spiritsoup's Blog

Alaskan Glaciers Grow for the First Time in 250 years

Plans to implement a worldwide carbon tax in the name of saving the planet from global warming have taken another blow after it was revealed that Alaskan glaciers have grown for the first time in 250 years after an abnormally cool summer.

Now that the planet has naturally exited a warming trend and is heading towards a new “big chill,” as evidenced by the near complete halt in sunspot activity, the glaciers are expanding once again.  

Temperatures 3 degrees below average caused winter snow to remain for longer, prompting the increase in glacial mass, reports the Daily Tech.

“Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months,” according to the report.

The biggest shrinkage witnessed in the region occurred between 1741 and 1900, during which the glaciers lost about 15 per cent of their total mass as the earth began to exit the climatological period coined the Little Ice Age.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but CO2 spewing cars and jumbo jets were not too prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And now that the planet has naturally exited a warming trend and is heading towards a new “big chill,” as evidenced by the near complete halt in sunspot activity, the glaciers are expanding once again.

Years more growth in the Alaskan glaciers “might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age,” notes the report.

The expansion of the glaciers follows a similar occurrence in the Arctic, which has undergone an ice cover growth twice the size of Germany in the past year, a gain of about thirteen percent following a colder than usual year.

Man-made global warming adherents have attempted to downplay such instances as aberrations that defy a wider warming trend, but in reality no global warming has been observed since at least 1999 or even 1995, as University of Finland professor Jarl R. Ahlbeck maintains.

Evidence that the planet is tip-toeing towards the onset of a new mini ice age continues to present itself following unprecedented ice storms in Kenya as well as Sydney experiencing its coldest August for 60 years.

The cold snap arrives on the back of the Sun reaching a milestone not observed in nearly 100 years - the entire month of August passed without a single sunspot being noted.

Lack of solar activity in 2008 has coincided with evidence of a cooling trend across the world.

• show_banners(Earlier this year, China experienced its coldest winter in 100 years while northeast America was hit by record snow levels and Britain suffered its coldest Easter in decades

as late-blooming daffodils were pounded with hail and snow on an almost daily basis. The British summer also left many yearning for global warming, with temperatures in June and July rarely struggling to get over 16 degrees and on one occasion even dropping as low as 9 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

Many parts of the U.S. suffered their coldest April on record. Canada had its third coldest April since 1970.

“Summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century’s opening decade,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That’s by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.”

According to an Associated Press report, The Farmers Almanac is now also predicting “below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.” The publication boasts of an 85 per cent accuracy rate for its forecasts which are given two years in advance.

According to a report from the World Meteorological Organization last month, the first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, adding that it may actually be the coolest since 2000.

Man-made advocates have been losing credibility in recent months on the back of bizarre proposals to fight climate change that include blocking out the sun with spaceships as well as eviscerating pristine old growth forests, despite wider evidence of a cooling trend that is just beginning to manifest itself.

A Futile Bail Out as America Falls into Darkness

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

America has become a pretty discouraging place.  Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press.  They have Big Brother’s press.  For example, on September 28, 2008, a New York Times editorial blamed the current financial crisis on “anti-regulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution.”  

What utter nonsense.  Every example of deregulation that the New York Times editorial provides is located in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush administration.  I was a member of the Reagan administration.  We most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, was the achievement of the Democratic Clinton Administration. It happened in 1999, over a decade after Reagan left office.

It was in 2000 that derivatives and credit default swaps were excluded from regulation.

The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was  head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.  In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence. 

In place of time-proven standards of prudence, computer models engineered by hot shots determined acceptable risk.  As one result Bear Stearns, for example, pushed its leverage ratio to 33 to 1.  For every one dollar in equity, the investment bank had $33 of debt!  

It was computer models that led to the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the first systemic threat to the financial system.  Why the SEC went along with Paulson and set aside capital requirements after the scare of Long-Term Capital Management is inexplicable.  

The blame is headed toward SEC chairman Christopher Cox.  This is more of Big Brother’s disinformation.  Cox, like so many others, was a victim of a free market ideology, itself a reaction to over-regulation, that was boosted by academic economic opinion, rewarded with Nobel prizes, that the market “always knows best.”

The 20th century proves that the market is likely to know better than a central planning bureau.  It was Soviet Communism that collapsed, not American capitalism.  However, the market has to be protected from greed.  It was greed, not the market, that was unleashed by deregulation during  the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes.  

I remember when the deregulation of the financial sector began.  One of the first inroads was the legislation, written by bankers, to permit national branch banking. George Champion, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, testified against it. In columns I argued that national branch banking would focus banks away from local business needs.

The deregulation of the financial sector was achieved by the Democratic Clinton Administration and by the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, with the acquiescence of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  

The Paulson bailout saves his firm, Goldman Sachs.  The Paulson bailout transfers the troubled financial instruments that the financial sector created from the books of the financial sector to the books of the taxpayers at the US Treasury. 

This is all the bailout does.  It rescues the guilty.

The Paulson bailout does not address the problem, which is the defaulting home mortgages.  

The defaults will continue, because the economy is sinking into recession.  Homeowners are losing their jobs, and homeowners are being hit with rising mortgage payments resulting from adjustable rate mortgages and escalator interest rate clauses in their mortgages that make homeowners unable to service their debt.  

Shifting the troubled assets from the financial sectors’ books to the taxpayers’ books absolves the people who caused the problem from responsibility.  As the economy declines and mortgage default rates rise, the US Treasury and the American taxpayers  could end up with a $700 billion loss. 

Initially, the House, but not the Senate, resisted the bailout of the financial institutions,whose executives had received millions of dollars in bonuses for wrecking the US financial system.  However, the people’s representatives could not withstand the specter of martial law and Great Depression with which Paulson and the Bush administration threatened them.  The people’s representatives succumbed as they did during the New Deal.

The impotence of Congress traces to the Great Depression.  As Theodore Lowi in his classic book, The End of Liberalism, makes clear, the New Deal stripped Congress of its law-making power and gave it to the executive agencies.  Prior to the New Deal, Congress wrote the laws.  After the New Deal a bill is merely an authorization for executive agencies to create the law through regulations.  The Paulson bailout has further diminished the legislative branch’s power.  

Since Paulson’s bailout of his firm and his financial friends does nothing to lessen the default rate on mortgages, how will the bailout play out?  

If the $700 billion bailout is based on an estimate of the current amount of bad mortgages, as the recession deepens and Americans lose their jobs, the default rate will  rise.  The $700 billion might not suffice.  The Treasury will have to go hat in hand to its foreign creditors for more loans.

As the US Treasury has not got $7, much less $700 billion, it must borrow the bailout money from foreign creditors, already overloaded with US paper.  At what point do America’s foreign bankers decide that the additions to US debt exceed what can be repaid?  

This question was ignored by the bailout.  There were no hearings.  No one consulted China,  America’s principal banker, or the Japanese, or the OPEC sovereign wealth funds, or Europe.  

Does the world have a blank check for America’s mistakes?  

This is the same world that is faced with American demands that countries support with money and lives America’s quest for world hegemony.  Europeans are dying in Afghanistan for American hegemony.  Do Europeans want their banks, which hold US dollars as their reserves, to fail so that Paulson can bail out his company and his friends?

The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency.  It comprises the reserves of foreign central banks.  Bush’s wars and economic policies are destroying the basis of the US dollar as reserve currency. The day the dollar loses its reserve currency role, the US government cannot pay its bills in its own currency.  The result will be a dramatic reduction in US living standards.  

Currently Treasuries are boosted by the habitual “flight to quality,” but as Treasury debt deepens, will investors still see quality?  At what point do America’s foreign creditors cease to lend?  That is the point at which American power ends. It might be close at hand. 

The Paulson bailout is predicated on cleaning up financial institutions’ balance sheets and restoring the flow of credit.  The assumption is that once lending resumes, the economy will pick up. 

This assumption is problematic.  The expansion of consumer debt, which kept the economy going in the 21st century, has reached its limit.  There are no more credit cards to max out, and no more home equity to refinance and spend.  The Paulson bailout might restore trust among financial institutions and enable them to lend to one another, but it doesn’t provide a jolt to consumer demand.

Moreover, there may be more shoes to drop.  Credit card debt could be the next to threaten balance sheets of financial institutions.  Apparently, credit card debt has been securitized and sold as well, and not all of the debt is good.  In addition, the leasing programs of the car manufacturers have turned sour.  As a result of high gasoline prices and absence of growth in take-home pay, the residual values of big trucks and SUVs are less than the leasing programs estimated them to be, thus creating more financial problems.  Car manufacturers are canceling their leasing programs, and this will further cut into sales.

According to statistician John Williams [ http://www.shadowstats.com/section/commentaries ] who measures inflation, unemployment, and GDP according to the methodology used prior to the Clinton regime’s corruption of these measures, the US unemployment rate is currently at 14.7 per cent and the inflation rate is 13.2 per cent.  Consequently, real US GDP growth in the 21st century has been negative. 

This is not a picture of an economy that a bailout of financial institution balance sheets will revive.  As the Paulson bailout does not address the mortgage problem per se, defaults and foreclosures are likely to rise, thus undermining the Treasury’s estimate that 90 per cent of the mortgages backing the troubled instruments are good.  

Moreover, one consequence of the ongoing financial crisis is financial concentration.  It is not inconceivable that the US will end up with four giant banks: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wachovia Wells Fargo. If defaulting credit card debt then assaults these banks’ balance sheets, who is there to take them over?  Would the Treasury be able to borrow the money for another Paulson bailout?

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation refinanced one million home mortgages in order to prevent foreclosures.  The refinancing apparently succeeded, and HOLC returned a profit. The problem then, as now, was not “deadbeats” who wouldn’t pay their mortgages, and the HOLC refinancing did not discourage others from paying their mortgages. Market purists who claim the only solution is for housing prices to fall to prior levels overlook that rising inventories can push prices below prior levels, thus causing more distress.  They also overlook the role of interest rates.  If a worsening credit crisis dries up mortgage lending and pushes mortgage interest rates higher, the rise in interest rates could offset the fall in home prices, and mortgages would remain unaffordable even in a falling housing market.  

Some commentators are blaming the current mortgage problem on the pressure that the US government put on banks to lend to unqualified borrowers.  However, whatever  breaches of prudence there may have been only affected the earnings of individual institutions.  They did not threaten the financial system.  The current crisis required more than bad loans.  It required securitization and its leverage. It required Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s inappropriate low interest rates, which created a real estate boom.  Rapidly rising real estate prices quickly created home equity to justify 100 percent mortgages.  Wall Street analysts pushed financial companies to improve their bottom lines, which they did by extreme leveraging. 

An alternative to refinancing troubled mortgages would be to attempt to separate the bad mortgages from the good ones and revalue the mortgage-backed securities accordingly.  If there are no further defaults, this approach would not require massive write-offs that threaten the solvency of financial institutions.  However, if defaults continue, write-downs would be an ongoing enterprise.

Clearly, all Secretary Paulson thought about was getting troubled assets off the books of financial institutions.  

The same reckless leadership that gave us expensive wars based on false premises has now concocted an expensive bailout that does not address the problem, which will fester and become worse.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

It's all our fault the Economy is Going Down the Drain

Reading through the corporate media in the wake the House passage of the Banker Takeover bill, I am struck by not only the sickening apologia of the supposed intelligentsia but the downright mean spiritedness, no doubt a likely result of nearly eight years of neocon rule. It is now fashionable to kick the victims while they are not only down, but thrown under the bus.

Consider Steven Pearlstein, a scribe for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.

“The basic problem here is that too many people don’t understand the seriousness of the situation,” writes Mr. Pearlstein. “Americans fail to understand that they are facing the real prospect of a decade of little or no economic growth because of the bursting of a credit bubble that they helped create and that now threatens to bring down the global financial system.”

In short, the global financial system is going to hell in hand basket because of the little guy, not because of the Wall Street shysters and the banksters.

For scribbling such things, Mr. Pearlstein is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

“And they will come around, reluctantly, to the understanding that the only way to get out of these situations is to have governments all around the world borrow gobs of money and effectively nationalize large swaths of the financial system so it can be restructured, recapitalized, reformed and returned to private ownership once the crisis has passed and the economy has gotten back on its feet.”

Sounds more like socialism, and not any old garden variety socialism. It sounds like National Socialism. Call it fascism, what Mussolini deemed corporatism, if you must.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School in New York University, had something to say about this. Roubini rejects the socialist comparison out of hand, saying “calling it socialism (even socialism for the rich, the well- connected and Wall Street) is giving a bad name even to a failed experiment like socialism; this is more akin to the creation of a corporatist state (like the Italian fascism or the German Third Reich) where private sector interests are protected (gains privatized and losses socialized), where the government is taken over by corrupt and reckless private interests.”

You know, the kind of interests that run newspapers like the Washington Post, the sort where Pulitzer Prize darlings excoriate the public for being suckered by snake oil salesmen wearing $5,000 Anderson & Sheppard suits as they angle to get their hands on your pension and 401k so it can be pissed away in the Grand Casino of Speculation.

Curious thing is, Mr. Pearlstein is a liberal.

I guess that gives at least some idea of how the administration of Barack H. Obama will be run.

Bank Closer Hoax Echoes Propaganda By White House


No surprise that we learn the source of the hoax is Hal Turner, who was exposed earlier this year as an alleged FBI informant posing as a white supremacist.

A hoax Internet rumor that has been doing the rounds over the last few days posits that unless the House follows the Senate in approving the bailout bill tonight then all U.S. banks will be forced to close for one week. The scam is noteworthy because it echoes the fearmongering rhetoric being spewed by the White House, while the source of the claim leads back to an alleged FBI informant.

The fact that people are pulling their money out of the banks is undeniable, indeed, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, even Yahoo.com carried a story admitting there was already a “slow motion run on banks”.

Experts such as Mark Patterson, chairman of private equity fund MattlinPatterson, have warned that 300 to 500 U.S. banks are set to fail over the next three years and as a result absorb all of the FDIC’s pool of funds.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000, only has about $50 billion to “insure” about $1 trillion in assets across the nation’s financial institutions.

The reality of the danger of a run on the banks in a time of financial crisis is all too real, which makes unsubstantiated Internet hoaxes all the more irresponsible. Indeed, a Hong Kong man who posted an Internet rumor claiming that a financial institution would be shut down was arrested this week. Another man was arrested on Saturday for urging people to withdraw money from a local bank that he claimed was about to be shut down.

There’s a clear difference between warning people about how to secure their assets and outright scare mongering about runs on specific banks.

Originating from a so-called “alternative news website” that has routinely proven to be a peddler of disinformation in the past, the rumor states, “Reliable word that Bank of America branch managers just received a message via the U.S. Federal Reserve Wire system from the US Federal Reserve instructing them to “perhaps be ready for a one-week universal shut-down of the banking system”, including access to checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and ATM’s.”

“Additional word is that a silent run is taking place on many U.S. Banks with customers withdrawing huge amounts from all banks almost everyday,” the claim reads. “My source says that unless Congress comes through with a plan which will stop the silent run, Banks will be forced to close to stop the run.”

The most interesting aspect of the hoax is that it actually echoes rhetoric being used by the White House and the Federal Reserve in order to ram through the widely despised bailout bill, by using economic terrorism and the fear of total collapse of the financial system to get the message across, just as Bush, Bernanke and Paulson have been ferociously doing for the past two weeks.

No surprise therefore that we learn the source of the hoax is Hal Turner, who was exposed earlier this year as an alleged FBI informant posing as a white supremacist.

In January, hackers broke into Turner’s computer server and found e-mails between Turner and an FBI agent who was apparently Turner’s handler. Turner was providing information to the FBI agent about individuals who attended his neo-nazi rallies, along with a potential assassination plot against Senator Russ Feingold.

“Once again,” Turner wrote to the agent, “my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center documented the case in an article entitled, FBI’s Use of Neo-Nazi Informant Knocked. Both the FBI and Turner have refused to comment on the allegations.

Considering the fact that Turner has been left alone despite arguing that killing certain federal judges “may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong” and outright calling for the murder of immigrants crossing border from Mexico, it’s no surprise that his latest scam, despite its blatant illegality, will go unnoticed by the same authorities that Turner apparently accepts a paycheck from.

The SLPC article states,

In 2006, Turner told his audience to “clean your guns, have plenty of ammunition … [and] then do what has to be done” to undocumented workers. Around the same time, he suggested that half the U.S. Congress “may have to be assassinated.” A year earlier, he suggested “drawing up lists of yeshivas,” or Jewish religious schools. He once started a website called www.killtheenemy.com for the purpose of posting photos and names of those who marched in favor of immigrant rights. Hearing that anti-racist activist Floyd Cochran was visiting Newark, near his home town, last June, Turner said he had “arranged for a group of guys to physically intercept” Cochran and added that Cochran would likely “get such a beating that his next stop is going to be University Hospital.” (Although complaints were made both to the FBI and to Newark police about this threat against Cochran, both declined to press criminal charges.)

So Turner’s alleged relationship with the FBI apparently affords him immunity from any legal consequences of making death threats, just as neo-con radio talk show host Michael Reagan was left alone despite openly advocating the assassination of Mark Dice and stating “I’ll pay for the bullets”.

Despite its brazenly unreliable origins, the bank closure hoax has been cropping up in e mails, forums and blogs across the Internet, almost to the point of going viral.

The fact that the scam actually endorses the necessity of passing the bailout bill should tell us in no uncertain terms that it can be attributed to the same economic terrorists that have brow-beaten the American people with threats of a financial apocalypse if the bankers and the Wall Street crooks do not get their way.

Could financial meltdown usher in a NorthCom police state?



The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Another huge win for the American public, yes I am speaking about the rejection of the Bail Out Bill by Congress.  (After a bit of computer jockeying, I was able to get a readable version of the novel length banker bill up and running in PDF format. Here it is in all its legalistic, mumbo-jumbo glory: http://freespeech.vo.llnwd.net/o25/pub/misc/bankerbill
.pdfposted by the Los Angeles Times, seems to work. It is, however, only a 110 page draft.  )

To think that the American Tax payer should have to fork out $700 billion to bail out the Federal Reserve banking system that has caused the problem in the first place by over extending credit to banking structures that have made it easier for the average American to get credit even if they have shoddy credit.  

Sure many have lost their homes due to being duped by the modern day version of the margin loan that caused the Great Depression...the Adjustable Rate Mortgage. 

But they gambled by purchasing a home above the means of their income on an ARM loan thinking that they could sell the home on a bull market.  They gambled and lost.
Which in turn means the Banks that lent that money have lost too.

And now it's our job to bail them out.   What happened to free market? 

Yeah right, as if we ever had one.

But the reality is the public is furious, and with a looming depression and people beginning to figure out the scam the Fed is pulling, now that the inflation that has been hidden over seas since the end of WWI is finally come home to roost the powers that be need to cover their arses from a huge up rising and this is (in my opinion) the means they tend to use.

Following the alarming admission that active duty U.S. Army would be on call to deal with “civil unrest” inside the United States from October 1st, the US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) has publicly denied that troops will engage in law enforcement duties, but concedes that forces will be armed with both non-lethal and lethal weapons as well as having access to tanks.

As highlighted last week on , a September 8 Army Times report stated that active duty troops from the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team returning from Iraq would be on call as a “federal response force for natural or man made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks,” for a period of 12 months from October 1st.

The purpose of the unit’s patrols, according to the article, includes helping “with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

However, a NorthCom official, presumably responding to reports featured on this website and others, publicly denies that troops will be used to police Americans.

“This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives, relieving suffering and meeting the needs of communities affected by weapons of mass destruction attacks, accidents or even natural disasters,” Army Col. Michael Boatner, USNORTHCOM future operations division chief, told Homeland Security Today.

We also learn that the troops will be under the operational control of USNORTHCOM’s Joint Force Land Component Command under US Army North, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. The operational headquarters of the response force is at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

The original Army Times report also stated that the use of non-lethal weapons against Americans would be a possibility, but a retraction has now been issued stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically.

However, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman was told by Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public affairs officer for Northern Command, that “Military forces would have weapons on-site, “containerized,” she said — that is, stored in containers — including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that use of weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary of defense level.”

As Goodman writes in an editorial for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is “on the brink,” that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. Conservative and progressive members of Congress, at the insistence of constituents, blocked the initial plan. If the economy does collapse, if people can’t go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious “civil unrest,” and the “sea-smurfs” may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with “crowd control.”

The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Rep. Kaptur: Normal legislative process has been shut down, high financial crimes committed, Republican Michael Burgess says “martial law” has been announced

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur boldly slammed the bailout bill this past weekend as the work of criminal insiders who have shut down the normal legislative process to commit “high financial crimes” and defraud the American people, while Rep. Michael Burgess warns that “martial law” has been declared.

The two Congress members are part of a growing minority of representatives sounding the alarm about the dictatorial nature of the bailout bill, which is expected to be up for a vote in the House today, with most in Congress having not had the opportunity to even read the legislation.

The bill is expected to reach the Senate on Wednesday as a raft of outraged politicians cry foul about being strong-armed and accused of being unpatriotic for opposing the carte-blanche passage of a piece of legislation that fundamentally centralizes control of the financial infrastructure of the country into the hands of the government and the Federal Reserve.

“We are Constitutionally sworn to protect and defend this Republic against all enemies foreign and domestic. And my friends there are enemies,” Kaptur told the House floor.

“The people pushing this deal are the very ones who are responsible for the implosion on Wall Street. They were fraudulent then and they are fraudulent now.”

“My message to the American people don’t let Congress seal this deal. High financial crimes have been committed,” added the Democrat from Ohio.

“The normal legislative process has been shelved. Only a few insiders are doing the dealing, sounds like insider trading to me. These criminals have so much political power than can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest law making body of this land,” Kaptur concluded.

Elsewhere, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) said that the only information he had received about the bailout was what talking points to use on the American people and that he had been thrown out of meetings for not blindly supporting the bill.

Ominously, Burgess also comments, “Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.”

Absent any proper hearings concerning the legislation, Burgess called for the legislation to at least be posted on the Internet for 24 hours so that the American people could “see what we have done in the dark of night.”

Watch the comments of Burgess followed by Kaptur.

When is it the average Americans turn to be Bailed out?
 
Let the Bankers take care of their damned selves!

Why should we foot the bill for their over extended greed and criminal acts?

I could have thought up at least twenty more headlines for this injustice.
We (or rather) Congress is about to sign our economic death certificate.
While Georgie boy all but demands we bow before the Un-Federal Reserve and hand them a blank check to bail out the Bankster crooks that he has, and will continue to be in bed with.   I subscribe to many news letters and this one from Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty site pretty much hits the nail on the head like only the Dr. can do.



My Answer to the President September 25th, 2008 by Ron Paul

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market’s attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I’d only be repeating what I’ve been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration “is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets.” Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that “low interest rates” led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or “wildcat capitalism” (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: “Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.”

Doesn’t that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn’t that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn’t the federal government shown that the “many” who “believed they were guaranteed by the federal government” were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don’t give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary “the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet.” Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It’s the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end… It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a “rescue plan”? I guess “bailout” wasn’t sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you’re supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Bush calls for the taxpayers to help the greediest of the greedy.

From shying away from even mentioning such terms as “recession,” “unemployment” or “bank failures,” Bush, Bernanke and Paulson are now vigorously invoking the fear of financial meltdown as part of a campaign of economic terror to blackmail the American people into accepting the power-grabbing “bailout,” while John McCain, who last week said the fundamentals of the economy are strong, is now all but threatening to cancel the election should the proposal not receive swift passage.

Bush’s speech last night was a throwback to his March 2003 stump before the invasion of Iraq - replace words like “weapons of mass destruction” with “financial panic” and the tone of the two is not dissimilar.

Bush rammed home the fear by appealing to people’s personal anxieties.

“More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically,” barked the President.

“And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs.”

Bernanke and Paulson spewed similar rhetoric during Tuesday’s Senate Banking Committee meeting. Compare their dire proclamations with their outright refusal to even entertain the notion of a recession as little as seven months ago.

Now Paulson tells us that people “should be scared” and that the only solution is for taxpayers to foot the bill to the tune of $700 billion dollars - a number we now learn was simply pulled out of thin air by the Treasury - while the Federal Reserve swallows up all manner of new regulation powers.

It seems that almost overnight these three stooges have gone from behaving like sedated zombies to end-times doomsayers.

Furthermore, John McCain, the man who as recently as last week proclaimed that “the fundamentals of the economy are sound,” is now canceling presidential debates, and some fear greasing the skids for the postponement of the presidential election itself, by insisting he and Obama “return to Washington” in order to put their weight behind the bailout.

As the George Washington Blog notes, McCain is basically implying, “Vote for the bailout or I’ll pull out of the election”.

The financial terrorism being perpetrated by Bush, McCain, Bernanke, Paulson and the rest of these criminals in threatening Americans with unbridled chaos unless they acquiesce to political demands, and the coordinated ferocity with which it is being delivered, is necessary for the crooks because they are desperate to get the bailout passed before Congress really has a chance to digest exactly what it stands for.

This is what’s called the “shock doctrine,” the accelerated passage of what is essentially dictatorial legislation without proper scrutiny by means of exploiting a temporary state of fear.

This is not just about $700 billion of taxpayers’ money and the continued sacking of the dollar, it’s about the imposition of a giant new infrastructure of control and regulation on behalf of the private, run for profit, Federal Reserve.

Bush even alluded to it last night, stating that Paulson’s bailout would mean the “Federal Reserve would be authorized to take a closer look at the operations of companies across the financial spectrum.”

But this is merely scratching the surface. As Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., said, “This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it’s un-American.” In fact properly defined, one could label it “national socialism,” otherwise known as fascism.

As professor of economics at New York University Nouriel Roubini framed it, welcome to the United Socialist States of America and “the most radical regime change in global economic and financial affairs in decades”.

The plan was drawn up months ago, lying in wait for the right crisis to see it enacted, just as the Patriot Act was prepared well in advance of 9/11.

The Treasury’s fact sheet about the bailout states, “The Secretary will have the discretion, in consultation with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to purchase other assets, as deemed necessary to effectively stabilize financial markets.”

This gives the government and the Federal Reserve carte blanche to do whatever they want to long as it is done in the name of stabilizing financial markets, they can nationalize any company or industry and use taxpayer money, above and beyond the initial $700 billion, for whatever purpose is deemed necessary, without any oversight. Paulson’s bailout plan is also unreviewable by any court, it will remain in perpetuity.

Paulson’s draft bailout plans says: “The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.”

As Chris Martenson writes, “This means that $700 billion is NOT the cost of this dangerous legislation, it is only the amount that can be outstanding at any one time. After, say, $100 billion of bad mortgages are disposed of, another $100 billion can be bought. In short, these four little words assure that there is NO LIMIT to the potential size of this bailout. This means that $700 billion is a rolling amount, not a ceiling.”

“The bill would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority,” reports Bloomberg.

The Bush administration seeks “dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis,” said Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington. “We are taking a huge leap of faith.”

“It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time,” said historian John Steele Gordon.

Reporter Larisa Alexandrovna calls it “the final stages of the coup,” noting, “This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands.”

The legislation would provide billions to foreign central banks in addition to private foreign banks.

The proposed move represents a total shift of U.S. taxpayers’ funds into the hands of powerful private interests, some of which do not even represent American companies.

The bailout bill represents the most fascist centralization of power in America since 9/11 and the Patriot Act - and many would argue that it even trumps that. The fiscal terrorists hope to ram through their agenda by appealing to people’s fears about the economy, their jobs, their houses and their pensions. But the temporary pain brought on by a Wall Street crash and a severe recession would be nothing compared to the long term death knell that the bailout bill would mean to the free market and economic liberty in America.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich, where we will be policed by a military force






We have, by now all seen the road blocks with in our State or have heard of them in other states where the police stop everyone and demand their ID's or as the Nazi's liked to call them "Papers please,  I need to see your papers." 

And when the cops are confronted by residents as to how that is a violation of their constitutional rights they are promptly hauled in for obstructing justice, but I ask who's justice...

Surely not ours.  What happened to the right to travel freely across our nation, with out hinderment of police or military.

9-11, that's what happened, the biggest damned farce to be swallowed by the mindless sheep of this nation.  This is why 9-11 happened, in order to get the flock to accept this sort of rights violation.

And now the Military is frequently training the local police, who more and more often see us, the residents of this nation as the enemy and I find this to be an outrage.

Have we become so weak that we are ready to forsake our liberties to this group of Nazi's, oh and they are Nazi's.  Just google Prescott Bush Nazi Union Bank corp and read away.

I am sicken by the spinelessness of this nation.  No one seems to give a rats arse about the state of our economy, or the totalitarian acts of our rouge Federal government. 

Strength isn't rolling through a country that is no more of a threat to the world then a child with a squirt gun is to a cop.  Strength is standing up against the powers that are ruining this nation with their warmongering and excessive bailouts and complete demoralization through their propaganda, and fear tactics. 

In this article from Paul Watson the facts about how we have become just another corrupt third world nation are abundantly clear.





 

U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with “civil unrest and crowd control” - which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.

This shocking admission was calmly reported on  September 8th by the Army Times website, which reports that from the beginning of next month the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team “Will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or man made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.”

The article notes that the deployment “marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

The purpose of the unit’s patrols includes helping “with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

The unit will be on homeland patrol for at least 20 months before returning to Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, according to the report.

Training for homeland operations has already begun at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

Ominously, the report states that, “The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”

The unit would also be deployed to deal with hostile crowds of Americans in the aftermath of a massive economic depression, potential food riots and race riots, if one defines the term “crowd control” to match its reasonably applicable scenarios.

The open admission that U.S. troops will be involved in law enforcement operations as well as potentially using non-lethal weapons against American citizens is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Is the Bush administration and Northcom waiting for such a scenario to unfold, an event that completely overwhelms state authorities, before unleashing the might of the U.S. Army against the American people?

The deployment of National Guard troops to aid law enforcement or for disaster relief purposes is legal under the authority of the governor of a state, but using active duty U.S. Army in law enforcement operations inside America absent the conditions described in the Insurrection Act is completely illegal.

With the promise of an “October surprise” on behalf of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda being bandied about by the media and the potential for civil unrest should a complete collapse of the U.S. economy unfold, the presence of U.S. troops inside America, returning fresh from kicking down doors, arresting “insurgents” and taking them to internment camps in Iraq, should put Americans on alert and provoke urgent questions about the legality of U.S. Army units engaging in law enforcement operations against American citizens.

Socializing the Fannie Freddie Mess

Kurt Nimmo

A massive socialist “reorganization” of the Fannie-Freddie fiasco would not be complete without a bit of spin from the Wall Street Journal:

The Treasury Department is putting the finishing touches to a plan designed to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would essentially result in a government takeover of the mortgage giants.

That’s how it works on Wall Street — dying mammoths rife with loan sharks and scam artists are taken over by the government — that is to say you, the American taxpayer, will pay for everything and soften the blow for the criminal financial class. I mean, you shouldn’t expect the rich stockholders to absorb the loss of all those bad loans.

But never mind. It’s all the fault of borrowers with poor credit. If not for them, the loan sharks and scam artists would never have gone down the road to ruin, not that it matters because they will not be held responsible. Add a couple more numbers to the astounding federal deficit.

The plan is expected to involve putting the two companies into the conservatorship of their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said several people familiar with the matter. That would mean the government would take the reins of the companies, at least temporarily.

Nice word, “conservatorship,” sounds so loving and paternal. Of course, this fatherly concern will not extend to the little people who were endlessly propagandized on the “American dream” of home ownership over the years. No, they’ll be sent packing with destroyed credit ratings. After all, the nanny state is there to take care of the billionaires who are accustomed to the little people socializing their losses.

It is also expected to involve the government injecting capital into Fannie and Freddie. That could happen gradually on a quarter-by-quarter basis, rather than in a single move, one person familiar with the matter said.

In addition, Treasury’s plan includes a top-level management shakeup at both companies, according to people familiar with the plans. Daniel H. Mudd, chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Richard Syron, his counterpart at Freddie Mac, are expected to step down from their posts eventually.

More fiat money down the rat hole. As for Mr. Mudd — nice name, appropriate — and his fellows, they will “step down” when they should be brought up on criminal charges for squandering billions and wrecking countless lives. In Wall Street parlance, a “shake up” means criminals get to walk free and move on to the next scam.

Any move by Treasury would represent perhaps the most significant intervention by the government in the financial industry since the housing bust touched off turmoil in the credit markets a little more than a year ago. From the $168 billion economic-stimulus package in February through the bailout of investment bank Bear Stearns Cos., the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve have taken an increasingly aggressive stance in responding to what has become one of the worst financial crises in decades.

Aggressive? No, that means the perps would be arrested and prosecuted. Instead, the Fannie-Freddie contrivance will be showered with funny money, courtesy of the banker’s club, otherwise known as the Fed. As for “intervention by the government in the financial industry,” it should be noted that Fannie and Freddie were created by the government — known as GSEs, or government sponsored enterprises — and Fannie was a scheme dreamed up as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. It is a government created virtual monopoly of the secondary mortgage market, but then the government has long specialized in setting up monopolies for its buddies.

Freddie and Fannie own or guarantee more than $5 trillion of mortgages. They have suffered combined losses of about $14 billion over the past four quarters as they make provisions for a wave of defaults. Investors worried that a government bailout would wipe out the value of existing stock, and those fears have sent the shares down about 90% from a year ago. Many U.S. banks as well as foreign governments own stock or debt in the two giants, meaning their financial woes could cause broad problems beyond the housing market… Mr. Paulson’s push to win authority was meant to reassure investors that the government wouldn’t allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fail.

In short, the government will not allow the shareholders to lose their money on bad investments, as they rightly should if we had a real free market, one that rewards and punishes investors for good or bad decisions.

Mr. Paulson is cautious about any plan that appears to benefit shareholders because he doesn’t want the government to be seen as bailing out investors who for years profited from the companies’ success.

Oh, man, that’s rich, as in rich investors protected by the government. Paulson does not want to be seen protecting the financial class, but that’s exactly what he is doing. And the Wall Street Journal is there to shovel the spin.

Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, has said his goal is to make the companies “go away” and to push for regulation that “limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.” Sen. McCain supported giving Treasury the authority to backstop the firms but has said any use of taxpayer funds should be combined with an ouster of management and a ban on lobbying by the companies.

He really doesn’t mean it, of course. McCain will do whatever Wall Street tells him to do. But first he has to convince the cattle he’s their man come November. Funny thing is, a lot of people buy into these inane promises, worth their weight in dung.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, has said the companies are a “weird blend” and that “if these are public entities, then they’ve got to get out of the profit-making business, and if they’re private entities, then we don’t bail them out.”

Does not compute because “private entities” — a nice neutral term, about as amorphous as an amoeba — are habitually bailed out by the government. But then Obama, like his statist twin McCain, are talking out of a certain orifice, one where smoke also on occasion emanates.

No matter, the government will socialize the failure of Fannie-Freddie, the scam gone south. In the meantime, the so-called “subprime crisis” will only intensify and more people will be thrown out on the street. Mudd and the billionaires will be allowed to move on to the next scam and the one after that, further pauperizing the country, as planned

Trading one corruption for another?


s

Now before we all start dancing and singing "ding-dong, the witch is dead,".

I thought to ask myself a few questions. 

So this Cockrel guy is the new mayor in acting.

Understand that I am a little cynical of any one in Wayne county government, so please...bare with me here.

What kind of media is available, what sort of news is this cat into of late.

What's his story?  

Well, seeing how he's the head of a city council that is still involved in a FBI embezzlement investigation I bet it's a hell of story.

I'm not trying to say he has anything to do with the FBI investigation.  I'm just saying that groups tend to elect leaders they deserve.
 
Let's start there, shall we?  See what we know as of yet about this on going FBI debacle.

 July 2 2008 the Detroit Free press published this article: FBI targets 4 on council, and within that article, just about the very first paragraph was this.

"The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the probe's sensitive nature, said they were surprised how cheaply some public officials could be bought."

"If you're going to trade your vote, you'd think it would be for a lot of money," one said.

"Four figures is not a lot of money. ... They were selling their votes in volume."

As if that isn't bad enough, Mr Cockrel had this to say about that information.

"It's not surprising, but it's very disappointing and very disturbing,"  

Not surprising?  Are you serious?

He then adds this statement,

"We'll have to see how this all plays out. But in the meantime, until names are actually dropped, council has to continue to focus on doing its job and it has to be business as usual, no matter how difficult that may be,"  

If I just found that out I would think I'd be a bit more appalled, and stern in speech.

So business as usual, hummmm? 

Now what business is that?  Ripping off the City of Detroit?

What else could it be when 1/3 the council is on the take?  What good is trading a blatant in your face corruption for a more covert one that sells their votes for peanuts?

It appears the only low bid contract given in the city is the bribes given to the city officials. 

They don't even sell us out at a decent price.

The Free Press first reported that one person taped by the FBI was John Clark, Cockrel's chief of staff, who sources said accepted two payments of $2,000 from Rosendall earlier this year. Clark resigned last week.

But ends with, "Cockrel had voted against the deal."

So that makes you wonder...well he did vote it down but in my eyes, when your Chief of Staff is on the take and you have no clue...you are either

A: corrupt too or

B: too ignorant and/or naive to be awarded the right to run the city as mayor in acting.

And who is this Rosendall guy,

Rosendall, 43, of Grand Rapids, vice president for market development for Synagro (A Waste management corporation) before the company announced his suspension Monday, came to the attention of FBI agents several months ago, sources said. He was one of two Synagro representatives involved in helping the company win a lucrative contract in southwest Detroit last November.

Synagro is the next question.   What do they do, and why are they trying to buy our city officials?

On there own site:

Synagro Technologies Inc.

They boast multiple city services including rail transportation, land development, Design/build.

Syngro, who was bought out in April 2007 by none other then the Bush Family Friendly, Carlyle  Group as reported by Behind the Buy Out,  But that fact is not mentioned on the Synagro web site.

Read the entire article from Behind the Buy Out 

Wow! It's enough to make your head hurt isn't it. 

But the soup just gets thicker and thicker, along with all the negative press they have garnered over their involvement with the Council of Corruption that is Detroit.

Now here is a bit about Synagro from Onvia a company used to assist them in there sales leads.

Synagro Earns a 44-Fold Return Winning New Business with Onvia

Synagro is the country's leading independent, full-service provider of residuals management services to municipalities and industrial customers. The company has three regional sales groups across the nation, including a Rail Transportation Division and Engineering & Facilities Development Group that looks into facilities construction. Government business drives 75 percent of Synagro's business revenue, which is supported by a sales force that spans across the country. Each sales person is in charge of their own states and a sales support team assists them in putting together the proposals and pricing for each region. To generate government sales leads, the company was trying to sign up for vendor lists and monitor new business intelligence. However, the company wasn't confident that they were catching all the right opportunities and needed a source to deliver timely government sales leads. They also wanted a way to track competitive data and gain insight into geographic market intelligence."

Sounds like a battle plan to me, "Can't catch the right opportunities?...buy them!

So what was it that Syngro has done for the city other then pay off it's council members?

Here is an snippet from an article from Diane Bukowski:

DETROIT — Without a whimper, Minergy Detroit LLC’s plan for a private incinerator for the city’s water and sewerage department expired after five years of protests by union and environmental activists.

But the company, a subsidiary of the giant Wisconsin Energy Corporation, is still seeking to profit from its 15-year, $375 million deal with the city.

It wants to sell its contract to Houston-based Synagro Technologies, which plans to transform sludge from the Waste Water Treatment Plant downriver into fertilizer pellets for land application. Environmentalists say the process has caused disease and death nationwide.

A city council public hearing on the buy-out is set for Thurs. Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. at the South Rademacher Recreation Center, 6501 S. in Detroit.

“Ever since the EPA banned ocean dumping 10 years ago, a whole industry has grown selling their processes to dispose of [sludge],” said John Riehl, president of Local 207 of the American Federation of State.

“Detroit burns or buries ours. That system has improved. It is certainly better than Synagro’s track record. But if the debate leads council to support pelletizing, remember this, Detroit city workers can do that work also. There is nothing that Synagro could offer that city workers couldn’t do for a lot cheaper with investment in Detroit’s infrastructure.”

Riehl and members of his local, which represents water department workers, fought Minergy’s original plan, saying it would displace nearly 200 city workers.

Water department worker Steven Borella told the council that there is no need for either a private incinerator like that Minergy had planned, or a pelletizing process.

“Our current incinerators have the capacity to handle all the plant’s sludge, 5,266 tons a day,” said Borella.

“The department has invested $300 million in a computer control system to operate the incinerators, and recent improvements can make them virtually emission-free. ”

So what they are doing here, is paying of city officials so they can send even more Michiganders off to the unemployment line, so they can charge the tax payers a huge sum of money to do what our city workers have done for years, but the difference is they can then turn around and sell our own fecal matter to local farmers to fertilize Michigan crops.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really ready to jump on that band wagon...who would?

That's like one step short of, "Solent Green is people."

Well, the good thing is...it's business as usual for the crew down at the Council. 

And why shouldn't it be, it's not their jobs that are being tossed to yet another juggernaut corporation owned by the same group of crooks and thieves that have controlling interest through out the world...meaning that world control is their interests. 

I'm glad Kwame has been ousted, but he isn't even the tip, of the tip of the iceberg that is the corruption in this city,  I will continue to research this matter but, damn I have other things to accomplish then dig through this tangled web of "Sludge".

I don't want this to imply that Cockrel has or had any thing to do with the F.B.I. investigation and I would like to believe he is just naive. 

I just ask...before we all go patting each other on the back, let's not stop asking real questions about the governing body of this, our City.  Whose pocket are they in, and how do their -more often, then not-shady practices effect our economy.

 

Why We Were Falsely Arrested

Amy Goodman
Truthdig
September 4, 2008

St. Paul, Minnesota - Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.

The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements-for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.

It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates.

There was a positive, festive feeling, coupled with a growing anxiety about the course that Hurricane Gustav was taking, and whether New Orleans would be devastated anew. Later in the day, there was a splinter march. The police-clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons and canisters of pepper spray-charged. They forced marchers, onlookers and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.

Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, “Get down on your face.” You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing “Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?” She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole’s screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was th