly Dvorak, writing for the Albuquerque Examiner, reports that two sources inside the Laredo Police Department have confirmed the incident. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity, writes Dvorak.
The DBKP blog contacted the the Laredo Police Department on Saturday. “We have been advised to say nothing. The Webb County Sheriff is taking the lead on this and they’re advising that they can’t confirm anything either,” a spokesperson told the blog.
On March 30, 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported Mexican drug cartels operated military-style
“Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle,” a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the newspaper. “Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training courses…. And that’s not something that we have seen before.” In the state of Tamaulipas, Los Zetas train with other mercenaries, including the Kaibiles from Guatemala, the officials said.
Obama announced his anemic response to border violence in May.
The Justice Department warned local police in Arizona and California about Los Zetas violence along the border. “The violence will spill over the Mexican border into the United States and law enforcement agencies in Texas, Arizona and Southern California can expect to encounter Los Zetas in the coming months,” warned an intelligence bulletin issued by the feds. The Justice Department and Los Zetas was founded by an elite force of assassins from Mexican Army deserters and is now integrated by corrupt ex-federal, state, and local police officers. Los Zetas was first hired as a private mercenary army for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, but since February of this year have gone independent and are now enemies of its former partner.
In the first eleven months of 2008, Los Zetas killers were directly responsible for the deaths of 5,300 people, including soldiers, their own operatives, civilians, journalists, and rival drug traffickers.
In 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon supposedly declared war on the drug cartels. Since Calderon’s declaration, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Mexico due to drug violence. In June of this year alone hundreds of people in Mexico died from drug-related violence.
Last week CBS News said Mexico’s drug Mafia had adopted “al-Qaeda tactics” after a car bomb exploded across the border from El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juárez, killing two federal officers and a musician and injuring 11 people, including several bystanders. In late June, the El Paso City Hall was struck by gunfire from a deadly narco terrorist attack across the border in Juárez.
In May, Obama announced that 1,200 troops would be sent to the border to crack down on smuggling and drug cartel violence. Critics have called it political posturing in the run-up to November congressional elections and a response to Arizona’s recently passed immigration law.
Republicans in Texas consider the deployment of 250 troops in their state an insult. “The National Guard troops are not an adequate or long-term solution — they’re only a Band-Aid,” a spokeswoman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White told the Star-Telegram. “Maybe Texas should sue the federal government for not doing its job,” added U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville.
Senator Kyl of Arizona said in June that Obama is refusing to secure the border until Congress passes so-called immigration reform. “The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said at a town hall organized by a local Arizona Tea Party.
In June, the banksters admitted they fund the Mexican drug Mafia. Wachovia and Bank of America have moved money for Mexican drug smugglers.
“The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years,” Bloomberg reported. “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case, told Bloomberg.
Bankster participation has also financed the Mexican Mafia’s expansion into Texas and Arizona.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
241 Teachers Fired In Washington D. C., Rhee Fires Teachers for Poor Performance
WASHINGTON -- Boisterous students protested outside McKinley Tech High School in northeast Washington Monday in response to a wave of D.C. Public Schools teacher layoffs.
Last week, more than 200 teachers were told their jobs had been eliminated, then escorted out of school buildings by police. The cuts are necessary due to declining enrollment and a $44 million budget deficit, school officials said.
"He (a police officer) didn't even allow me to get my lunch," said Sheila Gill, who has worked in D.C. Public Schools for 32 years and says her record is spotless. "He didn't allow me to get my personal items. He escorted me out of the building and told me I had to get off the parking lot immediately."
Upon learning about those cuts, students and parents held an informal protest outside McKinley Tech on Friday. After the situation escalated, police were called and arrested two people.
"It's our intention never to arrest anyone that's engaged in a protest," said D.C. police Capt. Jeff Herold. "What happened on Friday, it was an activist, and from the information that I have, the person wanted to get arrested."
Students gathered outside the school Monday for a formal protest, complete with signs and chants, including "Rhee is fired" and "Education, not termination."
"We organized this because we believe that the chancellor was unfair," said Brittany Timmons, McKinley's student vice president, who spread the word to wear black and plan to march.
The Washington Teacher blog also encouraged people to wear black to show support for those teachers affected by the cuts.
One student told NBC4 that she has been moved from her French III class to Spanish I because her French teacher was let go, but the school system denied that students are being placed in different subjects because of the layoffs and stressed that 60 percent of schools will lose one or no teachers and 80 percent of schools will lose two or fewer. The only change in students' class schedules resulting from the layoffs should be the time of day classes are offered.
One principal reportedly told teachers that all students who lost a teacher shouldn't receive grades lower than a "C," and the school system denied that as well, calling it a rumor.
The protesters marched to school headquarters, then the Wilson building, where they spoke with several members of the D.C. Council.
The most vocal council member, NBC4 reported, was Mayor for Life Marion Barry, who told students that Chancellor Michelle Rhee lied to them about the situation.
"We see our teachers walking out the door, we don't think it's fair," Timmons said. "We're uneased about it. We want our counselors back, the class of 2010 does, and we're going to protest until we get them back."
Rhonda Robinson, one of the counselors who was cut, said she doesn't believe a smaller workforce is the chancellor's goal.
"Today I found out from one of my very good friends that D.C. Public Schools is still hiring," she said. "She just finished the fingerprinting process, so that she could be hired."
"This whole situation has been highly illegal," McKinley senior Ikechukwu Umez-Eronini told NBC4. "The chancellor has been given power that the council members did not have the right to give her. This reduction of force was given without due process of law by any of the citizens here."
School officials are doing "everything possible to provide support for our schools, to minimize any disruption and to ensure schools can focus on serving students," Rhee said in a press release.
Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. promised the protesters' voices would be heard.
"I know the chairman is holding an oversight hearing and responsibility hearing," he said. "I think process takes a long time."
Police said their presence Monday was to protect protesters and the public.
The teachers who were forced to leave have been placed on administrative leave and will be given one month of severance pay.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tab For 'War On Terrorism' Tops $1 Trillion
The United States has spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a recently released Congressional report says. Adjusting for inflation, the outlays for conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world make the "war on terrorism" second only to World War II.
The report "Cost of Major U.S. Wars" by the Congressional Research Service attempts to compare war costs over a more than 230-year period -- from the American Revolution to the current day -- noting the difficulties associated with such a task.
Since the the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States has spent an estimated $1.15 trillion. World War II cost $4.1 trillion when converted to current dollars, although the tab in the 1940s was $296 billion.
CNN - World War II consumed a massive 36 percent of America's gross domestic product -- a broad measurement of the country's economic output. The post-9/11 cost of the conflicts is about 1 percent of GDP.
Comparisons of costs of wars over a 230-year period, however, are inherently problematic, the report says.
"One problem is how to separate costs of military operations from costs of forces in peacetime. In recent years, the DOD (Department of Defense) has tried to identify the additional 'incremental' expenses of engaging in military operations, over and above the costs of maintaining standing military forces."
"Figures are problematic, as well, because of difficulties in comparing prices from one vastly different era to another," according to the report. "Perhaps a more significant problem is that wars appear more expensive over time as the sophistication and cost of technology advances, both for military and for civilian activities."
The costs associated with the "war on terrorism" could still go much higher.
The report "Cost of Major U.S. Wars" by the Congressional Research Service attempts to compare war costs over a more than 230-year period -- from the American Revolution to the current day -- noting the difficulties associated with such a task.
Since the the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States has spent an estimated $1.15 trillion. World War II cost $4.1 trillion when converted to current dollars, although the tab in the 1940s was $296 billion.
CNN - World War II consumed a massive 36 percent of America's gross domestic product -- a broad measurement of the country's economic output. The post-9/11 cost of the conflicts is about 1 percent of GDP.
Comparisons of costs of wars over a 230-year period, however, are inherently problematic, the report says.
"One problem is how to separate costs of military operations from costs of forces in peacetime. In recent years, the DOD (Department of Defense) has tried to identify the additional 'incremental' expenses of engaging in military operations, over and above the costs of maintaining standing military forces."
"Figures are problematic, as well, because of difficulties in comparing prices from one vastly different era to another," according to the report. "Perhaps a more significant problem is that wars appear more expensive over time as the sophistication and cost of technology advances, both for military and for civilian activities."
The costs associated with the "war on terrorism" could still go much higher.
A Congressional Budget Office estimate from 2007 said the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could total $2.4 trillion by 2017, more than double the current amount.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Gang Members Coming Home From Iraq And Afghanistan With Military Training
Frank Mann - Being in a street gang is now forbidden for members of the U.S. armed forces. But you might not guess that if you were to visit U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to soldiers who have recently served there.
Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.
PHOTO GALLERY
Gangs in War Zones"I saw Maniac Latin Disciples graffiti out of Chicago," Stoleson said, adding that there was a lot of graffiti for Texas and California gangs, as well as Mexican drug cartels.
A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.
"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.
Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.
"It's scary," he said.
In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.
Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.
Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.
Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.
"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."
Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.
Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.
A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.
"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."
Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.
"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.
But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.
"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.
T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.
"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."
Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."
He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.
Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.
"The military needs to wake up," he said.
Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.
A soldier flashes Latin King signs.
(National Gang Intelligence Center)
(National Gang Intelligence Center)
PHOTO GALLERY
Gangs in War Zones
A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.
"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.
Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.
"It's scary," he said.
In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.
Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.
Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.
Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.
"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."
Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.
Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.
A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.
"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."
Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.
"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.
But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.
"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.
T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.
"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."
Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."
He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.
Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.
"The military needs to wake up," he said.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Quinnipiac National Poll: Obama Approval Rating 44%
President Obama's approval rating is the lowest its been in the 15 months since he took office, a new Quinnnipiac national poll finds. Just 44% now approve of the job he's doing as president, down from 45% last month; meanwhile, 46% disapprove.
Obama now has a 47.9% RCP Average Job Approval.
"President Barack Obama's approval rating hovers at an all-time low," said Quinnipiac assistant polling director Peter Brown. "The White House had predicted passage of the health care overhaul would boost his fortunes, but that has not been the case, and that legislation itself remains decidedly unpopular."
Congress remains astonishingly unpopular, with just 20% approving and 71% disapproving of the job its doing. On the health care reform bill that passed last month, 53% disapprove and just 39% approve of it.
Obama gets another selection for the Supreme Court this year, and voters trust him (46%) more than they do Senate Republicans (43%) to make the right choice. More (47%) believe that only qualifications should be considered by senators when voting on a nominee, while 43% believe political views should be a factor. Fifty-two percent approve of his first selection, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
"Perhaps most interesting is that almost five times as many voters think the justices allow their political views to play in their rulings rather than deciding cases solely on the law, perhaps a result of the all-out war that has been the case for most Supreme Court confirmations in the past two decades,” said Brown.
Obama now has a 47.9% RCP Average Job Approval.
"President Barack Obama's approval rating hovers at an all-time low," said Quinnipiac assistant polling director Peter Brown. "The White House had predicted passage of the health care overhaul would boost his fortunes, but that has not been the case, and that legislation itself remains decidedly unpopular."
Congress remains astonishingly unpopular, with just 20% approving and 71% disapproving of the job its doing. On the health care reform bill that passed last month, 53% disapprove and just 39% approve of it.
Obama gets another selection for the Supreme Court this year, and voters trust him (46%) more than they do Senate Republicans (43%) to make the right choice. More (47%) believe that only qualifications should be considered by senators when voting on a nominee, while 43% believe political views should be a factor. Fifty-two percent approve of his first selection, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
"Perhaps most interesting is that almost five times as many voters think the justices allow their political views to play in their rulings rather than deciding cases solely on the law, perhaps a result of the all-out war that has been the case for most Supreme Court confirmations in the past two decades,” said Brown.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Real Jobs, Fake Jobs
Lew Rockwell - In many ways, the unemployment numbers are much worse than they appear. One factor has been the timing of the US census. The bureau hired some 700,000 workers to collect data, people who otherwise were having a very difficult time navigating the choppy labor markets. They went for the jobs because they were a sure thing, paid decently, and didn’t require unusual skills (anyone can knock on a door and pester people about their private lives).
That inflated the jobs number for a while. But now these jobs are at an end — a highly unusual event in government employment, which usually lasts a lifetime. Now all of these people are facing the bracing reality of looking for employment in an economy wrecked by the government.
The press has been posting tributes to these people and their jobs and wailing about their fate now that their jobs are vanishing. And that raises questions. If these jobs were so great, why should they be eliminated at all? Surely, there is a way that these people could be transitioned to some other kind of government-funded service? That way, one might reason, people would have jobs, work would get done, and everyone would be better off.
Right? Wrong. Census jobs perform no market function, and the wages of these workers are paid by the taxpayer, meaning that these jobs are actually destructive of wealth. They siphon wealth and work out of the private sector into the wasteful sector. In fact, we can go further to say that eliminating these jobs is actually a step toward economic recovery.
Given the way economic fallacy has gone viral these days, it seems necessary to explain the issue further. The point of employment is not just jobs; it is productive and economically viable jobs.
It would be possible, for example, to reduce unemployment to its bare minimum simply by a mandatory regression in technology. We could abolish the trucking industry and force all freight to be carried by car, thereby creating millions of new jobs. Or we could abolish the car and create even more jobs for people to haul freight around by hand.
In each case, the number of jobs created would vastly outnumber the number of jobs lost. But would we be richer as a result? Not in any way. It would amount to a mandatory drop in living standards for everyone. These kinds of policies violate the Hazlitt dictum that part of good economic thinking consists in looking at what is good not just for one group (the unemployed), but all groups in society, and not just for the short term but for the long term.
The point of jobs is for people to work towards providing goods and services that are valued by the marketplace. If there is no consumer-driven demand for the things people are doing, their jobs are nothing more than waste. It does nothing for society if everyone is employed building pyramids, contrary to what Keynes once claimed. It would be senseless to have a business that employs thousands to do nothing but break new cellphones and repair them again, or to dig holes and fill them. And why is that? Because there is no economically rational basis for these tasks to exist.
To be sure, a wealthy entrepreneur can create a business doing anything, even something that loses money and is even socially ridiculous. But in order to sustain that, he will have to continue to throw good money after bad for an indefinite period of time, even unto the end of time. The day that he decides to stop doing it, the jobs will go away.
Of course, no businessman in his right mind wants to do such a thing. If you are going to create and retain uneconomic jobs, there is really only one way to do it: government. The government takes money from the private sector to throw around in inefficient ways, regardless of whether the job is worth doing in the first place.
The taxing and debt creation that is necessary to fund the government jobs is extracted from the real engine of wealth creation. This is not only true of census jobs but of all public sector jobs, whether in the federal bureaucracy, the military, or the educational sector. For this reason, the public sector’s payrolls really ought to be excluded from the employment rolls.
One objection might be that some of what public jobs produce is actually necessary for long-term economic health. We need an educated society, people might say, and even the results of the census are necessary for private-sector planning. But if that is true, there is no reason why the private sector would not have the incentive to provide these services themselves.
And they do in fact. The private sector has ever more sophisticated means for educating its employees, and making up for the inferior products of public schooling. It is the same with the census results, which are used by the state to keep track of us and control us; the private sector has its own methods of assessing demographic concerns over business location and product development. Even if there were government jobs that are in fact productive in their results, they could be performed at a profit instead of by extortion.
While everyone obsesses about the plight of census workers, there is a genuine calamity taking place in the private sector, which is being attacked by government every day. This is why the latest jobs numbers show nothing like robust job growth where it matters most. We see only slight overall increases from a decade ago, with boom-time jobs almost entirely wiped out in the bust.
This is what needs attention, but not from government programs. We need an absence of government programs, plus dramatic cuts in taxes and regulations of all sorts, and across the board. We need wage reductions in some sectors so that employment can grow in other sectors. Government cannot plan real job growth. It can only get out of the way and let it happen.
That inflated the jobs number for a while. But now these jobs are at an end — a highly unusual event in government employment, which usually lasts a lifetime. Now all of these people are facing the bracing reality of looking for employment in an economy wrecked by the government.
The press has been posting tributes to these people and their jobs and wailing about their fate now that their jobs are vanishing. And that raises questions. If these jobs were so great, why should they be eliminated at all? Surely, there is a way that these people could be transitioned to some other kind of government-funded service? That way, one might reason, people would have jobs, work would get done, and everyone would be better off.
Right? Wrong. Census jobs perform no market function, and the wages of these workers are paid by the taxpayer, meaning that these jobs are actually destructive of wealth. They siphon wealth and work out of the private sector into the wasteful sector. In fact, we can go further to say that eliminating these jobs is actually a step toward economic recovery.
Given the way economic fallacy has gone viral these days, it seems necessary to explain the issue further. The point of employment is not just jobs; it is productive and economically viable jobs.
It would be possible, for example, to reduce unemployment to its bare minimum simply by a mandatory regression in technology. We could abolish the trucking industry and force all freight to be carried by car, thereby creating millions of new jobs. Or we could abolish the car and create even more jobs for people to haul freight around by hand.
In each case, the number of jobs created would vastly outnumber the number of jobs lost. But would we be richer as a result? Not in any way. It would amount to a mandatory drop in living standards for everyone. These kinds of policies violate the Hazlitt dictum that part of good economic thinking consists in looking at what is good not just for one group (the unemployed), but all groups in society, and not just for the short term but for the long term.
The point of jobs is for people to work towards providing goods and services that are valued by the marketplace. If there is no consumer-driven demand for the things people are doing, their jobs are nothing more than waste. It does nothing for society if everyone is employed building pyramids, contrary to what Keynes once claimed. It would be senseless to have a business that employs thousands to do nothing but break new cellphones and repair them again, or to dig holes and fill them. And why is that? Because there is no economically rational basis for these tasks to exist.
To be sure, a wealthy entrepreneur can create a business doing anything, even something that loses money and is even socially ridiculous. But in order to sustain that, he will have to continue to throw good money after bad for an indefinite period of time, even unto the end of time. The day that he decides to stop doing it, the jobs will go away.
Of course, no businessman in his right mind wants to do such a thing. If you are going to create and retain uneconomic jobs, there is really only one way to do it: government. The government takes money from the private sector to throw around in inefficient ways, regardless of whether the job is worth doing in the first place.
The taxing and debt creation that is necessary to fund the government jobs is extracted from the real engine of wealth creation. This is not only true of census jobs but of all public sector jobs, whether in the federal bureaucracy, the military, or the educational sector. For this reason, the public sector’s payrolls really ought to be excluded from the employment rolls.
One objection might be that some of what public jobs produce is actually necessary for long-term economic health. We need an educated society, people might say, and even the results of the census are necessary for private-sector planning. But if that is true, there is no reason why the private sector would not have the incentive to provide these services themselves.
And they do in fact. The private sector has ever more sophisticated means for educating its employees, and making up for the inferior products of public schooling. It is the same with the census results, which are used by the state to keep track of us and control us; the private sector has its own methods of assessing demographic concerns over business location and product development. Even if there were government jobs that are in fact productive in their results, they could be performed at a profit instead of by extortion.
While everyone obsesses about the plight of census workers, there is a genuine calamity taking place in the private sector, which is being attacked by government every day. This is why the latest jobs numbers show nothing like robust job growth where it matters most. We see only slight overall increases from a decade ago, with boom-time jobs almost entirely wiped out in the bust.
This is what needs attention, but not from government programs. We need an absence of government programs, plus dramatic cuts in taxes and regulations of all sorts, and across the board. We need wage reductions in some sectors so that employment can grow in other sectors. Government cannot plan real job growth. It can only get out of the way and let it happen.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Jobless Americans: The Real Unemployment Rate 16.5% To 22%
Pallavi Gogoi - Raghavan Mayur, president at TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, follows unemployment data closely. So, when his survey for May revealed that 28% of the 1,000-odd households surveyed reported that at least one member was looking for a full-time job, he was flummoxed.
"Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government's numbers," says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors' Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a total of 14.6 million jobless people.
However, Mayur's polls continued to find much worse figures. The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.
Even Austan Goolsbee Has Been Skeptical
Mayur isn't alone in harboring such doubts, nor is he the first to wonder about inaccuracies. For years, many economists have pointed to evidence that the government data undercounts the unemployed. Economist Helen Ginsburg, co-founder of advocacy group National Jobs For All Coalition, and John Williams of the newsletter Shadow Government Statistics have been questioning these numbers for years.
In fact, Austan Goolsbee, who is now part of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a 2003 New York Times piece titled "The Unemployment Myth," that the government had "cooked the books" by not correctly counting all the people it should, thereby keeping the unemployment rate artificially low. At the time, Goolsbee was a professor at the University of Chicago. When asked whether Goolsbee still believes the government undercounts unemployment, a White House spokeswoman said Goolsbee wasn't available to comment.
Such undercounting of unemployment can be an enormously dangerous exercise today. It could lead to some lawmakers underestimate the gravity of the labor market's problems and base their policymaking on a far-less-grim picture than actually exists. Economically, and socially, that would make a bad situation much worse for America.
"The implications of such undercounting is that policymakers aren't going to be thinking as big as they should be," says Ginsburg, also a professor emeritus of economics at Brooklyn College. "It also means that [consumer] demand is not going to be there, because the income from people who are employed isn't going to be there."
Indeed, it will add additional stress to an already strained economy. Businesses that might start ramping up after seeing the jobless number drop could set themselves up for disappointment when customers don't appear or orders don't flow in.
College Grads Serving Fries
Plus, having a job today is quite different from what it was just a few years ago: Many Americans have had their hours cut and are working for less pay. A Pew Research survey found more than half of all adults in the labor force had either lost a job or suffered a reduction in income because of the recession.
Ginsburg says the biggest source of undercounting comes from people who can't find a full-time job that they're qualified to do, for instance recent college graduates who take part-time jobs at fast-food joints or retail stores. Today, the Labor Department estimates that 8.6 million people are in this category.
The federal government counts such people as employed. However, polls show that these folks actually consider themselves "unemployed" and "looking for a job," and probably accounted for a large chunk of TechnoMetrica's respondents.
Jobless Workers Who Disappear
Another major source of undercounting is the unemployed who've given up looking for jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline number counts as unemployed only people who have actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks. About 2.6 million people had pursued jobs in the past 12 months but, discouraged by the lack of opportunity, had stopped looking altogether.
"Isn't it interesting that if you stopped looking for a job, you evaporate as a jobless person and are just not counted," says Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute in Kingston, N.Y. Celente believes this kind of undercounting has suited the government politically. "It's what government does: Downplay disasters and amplify success."
According to the Pew Research Center, a large number of people are out of jobs for a longer period during this economic downturn. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months. That's almost double the previous post-World War II peak for this measure, which was 12.3 weeks in 1982-83.
Indeed, if all of the truly unemployed were counted, the rate would be significantly higher. The BLS, in a data point titled "U-6," says it counted the total unemployment rate in June at 16.5%.
Misreading Americans' Anxiety
However, John Williams, founder of Shadow Government Statistics, says when accounting for the long-term unemployed, the jobless rate runs up to as much as 22% currently. Williams's newsletter, which analyzes flaws in government economic data, points out that such a rate isn't that far from the 25% it hit during the Great Depression.
Both Celente and Ginsburg believe lawmakers' not-dire-enough view of unemployment is one reason why they didn't extend federal unemployment benefits. Of course, party politics is another deterrent. Ginsburg says the Administration's decision to tackle the health care reform over unemployment reflects its lack of priority.
By taking his eye off one of the most fundamental issues affecting the country, President Obama has seen his popularity sink. The most recent Public Policy Polling survey says 45% of voters approve of the job he's doing, while 52% disapprove -- the first time Obama's disapproval ratings have exceeded 50% in this survey.
It's obvious that Americans view unemployment more urgently than either lawmakers or the president. And if pollsters like Mayur or economists like Ginsburg and Williams are right, it will take longer to fix this hole because it's already bigger than Washington thinks.
"Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government's numbers," says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors' Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a total of 14.6 million jobless people.
However, Mayur's polls continued to find much worse figures. The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.
Even Austan Goolsbee Has Been Skeptical
Mayur isn't alone in harboring such doubts, nor is he the first to wonder about inaccuracies. For years, many economists have pointed to evidence that the government data undercounts the unemployed. Economist Helen Ginsburg, co-founder of advocacy group National Jobs For All Coalition, and John Williams of the newsletter Shadow Government Statistics have been questioning these numbers for years.
In fact, Austan Goolsbee, who is now part of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a 2003 New York Times piece titled "The Unemployment Myth," that the government had "cooked the books" by not correctly counting all the people it should, thereby keeping the unemployment rate artificially low. At the time, Goolsbee was a professor at the University of Chicago. When asked whether Goolsbee still believes the government undercounts unemployment, a White House spokeswoman said Goolsbee wasn't available to comment.
Such undercounting of unemployment can be an enormously dangerous exercise today. It could lead to some lawmakers underestimate the gravity of the labor market's problems and base their policymaking on a far-less-grim picture than actually exists. Economically, and socially, that would make a bad situation much worse for America.
"The implications of such undercounting is that policymakers aren't going to be thinking as big as they should be," says Ginsburg, also a professor emeritus of economics at Brooklyn College. "It also means that [consumer] demand is not going to be there, because the income from people who are employed isn't going to be there."
Indeed, it will add additional stress to an already strained economy. Businesses that might start ramping up after seeing the jobless number drop could set themselves up for disappointment when customers don't appear or orders don't flow in.
College Grads Serving Fries
Plus, having a job today is quite different from what it was just a few years ago: Many Americans have had their hours cut and are working for less pay. A Pew Research survey found more than half of all adults in the labor force had either lost a job or suffered a reduction in income because of the recession.
Ginsburg says the biggest source of undercounting comes from people who can't find a full-time job that they're qualified to do, for instance recent college graduates who take part-time jobs at fast-food joints or retail stores. Today, the Labor Department estimates that 8.6 million people are in this category.
The federal government counts such people as employed. However, polls show that these folks actually consider themselves "unemployed" and "looking for a job," and probably accounted for a large chunk of TechnoMetrica's respondents.
Jobless Workers Who Disappear
Another major source of undercounting is the unemployed who've given up looking for jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline number counts as unemployed only people who have actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks. About 2.6 million people had pursued jobs in the past 12 months but, discouraged by the lack of opportunity, had stopped looking altogether.
"Isn't it interesting that if you stopped looking for a job, you evaporate as a jobless person and are just not counted," says Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute in Kingston, N.Y. Celente believes this kind of undercounting has suited the government politically. "It's what government does: Downplay disasters and amplify success."
According to the Pew Research Center, a large number of people are out of jobs for a longer period during this economic downturn. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months. That's almost double the previous post-World War II peak for this measure, which was 12.3 weeks in 1982-83.
Indeed, if all of the truly unemployed were counted, the rate would be significantly higher. The BLS, in a data point titled "U-6," says it counted the total unemployment rate in June at 16.5%.
Misreading Americans' Anxiety
However, John Williams, founder of Shadow Government Statistics, says when accounting for the long-term unemployed, the jobless rate runs up to as much as 22% currently. Williams's newsletter, which analyzes flaws in government economic data, points out that such a rate isn't that far from the 25% it hit during the Great Depression.
Both Celente and Ginsburg believe lawmakers' not-dire-enough view of unemployment is one reason why they didn't extend federal unemployment benefits. Of course, party politics is another deterrent. Ginsburg says the Administration's decision to tackle the health care reform over unemployment reflects its lack of priority.
By taking his eye off one of the most fundamental issues affecting the country, President Obama has seen his popularity sink. The most recent Public Policy Polling survey says 45% of voters approve of the job he's doing, while 52% disapprove -- the first time Obama's disapproval ratings have exceeded 50% in this survey.
It's obvious that Americans view unemployment more urgently than either lawmakers or the president. And if pollsters like Mayur or economists like Ginsburg and Williams are right, it will take longer to fix this hole because it's already bigger than Washington thinks.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Tracking Of Americans Begins
Robert Wenzel - They have passed the health bill, they have passed the financial regulations bill and they have snuck stuff into the stimulus package bills. They are going to track your money and your body. Here’s the first few things they are doing. This is step one. It will only get worse from he
…the Health Care Bill mandates, according to Numismaster.com, Starting on January 1st in 2012, S federal law will require coin and bullion dealers to report to the Internal Revenue Service all gold and silver coin purchases and sales greater than $600.
No that is not an error, they tacked the gold coin tracking regulations into the health bill. They are just tacking stuff on wherever they can.
As for your body, you will be required to have an “electronic health record”, by 2014. They snuck this into one of the “stimulus” bills. The electronic record will include an obesity rating. The information will be required to be on a “national exchange” with only secure access (Hah!). Why the F does your obesity rating have to be on a national exchange? This is a tip off to how micro-managed they are going to attempt to run your life.
Keep in mind that the health bill and financial “reform” bill are thousands of pages, with much of the details left up to the new agencies to fill in. Obama is appointing major league interventionists to head these agencies. They are completely clueless as to how an economy works. Their regs will be over the top. It will stifle America in so many ways, it is difficult to imagine. I was in East Berlin the year before the Wall came down. I saw what constant monitoring and micro-management did to people. It is not pretty. The gray, the drab, the despair was everywhere. When you can only take orders and wait for approvals and are constantly watched, it saps the life out of you. America is going to be changing and the government is going to try and watch you and monitor your vitals, as if you were a lab rat, as it does the changing.
It is not going to be pretty.
…the Health Care Bill mandates, according to Numismaster.com, Starting on January 1st in 2012, S federal law will require coin and bullion dealers to report to the Internal Revenue Service all gold and silver coin purchases and sales greater than $600.
No that is not an error, they tacked the gold coin tracking regulations into the health bill. They are just tacking stuff on wherever they can.
As for your body, you will be required to have an “electronic health record”, by 2014. They snuck this into one of the “stimulus” bills. The electronic record will include an obesity rating. The information will be required to be on a “national exchange” with only secure access (Hah!). Why the F does your obesity rating have to be on a national exchange? This is a tip off to how micro-managed they are going to attempt to run your life.
Keep in mind that the health bill and financial “reform” bill are thousands of pages, with much of the details left up to the new agencies to fill in. Obama is appointing major league interventionists to head these agencies. They are completely clueless as to how an economy works. Their regs will be over the top. It will stifle America in so many ways, it is difficult to imagine. I was in East Berlin the year before the Wall came down. I saw what constant monitoring and micro-management did to people. It is not pretty. The gray, the drab, the despair was everywhere. When you can only take orders and wait for approvals and are constantly watched, it saps the life out of you. America is going to be changing and the government is going to try and watch you and monitor your vitals, as if you were a lab rat, as it does the changing.
It is not going to be pretty.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Justice Dept. Goes After Arizona But Not Sanctuary Cities
Washington Times - The Obama administration said this week that there is no reason to sue so-called sanctuary cities for refusing to cooperate with federal authorities, whereas Arizona’s new immigration law was singled out because it “actively interferes” with enforcement.
“There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law,” Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., told The Washington Times. “That’s what Arizona did in this case.”
But the author of the 1996 federal law that requires states and localities to cooperate says the administration is misreading it, and says drawing a distinction between sanctuary cities and Arizona is “flimsy justification” for suing the state.
“There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law,” Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., told The Washington Times. “That’s what Arizona did in this case.”
But the author of the 1996 federal law that requires states and localities to cooperate says the administration is misreading it, and says drawing a distinction between sanctuary cities and Arizona is “flimsy justification” for suing the state.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Obama And FDR: Failed Economic Policies
Walter Williams - Let's think about President Obama's failed economic stimulus program. Before getting to the nitty-gritty of why stimulus packages fail, let's look at the failed stimulus program of Obama's hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wrote in his diary: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!"
Morgenthau was being a bit gracious. The unemployment figures for FDR's first eight years were: 18 percent in 1935; 14 percent in 1936; by 1938, unemployment was back to 20 percent. The stock market fell nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, "With almost no important exception every measure he (Roosevelt) has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth." The last year of the Herbert Hoover administration, the top marginal income tax rate was raised from 24 to 63 percent. During the Roosevelt administration, the top rate was raised at first to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Hillsdale College economic historian Professor Burton Folsom notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a whopping 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000. Much more of the Hoover/FDR fiasco can be found in "Great Myths of the Great Depression" (http://fee.org/articles/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/).
The Great Depression did not end until after WWII. Why it lasted so long went unanswered until Harold L. Cole, professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lee E. Ohanian, professor of economics at UCLA, published their research project "How Government Prolonged the Depression" in the Journal of Political Economy (August 2004). Professor Cole explained, "The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes. Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened." Professors Cole and Ohanian argue that FDR's economic policies added at least seven years to the depression.
Where do the trillion-plus dollars come from that Congress and Obama are spending in an effort to stimulate the economy? How about Santa Claus, or maybe the Tooth Fairy? If you said, "Come on, Williams, you're being silly! The only way government can spend a dollar is to tax or borrow it," go to the head of the class. In the case of a tax, one should ask what would that taxpayer have done with the dollar had it not been taxed away. He would have spent it on something that would have created a job for someone. If the government hadn't borrowed the dollar, it might have been invested in some project that would have created a job. When government taxes, borrows and spends, it shifts unemployment from one sector to another. Of course, the sector that benefits tends to be a political favorite of the shifter.
Between 1787 and 1930, our nation has seen both mild and severe economic downturns, sometimes called panics, that have ranged from one to seven years. During that interval, no one considered it to be the business of the federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression because there was no constitutional authority to do so. It took Hoover, FDR and a frightened and derelict U.S. Supreme Court to turn what might have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 15-year meltdown.
Morgenthau was being a bit gracious. The unemployment figures for FDR's first eight years were: 18 percent in 1935; 14 percent in 1936; by 1938, unemployment was back to 20 percent. The stock market fell nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, "With almost no important exception every measure he (Roosevelt) has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth." The last year of the Herbert Hoover administration, the top marginal income tax rate was raised from 24 to 63 percent. During the Roosevelt administration, the top rate was raised at first to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Hillsdale College economic historian Professor Burton Folsom notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a whopping 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000. Much more of the Hoover/FDR fiasco can be found in "Great Myths of the Great Depression" (http://fee.org/articles/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/).
The Great Depression did not end until after WWII. Why it lasted so long went unanswered until Harold L. Cole, professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lee E. Ohanian, professor of economics at UCLA, published their research project "How Government Prolonged the Depression" in the Journal of Political Economy (August 2004). Professor Cole explained, "The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes. Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened." Professors Cole and Ohanian argue that FDR's economic policies added at least seven years to the depression.
Where do the trillion-plus dollars come from that Congress and Obama are spending in an effort to stimulate the economy? How about Santa Claus, or maybe the Tooth Fairy? If you said, "Come on, Williams, you're being silly! The only way government can spend a dollar is to tax or borrow it," go to the head of the class. In the case of a tax, one should ask what would that taxpayer have done with the dollar had it not been taxed away. He would have spent it on something that would have created a job for someone. If the government hadn't borrowed the dollar, it might have been invested in some project that would have created a job. When government taxes, borrows and spends, it shifts unemployment from one sector to another. Of course, the sector that benefits tends to be a political favorite of the shifter.
Between 1787 and 1930, our nation has seen both mild and severe economic downturns, sometimes called panics, that have ranged from one to seven years. During that interval, no one considered it to be the business of the federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression because there was no constitutional authority to do so. It took Hoover, FDR and a frightened and derelict U.S. Supreme Court to turn what might have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 15-year meltdown.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Top Clinton Official: Only a Terrorist Attack Can Save Obama
Paul Joseph Watson - A former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton says that the only thing which can rescue Barack Obama’s increasingly tenuous grip on power as his approval figures continue to plunge is a terror attack on the scale of Oklahoma City or 9/11, another startling reminder that such events only ever serve to benefit those in authority.
Buried in a Financial Times article about Obama’s “growing credibility crisis” and fears on behalf of Democrats that they could lose not only the White House but also the Senate to Republicans, Robert Shapiro makes it clear that Obama is relying on an October surprise in the form of a terror attack to rescue his presidency.
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, adding, “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
Shapiro’s veiled warning should not be dismissed lightly. He was undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs dung Clinton’s tenure in the Oval Office and also acted as principal economic adviser to Clinton in his 1991-1992 campaign. Shapiro is now Director of the Globalization Initiative of NDN and also Chair of the Climate Task Force. He is a prominent globalist who has attended numerous Bilderberg Group meetings over the past decade.
Shapiro is clearly communicating the necessity for a terror attack to be launched in order to give Obama the opportunity to unite the country around his agenda in the name of fighting terrorists, just as President Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11 when his approval ratings shot up from around 50% to well above 80%.
Similarly, Bill Clinton was able to extinguish an anti-incumbent rebellion which was brewing in the mid 1990’s by exploiting the OKC bombing to demonize his political enemies as right-wng extremists.As Jack Cashill points out, Clinton “descended on Oklahoma City with an approval rating in the low 40s and left town with a rating well above 50 and the Republican revolution buried in the rubble.”
Anti-incumbent fever is dominating the political climate once again, with establishment Democrats facing serious challenges from Tea Party candidates, people like Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid, who has a battle on his hands against Sharron Angle, a candidate the establishment media has attempted to demonize as a far-right extremist because she supports populist measures like removing sodium fluoride from water supplies and supports the Oath Keepers group, an organization centered around upholding states’ rights and the U.S. Constitution.
Only by exploiting a domestic terror attack which can be blamed on right-wing radicals can Obama hope to reverse the tide of anti-incumbency candidates that threaten to drastically dilute the power monopoly of establishment candidates from both major political parties in Washington.
As we highlighted yesterday, Shapiro is by no means the first to point out that terror attacks on U.S. soil and indeed anywhere in the world serve only to benefit those in positions of power.
CNN host Rick Sanchez admitted on his show this week that the deadly bombings in Uganda which killed 74 people were “helpful” to the military-industrial complex agenda to expand the war on terror into Africa.
During the latter years of the Bush presidency, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld mused with Pentagon top brass that shrinking Capitol Hill support for expanding the war on terror could be corrected with the aid of another terror attack.
Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, told the Toronto Star in July 2007 that “The key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago.”
The same sentiment was also explicitly expressed in a 2005 GOP memo, which yearned for new attacks that would “validate” the President’s war on terror and “restore his image as a leader of the American people.”
In June 2007, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party Dennis Milligan said that there needed to be more attacks on American soil for President Bush to regain popular approval.
Given the fact that a terror attack on U.S. soil will only serve to rescue Barack Obama’s failing presidency, and will do absolutely nothing to further the aims of any so-called “right wing extremists” the attack is blamed on, who should we suspect as the masterminds behind any such acts of terror? Surely not Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief string puller, the son of an Israeli terrorist who helped bomb hotels and marketplaces, and the man who once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste….an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
Undoubtedly, the first people we should suspect as culprits in the event of a domestic terror attack in the United States are the individuals Obama fronts for, globalists who are desperate to neutralize the growing success of grass-roots movements who have ridden a wave of rising resentment against big government as a means of obtaining real political power.
Buried in a Financial Times article about Obama’s “growing credibility crisis” and fears on behalf of Democrats that they could lose not only the White House but also the Senate to Republicans, Robert Shapiro makes it clear that Obama is relying on an October surprise in the form of a terror attack to rescue his presidency.
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, adding, “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
Shapiro’s veiled warning should not be dismissed lightly. He was undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs dung Clinton’s tenure in the Oval Office and also acted as principal economic adviser to Clinton in his 1991-1992 campaign. Shapiro is now Director of the Globalization Initiative of NDN and also Chair of the Climate Task Force. He is a prominent globalist who has attended numerous Bilderberg Group meetings over the past decade.
Shapiro is clearly communicating the necessity for a terror attack to be launched in order to give Obama the opportunity to unite the country around his agenda in the name of fighting terrorists, just as President Bush did in the aftermath of 9/11 when his approval ratings shot up from around 50% to well above 80%.
Similarly, Bill Clinton was able to extinguish an anti-incumbent rebellion which was brewing in the mid 1990’s by exploiting the OKC bombing to demonize his political enemies as right-wng extremists.As Jack Cashill points out, Clinton “descended on Oklahoma City with an approval rating in the low 40s and left town with a rating well above 50 and the Republican revolution buried in the rubble.”
Anti-incumbent fever is dominating the political climate once again, with establishment Democrats facing serious challenges from Tea Party candidates, people like Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid, who has a battle on his hands against Sharron Angle, a candidate the establishment media has attempted to demonize as a far-right extremist because she supports populist measures like removing sodium fluoride from water supplies and supports the Oath Keepers group, an organization centered around upholding states’ rights and the U.S. Constitution.
Only by exploiting a domestic terror attack which can be blamed on right-wing radicals can Obama hope to reverse the tide of anti-incumbency candidates that threaten to drastically dilute the power monopoly of establishment candidates from both major political parties in Washington.
As we highlighted yesterday, Shapiro is by no means the first to point out that terror attacks on U.S. soil and indeed anywhere in the world serve only to benefit those in positions of power.
CNN host Rick Sanchez admitted on his show this week that the deadly bombings in Uganda which killed 74 people were “helpful” to the military-industrial complex agenda to expand the war on terror into Africa.
During the latter years of the Bush presidency, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld mused with Pentagon top brass that shrinking Capitol Hill support for expanding the war on terror could be corrected with the aid of another terror attack.
Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, told the Toronto Star in July 2007 that “The key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago.”
The same sentiment was also explicitly expressed in a 2005 GOP memo, which yearned for new attacks that would “validate” the President’s war on terror and “restore his image as a leader of the American people.”
In June 2007, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party Dennis Milligan said that there needed to be more attacks on American soil for President Bush to regain popular approval.
Given the fact that a terror attack on U.S. soil will only serve to rescue Barack Obama’s failing presidency, and will do absolutely nothing to further the aims of any so-called “right wing extremists” the attack is blamed on, who should we suspect as the masterminds behind any such acts of terror? Surely not Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief string puller, the son of an Israeli terrorist who helped bomb hotels and marketplaces, and the man who once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste….an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
Undoubtedly, the first people we should suspect as culprits in the event of a domestic terror attack in the United States are the individuals Obama fronts for, globalists who are desperate to neutralize the growing success of grass-roots movements who have ridden a wave of rising resentment against big government as a means of obtaining real political power.
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