FL police promote public safety by roaming van

Vans rolling through FL neighborhoods.

I will research the financials for the peacemakers: federal funds, state funds how the peacemakers qualify backing for such large vans along with the training, the cost of vans, and logistics of roaming vans.

Socially, the public ask why aren’t there vans on the southern borders? Will vans addresses the drug cartel/gang violence? What is the impact upon children seeing massive surveillance vans roaming around? Americans ask if roaming vans are an incremental turn towards a militarized culture only to maintain order during the FL’s primary?

Prayer: remember me

Iranian pastor jailed:

Nadarkhani, an evangelical Christian, has been jailed since 2009 under apostasy charges and for evangelizing to Muslims.

According to a statement released in mid-December by Present Truth Ministries, Iranian officials have attempted to delay Nadarkhani’s verdict for at least four months, perhaps as long as a year.

As Christians around the world live in relative peace and freedom, let us remember those who do not enjoy the ability to practice their faith and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Clearing after the storm

“We Remember Your Love”

We will extol your love more than wine.

Song of Songs 1:4

Jesus will not let His people forget His love. If all the love they have enjoyed should be forgotten, He will visit them with fresh love. “Do you forget my cross?” says He. “I will cause you to remember it; for at My table I will manifest Myself anew to you. Do you forget what I did for you in the council-chamber of eternity? I will remind you of it, for you shall need a counselor and shall find Me ready at your call.”

Mothers do not let their children forget them. If the boy has gone to Australia and does not write home, his mother writes, “Has John forgotten his mother?” Then there comes back a sweet epistle, which proves that the gentle reminder was not in vain. So is it with Jesus. He says to us, “Remember Me,” and our response is, “We will remember Your love.” We will remember Your love and its matchless history. It is as ancient as the glory that You had with the Father before the world was.

We remember, O Jesus, Your eternal love when You became our Surety and chose us as Your bride. We remember the love that suggested the sacrifice of Yourself, the love that, until the fullness of time, mused over that sacrifice until what was written of You (“Lo, I come”) was fulfilled. We remember Your love, O Jesus, as it was manifest to us in Your holy life, from the manger of Bethlehem to the Garden of Gethsemane. We track You from the cradle to the grave–for Your every word and deed was love–and we rejoice in Your love, which death did not exhaust–Your love that shone resplendent in Your resurrection. We remember that burning fire of love that will never let You hold Your peace until Your chosen ones be all safely housed, until Zion be glorified and Jerusalem settled on her everlasting foundations of light and love in heaven.

The Great Marvels of Our God

And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

Luke 2:18

We must not cease to wonder at the great marvels of our God. It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God’s glory, though it may not express itself in song or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet it silently adores.

Our incarnate God is to be worshiped as “the Wonderful.” That God should consider His fallen creature, man, and instead of sweeping him away with the broom of destruction should Himself undertake to be man’s Redeemer and to pay his ransom price is indeed marvelous!

But to each believer redemption is most marvelous as he views it in relation to himself. It is a miracle of grace indeed that Jesus should forsake the thrones and royalties above to suffer ignominiously below for you. Let your soul lose itself in wonder, for wonder is in this way a very practical emotion. Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship and heartfelt thanksgiving.

It will cause within you godly watchfulness; you will be afraid to sin against such a love as this. Feeling the presence of the mighty God in the gift of His dear Son, you will put your shoes from off your feet, because the place whereon you stand is holy ground. You will be moved at the same time to glorious hope.

If Jesus has done such marvelous things on your behalf, you will feel that heaven itself is not too great for your expectation. Who can be astonished at anything when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Savior? Dear reader, it may be that from the quietness and solitariness of your life you are scarcely able to imitate the shepherds of Bethlehem, who told what they had seen and heard, but you can at least fill up the circle of the worshipers before the throne by wondering at what God has done.

Glorify and Praise God

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Luke 2:20

What was the subject of their praise? They praised God for what they had heard–for the good tidings of great joy that a Savior was born unto them. Let us copy them; let us also raise a song of thanksgiving that we have heard of Jesus and His salvation.

They also praised God for what they had seen. There is the sweetest music–what we have experienced, what we have felt within, what we have made our own. It is not enough to hear about Jesus: Mere hearing may tune the harp, but the fingers of living faith must create the music. If you have seen Jesus with the God-giving sight of faith, suffer no cobwebs to linger among the harp-strings, but loud with the praise of sovereign grace, awake your psaltery and harp.

One point for which they praised God was the agreement between what they had heard and what they had seen. Observe the last sentence–”as it had been told them.” Have you not found the Gospel to be in yourselves just what the Bible said it would be? Jesus said He would give you rest–have you not enjoyed the sweetest peace in Him?

He said you would have joy and comfort and life through believing in Him–have you not received all these? Are not His ways ways of pleasantness, and His paths paths of peace? Surely you can say with the queen of Sheba, “The half was not told me.”¹

I have found Christ more sweet than His servants ever said He was. I looked upon His likeness as they painted it, but it was a mere daub compared with Himself; for the King in His beauty outshines all imaginable loveliness. Surely what we have “seen” keeps pace with, no, far exceeds what we have “heard.” Let us, then, glorify and praise God for a Savior so precious and so satisfying.

¹1 Kings 10:7

Teen girls suffer from mystery illness

NBC: Teens stricken with mystery illness.

Daily Motion:

Dr. Laszlo Mechtler tells TODAY that after examining some of New York classmates who are plagued by uncontrollable tics, he has determined the girls are suffering from mass psychogenic illness.

Link fails…

Minor stuttering, twitching, flinching and other awkward movements could be unnoticeable and normal. What is taking place here is abnormal. Mass psychogenic illness? Stress or Hysteria? Minor tardive dyskinesia (TD) or Tourettes? Maybe just growing pains?

All doubtful. Parents have good reason to feel insulted with some of the wild theories the medical community marinates on.

Video Dr.’s baffled, calls in psychiatrist:

However, tension continues to grow as different specialists disagree on the possible causes of this condition. The New York State Department of Health say they have been investigating the case apparently for more than three months and found no cause for the illness.

“What we want to do is to put together support for the best treatment possible for the girls … I think if we can get the girls into the right kind of routine … with a little more support and focus, we have a real avenue of hope,” psychiatrist Dr. John Sharp told Dr. Drew Wednesday night.

That sounds so hopeful…

Grab your children, your purse and run. The class of drugs they’d offer are uppers, downers and more downers. Many of which are linked back to TD. The treatment will only continue the problems, not lessen the severity of the symptoms.

Some doctors initially believed the diagnosis was conversion disorder. “A conversion disorder is a condition you show psychological stress in physical ways to describe a health problem that starts as a mental or emotional crisis, a scary or stressful incident of some kind, and converts to physical problems,” Dr. Drew explained.

Dr. Laszlo Metchtler of the Dent Neurologic Institute, who diagnosed some of these girls with conversion added, “What shocked us was that in the following two, three months, then further patients started showing up to our office after being evaluated in the region and at that time our evaluation went from conversion disorder to mass psychogenic illness.”

Teens and parents tell their story:

Last Tuesday, the school district stressed that it was doing everything it could to address their concerns. “The environment or an infection is not the cause of the students’ tics,” a statement on the district’s website said. “There are many causes of tic-like symptoms. Stress can often worsen tic-like symptoms. These symptoms are real.”

“I`m not good – not today … my tics got worse,” Sanchez stated at the beginning of the interview.

Her mother, Melisa Philips added, “She also now has daily blackouts and seizures … not like epilepsy seizures, but where she’s somewhat lucid and can feel her body being rigid and it`s almost like she’s a stone statue. And she can’t move and she’s very weak and tired, and so, it just continually seems to get new symptoms.”

Philips added that all the girls had been treated individually with physicians assuming that it stress/anxiety induced or from “conversion disorder.”

(I recalled a debate about the conversion illness label around 10 or 11 years ago in a pharma seminar.)

Conversion disorder defined.

This is not a mystery. The medical community cannot and will not investigate the link between vaccinating humans ages 0-26 with consideration for the (vaccination) vax-drug potentiation treating whatever aliment they may have.

It is unknown if vax’s and prescription drugs are excluded from usual explanations for tremors, uncontrolled musculoskeletal movements, tics, uncontrolled bodily movements including speech.

It was notable that the media did not delve into the private medical histories of the teens. If the girls are receiving regular vaccinations via their vax schedule including rounds of the HPV vax along with mental health care that includes lifelong regimen of drugs that bring the very symptoms they are suffering from. That would indicate their problems could be caused by the vax’s plus the neuroleptic (mental health medications)/anti-convulsant drug classes. Their motor and cognitive skills are misfiring because of the cumulative build-up of vax’s and meds. These injections will potentiate with other drugs, excitoxins and neurotoxins to severely alter what were once normal motions.

On the other hand, it is possible the teen girls are not vaccinated or taking any medicines at all.

From Natural News, bold emp. mine:

When vaccines are administered to groups, the physical reactions of the recipients may be similar, causing a form of mass reaction, the mechanism for which is the same as that for mass reactions from other causes. These phenomena have been categorised as mass psychogenic illness (MPI), and have been defined as the collective occurrence of a constellation of symptoms suggestive of organic illness but without an identified cause in a group of people with shared beliefs about the cause of the symptom(s). A review of the literature shows that such outbreaks have been reported in differing cultural and environmental settings including developing and industrialised countries, in the work place, on public transport, in schools, and the military. The perceived threats have been against agents such as food poisoning, fire and toxic gases. Whatever the place or perceived threat, the response seems to be similar. The symptoms generally included headache, dizziness, weakness, and loss of consciousness. Once under way, MPIs are not easy to stop. ⁴.

It appears that these gender extortionists were laying the groundwork for the new medical conditions they knew were going to occur post-Gardasil vaccination.

Indeed, the situation with the 12 girls suffering from a severe neurological disorder is a prime example. Is it possible that Merck gender extortionists were aware that mass hysteria would be harder to trace and/or identify when girls were getting immunized individually at a doctor’s office vs. at a school setting? New York State is gearing up to pass legislation for mandatory HPV vaccination once again. Are the schools already vaccinating girls without parental consent or awareness?

It is well known that private doctor’s offices were already enforcing AB-499 which gives the State the right to determine medical care of children 12 and older for the diagnosis and treatment of STD’s before it was signed into law by Governor Brown. Is the same thing happening in NY? Now, South Carolina and Florida are considering similar legislation. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that is not being disclosed. But you can bet MPI is another made up gender extortionist syndrome like PMS and PMDD.

In a stunning HLN TV interview with two of the Le Roy High School girls suffering from a ‘mystery illness’, this past Friday night, Dr. Drew, a practicing physician, board certified in internal and addiction medicine was visibly upset when one of the girls experienced a seizure during the taping. He stated: ‘we need to explore the toxins that may be causing the focal damage in the brain.’ ⁵

Other news reports labeled the neurological disorder the girls are experiencing as ‘Conversion Disorder’ – a ‘neurosis marked by the appearance of physical symptoms such as partial loss of muscle function without physical cause but in the presence of psychological conflict. Symptoms include numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits without a neurological cause. It is thought that these problems arise in response to difficulties in the patient’s life, and conversion is considered a psychiatric disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM-IV).’⁶

On January 19, the Wall Street Journal blatantly and irreverently headlined an article: Teens in Upstate New York Get Diagnosis: ‘Mass Psychogenic Illness’, based on the ‘expert opinion’ of neurologist Laszlo Mechtler, Vice President of Dent Neurologic Institute, who has treated 11 of the girls. According to WSJ… “In MPI, physical symptoms that are perfectly real but that have psychological roots rather than some underlying organic cause appear in a group of people, often spreading from one to the next.”⁷.

Mechtler’s statement about the 12 Le Roy High School girls is degrading, demeaning, and reminiscent of how women were ‘treated and diagnosed’ then sent to public asylums in the 1800′s if they did not obey their husbands (male authority). But then again a quick search and one finds what one would expect to find in this case. Dr. Mechtler sits on the American Academy of Neurology Editorial Board – and the disclosures state:

‘Dr. Mechtler has received personal compensation for speaking engagements from Forest Laboratories, Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Inc., and Zogenix, Inc.⁸

Mechtler exhibits prejudice and a lack of professional integrity by diagnosing the girls in the first place. Making such statements is a prime example of gender extortionism in the name of Big Pharma. In fact, the situation in Le Roy is even more suspicious since the root cause behind the girl’s neurological problems is unknown yet an ‘expert’ is willing to label it psychogenic. Then again- perhaps he is right – brain damage is in their head – the ‘experts’ just can’t seem to find the cause.

VAERS analyst Janny Stokvis found 61 reports of ‘Conversion Disorder’ in VAERS reported post-HPV vaccination – establishing a potential link between Gardasil and the symptoms the girls are experiencing even though the authorities (gender extortionists) have ‘ruled out’ the connection between the high school girls and the HPV vaccine. ⁷

Meanwhile, adverse injuries from the HPV vaccines are on the increase – with the highest percentage of reported events from August to December 2011, from incidences of cervical dysplasia with a 15.29% increase and cervical cancer with a 14.63% from the end of the summer to 181 cases prior to December 14, 2011.

Whatever these gender extortionists want to call the autoimmune/neurological and endocrine disorders these girls are experiencing, the bottom line is the vaccine which is supposed to prevent cervical cancer may actually be causing cervical cancer.But then again, Merck and FDA gender extortionists also knew this when they reported in the May 2006 VRBPCA documents that if a girl is previously exposed to Human Papillomavirus and if she gets vaccinated that her chances of getting cervical cancer increase 44.6 % post-Gardasil and 32.5% post Cervarix.⁸Families & Girls Facing Financial Ruin from Psychosis DiagnosisMeanwhile out of pocket medical costs for families desperately trying to find out what is wrong with their previously healthy daughters is ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars. Some families have reported spending $50 to over $100,000 for special diagnostic testing and other therapies that insurance companies are not covering.Just this week SANE Vax Inc. has heard from a mother in California, whose 26 year old daughter independently living on her own has racked up over $1.2 million in medical costs since she was vaccinated with Gardasil in 2009.According to the mother her daughter has been hospitalized over 60 times with visits ranging from two to seven days. This innocent young girl – previously diagnosed as a child with Juvenile Type I Diabetes- who does not have medical insurance, cannot stop vomiting. She cannot keep her General Relief or follow-up on recommended doctor visits because she misses appointments when she lands back in the hospital.She has been told the hospitals are not here to fix her; they are here to get her well enough to see her regular doctor. They cannot grasp the fact that she is not out of the hospital long enough to make it to her regular doctor. Her mother told SANE Vax Inc. that during last week’s visit, the ER nurse told her daughter as she was violently vomiting that she was psychotic and making this happen herself. Sound familiar?The mother has not yet been able to get her records from the five different hospitals; the doctors failed to file a VAERS report; and she and her daughter have yet to do so because her daughter cannot get her record with exact dates, time and batch number.

Semi-related: new evidence finds Dr. Wakefield did not commit any fraud in his work.

Destroying the middle class: debt, unemployment, skyrocketing energy costs

Yesterday, I posted a blurb from a statement from a cancelled credit card. I operate on an outdated, strange notion: when earning less money I simply spend less. This includes cancelling any lines of credit, even if I need it. Our family refuses to enter debt to survive. We cannot risk anymore outrageous fees and rate hikes. The mentioned credit card had a teaser rate that ballooned to 15%.

More debt is not the answer and 2nd jobs are not available. Even a primary job is scarce as our economy remains depressed with little growth, (growth that is revised downward).

More Americans understand they cannot spend, enter debt and expect success. Americans are paying off debts, filing for BK, deleveraging and debanking. It is not that Americans dislike credit card companies and banks, Americans cannot afford them anymore:

Americans are cutting their debt faster than other countries and could already be halfway through the deleveraging process, setting the stage for the nation’s economic recovery, says a new report from McKinsey Global Institute.

However, even when U.S. consumers finish deleveraging, they probably won’t be as powerful an engine of global growth as they were before the crisis, warns the report.

According to McKinsey analysts, deleveraging happens in two stages: First, the private sector reduces debt, while economic growth is negative or minimal and government debt rises; then, growth rebounds and supports gradual government deleveraging.

“Somewhat surprisingly, given the amount of concern over the U.S. economy, we find that the United States is furthest along in private-sector debt reduction and closest to beginning the second phase of deleveraging,” says the report.

“The remaining obstacles for its return to growth are its unsettled housing market and its failure to lay out a credible medium-term plan for public debt reduction,” concludes the report.

Since the financial crisis, U.S. household debt has fallen by $584 billion, or 15 percentage points relative to disposable income, which is more than in any other country.

Due to the new regluations, coal plants are shut down in the northeast.

Job and energy losses:

FirstEnergy will close six older coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1 due to environmental regulations.

Bay Shore Plant, Units 2-4, in Oregon, Ohio; Eastlake Plant; Ashtabula Plant; Lake Shore Plant, Cleveland; Armstrong Power Station, Pennsylvania; and R. Paul Smith Power Station, Maryland are the six plants that will be retired. Eastlake Mayor Ted Andrzejewski said the news is devastating for his city. “It will cost us a total of $600,00 in lost tax revenue. We had to lay off 24 employees because of state budget cuts. Now, the hits keep coming. It’s another example of government regulation interfering with business operation ands it’s costing jobs.”

In all, 529 employees will lose their jobs. Existing severance benefits will apply to those who are eligible, and some affected may be able to apply for open positions at other FirstEnergy facilities.

“This decision is not in any way a reflection of the fine work done by the employees at the affected plants, but is related to the impact of new environmental rules,” said James Lash in a news release, president of FirstEnergy Generation and chief nuclear officer.

The company said the decision to close the plants is based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.

“We recently completed a comprehensive review of our coal-fired generating plants and determined that additional investments to implement MATS and other environmental rules would make these older plants even less likely to be dispatched under market rules. As a result, it was necessary to retire the plants rather than continue operations,” explained Lash in the release.

The plants being retired served mostly as peaking or intermediate facilities, generating, on average, 10 percent of the electricity produced by the company over the past three years.

Wash Po:

FirstEnergy Corp. said Thursday that new environmental regulations led to a decision to shut down six older, coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, affecting more than 500 employees.

The new standards are designed to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. An Associated Press survey found that the changes were likely to result in the mothballing of dozens of units in the Midwest and in the coal belt — Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

The Obama administration was under court order to issue a new rule, after a court threw out an attempt by the Bush administration to exempt power plants from controls for toxic air pollution.

Two factors have made it easier for utilities to shut old coal plants in recent years. Power demand has been weakening in recent years because of the slow economy and energy efficiency programs. And natural gas prices, which have fallen to decade-low levels in recent weeks, have allowed utilities to switch from coal to natural gas without impacting customer bills. Meanwhile, demand from China and elsewhere has driven up the price of coal.

FirstEnergy said its decision would directly affect 529 employees. Some of them could end up transferring to other FirstEnergy facilities and work sites, while others could take advantage of a retirement benefit being offered to employees 55 years and older, the company said.

Our latest electric bill is 3,383 KWH @ $10.57 per day, is $359.99 per month according to their bill.

Last year, this period, we used 4,450 KWH and the bill was around $250.00 to $270.00 that month. For the northeast, we are have had a mild winter, yet our energy costs are increasing.

Cocaine seized at NY United Nations

Guardian UK:

A shipment containing 16 kilograms of cocaine was seized last week at the United Nations‘s mail intake centre, a New York Police Department spokesman said on Thursday.

Paul Browne, NYPD’s chief spokesman, said the drugs were in a white bag evidently masquerading as a diplomatic pouch that raised suspicions when it was being scanned because it was stamped with what looked like a poorly copied version of the UN logo.

Browne said here was no name or address on the shipment sent from Mexico City through Cincinnati. UN security officials called the NYPD and Drug Enforcement Administration, which confirmed the substance inside the shipment intercepted on 16 January was cocaine, the police spokesman said.

From CBS:

Sources tell CBS 2 that authorities are investigating a delivery of cocaine to the United Nations. Sources said Thursday that 30 pounds of cocaine were received by the UN in their mail room. It was delivered as a package on Jan. 16. The New York Police Department and Drug Enforcement Agency are involved in the probe.

Taxpayers owed billions from toxic TARP

$130 billion remains unpaid:

No one hears much about TARP anymore, but a recent report shows a gloomy picture for the next 5 years.  The US can spend up to another $51 billion on various programs.  Taxpayers are still owed over $130 billion and own over 70% of AIG and 30% of GM.  Who knows how long it will take to pay back all those funds and get things back to normal, but in my opinion, the economy has not shown any signs that you can spend your way out of a depression.

Rep. Graves:

Representative Tom Graves (R-Ga.-09) issued the a statement Thursday, in response to a report by a government watchdog group that found U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion from companies that received money from the financial bailout.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program is a $700 billion project launched in September 2008 to bailout private financial companies. The report also found that some of the bailout money may never be repaid to taxpayers.

Representative Graves supported H.R. 830, the FHA Refinance Program Termination Act, and H.R. 839, the HAMP Termination Act. H.R. 830 would rescind any unused TARP funds directed to the Federal Housing Administration Refinance Program to pay down the overwhelming federal debt.

HA Refinance Program dollars are not given to homeowners, but to lenders and banks, and only helped 44 people over two years. H.R. 839 would rescind any unused TARP funds for the Home Affordable Modification Program. President Obama directed $30 billion to HAMP through TARP with the promise of HAMP helping four million homeowners. However, HAMP has only helped about 13 percent of the homeowners President Obama estimated, and the re-default rate among those helped is alarmingly high.

Alarmingly high? High on hopium to have fallen for such a fraud.

No easy solutions

In American politics, republicans want decreased spending/debt, smaller government and magical dragons (with some spending). Their view holds government is not the answer to problems.

Democrats want more central planning, more spending/debt and magical dragons. Their view holds that government is the answer to every problem.

America’s problem is debt and ranks high in the primary problems facing America.

As the EZ (European Union) nations entered austerity programs, knowing full well what they were signing onto, some believed this was their only option. How shocking austerity failed, or has it?

Leaders now admit signing on to austerity led by banks is a failure:

Austerity alone does not deliver the rewards it is meant to and the threats of stunted economic growth and recession remain high in the euro zone, Stephen King, global chief economist at HSBC told CNBC.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, King gave Portugal as an example of a country that had taken the austerity route and followed all the rules but was still struggling.

“There is a risk of that; look at Portugal, it has done all the right things, it has stuck to austerity, it has stuck to the programs set by the EU and others and yet Portugal’s bond yields are incredibly high,” he said.

“The expectation from austerity was that markets reward countries for delivering austerity in the form of much lower borrowing costs and that hasn’t happened,” King added…

“The consequence is that you are left with countries that have zero growth, possibly recession and interest rates which are painfully high and that combination is unsustainable.”

Interesting that anyone is still listening to HSBC.

There are no easy solutions:

If you increased your credit card spending by a couple thousand dollars per month would your lifestyle improve?  Of course it would.  By going into large amounts of debt, it is possible to live a lifestyle that you can’t really afford, at least for a while.  But if you keep racking up huge amounts of credit card debt every single month, eventually it gets to a point where it is extremely difficult to even keep up with the minimum monthly payments and the credit card companies will not lend you any more money.  Well, on a larger scale it is the same thing with government debt.  Right now, the U.S. government is spending more than a trillion dollars more than it takes in every year.  Even if the U.S. government spends all of that money on incredibly stupid stuff, it still gets into the pockets of ordinary Americans.

In turn, those ordinary Americans use that money to pay the mortgage, buy food, shop at the mall, etc.  All of this borrowing and spending by the U.S. government has created a “false prosperity” bubble that is not real.  It may feel real to you right now, but it is unsustainable by definition.  If the U.S. government suddenly started spending only the money that it actually brought in every year, our economy would be doomed and all of this “false prosperity” would rapidly disappear.  But if the U.S. government continues to rack up debt at this pace we are doomed as well.  In fact, every dollar that gets borrowed makes our eventual collapse ever worse.  We are heading down the exact same road that Greece has gone.  Eventually the rest of the world is not going to lend us gigantic mountains of super cheap money anymore.  When the flow of cheap money stops, it can be extremely painful.  Anyone that has ever seen the interest rates on their credit cards go above 20 percent knows how this feels.  If we had addressed these problems as a nation a decade or two ago, perhaps we could have found a solution.  But now there is no way out under our current financial system and a devastating economic collapse is on the horizon no matter what we do…

Those that are convinced that balancing the federal budget in the United States will be relatively painless should take a close look at what is happening in Greece.

As I have written about previously, the Greek economy has been plunged into a 21st century “Great Depression”.  In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have already shut down, the unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is sitting at 39 percent, and one third of the entire nation is living in poverty…

During 2011, the federal government went into more debt than the U.S. government accumulated from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.

That may be hard to believe, but it is true.

During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars.

Math is difficult:

The U.S. government has total assets of 2.7 trillion dollars and has total liabilities of 17.5 trillion dollars.  Those liabilities do not even count 4.7 trillion dollars of intragovernmental debt that is currently outstanding.

But it is not just the federal government that has been living a fantasy.

Reality:

The scary thing is that even with all of this borrowed money, our economy is still in the dumps.

So what in the world is it going to look like when the debt bubble totally bursts?

Even with all of this “borrowed prosperity”, anger at the government is rapidly growing.  A recent Gallup poll found that “satisfaction with government” in the United States is now at an all-time record low of 29 percent.

So how angry will the American people be when all of this “borrowed prosperity” disappears?

When this whole thing comes tumbling down, a lot of people are going to blame our problems on “capitalism”…

Truth:

But capitalism is not the problem.  Capitalism has produced the greatest eras of prosperity that the world has ever seen. No, the real problem is our debt-based financial system that is managed and run by the central banks of the world.

Updated: Facebook’s TMI format, unpopular practices

You will reveal your past by choice or force:

Facebook’s Timeline – a new look for people’s Profile pages which exposes their entire history on the site – will become mandatory for all users.

The ‘new look’ has been voluntary up until now.

From now, users will simply be notified that they are being ‘updated’ via an announcement at the top of their home page, which users click on to activate Timeline.

As with voluntary switches to Timeline, those who are ‘updated’ will have just seven days to select which photos, posts and life events they want to advertise to the world.

Via the official Facebook blog, the site announced, ‘Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story.’

After I stopped laughing, I recalled an article I read a few years ago outlining that TMI (or too much information model) was where FB’s business model was rumored to edge towards in the future. On a marketing level, this is fantastic for scary guerilla marketing. It appears that FB is nearly eliminating all privacy options. Which is good, users need to experience the computer viruses, harassment and oddball problems that FB has to offer them.

On a SN (social networking) level who could possibly troll around look at all this data? FB is a huge database of the most worthless emotional outbursts ever to be created.

It is common knowledge that the police make use of Facebook:

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a tool to mine social media for intelligence tips. The US domestic law enforcement agency is asking information technology contractors about the feasibility of building a tool that would “enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing ‘open source’ actionable intelligence.”

The January 19 open request was published on a website offering federal business opportunities and was first reported by New Scientist magazine.

The FBI said it is seeking an “open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application solution” for its Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC).

“Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations,” the FBI request said.

“Intelligence analysts will often use social media to receive the first tip-off that a crisis has occurred,” it said.

The FBI said the tool “must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identity, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”

It would need to be able to “instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all ‘publicly available’ tweets across the Twitter site and any other ‘publicly available’ social networking sites/forums.”

Futile: Senators protest NDAA

What a waste of time:

Strange bedfellows on Capitol Hill, ranging from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.), are joining forces to change controversial detainee language that was signed into law by President Obama last month.

The bipartisan effort is a clear indication that the debate on the government’s power to detain suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, will continue into 2012…

“Any statute that could possibly be interpreted to allow a president to detain American citizens without charge or trial is incredibly alarming,” said Landry, a freshman lawmaker and member of the Tea Party Caucus who has introduced a bill in the House to clarify the law.

When Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last month, he paired it with a signing statement, noting he had “serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

He’s hardly the only one.

Both libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is running for president, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, for example, have issued statements saying the NDAA provisions violate the Fifth Amendment.

At question is a provision in the new law wherein Congress affirms the president’s right to detain persons who were “part of or substantially supported al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces.” The president may detain these persons “under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities.”

President George W. Bush originally claimed a similar right under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, a law passed in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To the dismay of some on the left, Obama has asserted the same claim, and Congress has now codified it.

The provision, however, does not specifically exempt U.S. citizens, and that’s the rub.

“You go down a slippery slope,” Franken told The Hill. “To not give people a hearing, to not give an American citizen the right to have his case heard in a court — I think that’s one of our basic rights. Once we’re starting to get rid of our basic rights, we’re in real trouble.”

The president vowed that his administration would never use these powers against American citizens.

Of course, such powers would never used against good citizens like us.

Some say it is far too great a request to ask the American people to trust any leader with such unprecedented powers. Americans are asked to believe these  laws are just for non-white, non-black Muslim Americans. And it ain’t flying, the people are worried and disturbed at the <1> NDAA. The American people fear such laws will be tested upon them.

America’s stuck with the NDAA. Similar to the <2> health care bill, the eventual passage of the <3> Dream Act and the eventual passage of <4>SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, we too, will be stuck with all 4 laws.

Never to be repealed.

GOP runs unelectable, unconservative, ethically challenged Newt

Newt: Our Bill Clinton

How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private, I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism’s Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit, but he has all the charm of barbed wire.

What disinterest I have in politics these day! I read everything but I care only for a few issues that are covered here in repetition. Business, finance, econ, banking and public policy are my main focus. The 2012 election is a childish descent into madness.

And yes, I still believe that women should avoid doing politics. (However, Ann Coulter remains one of the most interesting, informative and humorous pundits.)

I concern myself with my faith, hobbies, family, friends and earning a living.

Until the recent debates, I wanted to believe the best about (baby boomers) Mitt, Newt and (younger, fresher) Santorum. I wanted to believe they are all nice, fine people. I like to believe the best of others, and remain verbally charitable to even the most worthless of people. My faith dictates that we all have a purpose and value in the eyes of God. Therefore, kindness suits me far better than wit as I lack the capacity for wit.

In debates, Newt’s persona appears mean, vindictive and abrasive. Mitt appears as a double-minded-internationalist not a decisive American.

Which grieves me to admit as my parents are boomers and they let their yes be yes and vice-versa. One likes to believe that every candidate including the current administration would register as people you’d want to have a drink with. But fit for the Oval office, they are not. Bold emp. mine:

Newt and Bill are, of course, 1960s-generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl-hopping. It’s not as egregious as Bill’s, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out. If I have heard of some, you can be sure the Democrats have heard of more.

Nancy Pelosi’s intimations are timely. Newt up against the Prophet Obama would be a painful thing to watch. He might be deft with one-liners, but it would be futile. There are independent and other uncommitted voters to be cultivated in 2012 — all would be unmoved by Newt’s juggling of conservative shibboleths.

Newt and Bill, as 1960s generation self-promoters, share the same duplicity, ostentatious braininess and a propensity for endless scrapes with propriety and the law. They are tireless hustlers. Now Newt is hustling my fellow conservatives in this election.

Yes, Americans aware of the hustling for the nomination.

Relax Terrell, no real GOP’ers believe or trust Mitt or Newt.

The last time around he successfully hustled conservatives in the House of Representatives and then the conservatives on the House impeachment committee. He blew the impeachment and in fact his role as speaker. He backed out in disgrace.

I recall the 1990′s. Those who know me, understand another reason why I didn’t care for the 90′s or growing up as a Gen X’er. I have zero interest in Mitt’s tax returns and Newt’s ex-wives. I don’t want to read anyone’s PRIVATE tax returns, medical records or hear about Newt’s tumultuous marriages. Newt, Mitt and Santorum’s economic policies are incoherent. In regards to Newt’s econo policy, even Bloomberg took notice of major policy and budgetary dysfunction.

For months, voters have waited for Nancy Pelosi to shed light upon the ethics violations she is lording over Newt. No ex-wife, dead woman or live 8 year old boy could destroy Newt, as Americans (voters, media, whomever) find out the candidate they rally around is corrupt and quite reminiscent of Bill Clinton.

(Newt cannot and will not win against the current administration. Voting for Mitt, Newt or Santorum is reelecting Obama, who is likely to win anyways. Only a vote for GOP Rep. Ron Paul will not violate any real American’s conscious. Voting for RP would promote sound money, the preservation of liberty and a agreater absence of cognitive dissonance that plagues both the false right-left paradigms. Voting Rep. Ron Paul is voting for consistent and principled leader whose public persona is one of kindness and approachability.)

Wait!

Pelosi? Will she or won’t she air details:

There seems to be a very persistent belief in some Republican and conservative circles that Nancy Pelosi is in possession of secret and damning information about Newt Gingrich that would immediately cause his presidential race to implode if she leaked it.

There is no such information. The whole thing is pure fantasy.

Really? This is so fun,  around, around and around!

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are UNEMPLOYED!

The latest to grab onto this conspiracy theory is Mitt Romney. To explain this clearly, a recap is in order.

A conspiracy theory…

Note the 4th grade approach…

A little while ago, Pelosi said in an interview that she was familiar with “a thousand pages” of documents related to the ethics probe of Gingrich that got him bounced from Congress. That triggered the first round of right-wing consipracy-mongering; her office quickly cleared up that all those documents are already public. They’re online right here.

Well now, that clears this ethics violations stuff up! Looks like I have more reading to do…

Undaunted, Romney picked up this line the other day, calling on Gingrich to “release” the probe. Many news outlets pointed it out again: The probe is already public.

Yesterday, Pelosi told CNN in an offhand comment that Gingrich will never be president, because “there’s something that I know.” Drudge madly flacked this “revelation“ with a massive headline claiming: “PELOSI THREAT: NEWT WON’T BE PRESIDENT.”

Romney today grabbed on to this one, too. Undaunted by the fact that the probe is already public, he went further still, calling for the release of “all of the records that were part of the ethics investigation, all of the transcripts.” It’s unclear whether such records exist, but as Jed Lewison notes, Pelosi plainly didn’t mean anything secretive with her comments to CNN. While her wording was clumsy, the notion that she’s in possession of any secret info about Newt is just daft.

Indeed, Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill confirms to me that she was just stating her belief that Gingrich will never be elected. “The ‘something’ Leader Pelosi knows is that Newt Gingrich will not be President of the United States,” Hammill says.

Come on now: The ethics probe of Gingrich is public information. Pelosi is not harboring any secret information that could destroy him or any other Republicans. As transfixing as the fantasy of an evil and all-powerful Pelosi may be, this is just that — a fantasy.

UPDATE: Pelosi herself clears this all up. Here’s her quote, emailed to me by her office:

“Any reference I would make to the Ethics Committee is confined to the public record.”

From The Hill:

The mystery of whether Nancy Pelosi knows something about Newt Gingrich that could hurt his presidential campaign deepened on Wednesday.

Pelosi’s office walked back comments she made Tuesday suggesting she had dirt on Gingrich, but a government watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with two agencies for documents on the Gingrich ethics probe from the 1990s…Separately, Gingrich demanded that if Pelosi had something, she “spit it out,” while Mitt Romney, battling for a win in the Florida primary, called for all records to be made public and said he wished he knew what Pelosi knew…

Pelosi hasn’t been shy about expressing her opinion about Gingrich, who memorably filmed an ad with her advocating action on climate change, something Gingrich has since described as “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years. ”

Asked about that comment, Pelosi told CNN on Tuesday: “I think he’s done plenty of dumb things, and there’s stiff competition for what is the dumbest thing he’s done, of course, including his violations of the ethics rules of the House of Representatives.”

Disliking credit cards

 

Hahaha…

Here’s a snapshot of your Blue from —— Express account.

As of Mon, Jan 23 at 07:58 AM ET

Statement Balance:	$19.62	closing date Jan 11
Recent Payments & Credits:	$20.00
Recent Charges:	$0.00	since Jan 12
Outstanding Balance:	($0.38)
Payment Due:	$0.00

American slave labor: more about billions behind bars…

In October of 2011, I posted my commentary about a CNBC series entitled billions behind bars, about US prisons and business teaming up to employ prisoners. It seems like a reasonable and good idea but there are serious consequences to sinking millions if not billions of dollars into prison labor.

Refresher details from CNBC:

With more than 2.3 million people locked up, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. One out of 100 American adults is behind bars – while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. These staggering numbers have created a thriving prison economy.

The states and the federal government together spend roughly $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the business. On Tuesday, October 18th at 9PM ET/PT, CNBC’s one-hour documentary, “Billions Behind Bars: Inside America’s Prison Industry,” takes viewers behind the razor wire to investigate the profits and inner-workings of the multi-billion dollar corrections industry. From some of the poorest towns in America to some of the wealthiest investment firms on Wall Street, CNBC’s award-winning Senior Correspondent Scott Cohn travels the country to go inside the big and controversial business of prisons.

After decades of tough-on-crime policies, prisons across the country have become so overcrowded, some states send inmates out of state to prisons thousands of miles away. This severe overcrowding has created an opportunity for a booming private prison industry that promises taxpayers significant cost-savings and state-of-the-art facilities. But for all the cost-savings, the practice of locking people up for profits can, in some cases, be highly controversial.

I wrote:

Omitted from the CNBC program was the statistical impact (if any) of inmates working the jobs that unemployed Americans (who are not in jail) are not hired for. Unemployed Americans seem to have endless competition preventing them from gainful employment.

Such employment would require paying more money to non-prison labor to potential employees who would contribute much needed tax dollars into a system that seems to have more recipients than money flowing into it. Unemployed Americans cannot compete with imprisoned Americans and illegal immigrants for work.

I urge readers to add, A Voice for Men to their daily reading. A voice for men addresses the booming business of American slave-labor:

Even 150 years after the end of the American Civil War, slavery in the United States is far from being history. Today, in a twisted marriage between Congress, the American prison system and large private corporations seeking to reduce costs and increase profits, slave labor has become a booming business in the United States. Generating over $2.4 billion dollars a year in revenue, and encompassing some 600,000 state, federal and local inmates, there seems to be no end in sight to this flourishing enterprise some have called the Prison Industrial Complex. Men who are in prison for non-violent offenses, that have gotten caught up in the never ending ‘War on Drugs’, mandatory minimum sentencing statues, “three strikes” laws and increasingly ending up in prison for unpaid debts, many times child support payments they are unable to make due to lack of employment, are by far and away the almost exclusive fodder for this new type of slavery. But how is this possible?

Expansion of Prisoner Labor 

On December 18th, 1865, the United States officially outlawed slavery through adoption of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment reads:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The US never did stop using prisoners for forced labor, many times seen in the form of the iconic chain gangs. And for the most part, excluding some parts of the South which sold prison labor to agricultural companies for work in the fields during the era of Jim Crow and the infamous Black Codes, prison labor was mostly used for public works and projects that were government run and benefitted the community at large. Indeed, even today, the Department of Defense employes Federal prison labor to manufacture a good portion of its personnel equipment such as helmets and body armor. UNICOR is the trade name for Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (FPI), which is the government owned corporation that “employs” inmates incarcerated in federal correctional facilities, for use in public projects.

That all began to change in 1979 after Congress passed the ‘Private Sector/Prison Industry Enhancement Certification (PIE) program‘ under the Justice System Improvement Act. The Congressional program essentially deregulated the use of inmates for labor, which not only enabled private companies to use prison labor, but also heavily encouraged it. PIE also lifted some restrictions on the sale of goods within the US that were produced with prison labor. Even today, while much of what private corporations have manufactured inside prisons still by law have to be sold overseas, companies and private “for profit” prisons have increasingly found ways around these regulations, and hence flooded the domestic market with goods made with American slave labor.

Blood from a Stone

While Federal regulations stipulates that prisons and companies must “pay wages at a rate not less than that paid for similar work in the same locality’s private sector,” the statue also allows for ‘allowable wage deductions’ of up to 80% of the prisoner’s wages. These deductions are for room and board, child support, victim programs and taxes. Through other loopholes in the PIE act, public prisons and “for profit” private prisons have found ways to deduct or withhold almost all of the remaining inmate’s wages. Today, after these ‘allowable wage deductions’, inmate wages rage from .17 cents an hour on the low end, to perhaps $3-4 dollars a day on the high end.

Since room and board is usually the biggest chunk of deductions from the inmates paycheck, most of these cost savings are often passed back to the private corporations, as an incentive to bring in more projects. Private corporations are standing in line to take advantage of cheap prison labor. The bottom line is that this slave labor can make a prison’s cash flow soar, and enable corporations to take advantage of third world wages right here in the United States, without the hassle or political fallout of overseas sweat shops or the expense of transporting goods from other countries.

By law, except in Federal prisons and the State of California, the inmates are not forced to work, and can remain in their cells during the work day. The catch is, if prisoners refuse to work, the prison can take away their canteen and telephone privileges, move the inmates into solitary confinement or disciplinary housing and most importantly halt the inmate’s ‘good time credit’, that can reduce their prison sentence length by up to 40%. The choice to work for the inmates is not a difficult one given the tactics used by the different prisons, which are tantamount to profiteering through coercion and extortion; an illegal act outside prison walls, but completely legal inside…

Proponents of these prison work programs have argued that these “jobs” give inmates life work skills for after their release, a lower case of recidivism, less instances of violence inside the facilities and a method by which convicts can help pay for the cost of their own imprisonment.  The Department of Justice has shown in most studies that recidivism in not effected by whether the prisoner was forced to work, and also showed an increase in the number of violent incidents and escapes, especially in “for profit” prison corporation facilities.  As for life work skills, the jobs that these inmates do, which they call “vocational training” are usually nothing more than repetitious activities needed for mass production, call center operators or farming work, such as planting or harvesting crops. In fact, one of the fastest growing segments of the prison slave labor are call centers for companies that need reservation operators for hotels, airlines and rental car companies.

Corporations who ‘partner’ with any facet of the prison system have, over the past 15 years, been given unprecedented access to inmates for an endless supply of cheap labor and have received additional tax breaks from both the federal and state governments for “employing” them. They also have gained the ability to legally slap the all important “Made in U.S.A.” label on their products. And since the inmates are non-violent convicts, who reside in medium to minimum security facilities, the ability for these companies to move heavy machinery and training personnel in and out of these prisons is very simple.

But the programs don’t always go smoothly for the corporations. Here is one story concerning the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and its clean up efforts”

“Following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and irreparably damaged the Gulf of Mexico for generations to come, BP elected to hire Louisiana prison inmates to clean up its mess. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the nation, 70 percent of which are African-American men. Coastal residents desperate for work, whose livelihoods had been destroyed by BP’s negligence, were outraged at BP’s use of free prison labor.

In the Nation article that exposed BP’s hiring of inmates, Abe Louise Young details how BP tried to cover up its use of prisoners by changing the inmates’ clothing to give the illusion of civilian workers. But nine out of 10 residents of Grand Isle, Louisiana are white, while the cleanup workers were almost exclusively black, so BP’s ruse fooled very few people.”

Continue reading here.

The choice is clear

GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul’s top contributors reflect individual donations and his campaign remains debt free. Ron Paul is a proven promoter of liberty and sound money.

WSJ looks at RP’s portfolio:

But Ron Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different. It’s shockingly different.

Yes, about 21% of Rep. Paul’s holdings are in real estate and roughly 14% in cash. But he owns no bonds or bond funds and has only 0.1% in stock funds. Furthermore, the stock funds that Rep. Paul does own are all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks. One is a “double inverse” fund that, on a daily basis, goes up twice as much as its stock benchmark goes down.

The remainder of Rep. Paul’s portfolio – fully 64% of his assets – is entirely in gold and silver mining stocks. He owns no Apple, no ExxonMobil, no Procter & Gamble, no General Electric, no Johnson & Johnson, not even a diversified mutual fund that holds a broad basket of stocks. Rep. Paul doesn’t own stock in any major companies at all except big precious-metals stocks like Barrick Gold, Goldcorp and Newmont Mining.

Infowars.com: There is only one candidate not owned by the bankers…

The video compiles many issues like banking, TARP, national security and the problematic constantly shifting positions of current GOP candidates.

See Kudlow & Paul interview discussing Austrian economics.

Flashback to Iowa, Jan. 3rd bold emp.mine: 

As we all know, the result of the Iowa caucuses will either be seen as a conclusive expression of the voice of the people – if Romney wins – or a totally meaningless manipulation of a minor and outdated aspect of the nomination process that really needs to be changed – if Paul wins. I shall be very surprised if all the belated conservative drum-banging on Santorum’s behalf has any impact, but then, it appears to be his turn at the Romney-alternative-who-is-not-Ron-Paul wheel.

But it will be illuminating to see how many Iowans understand that their choice is between the Bank Party and the American Party. The Bank Party, which includes both Democratic and Republican factions, is fundamentally globalist at its core and has no real concern for American interests. Romney, Gingrich, Obama, Santorum, Perry, Santorum, Cain, and even Bachmann are all representatives of the Bank Party. As Ron Paul himself correctly pointed out: “The others represent the status quo, variation of the status quo.”

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who actually represents America in its traditional and Constitutional form, which of course is why he is being attacked from the mainstream “left” and “right” alike. And if Iowans decide that they are more inclined to support the Bank Party, so be it. They will receive the government they have chosen, which is to say more war, more government spending, more government expansion, and more rule on behalf of the big banks. If you want the status quo, then by all means, vote for Romney, or Gingrich, or Santorum, or Obama.

As Americans, we are fortunate to actually have been presented with this choice, as most people throughout history have not been given one. Of course, the fact that we have a choice doesn’t meant that we won’t make the correct one.

Iowa outcome Jan. 4th:

30,015 Mitt Romney
30,007 Rick Santorum
26,219 Ron Paul

While it is disappointing that nearly 80 percent of Iowa Republicans support the status quo, it is not at all surprising and the strength of Ron Paul’s showing indicates there is a growing understanding among the electorate that the present political structure, dominated as it is by the two factions of the Bank Party, is going to fail. This is why Ron Paul must run as a third-party candidate in the general election, to give Americans the genuine choice between the national interest and the Bank Party they will be otherwise denied. Rand Paul’s assessment is completely wrong, as the Tea Party will remain toothless so long as it remains in the Republican Party and is subject to being used by the Red Party faction. The continued increase in federal spending and federal debt despite more than 100 new Republican House members, the majority of whom voted to increase the debt limit, suffices to prove that.

Unlike most Americans, Iowans were given a genuine choice. They decided to support the status quo. So, shed no tears for them when they suffer the consequences of their decision. Have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who supports the likes of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, or Barack Obama, then complains about losing their job, not keeping up with the interest payments on their debts, having their house foreclosed, losing their pension, or being victimized by an immigrant. All of those things are the predictable result of the continuation of the status quo, which they materially support.

Current polls:

Romney vs. Obama.

Newt vs. Obama.

Santorum vs. Obama.

Paul vs. Obama

Stunning: locals fed-up, seek to break BofA

Uh-oh…

Looks like go-nowhere posturing.

Do we want the federal government breaking up private companies?

Whom received taxpayer bailouts?

Whom continues to mismanage regulations and business policies?

Would breaking up any bank such prevent them from turning into the next Goldman Sachs?

Some still ask how private a bank like BofA remains…

Advocacy group Public Citizen is filing a petition today urging the government to break Bank of America Corp. into smaller companies, saying the Charlotte bank poses a “grave threat” to the financial system.

Smaller companies? Countrywide (nearly) bankrupted millions of investors, homeowners and taxpayers.

In a petition to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the group says the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in 2010 gives regulators the authority to do so.

Little mention or focus on Glass-Steagall.

Public Citizen is also hosting a conference call with academics today to “sound the alarm bells” about what they call “too-big-to-fail” banks and discuss specific policy measures that could be used to achieve their goals.

“Bank of America is too large and complex to manage or regulate properly, and its financial condition is poor and could deteriorate rapidly at any moment, potentially causing the market to lose confidence in the bank,” according to the two-dozen-page petition.

While Bank of America is aggressively shrinking its balance sheet to boost capital, CEO Brian Moynihan has also defended his bank’s size. At a forum in Switzerland today, he said the bank’s size is necessary to support customers in different economies, MarketWatch reported.

This unfortunately doesn’t quell Charlotte locals from moving in this direction. As too many professionals working for BofA, investors, shareholders and homeowners found themselves nearly ruined by (Countrywide), BofA and another unnamed institutions from 2006 to now. Conservative leaning promoters of this action do not want to punish business but even they acknowledge the glaring problems in banking.

BofA and other banks lower compensation for employees.

Housing sales/loan apps remains sluggish

From Reuters:

Signed contracts for the sale of existing U.S. homes retreated from a 1-1/2-year high in December and demand for home loans fell last week, pointing to a moderation in home sales after recent hefty gains.

But the reports on Wednesday did not change perceptions that a nascent recovery is under way in the housing market, which continues to be challenged by an oversupply of properties.

“This is potentially negative for January existing home sales although the two do not always go hand in hand,” said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “So does this mean the story has changed and housing is back in the dumps? Nope.”

The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in December, dropped 3.5 percent to 96.6 in December, after hitting a 19-month high in November.

Mortgage apps down:

Applications for U.S. home mortgages retreated last week, giving back some of the previous week’s surge as interest rates rose, an industry group said on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, fell 5 percent in the week ended Jan 20. The index had soared more than 20 percent the previous week.

The MBA’s seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications slipped 5.2 percent, while the gauge of loan requests for home purchases was off 5.4 percent. The refinance share of total mortgage activity decreased to 81.3 percent of applications from 82.2 percent. Fixed 30-year mortgage rates averaged 4.11 percent, up 5 basis points from 4.06 percent.

Jan. 2012 SOTU address

Who said, all any politician can do is make promises, tax, spend and enter debt?

America needs jobs. Jobs will remain scarce if not nonexistent and unrecoverable. Poverty will increase as more people require public assistance and the economy will not recover at a rate that will promote prosperity. The recent SOTU address indicated more dysfunction, instability, stagnancy, higher taxes and unsustainable fiscal pursuits otherwise known as promises and ideas (Hope and Change, take another hit of Hopium, please.)

Special note: for those fans and critics of the various political parties, I hope I am wrong – I want a successful/prosperous people, country and world.

Covering health and financial data:

From Forbes:

During President Obama’s State of the Union last night, he left no doubt which side of the green line he stood — with the environmental movement. Besides his unwavering support for clean energy, he alluded to the administration’s new mercury rule.

Regarding mercury, the nation’s coal-fired power plants emit half of all those emissions that are responsible for causing heart attacks, birth defects and delayed childhood development. The White House may have acted to solidify its environmental base but, in doing so, it is following the law and giving modern generators a shot to compete with their older coal cousins.

No! Mercury is healthy for you see the video!

“I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poison,” says President Obama, in his State of the Union last night.

Impossible! Mercury is healthy for you see the video!

On December 21, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency carried out its obligation under the 1990 Clean Air Act and demanded that coal-fired power plants implement the available technologies to reduce their emissions by 90 percent. Specifically, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in March 2011 that EPA must develop a final rule with respect to mercury emissions by year-end 2011.

The regulations are not a shock to most utilities, which have already taken the steps to implement the necessary tools to make such reductions. The EPA estimates that of the roughly 1,400 coal-and-oil-fired generators, 60 percent have implemented new technologies while 40 percent, or 600 of them have not.

Of those, it estimates that about 1 percent will choose to shut down their operations as opposed to clean up — a number that is contested by coal-related organizations that argue the ruling will drive up electricity prices and cut jobs.

Gee, will the mercury in vaccinations and its cumulative build-up in recipients bodies be removed too?

From Natural News:

Deniers of the link between mercury-laden vaccines and autism are going to have a hard time denying the latest findings by the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs (CoMeD). The nonprofit group has obtained critical documents via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that exposes the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) role in deliberately lying about and manipulating a key Danish study that showed a clear link between vaccines containing mercury and autism.

In 2003, the journal Pediatrics published a study conducted in Denmark that observed a significant decline in autism rates following the country’s elimination of Thimerosal, a mercury-based component, from vaccines. But thanks to the CDC’s corrupting influence, the published version of the study in Pediatrics actually claimed the opposite, and alleged that removal of Thimerosal brought about an increase in autism rates.

According to the documents, CDC officials removed large amounts of data from the study that showed a decline in autism rates following the removal of Thimerosal. The agency then twisted the remaining data to imply an increase in autism rates following the removal of Thimerosal, and suggested that there was no link between Thimerosal and autism.

Upon submission of the CDC’s tainted version of the study to Pediatrics, the study’s authors contacted CDC officials to let them know that the agency had incorrectly interpreted the data. They tried to tell the CDC that its figures and conclusions were wrong, and that corrections needed to be made.

In housing and foreclosures, get ready for another rip-off. The following content is from Mish Shedlock’s blog:

Inquiring minds are reading the complete text of President Obama’s State of the Union Address to see what distortions, lies, and hypocrisy it contains.

I found a nice Orwellian set of paragraphs smack in the middle of his speech.

And while Government can’t fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief.

That’s why I’m sending this Congress a plan that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks. A small fee on the largest financial institutions will ensure that it won’t add to the deficit, and will give banks that were rescued by taxpayers a chance to repay a deficit of trust.

Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.Top to Bottom: More Bailouts, More Handouts, More Copouts

While reading the first paragraph above I knew without a doubt a huge bailout proposal was coming up.

Sure enough, the very next paragraph contained a massive bailout proposal and in more ways than is readily apparent at first glance. For starters “responsible homeowners” don’t need mortgage relief. Secondly, $300 a month is a lot of dough so I would like to see an accounting.

Finally, and most importantly, every loan that is refinanced will be paid off in full. Thus, any bank, hedge fund, mortgage provider, or GSE that is paid off on a nonperforming loan will be immediately made whole.

This is a massive backdoor bailout of banks, mortgage companies, hedge funds, foreign banks, and anyone else holding mortgage related garbage…

How the Taxpayer Ripoff Works

The New York Times explains the ripoff in President to Offer Way for Easing Home Debt

The White House plans to propose legislation that could allow a few million homeowners to reduce monthly mortgage payments by refinancing their current loans into new ones guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The program would broaden the availability of government-backed mortgages to include many borrowers whose loans are held by private companies and who have been unable to persuade those lenders to reduce their interest rates. Existing federal programs focus mostly on borrowers whose loans are owned by the government.

The new program will be directed at people whose mortgage debts exceed the value of their homes, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details have not yet been finalized. The official estimated that the program could benefit two million to three million homeowners who have loans that are not guaranteed by the government, and that the program’s cost would not exceed $10 billion.$10 Billion?! Really?

The proposal as outlined rates to take every “responsible” underwater mortgage held by banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, hedge funds, foreign banks, and pension plans, and transfer all of them to the FHA. The idea this will only cost $10 billion is absurd.

The “small fees on the largest financial institutions” are absolutely guaranteed to not cover the cost of this monstrous proposal. Indeed there is something in Obama’s proposal for everyone except “responsible citizens”.

“Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day” will be royally screwed by Obama’s proposition in the form of higher taxes down the road.

Nomi Prins says issues were skirted during the SOTU address. She outlines 10 issues that were ignored to some degree or another regarding healthcare costs, student loan debt, education and youth unemployment.

To seasoned observers, the SOTU address sounded like mass financial chaos but to the average voter, this kind of talk is wonderful, helpful and all of it can really, really, really happen. This speech sounded recycled and was presented on a 4th grade level.

Unfortunately, the GOP chooses to run unpopular candidates like (McCain 2008) Mitt, Newt, Rick while ignoring Rep. Ron Paul. If the American people received confidence from the SOTU address, the current administration will win in 2012 – this can happen even if the current administration is unpopular.

The only man to vote for GOP Rep. Ron Paul. A victory for Mitt, Newt, Rick or the current president, will ensure the above dysfunction and deception in public policy.

Drug Related: HSBC investigated for laundering $

Unsurprising from Reuters:

HSBC Holdings PLC is under investigation by a Senate panel in a money-laundering inquiry, the latest step in a long-running U.S. effort to halt shadowy money flows through global banks, according to people familiar with the situation and a company securities filing.

The inquiry being conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations could yield a report and congressional hearing later this spring, these people said. The subcommittee has a history of conducting high-profile hearings that have proved embarrassing for the world’s biggest banks.

The intensifying scrutiny of HSBC is the latest in a series if investigations by U.S. officials into how global banks have processed — and in some cases, intentionally hidden — financial transactions on behalf of countries which allegedly support terrorism, corrupt foreign officials, drug gangs and criminals. Since 2008, European and U.S. banks have signed deferred prosecution agreements and paid more than $1.2 billion in penalties for alleged violations of anti-money laundering regulations.

The specific focus of the Senate probe of HSBC isn’t known. A Reuters review of legal documents and prior regulatory probes, though, points to a number of alleged breakdowns in HSBC’s anti-money laundering systems

Davos: Old man warns OWS’s violence, also warns EU

A global fan of destabilization and martial law discusses OWS:

Billionaire George Soros is predicting protests by Occupy Wall Street will turn violent, while warning the U.S. financial system may collapse. In an interview with Newsweek writer John Arlidge, Soros reportedly said riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable.

“‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says, almost gleefully,” when asked about the prospect of Occupy turning violent, writes Arlidge.

Soros claimed the riots will “be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

“At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” Soros continued. “I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros said. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse,” he said.

From CNBC:

Billionaire investor George Soros on Wednesday minced no words on the financial troubles faced by the Europe Union, as he addressed the future of the currency block before an audience in Davos. Soros said that Europe is mired in a “spiral of decline” that reinforces itself, adding that, as things stand, “Weaker members of the euro zone are being left as Third World countries that borrowed in foreign currencies.”

“I’m not sure if authorities (in the EU) are deliberately prolonging the crisis, or if this is being driven by divergent views,” he said.

Capitalism is not at fault, from Breitbart:

Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as “outdated and crumbling.”

“We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

“Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

Really? Outdated policies like Keynesian economics, failed bailouts, fraudulent investment vehicles like toxic mortgage derivatives, the debt addiction, unsound money, debt, progressive taxation, fiat currency, debt, counterfeit credit, progressive taxation, printing presses, debt, the mindless media brainwashing the public into endless shopping, and too big to fail technocrat banks sending nation after nation into an unrecoverable financial hell? Could that be the fault of the global financial woes, not capitalism?

Capitalism and free markets work in a world that values liberty...

Latest Davos news and list of topics from Businessweek, where they promote more taxes and whine about income inequality.

Observers are shaken and worried.

Previous Davos coverage.

6 charged in Charlotte-area mortgage scheme

Federal prosecutors have filed charges against six Charlotte-area defendants over mortgage fraud-related offenses and a “builder kickback” scheme, the latest fallout from the housing market bust.

The defendants are accused of working with Charlotte homebuilder Tara Properties to sell houses by offering kickbacks to straw buyers. The kickbacks weren’t disclosed to lenders or included on loan applications, according to documents filed last week in federal court. The scheme resulted in hundreds of sales between January 2005 and February 2008, with Tara paying more than $5 million in kickbacks, the filings say.

The conspirators fraudulently caused lenders to provide more than $42 million in loans, prosecutors allege. Tara specialized in building homes priced between $100,000 and $200,000 and the company offered kickbacks of 15 percent of the sales price. Here is how prosecutors say the scheme worked: Organizers recruited straw buyers by promising kickbacks. “Word spread quickly. The promoters and mortgage brokers … heard about the scheme and joined the conspiracy,” prosecutors wrote. Defendants lied on mortgage applications about income and assets, employment, debts and anticipated debts, and intent to occupy the home as a primary residence, court documents say. Some applications also contained false or forged documents such as bogus payroll stubs and bank statements.

Lawless judges fail Americans

From Vox Day, quoted in its entirety:

The judicial war on the U.S. Constitution continues apace:

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case. Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

It’s always interesting to see the logical contortions through which America’s corrupt judges go when they are determined to reach a conclusion that flies directly in the face of the Constitution. Given that Americans have “the right to remain silent” as well as the right to be “secure in their papers and effects”, there is no way that a judge can legitimately order any American to cough up a passphrase.

This is just one more piece of evidence demonstrating that the federal government is corrupt, lawless, and unconstitutional. It is an Augean Stables that is likely beyond the ability of any one man, even a principled man like Ron Paul, to clean up. But can anyone suggest with a straight face that Mitt Romney, the $45 million man, or that fat little Freddie Mac-owned troll, Newt Gingrich, have any interest whatsoever in doing so?

End Quote

Another absurd and unconstitutional case about warrantless GPS, courts rule warrants are required:

In a major decision on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that police need a warrant before attaching a GPS device to a person’s car. The ruling, which marked the justices’ first-ever review of GPS tracking, was unanimous. The justices divided, however, on how the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to such high-tech tracking.

The case, which during November oral arguments prompted justices’ references to George Orwell‘s futuristic novel 1984, ensures that police cannot use GPS to continuously track a suspect before presenting sufficient grounds and obtaining a warrant from a judge. Monday’s decision specifically applies when police install GPS on a person’s car. But five justices suggested in concurring statements that a warrant might similarly be needed for prolonged surveillance through smartphones or other devices equipped with GPS.

The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally developed for the military, relies on satellites that transmit to receivers that calculate the latitude and longitude of a location. A GPS device installed by police can be used to follow a person 24 hours a day. Data can be collected and analyzed far more efficiently and economically than if a team of agents followed a person. The court reversed the cocaine-trafficking conviction of a Washington, D.C., nightclub owner. In 2005, police attached a GPS device to a Jeep owned by Antoine Jones while it was parked in a public lot. Agents then used evidence of Jones’ travels over four weeks to help win the conviction on conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Civil libertarians and defense lawyers praised the ruling in United States v. Jones. The “Fourth Amendment must continue to protect against government intrusions even in the face of modern technological surveillance tools,” said Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project, which was among the groups that sided with Jones. The Justice Department, which had appealed a lower court decision requiring a warrant for GPS tracking, had no public response to the decision.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the main opinion for the court, said “the government’s physical intrusion on the Jeep” to obtain information constitutes a search. He based his decision on the original roots of Fourth Amendment protection for property against government intrusions. Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor. The four other justices, led by Samuel Alito, concurred only in the judgment for Jones. Alito said the case would be better analyzed by asking whether Jones’ “expectations of privacy were violated by the long-term monitoring of the movements of the vehicle he drove.”

China Is 175.6% Dependent on the U.S

From Forbes:

The Chinese economy increased its dependence on the United States last year according to recently released trade figures from Beijing and Washington.

Really?

China’s overall trade surplus in 2011 was $155.1 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

And how much of that surplus is related to America?  Commerce Department figures show that, through the first 11 months of last year, China’s trade surplus against the United States was $272.3 billion.  That’s up from $252.4 billion for the same period in 2010, a 7.9% increase. The Commerce Department has not released the December trade number yet, and some are predicting that China’s surplus against us will top $300 billion when all the figures are in. Yet let’s assume, merely to be conservative, that China’s December surplus is zero.  If December’s surplus is zero, then 175.6% of China’s overall trade surplus last year related to sales to the United States.  That’s up from full-year figures for the three preceding years: 149.2% for 2010, 115.7% for 2009, and 90.1% for 2008. Notice a trend?  The Chinese economy is becoming even more hooked on selling things to the United States.  Why the big jump last year?  Because orders from the 27-nation European Union for Chinese goods collapsed.  And if Europe falls apart this year—increasingly likely—China will become even more reliant on the American consumer.

Maybe, maybe not. I’m skeptical.

China and America have quite strained but symbiotic relationship of debt, products and currency. But American consumers have less money to spend.

Trade deficits & charts.