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Now, that is the attitude to take with NAGP!!
Revenge of the Deep State
The unseen government within the government has so much data on Americans that it can reward or punish at its own discretion.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community — part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections — now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States.
Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety — each one lying on top of a predecessor — eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late.
Here is the back story.
In the pre-Revolutionary era, British courts in London secretly issued general warrants to British government agents in America. The warrants were not based on any probable cause of crime or individual articulable suspicion; they did not name the person or thing to be seized or identify the place to be searched. They authorized agents to search where they wished and seize what they found.
The use of general warrants was so offensive to our Colonial ancestors that it whipped up more serious opposition to British rule and support for the revolutionaries than the "no taxation without representation" argument did. And when it came time for Americans to write the Constitution, they prohibited general warrants in the Fourth Amendment, the whole purpose of which was to guarantee the right to be left alone by forcing the government to focus on bad guys and prohibit it from engaging in fishing expeditions. But the fishing expeditions would come.
In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was intended to rein in the government spying on Americans that had been unleashed by the Nixon administration. FISA established a secret court and permitted it to issue warrants authorizing spying on agents of foreign governments when physically present in the United States.
People born in foreign countries who are here for benevolent or benign or even evil purposes have the same constitutional protections as those of us born here. That's because the critical parts of the Constitution that insulate human freedom from the government's reach protect "persons," not just citizens. But FISA ignored that.
And FISA was easy for the government to justify. It was a pullback from Richard Nixon's lawlessness. It required the feds to seek a warrant from federal judges. The targets were not Americans. Never mind, the argument went, that FISA has no requirement of showing any probable cause of crime or even articulable suspicion on the part of the foreign target; this will keep us safe. Besides, the government insisted, it can't be used against Americans.
That argument was bought by presidents, members of Congress and nearly all federal courts that examined it. We don't know whether the authors of this scheme really wanted federal spies to be able to spy on anyone at will, but that is where we are today. Through secret courts whose judges cannot keep records of their own decisions and secret permissions by select committees of Congress whose members cannot tell their constituents or other members of Congress what they have learned in secret, FISA has morphed so as to authorize spying down a slippery slope of targets, from foreign agents to all foreigners to anyone who communicates with foreigners to anyone capable of communicating with them.
The surveillance state regime today permits America's 60,000 military and civilian domestic spies to access in real time all the landline and mobile telephone calls and all the desktop and mobile device keystrokes and all the digital data created and used by anyone in the United States. The targets today are not just ordinary Americans; they are justices on the Supreme Court, military brass in the Pentagon, agents in the FBI, local police in cities and towns, and the man in the Oval Office.
The British system that arguably impelled our secession in 1776 is now here on steroids.
Enter the outsider as president. Donald Trump has condemned the spying and leaking, as he is a victim of it. While he was president-elect, the spies told him they knew of his alleged misbehaviors — vehemently denied — in a Moscow hotel room. Last week, his White House staff was shaken by what the spies did with what they learned from a former Trump aide.
Trump's former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, himself a former military spy, spoke to the Russian ambassador to the United States in December via telephone in Trump Tower. It was a benign conversation. He knew it was being monitored, as he is a former monitor of such communications. But he mistakenly thought that those who were monitoring him were patriots as he is. They were not.
They violated federal law by revealing in part what Flynn had said, and they did so in a manner to embarrass and infuriate Trump.
Why would they do this? Perhaps because they feared Flynn's being in the White House, since he knows the power and depth of the deep state. Perhaps to send a message to Trump because he once compared American spies to Nazis. Perhaps because they believe that their judgment of the foreign dangers America faces is superior to the president's. Perhaps because they hate and fear the outsider in the White House.
The chickens have come home to roost. In our misguided efforts to keep the country safe, we have neglected to keep it free. We have enabled a deep state to become powerful enough to control a powerful president. We have placed so much data and so much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, opaque spies that they can use it as they see fit — even to the point of committing federal felonies. Now some have boasted that they can manipulate and thus control the president of the United States by selectively revealing and concealing what they know about anyone, including the president himself.
This is a perilous state of affairs, brought about by the maniacal passion for surveillance spawned under George W. Bush and perfected under Barack Obama — all with utter indifference to the widespread constitutional violations and permanent destruction of personal liberties.
This is not the government the Framers gave us. But it is one far more dangerous to human freedom than the one from which they seceded in 1776.
COPYRIGHT 2017 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO | DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Photo Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty.
http://reason.com/archives/2017/02/23/revenge-of-the-deep-state
Gmenfan - From the moment they crossed the border in the first place. Some people just dont think law applies to them. Seems to be a common Democratic trait.
Wow_happens28 - I agree, between student loans and all the other ways the Democratically elected federal government has worked to totally dominate and subjugate the population, it is a wonder we are not all in government housing already.
Why Trump's Immigration Crackdown Could Sink U.S. Home Prices
by Prashant Gopal
February 22, 2017, 4:01 AM CST
Even economic news is slanted, this turns into a real boo hoo rather quickly.
In San Francisco, an Indian software engineer on a work permit canceled plans to bid on a $900,000 home. In Washington, a Brazilian nonprofit executive passed on a fixer-upper near her office. And, in Mesa, Arizona, a 24-year-old son of undocumented Mexican immigrants won the trust of a bank -- a green light for a mortgage -- but now fears deportation.
President Donald Trump’s immigration policies threaten to crack a foundation of the American economy: the residential real estate market. Legal and otherwise, immigrants, long a pillar of growth in homebuying, are no longer feeling the warm welcome and optimism necessary for their biggest purchase.
“I feel like with one stroke of Trump’s signature everything can be taken away, even all my hard work,” said Juan Rodriguez, the 24-year-old whose parents moved from Mexico when he was 7. He now works full time while earning his college degree.
President Barack Obama had protected immigrants like Rodriquez, often called “dreamers,” or undocumented Americans who arrived as young children and are often fully integrated into American society.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration detailed plans for a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, saying the authorities would deport many more people without court hearings. Under Obama, the government focused on those convicted of violent crimes; Trump would lower the bar to include fraud and, in some cases, a belief the residents threatened public safety.
Even workers with green cards and work visas under the H1-B program for skilled foreign workers are worried about possible restrictions under Trump. The housing markets most at risk include Miami, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, which have the biggest concentrations of foreign-born buyers.
While the Trump administration indicated it would exempt dreamers, stepped-up immigration raids and the travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries -- blocked in court -- are creating panic in many who believed that their American dream was within sight.
“If Trump gets the immigration plan he wants, the housing market will get hit harder than any other,” said Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute. If “millions of people get deported and more people don’t come in to take their place, then you’ll have downward pressure on home prices, especially in urban areas.”
The immigrant housing market is often underappreciated, in part, because undocumented workers and the companies that cater to them sometimes like to fly below the radar.
Some smaller firms will make loans to the undocumented, with higher interest rates. A few larger lenders such as Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T Corp. market to dreamers, who can qualify for conventional Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration mortgages.
Undocumented Homeowners
A third of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. live in a home that they or a family member or friend own, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Now, some lenders are starting to get nervous. Las Vegas-based Alterra Home Loans focuses on mortgages for immigrants, including dreamers and the undocumented. At the early stages of government loans, lenders can be on the hook in defaults. “We’re proceeding cautiously,” said Jason Madiedo, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
If financing dries up and borrowers lose faith, it will mark a major reversal in the market. New arrivals are expected to account for more than a third of growth of homeowners this decade, according to University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers.
While the U.S. homeownership rate in 2015 was the same as it was in 1994 -- 66 percent -- it has risen 2.4 percentage points for the foreign-born population, to more than half, according to real estate website Trulia.
Fueling Demand
Fueling housing demand, immigrants replace baby boomers retiring from the labor force, according to University of Washington economist Jacob Vigdor.
By his reckoning, the country’s 40 million immigrants add $3.7 trillion to total housing wealth. In Houston’s home county, the newcomers boosted the value of the typical home by $25,000 during the decade ended in 2010. Between 2015 and 2065, according to a Pew Research projection, future immigrants and their descendants will account for 88 percent of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people.
Other foreign buyers could step in. Trump’s friendly stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin is heartening buyers from that country. They had held back after his 2014 Crimean takeover prompted Obama to impose sanctions, according to Edward Mermelstein, a New York-based real estate lawyer who represents wealthy foreigners. His Russian clients negotiating home purchases in New York and Miami more than doubled since Trump took office.
But, among groups targeted by Trump, conversations around kitchen tables are now less about payments and more about politics.
Skittish Buyers
Even immigrants with high-paying jobs and valid visas are getting skittish. Two of them asked not to be identified because of fears of recrimination.
The 32-year-old Silicon Valley software engineer from India gave up on buying because Trump had so rattled him and his wife. He moved to the U.S. seven years ago and decided to become a homeowner after marrying a biomedical engineer from his home country a few months ago.
The newlyweds have H1-B visas, a program that technology and other companies rely on to hire 85,000 people each year.
“We were about to make some offers,” he said. “But we don’t know what news will come out and how that will affect our jobs.”
Their real estate agent, Nomita Shahani, said a colleague in her office just had a customer with an H-1B visa pull out of a purchase contract in Fremont, California, because of similar concerns.
“All morning clients have been calling me,” Shahani said. “We don’t know which way it will go, but if Trump keeps making it hard to hire people from overseas, the housing market will take a hit.”
Back-up Plans
Even immigrants who marry U.S. citizens are losing faith. The 36-year-old Brazilian nonprofit executive, whose husband is an American, is six months away from a permanent green card, one step behind citizenship. After the travel ban and the ensuing chaos, she abandoned plans to bid on a Maryland home only a 15-minute drive from her office.
“I just don’t want to take my life savings and commit to a house because even if things go my way with the green card, what if the climate here continues to get more and more aggressive toward immigrants?” said the executive, who is working with real estate brokerage Redfin.
Others are even factoring deportation into their homebuying plans. Yadira Hernandez, a 24-year-old dreamer who was five when she arrived in Phoenix with her mother, isn’t giving up her search.
While scouting property in the $175,000 range, she’s also planning for the worst. If she gets deported, she’ll rely on a family member to take over mortgage payments.
Hernandez, who has two children and is working full time as a credit counselor, has a goal in her sights: “I would be the first person in my family to own a house.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-22/why-trump-s-immigration-crackdown-could-sink-u-s-home-prices
Monopolies Are Worse Than We Thought
MHO, not particularly good article but glad someone is putting it out in public.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-15/monopolies-are-worse-than-we-thought
Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general -- when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking a bigger and bigger share of sales. This sort of creeping oligopoly acts much like a literal monopoly -- it raises prices, limits market size and tends to make the economy less efficient.
There’s now evidence that market concentration could also be hurting workers, by decreasing the share of national income that they receive. It’s probably making inequality worse. I also suspect that creeping monopoly will prove to be one of the main reasons for decreasing business dynamism. And it could even be a contributor to slow productivity growth. In other words, many of the diseases in our economy can probably be traced, at least in part, to the problem of market concentration. And it's getting worse:
It's Good to Be Big
Change in sales concentration between 1982 and 2012 of top four companies.
Source: "Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share," David Autor, David Dorn, Lawrence Katz, Christina Patterson, and John Van Reenen
But before we devise strategies to fight the tide of monopoly, we need a more complete diagnosis. Why is monopoly power increasing? The best minds in the econ profession are on the case, but there’s no definitive answer yet.
In a previous post, I mentioned a couple of potential causes. The obvious culprit would be a more lax attitude toward antitrust enforcement. If free-market fundamentalism caused the U.S. to be friendlier toward big mergers since the 1990s, this could have encouraged concentration. One problem with this story is that antitrust fines have actually been on the rise:
Monopolies Not Welcome
Federal fines in millions of dollars for antitrust violations
Source: Gibson & Dunn
Another possible cause is regulation. Measured by sheer number of words, the amount of federal regulation has been on the rise:
Bedtime Reading
Number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Source: Regulatory Studies Center, Columbia College
Regulation can increase monopoly power by raising barriers to entry. If a new startup has to wade through oceans of red tape, pay millions of dollars in compliance costs and develop a whole regulatory compliance infrastructure just to start to be able to compete in a market, it gives the big established players a huge and enduring advantage. Big companies are able to bear the cost of regulation much better than small ones. If it turns out that regulation is a central reason behind increased market concentration, I’ll have to become much more libertarian.
But there are some problems with the regulation story. Most of the negative trends that economists are worried about -- decreased labor income, slow productivity growth, inequality and reduced dynamism -- are recent developments. Most of them have only been significant since about 2000. But federal regulation has been steadily increasing for a number of decades. In fact, the biggest increase was in the 1960s. Also, there’s evidence that the decline in dynamism isn’t associated with increased federal regulation. So we should be careful before concluding that red tape is the problem here.
That leaves technological explanations. A recent paper by David Autor, David Dorn, Lawrence Katz, Christina Patterson and John van Reenen speculates that tech might have enabled the rise of a few “superstar” companies in each industry. The fact that leaders in more concentrated industries also tend to have higher productivity supports this hypothesis. Technology might have simply changed the nature of markets so that the winners take most of the profits.
This could happen because network effects have increased. For example, iPhones are popular in part because of Apple’s large app store, and the app store is large because developers want to write apps for popular phones. Or in finance, having a larger network of counterparties could be more important to banks in the internet age.
Another possibility is that better managed companies are more innovative. As technology has progressed and competition has become more global, continuous innovation has become more important to corporate success than in the past. That would tend to give a bigger advantage to companies whose management is more committed to innovation. Those companies could simply be out-competing their rivals.
A third possibility is that information technology has simply broadened the arena of competition. Prestigious brands are now able to penetrate local markets all over the world like never before, with the power of internet advertising. And thanks to online supply chain management, big corporations can push out regional rivals and small businesses even more effectively.
If technology is behind the increase in monopoly power, it’s going to be a tough problem to solve. The old remedies of antitrust enforcement and increased competition won’t work -- the superstars will win and take most of the market, and it will be back to square one. Meeting the challenge of tech-powered monopoly would require radically new policy ideas. I don’t have an answer yet, but economists should start thinking about this.
America will learn Civics 101
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
Vizio, one of the world's biggest makers of Smart TVs, is paying $2.2 million to settle charges that it collected viewing habits from 11 million devices without the knowledge or consent of the people watching them.
FURTHER READING
Man-in-the-middle attack on Vizio TVs coughs up owners’ viewing habits
According to a complaint filed Monday by the US Federal Trade Commission, Internet-connected TVs from Vizio contained ACR—short for automated content recognition—software. Without asking for permission, the ACR code captured second-by-second information about the video the TVs displayed. The software collected other personal information and transmitted it, along with the viewing data, to servers controlled by the manufacturer. Vizio then sold the data to unnamed third-parties for purposes of audience measurement, analysis, and tracking.
"For all of these uses, Defendants provide highly specific, second-by-second information about television viewing," FTC lawyers wrote in Monday's complaint. "Each line of a report provides viewing information about a single television. In a securities filing, Vizio states that its data analytics program, for example, 'provides highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale with great accuracy, which can be used to generate intelligent insights for advertisers and media content providers.'"
In an e-mailed statement, Vizio officials wrote: "The ACR program never paired viewing data with personally identifiable information such as name or contact information, and the Commission did not allege or contend otherwise. Instead, as the Complaint notes, the practices challenged by the government related only to the use of viewing data in the ‘aggregate’ to create summary reports measuring viewing audiences or behaviors."
The tracking started in February 2014 on both new TVs and previously sold devices that didn't originally ship with ACR software installed. The software periodically appended IP addresses to the collected data and also made it possible for more detailed personal information—including age, sex, income, marital status, household size, education level, home ownership, and home values—to be associated. The collection occurred under a setting that was described as a "Smart Interactivity" feature that "enables program offers and suggestions." The menu never informed users that the feature also transmitted viewing habits or other personal information. The complaint offered these additional technical details:
Through the ACR software, Vizio's televisions transmit information about what a consumer is watching on a second-by-second basis. Defendants’ ACR software captures information about a selection of pixels on the screen and sends that data to Vizio servers, where it is uniquely matched to a database of publicly available television, movie, and commercial content. Defendants collect viewing data from cable or broadband service providers, set-top boxes, external streaming devices, DVD players, and over-the-air broadcasts. Defendants have stated that the ACR software captures up to 100 billion data points each day from more than 10 million VIZIO televisions. Defendants store this data indefinitely.
Defendants’ ACR software also periodically collects other information about the television, including IP address, wired and wireless MAC addresses, WiFi signal strength, nearby WiFi access points, and other items.
Big Brother is watching
FURTHER READING
LG smart TV snooping extends to home networks, second blogger says
The allegations are only the latest to raise troubling privacy concerns about Internet-connected TVs and other so-called Internet-of-things devices. In late 2015, security researchers found that Vizio TVs failed to properly validate the HTTPS certificates of servers they connected to when transmitting viewing-habit data. That made it trivial for anyone who had the ability to monitor and control the Internet traffic passing between the TV and the Vizio servers to impersonate the servers and view or tamper with the transmitted data. Smart TVs manufactured by LG have also been caught collecting potentially sensitive data, including a list of shows being watched, the names of files contained on connected USB drives, and the names of files shared on home or office networks.
Under the terms of the settlement, Vizio will pay $1.5 million to the FTC and $700,000 to the New Jersey Division of Consumer affairs. The settlement also requires Vizio to delete all data collected before March 1, 2016. Additionally, Vizio has agreed to prominently disclose and obtain express consent for all future data collection. The FTC has more details about the case here and here.
Post updated to add comment from Vizio.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/vizio-smart-tvs-tracked-viewers-around-the-clock-without-consent/
Perhaps Leonard Peltier could do another endorsement?
Exit Poll: 58 Percent of Hispanic Voters Back Donald Trump’s Immigration Policies
Excerpted from the article:
Twice as many Hispanic voters think immigration enforcement is too lax than those who think it’s too strict (36.3 percent versus 18.3 percent).
“The conventional wisdom that advocating enforcement of immigration laws is a deal-killer for Hispanic voters is just plain wrong,” Dan Stein, president of FAIR, said in a statement. “It is a myth perpetuated by groups and individuals with a political stake in maintaining mass immigration and by a bunch of high-price political consultants who continually misread public sentiment.” Stein added:
As Republicans lay out their immigration agenda for the next two years in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they would be well-advised to ignore the self-anointed spokespeople and the political consulting class. Enforcing immigration laws, securing our borders, protecting American workers and taxpayers, and setting reasonable limits on immigration enjoy broad public support, including large numbers of Hispanic Americans who stand to benefit economically from the policies President-elect Trump ran on.
Another poll, released on Election Day, found 54 percent of voters—and 52 percent of Hispanic voters—want annual immigration flows into the U.S. slashed in half or reduced to zero.
Another poll released in July found that voters in Midwestern states, which carried Trump into the White House, were on the whole deeply concerned about immigration and its effects on the job market and their wages.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/17/exit-poll-58-percent-hispanic-voters-back-donald-trumps-immigration-policies/
Well, there's your news - late again.
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=72917301&symbol=NAGP
Change the date, cut and paste, add another quarter. Repeat.
Instead of Raj & Joe, let's call them Pete and Repete.
You may be surprised, let's hope so.
The latinos I have talked with don't like Trump but do see the sense of what he is saying. They also realize Shillary will/is selling them out for the Muslims.
They figure they are here, so they are "in" and don't want more competition. Admit it is based on a small sample but wide demographic.
Si, hablo pico Espanol.
Check again. Late filling notice
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=72225523
Late filing notice not due for another week or so.
Do you want to make a bet?
The saying goes "No news is good news!"
So you have a lot to be happy about.
Ask yourself "Am I unaware and compliant?"
10,000:1 did not seem like a good idea to me, either, but it seems to have worked out OK for RaJoe&Co
The only reason I mention this was the talk of stockholder "tier will be eliminated".
Only two ways to eliminate a tier of stockholders: LOL buy them out or reverse them out.
WHAT?!?! Another reverse split coming?
Is "hope" the only reason you have a position in this stock?
Are there some more substantive reasons? If so, please. express them.
If you don't have the time or energy to go into detail, the high lights will do.
The trouble with "dangerous unicorns", beware of the unicorn.
this article is on point, with a few glaring discrepancies:
http://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/heres-the-danger-of-a-massive-tech-unicorns-meltdown.html
Leaking Alabama pipeline could restart this week, company says
By Dennis Pillion | dpillion@al.com
Colonial Pipeline says it could be ready to restart its Line 1 this week, meaning drivers throughout the Southeast will likely have to endure scattered gas station outages and price increases for at least a few more days.
The company is constructing a temporary bypass line around the leaking segment of pipe, which spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of gasoline in Shelby County, Ala. and shut down a major part of America's gasoline distribution system for more than a week.
"We anticipate being able to restart the line through the bypass this week," Colonial Pipeline public information officer Don Pozin said Sunday afternoon. "There's a lot of factors that can go into restart time, but our projections suggest that it will be this week.
"A more precise timetable really depends on a number of external factors, such as weather or other things that are outside the bounds of our control. At this time, we're staying with this week."
The bypass line would be about 500-700 feet long, Pozin said, and follow closely the route of the leaking pipeline.
Pozin said that allows pipeline workers to avoid the hazardous fumes around the assumed site of the leak.
Work crews have been limited in their access the site to make repairs or remove the spilled gas for days at a time due to high levels of gasoline and benzene vapors at the site.
"What [the bypass] does, is it allows us to work in a safe area, construct the pipeline and be able to connect it back to the existing line," he said.
Federal, state and local authorities on scene have said the vapors do not pose a health threat to local residents, or the nearby cities of Helena or Alabaster. Pozin said the company has installed multiple blockages to prevent gasoline from reaching the Cahaba River, which is home to numerous threatened and endangered species.
The leaking pipeline normally carries 1.3 million barrels of gasoline per day from refineries in Houston to distribution centers across the Southeast and East Coast. For now, Colonial is shipping gasoline on Line 2, normally used for diesel and other distillate products, to get around the leak but will not say how much of their product is currently going through.
Colonial is the country's largest pipeline operator by volume and, according to its web site, delivers 105 million gallons of petroleum products daily to distributors who serve approximately 50 million consumers, mostly in the Southeast and East Coast.
Colonial has said that consumers in the Southeast are more likely to feel the impacts of the pipeline outage since the East Coast has more alternate sources available.
Gas stations in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee have experienced outages and price spikes since the pipeline was shut down on Sept. 9, the day the leak was discovered.
The governors of six states have declared states of emergency allowing fuel delivery truckers to log longer hours on the highways to make deliveries until the situation is resolved.
Excavation put on hold
Friday, Colonial's plan was to dig out the leaking line and repair it in place. Now, those actions are being put on hold in favor of the bypass.
"We have focused on the bypass at this time," Pozin said. "We are still recovering product off of the pond, but work at the actual leak site because it was being impacted by the vapors, we have decided to go to the bypass solution.
"When that is constructed and we've got it back online, we'll be able to move more cautiously, with the health and safety of the workers being the primary concern, to be able to continue the work at the leak site."
Federal regulators from the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration are on scene to investigate the cause of the leak. Pozin said the DOT approved the plan to construct the bypass line and the agency would have to give authorization before the line is restarted.
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/09/leaking_alabama_pipeline_could.html
The arm of the bell ringers got tired.
Black Lives Matter activist changes tune on police following robbery
Oh, how ironic. Does this guy even have a brain?
A University of Houston grad student active in the local Black Lives Matter movement is suddenly all for police patrols in his neighborhood — after he was robbed at gunpoint outside his apartment.
Jerry Ford Jr., described as one the leaders of the BLM movement on campus, tells KTRK that he spotted the young man loitering outside his apartment one evening last week but thought little of it. But when he went to unlock the door, the man pulled a gun and stole Ford’s wallet and cell phone.
A U. of Houston grad student active in #BlackLivesMatter is suddenly all for police protecting his neighborhood. http://heat.st/2cA0pXP
1:28 PM - 15 Sep 2016
Photo published for Black Lives Matter Activist Changes Tune on Police Following Robbery
Black Lives Matter Activist Changes Tune on Police Following Robbery
Campus cops don’t patrol his neighborhood. That, he says, ‘has got to change.’
Ford lives at an apartment complex just a few blocks from the UH campus in an area that has seen a spate of robberies and thefts in recent weeks, including the burglary of dozens of vehicles. Because the housing is off-campus, it is not patrolled by University of Houston police officers. Ford says that needs to change.
“I hope they would take a bigger stance and put more security over here because you have a lot of people walking back and forth to class,” he told the station.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/09/15/black-lives-matter-activist-changes-tune-on-police-following-robbery.html
Yeah, i agree with you. Raj/Joe are guilty. They are guilty of a lot of silence, at the least. I guess they forgot to add mushroom farming to their list of failed enterprises.
No, I don't do short positions. Something inherently negative about that. But, sometimes I feel I have a negative position in NAGP, especially after the 10,000 to 1 reverse split.
Hey, when this "merger" occurs, what is your exposure to a reverse split?
What if they just take NAGP private ?
I'm sure you guys are protected though, right?
Yeah, i agree with you. Raj/Joe are guilty. They are guilty of a lot of silence, at the least. I guess they forgot to add mushroom farming to their list of failed enterprises.
No, I don't do short positions. Something inherently negative about that. But, sometimes I feel I have a negative position in NAGP, especially after the 10,000 to 1 reverse split.
Hey, when this "merger" occurs, what is your exposure to a reverse split?
What if they just take NAGP private ?
I'm sure you guys are protected though, right?
Pessimist? No. The price for optimism, NAGP has to show me any real progress, that would be a beginning.
if the merger is with NAEG, I'll expect more smoke and mirrors from the "international" partner(s).
Left hand in Singapore. Right hand in London.
NAGP is in the middle. Bingo.
Keep on pumpin' da smoke. NAGP is reducing debt. NAGP is getting current reporting. NAGP has a new transfer agent.
You guys gonna make money, yet. Raj told you so, didn't he?
Cokie Roberts: Dems ‘Nervously Beginning to Whisper’ About Hillary Replacement; Floats Biden as Possibility
Monday on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” ABC political commentator Cokie Roberts offered her thoughts on the apparent health issues regarding Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the how the party could be looking to handle things if a replacement is needed for Clinton.
?According to Roberts, there was already conversation within the party about such a possibility.
“The fact that it comes now when the polls are tightening and Democrats are already saying that Hillary was the only candidate who could not beat Trump and it is taking her off of the campaign trail, canceling her trip to California – it has them very nervously beginning to whisper about having her step aside and finding another candidate.”
When asked if that really could happen, Roberts called it “unlikely to be a real thing,” but floated the name of Vice President Joe Biden as a possible replacement.
“I think it is unlikely to be a real thing,” she added. “And I’m sure it is an overreaction of an already skittish party. But you know, they have looked at what happens in that circumstance. The Democratic National Committee chair convenes the committee and they vote. Now ironically, the candidate who everybody looks at is Joe Biden, who is older than Hillary Clinton. But then again, so is Donald Trump and by the way we know nothing about his health.”
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/09/12/cokie-roberts-dems-nervously-beginning-to-whisper-about-hillary-replacement-floats-biden-as-possibility/
OK, let me catch my breath. I'm still chuckling a bit. just got caught up on the message board.
Let's see if I got this right.
the company has four positive points going for it right now.
1. they intend to get financials up to date real soon
2. the company has a new transfer agent
3. the company has reduced out standing liabilities (by how much and when, we don't know)
4. the future is so bright, we should wear shades
The only negative for the company is the past performance as evidenced in it history.
see there, it is a lock. outnumbered 4 to 1.
Mildred open the safe.
Corporate donors to Black Lives Matter
Ford Foundation Just Gave Black Lives Matter $100 MILLION (To Go With the $33 MILLION From George Soros)
For all its talk of being a street uprising, Black Lives Matter is increasingly awash in cash, raking in pledges of more than $100 million from liberal foundations and others eager to contribute to what has become the grant-making cause du jour.
The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy recently announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund [BLMF], a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition.
That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.
“The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America,” said the Borealis announcement.
In doing so, however, the foundations have aligned themselves with the staunch left-wing platform of the Movement for Black Lives, which unveiled a policy agenda shortly after the fund was announced accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state” guilty of “genocide.”
Released Aug. 1, the platform also calls for defunding police departments, race-based reparations, breaking, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a “universal basic income,” and free college for blacks.
As far as critics are concerned, the grab-bag platform combined with the staggering underwriting commitment offer more evidence that Black Lives Matter is being used as a conduit for left-wing politics as usual.
“It’s about time people woke up to the fact that big money is using people as pawns to stoke racial hatred and further their global agenda,” said the Federalist Papers Project’s C.E. Dyer.
Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said corporations and others may want to think twice about partnering with the Ford Foundation, the fifth-largest U.S. philanthropy with $12.4 billion in assets.
“The Ford Foundation has traditionally been leftist, at least since the 1970s, on law-enforcement matters. So it’s not a huge surprise, but it’s certainly disappointing,” said Mr. Johnson. “I guess potential donors may want to look at the [Black Lives Matter] movement and see the damage, destruction and murders that they’ve left in their wake.”
For Black Lives Matter, the grant-making partnership isn’t risk free, lending legitimacy to the movement but also credence to those who say it has strayed from the concerns of black Americans calling for equal treatment at the hands of police.
“I think whoever’s in charge of vetting a grant like that didn’t do their homework,” said Mr. Johnson. “Or maybe this was already in the works before they realized what exactly they were dealing with before this platform came out—before it became more apparent that it’s become today’s Velcro for what the leftist-fringe movement desires.”
And that’s a shame, he said, “because instead of having a serious movement that might have been a basis for dialogue and improving relations in communities, especially communities of color, it’s kind of become in some ways a very violent movement, in some ways a very, very far-left [movement] with an almost statist agenda.”
Borealis and Ford did not return requests Wednesday asking for comment, but one of the newly launched fund’s partners, the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, California, praised the foundations for bringing resources to “this transformative movement.”
“Ensuring that all Black Lives Matter, in this land and around the world, will require an infusion of assets into Black communities,” said the center in an Aug. 8 statement.
In their July 19 announcement, Ford Foundation program officers Brook Kelly-Green and Luna Yasui said that, “Now is the time to call for an end to state violence directed at communities of color.”
http://spinzon.com/ford-caught-funding-black-lives-matter/
Consistent performance!! What more could we ask??
This has got to be the most consistent company ever.
For nearly four years now, couldn't beat it with an atomic clock.
But, it WILL happen. You just have to believe. It's just that it will happen in that alternate universe (Bizarro world?) we have to believe in.
A Republican Workers' Party?
By Matt Taibbi
A horrifying article appeared in The New York Times last week, entitled "They Want Trump to Make the G.O.P. a Workers' Party."
In it, conservative intellectuals say they disavow Donald Trump, but also see in his rise a reason to shift their party's focus.
The new Republicans would no longer be the party of "business and the privileged," but the protector of a disenfranchised working class.
This was unplanned. If it happens, it'll be a change that takes place not because conservative leaders ever wanted it, but because voters demanded it.
Basically, large numbers of working-class voters, particularly white working-class voters, long ago abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the Republicans.
A few conservatives saw this coming. Chin-stroking New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, whom Esquire's Charles Pierce once described as a "god-bothering newsboy on his best day," along with National Review editor Reihan Salam, claim they saw the writing on the wall.
In their 2008 book, Grand New Party, Douthat and Salam argued that the Republicans needed to reshape themselves, and admitted "the policy elite of the Republican Party" is "out of touch with the majority of Republican voters."
They also noted, in a recent Times editorial, "A Cure for Trumpism," that the Republican Party has "increasingly depended on mostly white working-class support, even as its policy agenda was increasingly unresponsive to working-class voters' problems."
All of this soul-searching is happening now because the maniac Trump has hijacked a portion of the Republican base and is driving it off an electoral cliff. (He will clutch his own hand all the way down in the inevitable Thelma & Louise crash ending.)
Republican propaganda for decades pushed magical-thinking concepts like "trickle-down economics" that asked lower-income voters to accept present sacrifices for theoretical bigger payoffs down the road.
Until this year, Republican voters mostly bought it. But Trump was their way of telling their leaders they're done waiting. They want their piece of the pie now, even if it means unleashing the Trumpinator to get it.
People have been conscious of the defection of working-class voters to the Republican Party for years, but this has always been dismissed as the consequence of skillfull propaganda. It's the What's the Matter With Kansas? creation story, i.e., that the white working class has been hoodwinked into going against its own economic interests thanks to cynical/backward appeals to race, religion and culture.
But that isn't the whole story, as some leading Democrats are beginning to realize. Joe Biden went on Morning Joe a few weeks ago and admitted that "the Democratic Party over all hasn't spoken enough to [working-class voters]," the "ordinary people busting their necks."
Biden's admission is a massive understatement. If we're going to be honest about what's happened in the last 30 or 40 years, the new iteration of the Democratic Party has embraced hocus-pocus neoliberal theory that is not much different from trickle-down economics.
The Democratic Party leaders have been fervent believers in the globalization religion since the late Eighties, when the braintrust at the Democratic Leadership Council made a calculated decision to transform the party from one that depended largely on unions for financial and logistical support to one that embraced corporate objectives, in particular free trade.
When he signed NAFTA into law in 1993, Bill Clinton laid out a utopian vision of how free trade would work. "We have the opportunity to remake the world," he said, boldly.
More trade agreements, he said, would create a world that would not only be more prosperous all over, but freer and more able to serve as a market for our exports.
"We will press for workers in all countries to secure rights that we now take for granted, to organize and earn a decent living," he said.
Critically, Clinton promised that free-trade agreements would emphasize new environmental standards, would expand the rights of workers in signatory countries, that we would not trade with countries that employed subsidies or tariffs against us, and that displaced domestic workers would eventually see gains after being retrained and redeployed for new jobs that would eventually appear to replace the lost ones.
"To the men and women of our country who were afraid of these changes," Clinton said, "the gains from this agreement will be your gains, too."
It was never articulated this way, exactly, but the basic promise of free trade was that the American middle class would experience temporary losses that over time would be balanced out by increased growth worldwide.
It was trickle-down economics, only repackaged with an international spin: After a long trip around the world, the wealth eventually gets back to you.
Twenty-three years later, we see how all of this has turned out. There have been some improvements in the economic condition of foreign workers.
But we never excluded politically oppressive regimes from free-trade deals, never made sure that trade partners weren't also massive human rights violators, never seriously worried about environmental enforcement. Mostly, we just made cheap, un-free foreign labor available to Western manufacturers.
Even a onetime die-hard NAFTA cheerleader like staunch Clinton supporter Paul Krugman, who once compared free trade's critics to the anti-evolutionist followers of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial, now admits that the case for "ever-freer" trade is a "scam":
"The elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict."
Like Marxism, globalization is a borderless utopian religion. Its adherents almost by definition have to reject advocacy for the citizens of one country over another. Just as "Socialism in One Country" was an anathema to classic Marxists, "prosperity in one country" is an anathema to globalists, no matter what their politicians might say during election seasons.
If you bring up the destruction of the American middle class, pro-globalization adherents will point to facts like the rising fortunes of those hundreds of millions of Chinese workers who are now supposedly above the World Bank definition of poverty, making more than $1.90 a day.
That those same workers still have virtually no rights or benefits and on occasion have to be housed in factories with safety nets to keep them from killing themselves at an astronomical rate is immaterial to True Believers.
They want even American voters to focus on the good news of incrementally increased wages abroad, forgetting that American workers never signed up for a plan to disenfranchise themselves so that workers in China or India could earn a few quarters more per day. Moreover, they certainly didn't elect leaders to push such policies.
The problem with all of this is that the Democrats went so far in the direction of advocacy for the global religion that they made something as idiotic as the rise of unabashed nativist Donald Trump possible.
Worse, Trump's rise will give the Globalist Faith Militant an automatic argument for more time. They will decry any criticism of free trade or globalization as racist Trumpism, and Trump is such a galactic jackass that this will work, his vast inventory of offensive bleatings discrediting even the legitimate economic concerns of his voters.
But expecting American politicians to advocate first and foremost for their own constituents isn't isolationism. It's just rational self-interest, which neoliberals only seem to disbelieve in when it pertains to labor. Moreover we didn't call movements to disinvest from South Africa or the Soviet Union "nativism." We called that idealism.
We haven't shown much of that in the last decades, as huge majorities of Westerners buy cell phones, clothes and other products increasingly likely to have been made by abused sweatshop workers or even children (like the Indonesian eight-year-olds recently found harvesting tobacco sold to the West).
As Krugman explained earlier this year, the question of what to do about any of this is a very hard one. He even called the Bernie Sanders campaign "a bit of a scam itself" because it hinted that anything at all can be done about the vast inequities and injustices of globalization.
Krugman claimed the maze of trade agreements is so entrenched by now that chaos would ensue from any attempt to undo them. A Trump might try, he said, but only as part of a "reign of destruction on many fronts."
Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't.
But to deny that something needs to be done, and to ask American voters to keep having faith in this "we'll all see gains in the end" fairytale that so far has very conspicuously only delivered gains to a tiny group of very wealthy people in this country, will do nothing but drive more workers into the Trump tent.
And maybe the next strongman those voters pick to lead them out of the wilderness won't be quite as huge an idiot, or as suicidal a campaigner, as Trump. Sooner or later, failing to deal with these questions is going to come back and bite all of us.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/a-republican-workers-party-w433295
Who is watching you?
This Company Has Built a Profile on Every American Adult
Every move you make. Every click you take. Every game you play. Every place you stay. They’ll be watching you.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-05/this-company-has-built-a-profile-on-every-american-adult
The lead stories on MSM this morning:
ABC
Trump Says He Hopes Russian Hackers Find Clinton’s Deleted Emails
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-spoken-vladimir-putin-urges-russian-president/story?id=40922483&cid=clicksource_4380645_1_hero_headlines_hero_hed
CBS
Donald Trump: I hope Russia finds Hillary Clinton's emails
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-i-hope-russia-finds-hillary-clintons-emails/
CNN
Donald Trump encourages Russia to hack Hillary Clinton
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/27/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-hack-hillary-clinton/index.html
FOX
Video captures ISIS killers using nuns as human shields after slaughtering French priest
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/27/video-captures-isis-killers-using-nuns-as-human-shields-after-slaughtering-french-priest.html
NBC
Trump Calls on Russia to 'Find' Missing Clinton Emails
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-conventions/trump-calls-russia-help-find-missing-clinton-emails-n617946
With Globalization in Danger, G-20 Double Down on a Defense (1)
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OASSLZSYF01V01-1QVMJ1V2JK84HVCLDGAH1BUB3V
(Bloomberg) -- Finance chiefs from the world’s biggest economies signaled escalating concern about a wave of anti-globalization sentiment that threatens core principles long embraced by the group.
Meeting in China one month after a shock decision by U.K voters to exit the European Union, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 put a stepped-up emphasis on fiscal and structural policies to boost growth, and renewed a pledge to promote inclusiveness. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, whose own country has seen millions of people embrace the protectionist calls of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said Brexit had escalated the importance of inclusive economic expansion.
"There was a consensus around the table that more needs to be done to share the benefits of growth and economic openness broadly within and among countries," International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement after the two-day G-20 meeting ended Sunday. Her counterpart, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, warned Friday that there was a very loud rejection of globalization in the West.
Easing Steps
While no G-20 member promised any specific fresh action in Chengdu, many had already been taking steps in the run-up to the gathering. Japan is in the midst of compiling an extra budget, with calls from some lawmakers for support for lower-income households. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also called for bolstering wages of workers on temporary contracts.
In the epicenter of Brexit, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond indicated openness to a more generous budget on July 22, when he told the BBC the U.K. could "reset fiscal policy" if necessary. For his part, Lew said the U.S. economy is in strong shape, and held off making any new commitments.
With some exceptions -- notably Germany -- the result is a reversal of years of antagonism over whether to pursue pro-growth policies versus reining in debt. Lew told reporters in Chengdu that there’s a broad consensus the world needs growth, not austerity. The need for inclusive growth was given prominence in the second paragraph of the G-20 communique.
‘At a Crossroads’
In a pile of documents left behind at the G-20 meetings was one with the title of being a "zero draft" of the leaders’ communique for the summit in Hangzhou Sept. 4-5, and it included some stark language: "The world economy stands at a crossroads," the paper dated July 15 said. "We will work to build an open world economy, reject protectionism, promote global trade and investment, ensuring broad-based public support for expanded growth in a globalized economy."
"If there’s one message coming out of this G-20 meeting it’s that they’re starting to get the message that electorates around the world aren’t happy with the way things have been proceeding," said Shane Oliver, Sydney-based head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which manages more than $110 billion.
WTO Threat
Hours after the G-20 meeting concluded, a further risk to the global trade order emerged, with Trump comments broadcast on NBC’s "Meet the Press." The candidate for president in the November election said that if the World Trade Organization tried to block his proposal to tax goods of U.S. companies that sent operations out of the U.S., “then we’re going to renegotiate or we’re going to pull out.”
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, has plenty of reason to ensure inclusive growth, as its slowing expansion risks eroding the income gains needed to spur consumption and services. The government has been pumping cheap credit into banks, companies and local governments, and in June alone an additional $244 billion in new credit flowed into the economy.
South Korea, Asia’s No. 4 economy, has unveiled an 11 trillion won ($9.7 billion) supplementary budget to support the jobs market. Canada is adding C$11 billion ($8.38 billion) in annual spending for the fiscal year that began April 1 and will run deficits totaling almost C$120 billion over six years.
Currency Pledge
At the G-20 itself, the group recommitted to keeping clear of competitive currency devaluations. Unlike at a Shanghai gathering in February, there was little focus on the yuan, which has seen much less volatility in recent months. In Beijing Sunday, People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Chen Yulu said the central bank will work hard to keep the yuan stable against a basket of currencies.
"All forms of protectionism" will be resisted, the G-20 said. "The global economic recovery continues but remains weaker than desirable" and "the global economic environment is challenging and downside risks persist, highlighted by fluctuating commodity prices, and low inflation in many economies."
The group also said that "financial market volatility remains high, and geopolitical conflicts, terrorism, and refugee flows continue to complicate the global economic environment."
Brexit Outlook
Even so, the G-20 signaled optimism with regard to managing any growth threats from Brexit. Members are "well positioned to proactively address the potential economic and financial consequences," they said. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that despite some market volatility after Brexit, there’s been quite a lot of stabilization.
The G-20 sought again to de-emphasize the role of monetary policy, repeating past conclusions that such stimulus on its own cannot achieve balanced growth. That conclusion didn’t stop group members including India, Australia and South Korea from cutting interest rates since the February meeting.
Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda noted that monetary and fiscal efforts in combination can be effective in helping the economy. Speaking to reporters days before the BOJ’s July 28-29 policy meeting, he reiterated that he is prepared to step up stimulus if needed, while noting again that so-called helicopter money is prohibited.
Steel Towns
The communique noted that overcapacity in industries like steel making are a challenge not just for trade, but also for workers, and require a collective global response. While no new mechanism for such talks was announced, Lew reiterated his backing for a multilateral effort to discuss steel capacity. China is already engaged in reforms to eliminate excesses in its old-line industries.
"After many years of sub-par growth in industrialized economies, and increasingly also in emerging markets, G-20 leaders are recognizing the risks of social cleavages and their potentially harmful economic consequences," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. "More inclusive growth, protecting society’s most vulnerable, will increasingly be woven into economic policy."
Neumann anticipates measures including greater transfer payments to lower-income groups, additional job training, a more progressive tax structure, and spending plans that provide greater health care and old-age assistance.
(Updates with Trump comments on chance of U.S. withdrawing from WTO, in ninth paragraph.)
--With assistance from Tom Mackenzie and Brett Miller To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jana Randow in Chengdu, China at jrandow@bloomberg.net, Saleha Mohsin in Chengdu, China at smohsin2@bloomberg.net, Rainer Buergin in Chengdu, China at rbuergin1@bloomberg.net, Toru Fujioka in Chengdu, China at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt in Chengdu, China at rcolitt@bloomberg.net, Yinan Zhao in Chengdu, China at yzhao300@bloomberg.net, Enda Curran in Hong Kong at ecurran8@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns
©2016 Bloomberg L.P.
Getting right lively over here.
Plugger references a few old company released PRs and the sky is falling.
Ease up there SIR and best of luck "trading" NAGP. I hope you makes lots and lots and lots of money.
Just remember, you only bet what you can afford to loose.
Same Kool-aid, different delivery system.
What production? The only numbers NAGP has produced, for several years now, is the number of times they have failed to produce financials or anything else.
Bank of America $1.27 billion U.S. mortgage penalty is voided
NEW YORK | BY NATE RAYMOND AND JONATHAN STEMPEL
A U.S. appeals court on Monday threw out a jury's finding that Bank of America Corp was liable for mortgage fraud leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, voiding a $1.27 billion penalty and dealing the U.S. Department of Justice a major setback.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found insufficient proof under federal fraud statutes to establish Bank of America's liability over a mortgage program called "Hustle" run by the former Countrywide Financial Corp.
The Justice Department claimed Countrywide, which Bank of America bought in July 2008, defrauded government-sponsored mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling them thousands of toxic loans.
read rest of article at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-fraud-idUSKCN0YE20S
Have some fun. Be safe.