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This is What We Think Happened With ObamaTrade Today and Why We Think it Will be WORSE Now
As mentioned in our previous story about what happened with ObamaTrade today, there is a ton of confusion circling the results. Hopefully this post will clarify where we are and where we’re likely headed.
For starters, ObamaTrade is not dead. It wasn’t killed in the House today. Not at all. In fact, the TPA was passed. The TPA was previously thought to have been the most challenging part of the package.
In order for the entire ObamaTrade package to work, the House had to pass both the TAA and the TPA. The TAA is legislation that spends big money compensating workers for lost jobs (Unemployment) and other social welfare programs (among other things). In short, the TAA is what Democrats get/want and the TPA is what Republicans get/want.
Apparently the TAA didn’t spend enough on social programs and all the other goodies Democrats usually demand. So, as a result, Democrats killed TAA, which in turn should have killed TPA. In fact, several members of Congress had already previously stated there would be no vote on TPA if TAA didn’t pass first.
But Boehner is Boehner. And if there is one thing Boehner is good at, it’s helping Democrats spend more of our money. Boehner wasn’t about to let Democrats hold TPA hostage over their desire to see more money spent. So immediately after TAA failed, Boehner called for a vote on TPA. Boehner knew he had the votes for TPA and he knew that as long as TPA was passed, he could fatten the deal on TAA and bring it back to Democrats next week for another vote.
Which is exactly what he did. So now TAA is likely to come back for a vote on Tuesday with a heck of a lot more spending that will help get unions back in the corner of their Democrat allies. If Boehner can get Democrats to support TAA, the deal is done and ObamaTrade lives on.
In other words, it’s very possible the House passes ObamaTrade with even more spending than previously planned.
http://libertynews.com/2015/06/this-is-what-we-think-happened-with-obamatrade-today-and-why-we-think-it-will-be-worse-now/
Food Banks in NYC Are Running out of Food
The Obamanomics recovery in full bloom..........al
Joshua Krause
The Daily Sheeple
June 9th, 2015
Despite the media’s claims that we’re no longer in a recession, millions of Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. It seems that America has developed a permanent underclass of citizens that just can’t quite rise above their poverty. No matter how high home prices rise or how far the stock market soars, the profits never seem to trickle down to this segment of society.
If you’re looking for proof that this permanent underclass exists, look no further than the massive number of people who still rely on food stamps and food pantries to survive. In fact, their ranks may be growing, which is starting to cause some food pantries to run out of resources on a regular basis. In New York City, 1.4 million residents eat at food pantries (out of a total population of 8.5 million), a number which is currently growing 20% every year.
The largest influx of food bank users occurred in 2013, when Congress cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $18 per person. Since that time, 40% of food stamp users have had to turn to food banks to sustain themselves, and 37% of food banks in New York City have admitted that they have turned away hungry residents in recent years, after running out of food.
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/food-banks-in-nyc-are-running-out-of-food_062015#sthash.O0SDVUiI.dpuf
You're Fired – Now Train Your Much Cheaper Foreign Replacement
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/12/2015 22:14 -0400
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
If you were laid off from your job, would you be willing to train your replacement if your company threatened to take away your severance pay if you didn’t do it? And how would you feel if your replacement came from India, and the only reason your company was replacing you was because the foreign worker was a lot less expensive?
Sadly, this is happening all over America – especially in the information technology field. Huge corporations such as Disney and Southern California Edison are coldly firing existing tech workers and filling those jobs with much cheaper foreign replacements. They are doing this by blatantly abusing the H-1B temporary worker visa program. Workers that had been doing a solid job for decades are being replaced without any hesitation just because it will save those firms a little bit of money.
There is very, very little loyalty left in corporate America today. Even if you have poured your heart and your soul into your company for years, that ultimately means very little. The moment that your usefulness is over, most firms will replace you in a heartbeat these days.
When I learned that Disney was doing this, I was absolutely outraged. Talk about a company that is going down the toilet. The following comes from the New York Times…
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.
Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
Honestly, I don’t think that I could do it.
I don’t think that I could train my much cheaper foreign replacement.
But if you are the average American that is just barely scraping by from paycheck to paycheck, I guess complete and total humiliation is better than losing your home to foreclosure.
Out on the west coast, Southern California Edison did the exact same thing that Disney did. The following is an excerpt from a Fox News report…
Anonymous workers who were displaced by the visa holders also submitted written testimonials to lawmakers detailing their firings. Several claimed they were forced to train their replacements, and threatened with losing their severance if they did not.
“We had no choice in this,” one anonymous worker who claimed to have been one of those let go from Southern California Edison, said in a letter. The worker described how when the two vendors were picked – Infosys and TCS, both major Indian companies – SCE employees were told to “sit with, video chat or do whatever was needed to teach them our systems.”
If they did not cooperate, according to the testimonial, “we would be fired and not receive a severance package.”
That is wrong on so many levels. But this is what corporate America has become today – a cold, heartless place that has absolutely no empathy for the average worker.
These workers at Southern California Edison were even told that the firm “could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel” and still save money on the deal…
“They told us they could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel and still save money,” one laid-off Edison worker told me, recounting a group meeting with supervisors last year. “They said, ‘We can get four Indian guys for cheaper than the price of you.’ You could hear a pin drop in the room.”
The original intent of the H-1B temporary worker visa program was to allow U.S. companies to import foreign workers to do jobs that they were unable to fill with American workers.
But that is not what is happening.
Instead, the H-1B temporary worker visa program is being used to replace thousands upon thousands of well paid American workers.
It is a disgusting practice and it needs to stop. There has been so much outrage over this that it has even gotten the attention of the U.S. Senate. The following is from a letter that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators sent to the Attorney General…
A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign workers who are taking their jobs. This troubling practice seems to be particularly concentrated in the information technology (IT) sector, which is not surprising given that sixty five percent of H-1B petitions approved in FY 2014 were for workers in computer-related occupations. Though such reports of H-1B-driven layoffs have been circulating for years, their frequency seems to have increased dramatically in the past year alone.
So has anything been done about this?
Of course not.
Instead, Barack Obama is working on an extremely secretive global economic treaty which will reportedly allow far more foreign workers to come into this country and which will result in millions more good paying jobs being shipped overseas. It is called “The Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it is basically NAFTA on steroids.
Why is it that Barack Obama has to be on the wrong side of every single issue?
The U.S. middle class is being systematically ripped to shreds, and most Americans are showing very little alarm about this.
How much damage has to be done before people will finally start waking up?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/youre-fired-%E2%80%93-now-train-your-much-cheaper-foreign-replacement
In a word- YUP!!eom
trkyhntr- I read your MT quote a long time ago and have always thought how true it was and still is today.
......al
I fully expect both bills will pass next week after pressure over the weekend from the WH.
Sad to say but I believe you are correct. Doesn't anyone in congress remember what NAFTA cost our country in jobs? Ross Perot was right. I remember many articles quoting execs from Ford, GM and Chrysler how wages accounted for up to 80% of the cost of a car. So those middle class jobs went to Mexico where the wages paid are miniscule compared to American wages yet I didn't see the prices of cars come down. All we got was a loss of good paying jobs in our economy.
........al
Anyone besides myself cheering the dems for blocking the TPP BS? Been hounding my congressman and repub senator on this to no avail.
From many years of watching the goings on in DC I became a firm believer in gridlocked gov't. The more fighting and posturing and pandering they do the less they accomplish. Many may differ but I believe the less they do the better off we are. Bipartisanship? Look what is looking down at us right now with this TPP bullchit. All thanks to that wonderful world of bipartisanship. Give me gridlock any day. IMHO
..........al
The Rise of “Criminal Capitalism” – Pillage and Class Polarization
About 75% of US employees work 40 hours or longer, the second longest among all OECD countries, exceeded only by Poland and tied with South Korea. In contrast, only 10% of Danish workers, 15% of Norwegian, 30% of French, 43% of UK and 50% of German workers work 40 or more hours. With the longest work day, US workers score lower on the ‘living well’ scale than most western European workers. Moreover, despite those long workdays US employees receive the shortest paid holidays or vacation time (one to two weeks compared to the average of five weeks in Western Europe). US employees pay for the costliest health plans and their children face the highest university fees among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In class terms, US employees face the greatest jump in income inequalities over the past decade, the longest period of wage and salary decline or stagnation (1970 to 2014) and the greatest collapse of private sector union membership, from 30% in 1950 down to 8% in 2014.
On the other hand, profits, as a percentage of national income, have increased significantly. The share of income and profits going to the financial sector, especially the banks and investment houses, has increased at a faster rate than any other sector of the US economy.
There are two polar opposite trends: Employees working longer hours, with costlier services and declining living standards while finance capitalists enjoy rapidly rising profits and incomes.
Paradoxically, these trends are not directly based on greater ‘workplace exploitation’ in the US.
The historic employee-finance capitalist polarization is the direct result of the grand success of the trillion dollar financial swindles, the tax payer-funded trillion dollar Federal bailouts of the crooked bankers, and the illegal bank manipulation of interest rates. These uncorrected and unpunished crimes have driven up the costs of living and producing for employees and their employers.
Financial ‘rents’ (the bankers and brokers are ‘rentiers’ in this economy) drive up the costs of production for non-financial capital (manufacturing). Non-financial capitalists resort to reducing wages, cutting benefits and extending working hours for their employees, in order to maintain their own profits.
In other words, pervasive, enduring and systematic large-scale financial criminality is a major reason why US employees are working longer and receiving less – the ‘trickle down’ effect of mega-swindles committed by finance capital.
Mega-Swindles, Leading Banks and Complicit State Regulators
Mega-swindles, involving trillions of dollars, are routine practices involving the top fifty banks, trading houses, currency speculators, management fund firms and foreign exchange traders.
These ‘white collar’ crimes have hurt hundreds of millions of investors and credit-card holders, millions of mortgage debtors, thousands of pension funds and most industrial and service firms that depend on bank credit to meet payrolls, to finance capital expansion and technological upgrades and raw materials.
Big banks, which have been ‘convicted and fined’ for mega-swindles, include Citi Bank, Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, JP Morgan, Barclay, Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and forty other ‘leading’ financial institutions.
The mega-swindlers have repeatedly engaged in a great variety of misdeeds, including accounting fraud, insider trading, fraudulent issue of mortgage based securities and the laundering of hundreds of billions of illegal dollars for Colombian, Mexican, African and Asian drug and human traffickers.
They have rigged the London Interbank Official Rate (LIBOR), which serves as the global interest benchmark to which hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial contracts are tied. By raising LIBOR, the financial swindlers have defrauded hundreds of millions of mortgage and credit-card holders, student loan recipients and pensions.
Bloomberg News (5/20/2015) reported on an ongoing swindle involving the manipulation of the multi-trillion-dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) fix, a global interest rate benchmark used by banks, corporate treasurers and money managers to determine borrowing costs and to value much of the $381 trillion of outstanding interest rate swaps.
The Financial Times (5/23/15, p. 10) reported how the top seven banks engaged in manipulating fraudulent information to their clients, practiced illegal insider trading to profit in the foreign exchange market (forex), whose daily average turnover volume for 2013 exceeded $5 trillion dollars.
These seven convicted banks ended up paying less than $10 billion in fines, which is less than 0.05% of their daily turnover. No banker or high executive ever went to jail, despite undermining the security of millions of retail investors, pensioners and thousands of companies.
The Direct Impact of Financial Swindles on Declining Living Standards
Each and every major financial swindle has had a perverse ripple effect throughout the entire economy. This is especially the case where the negative consequences have spread downward through local banks, local manufacturing and service industries to employees, students and the self-employed.
The most obvious example of the downward ripple effect was the so-called ‘sub-prime mortgage’ swindle. Big banks deliberately sold worthless, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligation (CDO) to smaller banks, pension funds and local investors, which eventually foreclosed on overpriced houses causing low income mortgage holders to lose their down payments (amounting to most of their savings).
While the effects of the swindle spread outward and downward, the US Treasury propped up the mega-swindlers with a trillion-dollar bailout in working people’s tax money. They anointed their mega-give-away as the bail out for ‘banks that are just too big to fail”! They transferred funds from the public treasury for social services to the swindlers.
In effect, the banks profited from their widely exposed crimes while US employees lost their jobs, homes, savings and social services. As the US Treasury pumped trillions of dollars into the coffers of the criminal banks (especially on Wall Street), the builders, major construction companies and manufacturers faced an unprecedented credit squeeze and laid off millions of workers, and reduced wages and increased the hours of un-paid work.
Service employees in consumer industries were hit hard as wages and salaries declined or remained frozen. The costs of the FOREX, LIBOR and ISDA fix swindles’ fell heavily on big business, which passed the pain onto labor: cutting pension and health coverage, hiring millions of ‘contingent or temp’ workers at minimum wages with no benefits.
The bank bailouts forced the Treasury to shift funds from ‘job-creating’ social programs and national infrastructure investment to the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector with its highly concentrated income structure.
As a result of the increasing concentration of wealth among the financial swindlers, inequalities in income grew; wages and salaries were frozen or reduced and manufacturers outsourced production, resulting in declines in production.
Employees, suffering from the loss of income brought on by the mega-swindles, found that they were working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. Productivity suffered. With the total breakdown of the ‘capitalist rules of the game’, investors lost confidence and trust in the system. Mega-swindles eroded ‘confidence’ between investors and traders, and made a mockery of any link between performance at work and rewards. This severed the nexus between highly motivated workers, engaged in ‘hard work, long hours’ and rising living standards, and between investment and productivity.
As a result, profits in the finance sector grew while the domestic economy floundered and living standards stagnated.
Financial Impunity: Regulatees Controlling the Regulators
Despite the proliferation of mega-swindles and their pervasive ripple effects throughout the economy and society, none of the dozens of federal or state regulatory agencies intervened to stop the swindle before it undermined the domestic economy. No CEO or banker was ever arrested for their part in the swindle of trillions. The regulators only reacted after trillions had ‘disappeared’ and swindles were ‘a done deal’. The impunity of the swindlers in planning and executing the pillage of hundreds of millions of employees, taxpayers and mortgage holders was because the federal and state regulatory agencies are populated by ‘regulatory administrators’ who came from or aspired to join the financial sector they were tasked with ‘regulating’.
Most of the high officials appointed to lead the regulatory agencies had been selected by the ‘Lords of Wall Street, Frankfurt, the City of London or Zurich.’ Appointees are chosen on the basis of their willingness to enable financial swindles. It therefore came as no surprise on May 28 2015 when US President Obama approved the appointment of Andrew Donahue, Managing Director and Associate General Council for the repeatedly felonious, mega-swindling banking house of Goldman Sachs to be the ‘Chief of Staff’ of the Security and Exchange Commission. His career has been typical of the Washington-Wall Street ‘Revolving Door’.
Only after fraud and swindles evoked the nationwide public fury of mortgage holders, investors and finance companies did the regulators ‘investigate’ the crimes and even then not a single major banker was jailed, not a single major bank was closed down.
There were a few low-level bond traders and bank employees who were fired or jailed as scapegoats. The banks paid puny (for them) fines, which they passed on to their customers. Despite pledges to ‘mend their ways’ the bankers concocted new schemes with their windfalls of billions of Federal ‘bailout’ money while the regulators looked on or polished their CV’s for the next pass through the ‘revolving door’.
Every top official in Treasury, Commerce and Trade, and every regulator in the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) who ‘retired to the private sector’ has ended up working for the same mega-criminal banks and finance houses they had investigated, regulated and ‘slapped on the wrist’.
As one banker, who insists on anonymity, told me: ‘The most successful swindlers are those who investigated financial transgressions’.
Conclusion
Mega-swindles define the nature of contemporary capitalism. The profits and power of financial capital is not the outcome of ‘market forces’. They are the result of a system of criminal behavior that pillages the Treasury, exploits the producers and consumers, evicts homeowners and robs taxpayers.
The mega swindlers represent much less than 1% of the class structure. Yet they hold over 40% of personal wealth in this country and control over 80% of capital liquidity.
They grow inexorably rich and richer, even as the rest of the economy wallows in crisis and stagnation. Their swindles send powerful ripples across the national economy, which ultimately freeze or reduce the income of the skilled (middle class) employees and undermine the living conditions for poor working-class whites, and especially under and unemployed Afro-American and Latino American young workers.
Efforts to ‘moralize’ capital have failed repeatedly since the regulators are controlled by those they claim to ‘regulate’.
The rare arrest and prosecution of any among the current tribe of mega-swindlers would only results in their being replaced by new swindlers. The problem is systemic and requires deep structural changes.
The only answer is to build a political movement independent of the two party system, willing to nationalize the banks and to pass legislation outlawing derivatives, forex trading and other unnatural parasitic speculative activities.
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/the-rise-of-criminal-capitalism-pillage-and-class-polarization/
Obama Finds Vicious Way to Get Revenge on School That Ditched Michelle’s Horrible Lunches
President Barack Obama is a petty and vindictive man who not only endlessly berates his political opponents, but also punishes schools that reject his wife’s horrible lunches.
Case in point: Obama chose to redact $170,000 in funding for a Minnesota school that opted out of First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch program.
Prior Lake High School had to raise lunch prices from $2.45 to $2.95 to make up for the loss, though it stood firm in its decision because Michelle’s program was hurting the kids.
“Under the federal program, the serving sizes did not meet the needs of our students,” Janeen Peterson, the district’s director of food services, explained to reporters.
Because Prior Lake High School exited the program, students are now free to “take the serving sizes they want, free from constraint,” which means that they don’t have to contend with feeling hungry all day anymore.
Furthermore, the school spends less money on food preparation and more easily constructs menus.
According to Pratt-Heavner, over 600 schools — including Prior High School — have exited Michelle’s program since its inception (H/T WZ).
It is clear as day that Michelle’s lunch program is a gigantic failure. But rather than either fix it or scrap it, President Obama apparently prefers punishing schools that have the courage to stand up to his him and his wife.
And by punishing schools, Obama is doing nothing more than punishing the students who attend them.
How much more petty can the man possibly get?
Please share this post on Facebook because Americans need to know that President Barack Hussein Obama is a petty bully who tries to use coercion and manipulation to force others to do things his way.
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/obama-finds-vicious-way-to-get-revenge-on-school-that-ditched-michelles-horrible-lunches/
Obama Finds Vicious Way to Get Revenge on School That Ditched Michelle’s Horrible Lunches
President Barack Obama is a petty and vindictive man who not only endlessly berates his political opponents, but also punishes schools that reject his wife’s horrible lunches.
Case in point: Obama chose to redact $170,000 in funding for a Minnesota school that opted out of First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch program.
Prior Lake High School had to raise lunch prices from $2.45 to $2.95 to make up for the loss, though it stood firm in its decision because Michelle’s program was hurting the kids.
“Under the federal program, the serving sizes did not meet the needs of our students,” Janeen Peterson, the district’s director of food services, explained to reporters.
Because Prior Lake High School exited the program, students are now free to “take the serving sizes they want, free from constraint,” which means that they don’t have to contend with feeling hungry all day anymore.
Furthermore, the school spends less money on food preparation and more easily constructs menus.
According to Pratt-Heavner, over 600 schools — including Prior High School — have exited Michelle’s program since its inception (H/T WZ).
It is clear as day that Michelle’s lunch program is a gigantic failure. But rather than either fix it or scrap it, President Obama apparently prefers punishing schools that have the courage to stand up to his him and his wife.
And by punishing schools, Obama is doing nothing more than punishing the students who attend them.
How much more petty can the man possibly get?
Please share this post on Facebook because Americans need to know that President Barack Hussein Obama is a petty bully who tries to use coercion and manipulation to force others to do things his way.
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/obama-finds-vicious-way-to-get-revenge-on-school-that-ditched-michelles-horrible-lunches/
So Now The TPP's Real Purpose Is Revealed
The "TPP" has been "negotiated" in secret; our government refuses to release what's in it and both Congress and President Rob-you-blindBama loves the complicity of both Congress and you.
Now Wikileaks has gotten their hands on the health care component. Well, it's not called that, but it clearly is that. Yes, this "trade agreement" is meant to, and will, prevent you from doing things like going to Mexico to get a medicine made there that sells for $100 instead of paying $30,000 for it here.
And how will it do that? It will make the price $30,000 everywhere.
Ok, maybe that's a bit unfair. Maybe it won't be $30,000. But you can bet it won't be $100 either or anything close to it.
I've spent so much digital ink on this since 2009 because it was clear that unless stopped the medical and pharmaceutical industries, in concert with the so-called "insurance" business, was going to ruin federal, state and local budgets -- and you, personally.
I'll just stop here, because you're still in your chair and still making excuses, and my keyboard is well-worn.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
When You Don't Get The Answer You Want, Lie
It's time to close NOAA, unfortunately.
Until last week, government data on climate change indicated that the Earth has warmed over the last century, but that the warming slowed dramatically and even stopped at points over the last 17 years.
But a paper released May 28 by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has readjusted the data in a way that makes the reduction in warming disappear, indicating a steady increase in temperature instead. But the study’s readjusted data conflict with many other climate measurements, including data taken by satellites, and some climate scientists aren’t buying the new claim.
Of course.
You see, the data says that over the last 20 years or so there has been no warming beyond instrument uncertainties at all. Not in the ocean, not in the atmosphere, not anywhere.
The prediction was that warming would occur on an exponential basis. It hasn't happened, and not one but two separate satellite data sets agree. Further, floating buoys that are specifically intended to measure this sort of data confirm the satellite data.
So what did NOAA do? They used engine intake temperatures from ships, which (of course) are subject to all sorts of errors, all in the warming direction. The inside of a ship is probably going to be warmer than the intake water, which means that most of the time there will be a shift upward in temperature .vs. reality.
Take a modern car; it has an intake air temperature sensor because the density of air changes with temperature and when computing how much fuel to inject having a baseline is important. But on my car, which I log data from in real time on a reasonably-regular basis during trips, the intake air temperature is frequently 10 or more degrees higher than the outside air temperature. Indeed, the displayed temperature on most cars that have an outside air temperature display is usually higher than reality because that sensor is usually located where it is subject to heated air (e.g. close to the road surface, which is warmer than the air in the daytime due to absorbed heat.)
The same errors apply to ship cooling water intake temperatures.
It's utterly nuts to use such a temperature measurement for any scientific purpose as an absolute indicator. Such data is very useful for the operator of the ship as a relative measurement; if the ship's engines are operating at 70% of output capacity and the expected delta between the intake and outlet temperatures is 10 degrees C, but the actual delta is 12 degrees then the maintenance staff may want to investigate whether there's a flow problem or the engine is otherwise malfunctioning. That's why these sensors are in ship water intakes.
In other words we have yet another political "science paper" that intentionally omitted data the writers didn't like.
That's not science, it's politics and intentionally labeling it otherwise is fraud.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
xero90- I thought it was pretty clear. If any part of this is unclear ask a specific question and I'll try my best to help you with an answer.
Escaping the Obamacare penalty and getting a nice tax refund are not compatible.
And MANY that are in this category want to get money back -- poors man savings account basically.
Yes many people do that, myself included. It then comes down to individual choice. Pay the penalty and get the refund or don't pay the penalty and have the IRS take the penalty from your refund or don't pay the penalty and make sure there is no refund for the IRS to grab. Choices.
..........al
Hi basserdan
from that article:
20 Years in Jail and $1 Million Fines For Gun Speech
By RedSilverJ
YouTube reporter RedSilverJ covers the new Obama regulation that restricts speech about firearms; 20 years in jail and $1 million fines for gun speech resulted in the NRA saying gun blogs, videos, web forums threatened by speech laws.
What’s Wrong with the Obama Administration’s Trade-Deal Arguments
June 8th, 2015
Eric Zuesse
Here is from the June 3rd article at the pro-trade-deals Americas Society & Council of the Americas, “Summary: The Trans-Pacific Partnership – What’s at Stake for the Western Hemisphere?” in which the Democratic congressman, Gregory Meeks, a Co-Chair of the Friends of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Caucus, states the core of the Administration’s case on its proposed trade-deals. The article reports:
According to Congressman Meeks, ‘TPP is a force for positive change across the board for all countries, whether or not they belong to TPP,’ although this transformation will require rigorous action. Countries in Central and South America understand that economic reforms and harmonized trade rules are only one side of the coin. On the reverse side, they are committed to addressing socio-political demands, inequality issues, violence, and the informal sector in the economy.
He’s referring there to the uniform standardization that these deals would impose upon all participating countries regarding regulations of food-safety, product-safety, drug-safety, environmental standards, workers’ rights, protections against the defrauding of investors, etc. He is saying that this international uniformity will bring “positive change across the board for all countries.”
What it will actually do is to raise the standards in some countries and lower the standards in others, in order to achieve uniformity across international borders.
So: let us assume, for the purpose of argument, that, for the most part, the net average result will indeed be to raise standards. This is what he is implying (even though it’s false). But there is a deeper problem than whether environmental and other standards within various nations are set higher; and it is that they are, in effect, to be set in stone by these agreements.
Just as it is vastly more difficult to update a provision in the U.S. Constitution by means of its Amendment-process than it is to enact a new mere law that updates an old mere law; so, too, it is vastly more difficult to change an international treaty-provision than it is to change a mere single nation’s regulatory standards and laws.
Whereas to change a law or regulation requires only intra-national, or inside-the-nation, process, changing a treaty-provision requires a vastly more difficult international process, which demands the unanimous consent of all member-nations of the given treaty or international agreement.
These ’trade’ deals are set up, far more fundamentally, to transfer the power over the decisions concerning such matters, away from democratically accountable national governments, to, instead, panels of ‘arbitrators’ consisting of three lawyers, each one of whom is appointed by international corporations — i.e, by the very same parties whose interest is to lower workers’ wages and rights, to lower environmental standards, to lower protections against defrauding stockholders, to lower protections against global warming, to lower protections against toxics in foods, etc.
The system in these ’trade’ deals does not allow nations to sue international corporations, but it does allow international corporations to sue any signatory nation that, a given suing international corporation alleges, has violated the treaty’s international standard — in other words, that has applied or instituted a standard higher than the international treaty allows.
If subsequent scientific research indicates that a given global-warming matter requires a higher standard than was formerly thought, or that a given product-safety or food-safety standard was actually dangerously low and must be raised, then, that’s just too bad, because there won’t be any realistic way in which the given standard, in any participating country, will be able to be raised. The international corporations that have lobbied so successfully for Obama’s ‘trade’ deals to get them as far as they already have, will easily be able to block at least one of the participating countries from going along with a treaty-change to enable increasing the then-established set-in-stone international standard.
So: what’s really at issue here is a transfer from national democratic sovereignty to, instead, international-corporate sovereignty, in which international coporations will have locked-in an international dictatorial control over a large portion of what it is that national governments do, and necessarily must do, in order to serve the public good.
The whole thing is a corrupt con-job.
What is at stake here is nothing less than whether the future of the world will be national democratic governments, or instead an international fascist government. Regardless of whether the old ideal of an international democratic world-federalist government (the old idea of a world government) was a good one, the bringing-about of an international corporate dictatorship is a monstrosity: the very opposite of an international democracy.
Barack Obama wants to bring the world into international fascist control more than has ever yet existed on this planet. If he succeeds, he will thus be the most harmful political leader in world history. His deals must be stopped. They are horrendous.
http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/whats-wrong-with-the-obama-administrations-trade-deal-arguments/
If Your BS Detector Is Not Screaming, It's Broken
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/09/2015 08:29 -0400
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con.
Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic "gunfight" in the real West)--it was a simmering stew of con artists, flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the credulous.
We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That "organic" produce from some other country--did anyone test the soil the produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified "organic" because no pesticides were used during production. But what about last year? And the year before? What's in the water used to irrigate the crops?
The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce (everyone ages 18 - 70 that isn't institutionalized or in prison), the unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by the bureaucratic con artists.
The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage, 24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary's most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation--a glorification of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or another.
And as she learned from hubby Bill--if the smarmy charm-con fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. "You'll never work in this town again!"
Hillary would fit right into Melville's river boat teeming with con-artists. The accent she uses on the marks--oops, I mean audience--changes as readily as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk, Fake-Southern--what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks.
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
Which brings us to China, one of the greatest credit bubble and financial cons ever. Please examine this chart of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC). Clearly, there is no upper limit to the Chinese stock market: 5,000 today, 10,000 next week, 50,000 the following month and 100,000 shortly thereafter. The sky's the limit, Baby!
That China's credit machine is now dependent on a stock market bubble for its very survival speaks volumes about the true health of China's economy. This dependence was recently explained in Why China Is So Desperate To Blow The Most Epic Stock Bubble.
Everybody who thinks China's economy is healthy because its stock market is soaring has been suckered. Every good con-man/ con-woman knows that the con only works if the chump/mark wants to believe the impossible is true--that the snake-oil remedy will actually cure their ailments, that the "hope" candidate will actually change the corrupt system from the inside (ha-ha, they fell for it), and that China's economy is on its way to becoming the world leader in everything.
Many people want to believe this fantasy because it suits their agenda: For American pundits, China isn’t a country. It’s a fantasyland.
But wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con. We want to believe our political system isn't an unreformable cesspool, that our economy is a vibrant creator of new middle class jobs and that China will manage the greatest credit bubble in history without a hitch. But these are all cons put over to protect the wealth and power of those benefiting from the con.
If your BS detector isn't shrieking, it's broken. You've been conned. Wake up.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-09/if-your-bs-detector-not-screaming-its-broken
If Your BS Detector Is Not Screaming, It's Broken
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/09/2015 08:29 -0400
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con.
Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic "gunfight" in the real West)--it was a simmering stew of con artists, flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the credulous.
We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That "organic" produce from some other country--did anyone test the soil the produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified "organic" because no pesticides were used during production. But what about last year? And the year before? What's in the water used to irrigate the crops?
The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce (everyone ages 18 - 70 that isn't institutionalized or in prison), the unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by the bureaucratic con artists.
The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage, 24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary's most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation--a glorification of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or another.
And as she learned from hubby Bill--if the smarmy charm-con fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. "You'll never work in this town again!"
Hillary would fit right into Melville's river boat teeming with con-artists. The accent she uses on the marks--oops, I mean audience--changes as readily as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk, Fake-Southern--what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks.
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
Which brings us to China, one of the greatest credit bubble and financial cons ever. Please examine this chart of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC). Clearly, there is no upper limit to the Chinese stock market: 5,000 today, 10,000 next week, 50,000 the following month and 100,000 shortly thereafter. The sky's the limit, Baby!
That China's credit machine is now dependent on a stock market bubble for its very survival speaks volumes about the true health of China's economy. This dependence was recently explained in Why China Is So Desperate To Blow The Most Epic Stock Bubble.
Everybody who thinks China's economy is healthy because its stock market is soaring has been suckered. Every good con-man/ con-woman knows that the con only works if the chump/mark wants to believe the impossible is true--that the snake-oil remedy will actually cure their ailments, that the "hope" candidate will actually change the corrupt system from the inside (ha-ha, they fell for it), and that China's economy is on its way to becoming the world leader in everything.
Many people want to believe this fantasy because it suits their agenda: For American pundits, China isn’t a country. It’s a fantasyland.
But wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con. We want to believe our political system isn't an unreformable cesspool, that our economy is a vibrant creator of new middle class jobs and that China will manage the greatest credit bubble in history without a hitch. But these are all cons put over to protect the wealth and power of those benefiting from the con.
If your BS detector isn't shrieking, it's broken. You've been conned. Wake up.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-09/if-your-bs-detector-not-screaming-its-broken
Treason Is Too Nice Of A Word
Thanks to ONEBGG for this article
David Risselada
Many people believe the old saying that people shouldn't be afraid of government, but government should be afraid of the people. It sounds good on the surface, and, to some degree, it makes sense; however, I don't think it's true. I'm not saying people should live in abject fear of their governments by any means; it's just that, well, to be honest, I think our government is scared to death of us, and they will do whatever it takes to keep us from exposing them. I would argue that their fear of exposure is the number one motivating factor behind their attacks on the first and second amendments. Their fear of us discovering the truth of just how deep their deception runs, has led to the creation of the massive militarized police force, and the attempts to silence patriots by labeling us domestic terrorists. Their actions reek of treason against the American people and its due time we take charge of this mess and hold them accountable. This article will highlight ten of the most treasons acts.
1. The guardian.com released an article today claiming that U.S. senators on both the Republican and Democrat side of the house took payoffs from mega corporations to ensure the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty. This was another bill where no one knew exactly what was in it when it was voted on. This bill, according to many, is nothing but a complete sell out of American sovereignty to corporate interests and threatens our children's future as it allows American jobs to be shipped overseas. I suppose if you wanted to look at it from the government's perspective you would want to silence free speech as well. You can't have the people finding out how bad you screwed them before you had the opportunity to destroy the second amendment.
2. Judicial watch just released an article proving that the Defense and State Departments knew a full ten days in advance that there was an impending attack coming in Benghazi. They knew from day one that it was a gun running operation and they did nothing to stop it, or to save the lives of our troops. They then had the audacity to use the opportunity to attack the first amendment and blame it on an alleged video the Muslims found offensive. It was later confirmed that the man responsible for filming that video was actually working for Eric Holder. Do you understand this? The government of the United States actually collaborated to stage this event in order to run guns to our enemies and attempt to dismantle the first amendment in the process!
3. Barrack Obama and his racist administration have deliberately inflamed racial tensions and allowed riots to ensue where cities were burned and people were killed, all on the pretense of the "white privilege" lie. In fact, it has just been revealed that the rioters and looters in Ferguson were actually promised to be paid a sum of $5000.00 by none other than George Soros, who incidentally owes a couple billion in back taxes. These actions were taken deliberately to lay the groundwork for the creation of Obama's national police force. According to federal law, it is illegal to incite riots. Obama and the justice department continue to blame the actions of these rioters on "racist" America while labeling patriots and veterans as threats to national security. Not one Republican has challenged this.
4. Our government continues to attack our energy sector by pushing the global warming lie. No matter how many times it has been proven false, they continue to chip away at our society by claiming the actions of human beings are responsible for climate change. The U.N. climate chief not only admitted that a communist world government would be best to deal with climate change, but has also suggested a reduction in the world's population. In the meantime, Obama tells United States Coast Guard Cadets that a failure to act in the name of climate change is dereliction of duty. They fully intend to force us to pay carbon taxes, herd us into the cities, and control every aspect of our lives under the guise of saving the environment.
5. Republicans ran on the promise of a full of repeal of Obamacare in the 2014 elections. We gave them the largest majority they have had in decades and they completely sold us out. Not only did they fail to repeal Obamacare, they now intend to push for subsidies. In fact, they have sided with Obama on almost every issue and given him everything he wants. They are operating on the belief that they have to pander to the welfare state in order to win elections despite the fact it was the promises they have since broken that got them elected.
6. Even the liberally biased news admitted the treason behind the Fast and Furious gun running scandal. Documents revealed the administration's plan to use the issue as a means of restricting gun sales and furthering the gun control agenda. In simple terms, Eric Holder deliberately let firearms bought from American gun stores find their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels for the explicit purpose of attacking the second amendment. In the process, many people were murdered by the drug cartels, including one border control agent, Brian Terry. If this wasn't bad enough, in 2010 the Mexican President, to a standing ovation from democrats no less, lectured our congress on gun control.
7. John Kerry signed the U.N. small arms treaty. Though it has not been ratified by the senate, many of the treaty's provisions are finding their way into gun control legislation being introduced by democrats.
8. Both Democrats and Republicans sent U.S. troops into Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein from using stockpiles of chemical weapons. Upon returning from the combat zone veterans are being labeled as a domestic threat to national security for reasons as ridiculous as a "lack of jobs." This is according to a report that was released by the Department of Homeland Security entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. This report also labels gun owners, Christians, and people who believe that the government is infringing upon constitutional liberties as threats to national security. While The Department of Homeland Security was forced to apologize for labeling veterans as terrorists, law enforcement training manuals have wiped all references of Islamic terrorism and still train according to the information presented in this report.
9. Many people understand the seriousness of an eighteen trillion dollar debt. Unfortunately, the real seriousness of the situation is that the debt, with all the unfunded liabilities included, is closer to one hundred twenty five trillion dollars. There is no way that this can ever be paid back. Our children's futures are at stake as this reckless spending virtually guarantees their enslavement. Our nation is being sold out to foreign interests simply to line the pockets of unprincipled men who stand for nothing.
10. Our nation's education system has been literally destroyed in an effort to indoctrinate our children into the tenets of leftist philosophy. We once had the finest education system in the world and now our children can't think their way out of a paper bag. We are falling below international averages in math and other academic areas as educators focus more on teaching "social justice" and rabid anti American values as opposed to real academic endeavors. Our students are being trained to be social advocates for Democrat issues while being told the values their nation stands for are racist, sexist, oppressive and homophobic. The effects of this education can be seen by watching the events in Ferguson and Baltimore.
These ten issues by no means account for all the lies and acts of treason committed by our government against the people. Some of the biggest ones such as the Federal Reserve act and the income tax haven't even been mentioned but are certainly of equal importance. All of these issues have remained virtually unaddressed and unchallenged because we have no real opposition party. It has become all too apparent that there is no difference between the Republican Party and the Democrats, except perhaps the speed at which they seek to subjugate us. All of this is being done on purpose to keep the public overwhelmed and in a reactionary instead of proactive mode. We have to understand that we have the power to stop this. We have to stop letting them divide us and start finding some common ground. America, the consequences of what lies ahead of us will affect all of us the same. No one will be safe. This will not be about liberals and conservatives, anyone who disagrees with the powers that be, will be a target. We can't stop this if we can't stand together, which is why they work so hard to divide us.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/05/treason-is-too-nice-of-a-word/#ubgYEU5soPl2vmtZ.99
Note: There are active links contained within the original article at the website posted above.
I have a neighbor and friend who was a pilot in the Vietnam war. He was shot down and captured and sent to the Hanoi Hilton. His claim to fame was his utter refusal to meet with Hanoi Jane when she was there. Good man!!! Despite his ordeal both he and his wife are kind and caring people. Anyway he has just had a massive stroke and any prayers would be appreciated. TIA
........al
As the MSM hacks and government apparatchiks try to convince you the jobs market is booming, Table A-9 tells a different story.
Submitted by IWB, on June 6th, 2015
by James Quinn
It seems the mainstream media is giddy with excitement over the 280,000 jobs supposedly created in May. The markets aren’t so happy, as good news is actually bad news. What excuse will Yellen and her fellow Wall Street puppets at the Federal Reserve use to not increase interest rates from emergency levels of 0.25%? The ten year Treasury rate immediately skyrocketed to 2.43% in seconds. It was at 1.64% in February. That’s a 46% decline in price in four months. Do you still think bonds are a safe investment? Guess what is tied to the 10 Year Treasury rate? Mortgage rates. There goes the fake housing recovery. Artificially high prices, higher mortgage rates, and young people unable to buy sounds like a perfect recipe for collapse.
The MSM is cackling about the 280,000 new jobs, but you won’t hear them mentioning that the number of unemployed people went up by 125,000 as 208,000 people the BLS classified as not in the labor force last month decided they were in the labor force this month. What a crock. At least 20 million of the 93 million classified as not in the labor force can or will work, therefore they are unemployed.
One month does not make a recovery. Let’s see what the YTD numbers show:
Since January, 594,000 more Americans are employed, an average of 149k per month. Considering the working age population has gone up by 732,000 since January, why is anyone crowing?
The BLS drones actually expect you to believe the unemployment rate has fallen from 5.7% in January to 5.5% today, because 442,000 Americans decided to voluntarily exit the labor force. That’s a hoot.
The really good stuff is buried in Table A-9 of the BLS data dump. See for yourself:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm
As the MSM hacks and government apparatchiks try to convince you the jobs market is booming, Table A-9 tells a different story. Here is what is revealed:
The number of working age Americans went up by 2.8 million in the last year, or 236k per month. The number of new jobs must average 236k per month just to stay even. In the last year the economy added 2.9 million jobs, slightly above the workforce growth, but the BLS expects you to believe the unemployment rate plunged from 6.3% to 5.5%. Hilarious!!!
It’s the breakdown of jobs by age that really screams out. It is a known fact that people in the 45 to 54 age bracket are in their prime earning and spending years. In the last year the number of employed 45 to 54 year olds has DECLINED by 67,000. It DECLINED in May by 51,000. It has DECLINED by 187,000 since February.
It is a known fact that people over 55 dramatically reduce their spending as they approach and enter their retirement years. The Boomers have added 824,000 jobs in the last year, or 28% of all the new jobs added.
Only 117,000 jobs were added in the 35 to 44 year old bracket in the last year. So the age brackets that do the most spending in the country (35 to 54) have a net increase of 50k jobs in the last year. That is 1.7% of the total jobs added.
The remainder of the new low paying jobs are going to young people who are in debt up to their eyeballs. Now you should understand why there is no real recovery. The people who normally spend the most aren’t getting jobs. The people who don’t spend or can’t spend are getting the bulk of the low paying service jobs.
Of the 2.9 new jobs created in the last year, guess how many are classified as self-employment jobs? How about 935,000. That’s right. Your new job selling shit on Ebay or cutting three lawns per week is counted as a new job by the BLS drones. What a load of bull.
There are also 7 million people who hold multiple jobs. That is a sure sign of economic progress.
Almost 300k of the new jobs added in the last year were part-time shit jobs. 205k of the 464k jobs added since March are part-time jobs.
Sorry to be a buzzkill, but today’s jobs numbers are not great. The job market sucks. Wages suck. The BLS will lie and obfuscate until morale improves. The MSM will regurgitate the lies. So it goes.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/as-the-msm-hacks-and-government-apparatchiks-try-to-convince-you-the-jobs-market-is-booming-table-a-9-tells-a-different-story/#ymOcbgm6wv86EeVg.99
Chuckless- welcome aboard. And great post. I went down memory lane remembering how many times I've tried to point out that the mainstream issues like abortion, gun control, gay marriage, etc keep we the people divided and bickering while the real agenda goes on unnoticed. If we could ever get more of the electorate enlightened real change is possible.
.......al
Prognosis:
0% chance of being enacted
Trouble is the receiving agencies become addicted to those extra funds pouring in and will do whatever it takes to keep them coming. Constitution be damned.
......al
Land of the Unfree – Police and Prosecutors Fight Aggressively to Retain Barbaric Right of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”
Published: June 4, 2015
Source: Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg
Efforts to limit seizures of money, homes and other property from people who may never be convicted of a crime are stalling out amid a wave of pressure from prosecutors and police.
Their effort, at least at the state level, appears to be working. At least a dozen states considered bills restricting or even abolishing forfeiture that isn’t accompanied by a conviction or gives law enforcement less control over forfeited proceeds. But most measures failed to pass.
– From the Wall Street Journal article: Efforts to Curb Asset Seizures by Law Enforcement Hit Headwinds
The fact that civil asset forfeiture continues to exist across the American landscape despite outrage and considerable media attention, is as good an example as any as to how far fallen and uncivilized our so-called “society” has become. It also proves the point demonstrated in a Princeton University study that the U.S. is not a democracy, and the desires of the people have no impact on how the country is governed.
Civil asset forfeiture was first highlighted on these pages in the 2013 post, Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas, in which I explained:
In a nutshell, civil forfeiture is the practice of confiscating items from people, ranging from cash, cars, even homes based on no criminal conviction or charges, merely suspicion. This practice first became widespread for use against pirates, as a way to take possession of contraband goods despite the fact that the ships’ owners in many cases were located thousands of miles away and couldn’t easily be prosecuted. As is often the case, what starts out reasonable becomes a gigantic organized crime ring of criminality, particularly in a society where the rule of law no longer exists for the “elite,” yet anything goes when it comes to pillaging the average citizen.
One of the major reasons these programs have become so abused is that the police departments themselves are able to keep much of the confiscated money. So they actually have a perverse incentive to steal. As might be expected, a program that is often touted as being effective against going after major drug kingpins, actually targets the poor and disenfranchised more than anything else.
Civil asset forfeiture is state-sanctioned theft. There is no other way around it. The entire concept violates the spirit of the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution. In case you have any doubt:
The 4th Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The 5th Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The 6th Amendment: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Civil asset forfeiture is a civil rights issue, and it should be seen as such by everyone. Just because it targets the entire population as opposed to a specific race, gender or sexual orientation doesn’t make it less important.
The problem with opposition in America today is that people aren’t seeing modern battle lines clearly. The greatest friction and abuse occurring in these United States today comes from the corporate-fascist state’s attack against average citizens. It doesn’t matter what color or gender you are. If you are weak, poor and vulnerable you are ripe for the picking. Until people see the battle lines clearly, it will be very difficult to achieve real change. Most people are divided and conquered along their superficial little tribal affiliations, and they completely miss the bigger picture to the peril of society. Which is why women will support Hillary just because she’s a woman, not caring in the least that she is a compromised, corrupt oligarch stooge.
In case you have any doubt about how little your opinion matters when it comes to the rights of police to rob you blind, read the following excerpts from the Wall Street Journal:
Efforts to limit seizures of money, homes and other property from people who may never be convicted of a crime are stalling out amid a wave of pressure from prosecutors and police.
Read that sentence over and over again until you get it. This is a free country?
Critics have taken aim at the confiscatory powers over concerns that authorities have too much latitude and often too strong a financial incentive when deciding whether to seize property suspected of being tied to criminal activity.
But after New Mexico passed a law this spring hailed by civil-liberties groups as a breakthrough in their effort to rein in states’ forfeiture programs, prosecutor and police associations stepped up their own lobbying campaign, warning legislators that passing such laws would deprive them of a potent crime-fighting tool and rip a hole in law-enforcement budgets.
Their effort, at least at the state level, appears to be working. At least a dozen states considered bills restricting or even abolishing forfeiture that isn’t accompanied by a conviction or gives law enforcement less control over forfeited proceeds. But most measures failed to pass.
“What happened in those states is a testament to the power of the law-enforcement lobby,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning advocacy group that has led a push for laws giving property owners more protections.
It seems the only people in America without a powerful lobby group are actual American citizens. See: Charting the American Oligarchy – How 0.01% of the Population Contributes 42% of All Campaign Cash
Prosecutors say forfeiture laws help ensure that drug traffickers, white-collar thieves and other wrongdoers can’t enjoy the fruits of their misdeeds and help curb crime by depriving criminals of the “tools” of their trade. Under federal law and in many states, a conviction isn’t required.
“White-collar thieves,” they say. Yet I haven’t seen a single bank executive’s assets confiscated. Rather, they received taxpayer bailout funds with which to pay themselves record bonuses after wrecking the global economy. Don’t forget:
The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally
In Texas, lawmakers introduced more than a dozen bills addressing forfeiture during this year’s legislative session, which ended Monday. Some would either force the government to meet a higher burden of proof or subject forfeiture programs to more stringent financial disclosure rules and audits.
But only one bill, which law-enforcement officials didn’t object to, ultimately passed. It requires the state attorney general to publish an annual report of forfeited funds based on data submitted by local authorities. That information, at the moment, is only accessible through freedom-of-information requests.
This is what a corporate-statist oligarchy looks like.
Shannon Edmonds, a lobbyist for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said local enforcement officers and prosecutors “educated their legislators about how asset forfeiture really works in Texas.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan last month vetoed a bill that would, among other things, prohibit the state from turning over seized property to the federal government unless the owner has been charged with a federal crime or gives consent.
Remember, the terrorists hate us for our freedom.
Prosecutors said the Tenaha episode was an isolated breakdown in the system. “Everybody knows there are bad eggs out there,” Karen Morris, who supervises the Harris County district attorney’s forfeiture unit, told Texas lawmakers at a hearing this spring. “But we don’t stop prosecuting people for murder just because some district attorneys have made mistakes.”
When police aren’t out there stealing your hard earned assets without a trial or charges, they can often be found pounding on citizens for kicks. I came across the following three headlines this morning alone as I was the scanning news.
Cop Exonerated After Being Caught on Video Brutally Beating A Tourist Who Asked For A Tampon
Kids in Police-Run Youth Camp Allegedly Beaten, Threatened By Cops
Florida Cop Charged With On-Duty Child Abuse; Suspended With Pay
This is not what freedom looks like.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Land_of_the_Unfree_%E2%80%93_Police_and_Prosecutors_Fight_Aggressively_to_Retain_Barbaric_Right_of_%E2%80%9CCivil_Asset_Forfeiture%E2%80%9D/44343/0/38/38/Y/M.html
IRS Created Team of Lawyers to Hide Info From Congress
And don't forget there was not a "smidgen" of corruption according to our president. my add
We haven’t heard a whole lot about the IRS/Tea Party scandal of late. You know – where the IRS intentionally delayed or refused local Tea Party groups their tax status in order to protect Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 and to curtail Republican gains in the 2014 election.
But now, new information is coming out about just how deep the scandal really goes. It certainly appears that the IRS put considerable resources into the effort to deny millions of Americans their 1st Amendment rights. The ACLJ reports:
New testimony reveals that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) used “hundreds of attorneys” to hide critical information from Congress’s investigation of the IRS targeting of conservatives.
According to new congressional bombshell testimony today, the IRS set up a previously unknown “special project team” comprised of “hundreds of attorneys,” including the IRS Chief Counsel (one of only two politically appointed positions at the IRS).
The “special project” this team was given? Concealing information from Congress.
The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison, and disclosure division, Mary Howard, testified that soon after the IRS targeting scandal was revealed, the IRS “amassed hundreds of attorneys to go through the documents [requested by Congress] and redact them.”
Members of Congress have long complained that many of the documents produced by the IRS have been “redacted to the point of absurdity.”
Now we know why.
How did it work – this stonewalling of information to Congress? The ACLJ explains:
As the Washington Times reports:
Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information.
“My understanding was that it started soon after the request came from Congress and other investigators asking for documents around this whole issue,” which she surmised meant around spring of 2013.
In other words, as soon as the IRS targeting scandal broke, the IRS set up a special team of hundreds of attorneys, including President Obama’s political head of the Chief Counsel’s office, to keep requests for publicly available information away from the person who would normally review those documents and turn them over to Congress and the public. That “special” team then overly redacted, delayed, and determined which documents it wanted Congress to see.
After setting up a special “group” to target and delay applications by Tea Party groups for tax-exempt status, the IRS set up a new “special project team” to delay and redact information from Congress about that targeting. Can you smell a cover-up?
And, in the testimony, a familiar name has re-surfaced according to the ACLJ:
When asked about these revelations and the ongoing investigation by Congress into the IRS and former top IRS official Lois Lerner’s involvement, Howard testified, “I think that Lois Lerner was the tip of the iceberg.”
This is what we at the ACLJ have been arguing all along. The targeting of conservative groups, the delays, the unconstitutionally abusive questions go far beyond former top IRS official Lois Lerner. We expect to learn more about Lerner’s role and the disappearance and later recovery of many of her emails later this month as the Inspector General for Tax Administration is due to issue its report.
http://www.newsforage.com/2015/06/irs-created-team-of-lawyers-to-hide.html
And here in PA we have had the Castle Law in effect for about 4 years also. Rebuffed by a democrat guv for years and finally signed into law by a republican. Too bad he lost out. Gas taxes just went up and the new guv, a democrat, looking for more and more taxes to spend.
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Gotta disagree a little. They are not idiots by no means. They are smart enough to find an occupation that does very little, pays well, and has major perks with no hard physical labor involved. Gone are the days when representing the people was a public service. It's "we the people" that are the real idiots for not demanding change and throwing out the bums that prevent it. It's not a republican nor a democrat issue. Both are bought and paid for and work almost solely for their large donors, "we the people" be damned. Obama teaming up with the repubs to get the fast track for the TPP through a vote should convince anybody who they really work for. Sad what we get when the gridlock dissolves into bipartisanship.
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We The People: 2 Million Petitions Delivered To Congress to Stop TPP
I hope all the liberals are happy with their hero in chief pushing so hard for this. my add
by Garrett Reno3 Jun 2015Washington, DC232
Members of the House and the Senate delivered 2 million petitions to Congress, opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).
The ranking Democrat of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), says that “if there is ever a time in American history that we have got to stand up for the American worker and not for corporate greed—today is that day and the TPP is that issue. The facts are very clear… the TPP follows in the footsteps of other disastrous trade agreements.” Sanders adds:
Over and over again—we were told by corporate America and their representatives about all of the jobs that these trade agreements would create. And over and over again… the proponents of unfretted free trade were wrong. Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would create a million jobs in 5 years, in fact it lost 700,0000 jobs. We were promised that PNTR with China would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead it has lead to the loss of over 2 million jobs. And on and on it goes. Everybody knows that the great middle class of this country is disappearing and one of the major reasons is a disastrous set of trade policies, which force America workers to compete with workers around the world who make pennies an hour.
The TPP and TPA proposals that President Obama has negotiated in complete secrecy have unified members from both the Republican and Democratic parties against the trade agreement.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) each joined Sanders to come out against the trade deal, echoing the concerns that TPP would prioritize corporate interests over middle class families and that jobs would undoubtedly be shipped over seas.
The list of House members opposed to the trade agreements continues to grow ahead of a vote.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)
92%
, former U.S. Navy Seal Team 6 Commander Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT)
40%
(R-MO), Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)
70%
, and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX)
79%
are just a few who’ve spoken against the TPP and TPA deals in recent days.
The petitions come just a day after WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 bounty for the remaining 26 missing chapters of the massive and unprecedented multinational trade deal. In that time, WikiLeaks has crowd sourced nearly 40 percent of its goal.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/03/we-the-people-2-million-petitions-delivered-to-congress-to-stop-tpp/
3,700 Illegal Immigrant ‘Threat Level 1’ Criminals Released Into U.S. by DHS
Published: June 4, 2015
Source: Washington Times
Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard.
Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are tied by court rulings in many cases, but the numbers, obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, showed 57 percent of the criminals released were by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own choice, and they could have been kept instead.
“Put aside the spin, and the fact is that over 17,000 of the criminal aliens released last year were released due to ICE discretion, representing 57 percent of the releases,” said Mr. Goodlatte. “The Obama administration’s lax enforcement policies are reckless and needlessly endanger our communities.”
http://www.blacklistednews.com/3%2C700_Illegal_Immigrant_%E2%80%98Threat_Level_1%E2%80%99_Criminals_Released_Into_U.S._by_DHS/44339/0/38/38/Y/M.html
WTF! Obamacare rates could spike by 50%, Obama admin:”Rate Hikes Is Proof Obamacare Is Working”
Submitted by IWB, on June 4th, 2015
Obamacare Insurance Premium Increases Could Spike by 50 Percent
Despite President Obama’s repeated claims that Americans’ insurance rates would decrease, once again we see just the opposite as health insurers are seeking yet another massive hike in Obamacare premiums.
Every year since the passage of Obamacare, insurance premiums have risen, sometimes nearly 50 percent, quite despite that Obama claimed at least 19 times that he’d save every American $2,500 a year on their insurance. Far from saving Americans money, the average cost has soared to over $5,000 a year.
Early in March it was reported that Obamacare customers were going to see a significant hike in their premiums.
As June dawns, more sources are claiming that the hikes may even be higher than expected.
Some states are seeing 15 to 20 percent hikes. But other states are seeing hikes as high as 50 percent.
Obamacare Insurance Premium Increases Could Spike by 50 Percent
Despite President Obama’s repeated claims that Americans’ insurance rates would decrease, once again we see just the opposite as health insurers are seeking yet another massive hike in Obamacare premiums.
Every year since the passage of Obamacare, insurance premiums have risen, sometimes nearly 50 percent, quite despite that Obama claimed at least 19 times that he’d save every American $2,500 a year on their insurance. Far from saving Americans money, the average cost has soared to over $5,000 a year.
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Early in March it was reported that Obamacare customers were going to see a significant hike in their premiums.
As June dawns, more sources are claiming that the hikes may even be higher than expected.
Some states are seeing 15 to 20 percent hikes. But other states are seeing hikes as high as 50 percent.
Say what you want, the need for larger warehouse space is always a good sign of growth.
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I would love to see their camp grow. Too many citizens are out of touch and our elected representatives are far too addicted to wall street money.
........al