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ashkif as

Group Health Insurance California - 0 views

www.portalmarkets.com/...20934.html

group health health insurance insurance california

shared by ashkif as on 11 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • ashkif as on 11 Jan 19
     
    BIA Insurance Agency is one of California's premier insurance providers, founded in 2008 by Daniel Babajoni . BIA Insurance Agency guarantees the best insurance rates for both personal and commercial lines of insurance, as well as world-class customer service. Our prime focus is on Auto Insurance, Home Insurance, Business Insurance, Life insurance solutions, Health Insurance( Individual/Group ), Dental Insurance, Disability Insurance, Retirement Insurance, Earth Quake Insurance Plans, Commercial...
Paul Merrell

Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Scandal Spreads To Life Insurance Business - 0 views

shadowproof.com/...preads-life-insurance-business

banksters Wells-Fargo life-insurance fraud

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Today, Prudential Financial announced it would suspend the distribution of a low-cost life insurance policy through Wells Fargo. The low-cost life insurance policy, called MyTerm, had been promoted by Wells Fargo since 2014 throughout its large number of retail banking outlets. The suspension comes shortly after a wrongful termination lawsuit was filed by three former Prudential employees, which alleged that Wells Fargo employees signed up customers for MyTerm life insurance policies without the customer’s knowledge to hit sales goals. The plaintiffs, who worked at Prudential’s corporate investigations division, claim their reports of the fraud led to their termination because Prudential management did not want to take any action that could damage its business with Wells Fargo. If true, those allegations would fit an already established pattern of Wells Fargo employees creating fake customer checking, saving, and credit card accounts. The resulting scandal from those revelations led to Wells Fargo being fined $185 million and the resignation of the CEO, John Stumpf. Wells Fargo is already facing a new investigation by the SEC concerning whether the bank made proper disclosures to investors. It’s not clear if the company disclosed the nature of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation and others that led to $185 million in fines, or whether the company knowingly transmitted false sales numbers based on the gains from fake accounts.
  • Though it is hard to quantify, Wells Fargo’s name, reputation, and brand have been undeniably damaged. After the publicity of the congressional hearings, it is likely that many potential customers will not use the bank’s services. Customers whose names were used to open fake accounts will probably never bank with Wells Fargo again. In fact, some of them are suing. That’s all before whatever further damage is done by the more recent accusations about the fake life insurance accounts from Prudential. Hopefully not lost in all this is that the initial plan by Wells Fargo executives was to scapegoat low-level employees for this entire scandal. Despite creating the “cross-selling” program, which forced employees to aggressively try to open new accounts and even firing those that did not or complained about it, Wells Fargo upper management initially took no responsibility for the fake account scandal. In all, over 5,000 low-level employees have been terminated and are likely never going to work in banking again, while the CEO and the executive responsible for managing the program, Carrie Tolstedt, will walk away with millions upon millions of dollars.
Paul Merrell

Survey: One in four US adults burdened by medical debt - World Socialist Web Site - 0 views

www.wsws.org/...kais-j08.html

economics stats U.S. medical-debt income inequality socialized-medicine

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • A new survey shows that 26 percent of US adults ages 18-64 say they or someone in their household had problems paying their medical bills in the past 12 months. The Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times Medical Bills Survey shows that those from all walks of life are saddled with medical debt, with the uninsured and low-income households carrying the heaviest burden.
  • Being uninsured has a strong correlation with medical bill difficulties, with 53 percent of the uninsured reporting problems paying household medical bills in the past year. However, as the survey’s findings point out, “insurance is not a panacea against these problems.” About one in five of those with insurance—either through an employer, Medicaid or purchased on their own—also report problems paying medical bills. Among those with private insurance, the prevalence of high-deductible health coverage significantly impacts the financial burden on households, with 26 percent of those with high-deductible coverage reporting difficulties paying their medical bills. Although the survey does not indicate which of those interviewed purchased their coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is clear that the high deductible plans dominating the ACA marketplace are becoming increasingly common among plans sold by private insurance companies.
  • Not surprisingly, households with lower or moderate incomes are more likely to report problems paying their medical bills. Nearly four in 10 (37 percent) of those with household incomes below $50,000 report these problems, compared with 26 percent of those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, and 14 percent of those with household incomes greater than $100,000. Women are slightly more likely than men to experience problems paying medical bills (29 percent versus 23 percent), as are adults under age 30 compared with those ages 30-64 (31 percent versus 24 percent). Residents in the South reported the highest share of medical bill problems (32 percent), while those in the Northeast reported the lowest (18 percent). At 24 percent, whites reported slightly less difficulty pay their bills than blacks (31 percent) and Hispanics (32 percent). People with the greatest medical needs are also more likely to face problems paying their medical bills. Of those who say they have a disability that prevents them from participating fully in daily activities, 47 percent report medical bill problems. Among those who rate their own heath as fair or poor, 45 percent report these problems, while 34 percent of those who say they receive regular treatment for a chronic condition report problems.
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  • When asked to describe their financial situation, 43 percent of those who have experienced problems paying medical bills say they just scrape by covering their basic household expenses, while 18 percent say they don’t have the financial resources to cover them. The survey also shows that compared to those without medical debt, those with medical bill problems are less likely to have a credit card or a retirement savings account. Of those with difficulties paying bills, the total amount owed ranged from 10 percent owing $500 or less, to 24 percent owing $2,500 to less than $5,000, to 13 percent owing in excess of $10,000. For an individual or family living paycheck to paycheck, or facing unemployment, even a $500 unpaid medical bill—accompanied by calls from health providers’ offices or their bill collectors—can become an overwhelming burden. In a further cruel twist, those facing medical bill problems also often face the complicating factor of income loss due to an illness. Three in 10 respondents say someone in their household had to take a cut in pay or hours as a result of the illness that led to the medical bills, either due to the illness itself or in order to care for the person who was sick.
  • The medical bills burdening households are for a wide variety of medical services, both one-time events and chronic conditions. Of those surveyed, bills incurred included those for doctor visits (65 percent), diagnostic tests (65 percent), lab fees (64 percent) and emergency room visits (61 percent). About half say they had problems paying for prescription drugs, hospitalizations or dental care. Those surveyed were asked to briefly describe the illness or injury that led to their medical bills. Respondents describe the nightmare scenario in which they face the double impact of serious medical conditions and the inability to pay the bills incurred to treat them.
  • The ACA is contributing to and compounding these devastating financial conditions for millions of Americans. The program, popularly known as Obamacare, forces uninsured individuals to purchase coverage from for-profit insurers under threat of penalty, offering only modest subsidies to those who qualify. The most affordable of these plans come with deductibles in excess of $5,000 and other high out-of-pocket costs and there are no meaningful restraints on the premiums insurance companies can charge. These Obamacare plans are serving as a model for employer-sponsored coverage, where high-deductible plans are becoming more and more the norm. Architects of the ACA further predict that employer-sponsored coverage will largely be done away with by 2025.
  • The solution to the financial crisis ordinary Americans face paying their medical bills—along with the other scourges of the US for-profit medical system—lies in putting an end to the privately owned insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and giant health care chains and establishing socialized medicine.
Gary Edwards

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...14-forecast-burning-down-house

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Jan 14
     
    Incredible must read analysis. Take away: the world is going to go "medevil". It's the only way out of this mess. Since the zero hedge layout is so bad, i'm going to post as much of the article as Diigo will allow: Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/06/2014 19:36 -0500 Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com , Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It's like being buried alive in Jell-O. It's embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war. Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical "recovery" and the "shale gas miracle" on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations. Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt - with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage.
Gary Edwards

A Crisis Worse than ISIS? Bail-Ins Begin - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...worse-than-isis-bail-ins-begin

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Propping Up the Derivatives Scheme Dodd-Frank states in its preamble that it will “protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” But it does this under Title II by imposing the losses of insolvent financial companies on their common and preferred stockholders, debtholders, and other unsecured creditors. That includes depositors, the largest class of unsecured creditor of any bank.
  • Title II is aimed at “ensuring that payout to claimants is at least as much as the claimants would have received under bankruptcy liquidation.” But here’s the catch: under both the Dodd Frank Act and the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivative claims have super-priority over all other claims, secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured.
  • The over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market (the largest market for derivatives) is made up of banks and other highly sophisticated players such as hedge funds. OTC derivatives are the bets of these financial players against each other. Derivative claims are considered “secured” because collateral is posted by the parties. For some inexplicable reason, the hard-earned money you deposit in the bank is not considered “security” or “collateral.” It is just a loan to the bank, and you must stand in line along with the other creditors in hopes of getting it back. State and local governments must also stand in line, although their deposits are considered “secured,” since they remain junior to the derivative claims with “super-priority.”
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  • Under the old liquidation rules, an insolvent bank was actually “liquidated” – its assets were sold off to repay depositors and creditors. Under an “orderly resolution,” the accounts of depositors and creditors are emptied to keep the insolvent bank in business.
  • The point of an “orderly resolution” is not to make depositors and creditors whole but to prevent another system-wide “disorderly resolution” of the sort that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
  • The concern is that pulling a few of the dominoes from the fragile edifice that is our derivatives-laden global banking system will collapse the entire scheme. The sufferings of depositors and investors are just the sacrifices to be borne to maintain this highly lucrative edifice.
  • At first glance, the “bail-in” resembles the normal capitalist process of liabilities restructuring that should occur when a bank becomes insolvent. . . . The difference with the “bail-in” is that the order of creditor seniority is changed. In the end, it amounts to the cronies (other banks and government) and non-cronies. The cronies get 100% or more; the non-cronies, including non-interest-bearing depositors who should be super-senior, get a kick in the guts instead. . . . In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.
  • A study involving the cost to taxpayers of the Dodd-Frank rollback slipped by Citibank into the “cromnibus” spending bill last December found that the rule reversal allowed banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books. This is money that taxpayers could be on the hook for in another bailout; and since Dodd-Frank replaces bailouts with bail-ins, it is money that creditors and depositors could now be on the hook for.
  • As of September 2014, US derivatives had a notional value of nearly $280 trillion
  •  Citibank is particularly vulnerable to swaps on the price of oil. Brent crude dropped from a high of $114 per barrel in June 2014 to a low of $36 in December 2015.
  • What about FDIC insurance? It covers deposits up to $250,000, but the FDIC fund had only $67.6 billion in it as of June 30, 2015, insuring about $6.35 trillion in deposits. The FDIC has a credit line with the Treasury, but even that only goes to $500 billion; and who would pay that massive loan back? The FDIC fund, too, must stand in line behind the bottomless black hole of derivatives liabilities
  • You can move your money into one of the credit unions with their own deposit insurance protection; but credit unions and their insurance plans are also under attack.
  • In short, the goal of the bail-in scheme is to place losses on private creditors. Alternatives that allow them to escape could soon be blocked.
  • The Dodd Frank Act and the Bankruptcy Reform Act both need a radical overhaul, and the Glass-Steagall Act (which put a fire wall between risky investments and bank deposits) needs to be reinstated.
  • Meanwhile, local legislators would do well to set up some publicly-owned banks on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota – banks that do not gamble in derivatives and are safe places to store our public and private funds.
  • Gary Edwards on 31 Dec 15
     
    Excellent analysis of the coming banking crisis anw how our politicians have put the citizens on the hook for risky bank derivative gambling.  Thanks Marbux! Ellen H. Brown (nsnbc) : While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US.  Poverty also kills.
Gary Edwards

75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe - 0 views

theeconomiccollapseblog.com/...re-almost-too-crazy-to-believe

economic-collapse Obammunism Obamanomics

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 13
     
    Thanks to Marbux we have this extraordinary collection of facts and figures describing the economic catastrophe that has hit the USA.  excerpt: "What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a "great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class.  It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening.  If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode.  Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy.  We need a fundamental change in direction.  Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up. The end of the year is a time when people tend to gather with family and friends more than they do during the rest of the year.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help start some conversations about the coming economic collapse with your loved ones.  Sadly, most Americans still tend to doubt that we are heading into economic oblivion.  So if you have someone among your family and friends that believes that everything is going to be "just fine", just show them these numbers.  They are a good summary of the problems that the U
Gary Edwards

Member List - ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA - 0 views

www.icleiusa.org/...member-list

Property-Rights Property-Seizure-AND-Redistribution-of-Wealth Agenda-21 ICLEI

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 13
     
    ICLEI is a UN Agenda 21 initiative.  It's a direct assault on property ownership rights.  I had my own first hand view of these Marxists at work in the small town of Belmont California, when the Fire Chief presented a plan to turn 2/3rd's of the cities land over to the State by declaring it "a risk fire hazard zone".  The declaration would move the 2/3rds to State control and regulation, dramatically increasing the costs of building codes compliance and insurance, while effectively ending development and property improvement.  It would also end the sale of homes in these sectors since Home Owners insurance and property compliance would be prohibitively expensive.  Agenda 21 at work.  Right next door.   From TeaPartyORG:  http://goo.gl/QHIOS ......   "The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is a conglomerate of 600 national, regional, and local government associations who promote "sustainable development" and protection of the environment because of man-made global warming that does not exist. "Sustainable development" is the United Nations effort to contain and limit economic development in developed countries and thus control population growth. It is "sustainable de-growth," plain and simple. The focus is "low-income agriculture" and to set limits on the developed world. United Nations and its affiliates believe that first world countries polluted significantly during their development while urging third world countries to reduce pollution thus impeding their growth. Implementation of"sustainable development" would revert our society to a pre-modern lifestyle. ICLEI wants to keep the environment as pristine as possible through "ideal-seeking behavior." These euphemisms are not clearly defined in terms of what or who will evaluate or set the standards for this "ideal-seeking behavior." Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure to manage, count, and control assets. It is not concerned with
Gary Edwards

Judge Napolitano: How the forgotten man decided the 2016 election | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...man-decided-2016-election.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Nov 16
     
    "Whatever the impression Trump may have given you -- a carnival barker, a hero, a jerk, a courageous leader -- he brilliantly tapped into a deep vein of millions of American men and women who believe they have been forgotten by the government they pay for. These good people have been alienated by the elites who dominate American government and culture and civic life. On Tuesday night, they found a home. The forgotten man believes that the Obama administration doesn't care about him. The forgotten man knows that the government put into place regulations of economic activity that put him out of work or into a lower-paying job. These forgotten men and women resent the Obama administration's telling them they must have health insurance or they will be taxed for it and then so incompetently manipulating the marketplace as to cause the cost of that insurance -- often an unwanted product -- to skyrocket. These good folks cringed when their family doctor told them that he could no longer afford to treat them because the feds had overregulated the practice of medicine. They simply couldn't believe that their own government would make the practice of medicine so expensive that doctors in droves could not afford to stay in business. And they were outraged when their doctors told them the feds could see their medical records and dictate their medical treatment. The forgotten man has profound resentment for a government that is telling him how to live. The forgotten man's union dues have shot up. His union leaders use his dues to support political candidates he doesn't know or like. Yet he has usually voted for the Democrats -- out of a traditional belief that the Democrats would think of him and his needs when framing federal legislation. They haven't. The forgotten man speaks his mind but isn't drawn to lofty arguments about the freedom of speech. The forgotten man wants the government to work but couldn't tell you which aspects of its behavior are unconstit
Gary Edwards

Doug Casey on American Socialism - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...doug-casey-american-socialism

Doug-Casey Socialism economic-ruin

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Oct 12
     
    "Doug Casey on American Socialism"  .  Awesome interview, especially the discussion on Liberalism and how the socialist Norman Thomas decided to co-opt the term as an effective replacement for the disreputable socialism.  Links to the Thomas 1932 socialist platform that Casey points out has pretty much been put into place.   Good discussion.  Focus on an article published by socialist apologist and idiot, Allan Colmes.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 12
     
    I agree that Colmes is far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. In my opinion, he was largely a Fox News invention to give Shawn Hannity a far weaker opponent to argue against that Hannity's idiocy could still overcome. There are in reality liberals that Hannity could never have gone toe-to-toe with. (That's not an endorsement of liberalism; it's commentary on the quality of Hannity's arguments.) The show was mostly a variant of the straw man logical fallacy; the fact that Colmes lacked the ability to think critically or communicate effectively made Hannity "win" the pseudo-debate in the eyes of those unable to think critically themselves. I have some criticism of Casey's remarks that apply more generally to my experience of strict Libertarians and perhaps even farther to strict adherents to any "ism." My criticism boils down to a couple of examples of hard issues usually avoided by strict Libertarians. -- The Disabled: When discussing Social Security disability benefits, Casey changes the subject from the genuinely disabled to a short rant about those whose disability claims are bogus and the "ambulance chasing" lawyers who pursue their claims. But if pressed to the wall and forced to answer, I strongly suspect that Casey would admit that there are people, likely the majority of Social Security disability benefits, whose claims are genuine. The net effect of his relevant argument: an impression that he has a Darwinian view that he would leave the disabled dying in the streets without sustenance or medical care. That kind of society is unacceptable to me. Perhaps it is to Casey too, but if so I think it was incumbent on him to offer a solution for the genuinely disabled. (In fairness, I'll note that at one point Casey hinted but did not forthrightly say that he would favor financial assistance for single mothers in Harlem.) -- Medical Care: I agree that our health care system is badly broken. But again Casey is long on criticism but short on realistic idea
Joseph Skues

Bechtel Corporation: Key UK Benefits - 0 views

www.bechtel.com/uk-benefits.html

bechtel benefits finacial-crisis socialism economy financial-oligarchs Banksters banksters

shared by Joseph Skues on 18 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • employees can opt to include spouse/family members under the company scheme at a cost
  • Business travel accident insurance Company paid accident insurance
  • employee contributions, plus company contributions, into an employees
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • pension account.
  • offering financial protection for the employee and the employee and their families, both during the employee’s career
  • and after retirement.
  • employees can change which funds the pension account is invested in. 
  • Long Term Disability insurance
  • at no cost. 
  • Employees will receive 50 percent of base salary from the scheme after six months absence from work. 
  • benefits including Bechtel University online training, mentoring and leadership programmes
  • breast cancer awareness workshops
  • The Well programme is offered to all employees at no cos
  • nutrition advise and guidance
  • professional membership reimbursement.
  • provides a health manager who is on site every Thursday and Friday
  • advises employees on health issues such as high blood pressure, BMI, high cholesterol, diabetes, weight management, and work life balance;
  • all employees receive at the beginning of employment with Bechtel.
  • Confidential telephone and face-to-face counselling services are offered to all employees at no cost
  • Bechtel recognises that everyone needs some assistance in dealing with the changes and challenges in their lives.
  • a season ticket loan scheme for London office permanent staff
  • Loans will be based on the actual cost of second class rail season tickets and/or London Zone Travel Cards between the employee’s home and London office by the most direct route that does not impose undue travel restrictions on the employee.
  • mployees to sacrifice a maximum of £220 per month; in return, the employee receives childcare vouchers and savings in tax and National Insurance contributions.
Gary Edwards

JB Williams -- Congress Must Immediately Impeach Entire Obama Administration - 0 views

www.newswithviews.com/...williams180.htm

Impeachment Impeach-Obama JB-Williams newswithviews

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12
     
    A well written list of particulars calling for the impeachment of the entire Obama administration.  The article ends with an appeal to restore the Constitution, identifying two groups in particular: US Patriots Union and the US Veterans "Defenders of America".  Outstanding stuff.  When you read this you will know you're in the presence of true Patriots. http://www.patriotsunion.org/DECLARATION-RESTORE-THE-CONSTITUTIONAL-REPUBLIC.pdf http://www.veterandefenders.org/ excerpt: The Obama Administration has intentionally and criminally bankrupted what was once the most productive, prosperous and powerful nation on earth. This is nothing compared to Obama's other first term achievements. Via their Federal "wealth redistribution" bailouts, the Obama Administration seized control of General Motors, screwed every individual who ever invested in the company and steered the company through managed bankruptcy so that it would emerge the property of labor unions, not the people who had invested in it for years. The Obama Administration has since seized control of Energy, Banking, Insurance, Health Care, Food production and distribution, manufacturing, water supply and outlawed free speech on public lands to protect elected servants from an increasingly angry society that currently gives Obama, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court their lowest approval ratings in U.S. history. The Obama Administration designed and launched the so-called Arab Spring across the Middle East, attacking Jews and Christians alike and unseating leaders of sovereign nations and redistributing political power throughout the region to the Muslim Brotherhood, purposefully responsible for total civil unrest around the globe and rising gas prices at the pumps. Last Friday evening, Obama issued yet another Executive Order seizing unbridled power over every aspect of American life, all the way down to the water in your toilet bowl and the garden in your back yard, sharing that power with each mem
Gary Edwards

Tom Coburn: The Health Bill Is Scary - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3514404574588842779569168.html

health-care-hoax obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 09 - Cached
  • the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill—composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members—will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
  • The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force. This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients. When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 09
     
    That's Dr. Tom Coburn.  The same Dr. Tom Coburn who managed to force the public reading of Socialist Bernie Sanders health care amendment proposal designed to force government run health care on all Americans. excerpt: Every American, not just seniors, should know that the rationing provisions in the Reid bill will not only reduce their quality of life, but their life spans as well. My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine: Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely. Even if the public option is eliminated from the bill, these onerous rationing provisions will remain intact.
Paul Merrell

Canadian Spies Collect Domestic Emails in Secret Security Sweep - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ony-express-email-surveillance

surveillance state Canada CSE bulk-collection email

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The emails are vacuumed up by the Canadian agency as part of its mandate to defend against hacking attacks and malware targeting government computers. It relies on a system codenamed PONY EXPRESS to analyze the messages in a bid to detect potential cyber threats.
  • Last year, CSE acknowledged it collected some private communications as part of cybersecurity efforts. But it refused to divulge the number of communications being stored or to explain for how long any intercepted messages would be retained. Now, the Snowden documents shine a light for the first time on the huge scope of the operation — exposing the controversial details the government withheld from the public. Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure — a loophole that the Snowden documents show is being used to monitor the emails. The latest revelations will trigger concerns about how Canadians’ private correspondence with government employees are being archived by the spy agency and potentially shared with police or allied surveillance agencies overseas, such as the NSA. Members of the public routinely communicate with government employees when, for instance, filing tax returns, writing a letter to a member of parliament, applying for employment insurance benefits or submitting a passport application.
  • Chris Parsons, an internet security expert with the Toronto-based internet think tank Citizen Lab, told CBC News that “you should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say … could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.” Parsons said that there are legitimate cybersecurity purposes for the agency to keep tabs on communications with the government, but he added: “When we collect huge volumes, it’s not just used to track bad guys. It goes into data stores for years or months at a time and then it can be used at any point in the future.” In a top-secret CSE document on the security operation, dated from 2010, the agency says it “processes 400,000 emails per day” and admits that it is suffering from “information overload” because it is scooping up “too much data.” The document outlines how CSE built a system to handle a massive 400 terabytes of data from Internet networks each month — including Canadians’ emails — as part of the cyber operation. (A single terabyte of data can hold about a billion pages of text, or about 250,000 average-sized mp3 files.)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The agency notes in the document that it is storing large amounts of “passively tapped network traffic” for “days to months,” encompassing the contents of emails, attachments and other online activity. It adds that it stores some kinds of metadata — data showing who has contacted whom and when, but not the content of the message — for “months to years.” The document says that CSE has “excellent access to full take data” as part of its cyber operations and is receiving policy support on “use of intercepted private communications.” The term “full take” is surveillance-agency jargon that refers to the bulk collection of both content and metadata from Internet traffic. Another top-secret document on the surveillance dated from 2010 suggests the agency may be obtaining at least some of the data by covertly mining it directly from Canadian Internet cables. CSE notes in the document that it is “processing emails off the wire.”
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    " CANADIAN SPIES COLLECT DOMESTIC EMAILS IN SECRET SECURITY SWEEP BY RYAN GALLAGHER AND GLENN GREENWALD @rj_gallagher@ggreenwald YESTERDAY AT 2:02 AM SHARE TWITTER FACEBOOK GOOGLE EMAIL PRINT POPULAR EXCLUSIVE: TSA ISSUES SECRET WARNING ON 'CATASTROPHIC' THREAT TO AVIATION CHICAGO'S "BLACK SITE" DETAINEES SPEAK OUT WHY DOES THE FBI HAVE TO MANUFACTURE ITS OWN PLOTS IF TERRORISM AND ISIS ARE SUCH GRAVE THREATS? NET NEUTRALITY IS HERE - THANKS TO AN UNPRECEDENTED GUERRILLA ACTIVISM CAMPAIGN HOW SPIES STOLE THE KEYS TO THE ENCRYPTION CASTLE Canada's electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians' emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada's equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The emails are vacuumed up by the Canadian agency as part of its mandate to defend against hacking attacks and malware targeting government computers. It relies on a system codenamed PONY EXPRESS to analyze the messages in a bid to detect potential cyber threats. Last year, CSE acknowledged it collected some private communications as part of cybersecurity efforts. But it refused to divulge the number of communications being stored or to explain for how long any intercepted messages would be retained. Now, the Snowden documents shine a light for the first time on the huge scope of the operation - exposing the controversial details the government withheld from the public. Under Canada's criminal code, CSE is no
Joseph Skues

Bechtel Corporation: Key U.S. Benefits - 0 views

www.bechtel.com/key_us_benefits.html

banksters bechtel financial-oligarchs financial-crisis benefits Banksters

shared by Joseph Skues on 18 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • one-on-one health coaching
  • earn wellness credits each pay period, which may be applied toward the cost of medical coverage or taken as additional taxable income.
  • other healthy activities may be available such as weight management programs and free flu shots.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Coverage is available f
  • recognizes registered domestic partners for all applicable benefits. 
  • Confidential, short-term outpatient counseling services are offered at no cost
  • at no cost to employees. Basic life insurance Business travel accident insurance Company paid accident insurance
  • Both plans allow employees to contribute up to $5,000 each year to each plan
  • nine paid holidays a year in the United States
  • 20 days (160 hours) of paid time off per year, up to 80 days
  • for vacation, sick leave, personal time off, or religious observance.  
  • This option allows employees to “buy” an additional 40 hours of vacation. The employee’s salary is reduced by one week’s pay, with the reduction spread over the entire year.
  • Company matching and profit sharing contributions begin after one year of service. Immediate vesting entitles employees to the full value of company contributions.
  • Additional Benefits Additional benefits include Bechtel
  • University online training
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Libertarianism, Anarchism and the Truth of Austrian... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...he-Truth-of-Austrian-Economics

Richard-Ebeling Libertarian banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • These are at least two conceivable methods of compelling the government to stop, or limit, its abuse of the monetary printing press.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 09 Jul 12
       
      Ebeling proposes two methods of reining in out of control government printing of paper money.  There is a third method; one used by Lincoln and Kennedy.  This is the issuance of gold/silver/oil backed reserve notes.  The notes represent gold or silver being held on deposit, and are fully redeemable.   The value of the gold/silver or another commodity represented floats in the marketplace against goods and services.  Nor is there a fixed exchange rate for converting fiat (paper) dollars.  The market will figure those things out if left free to do so.  And that's one big big "if".
  • So the normal market pressures of downward price and wage adjustments in the recession are partly counter-acted by a new monetary expansion that is delaying the necessary re-coordination of market activities. Thus, given these two pressures, prices do not fall as much as a post-recession adjustment may require and they do not rise as much or as fast as might otherwise occur due to the renewed monetary expansion.
  • At the same time, as you correctly ask, the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a relatively low rate of interest to keep large excessive reserves in their accounts at the Federal Reserve, rather than to fully lend those excessive reserves to private borrowers. And given the low market rates of interest that Federal Reserve policy has generated, even the low rate of interest on unlent excess reserves offered to banks by the Federal Reserve appears the relatively more profitable way to use their available funds.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • Why has the Federal Reserve done this? They infused these two trillion dollars into the financial markets back in 2008-2010 because they feared that an economy-wide bank collapse was possible. They are afraid to reverse this monetary expansion because to do so would reduce potential bank-lending capacity and put upward pressure on interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve wants to prevent the sluggish recovery from slowing down even more and also raise the cost of the US government's financing of its trillion dollar a year deficits. So, instead, they leave this excess bank lending power sloshing around in the system, while keeping it off the market and from causing significant new price inflationary pressures, by paying banks not to lend those vast sums.
  • Austrians argue that economics is fundamentally a science and study of "human action." It attempts to trace out the logic and implications of man's intentional conduct in selecting among ends desired and applying perceived means to try to attain them. Austrians emphasize that all human action and the social and market interactions among men occur in a setting of imperfect knowledge, inescapable degrees of uncertainty and always through the passage of time.
  • They try to explain the market processes by which men discover mutual gains from trade.
  • They emphasize that the networks of social institutions in which and through which men discover ways to coordinate their interdependent actions in complex systems of division of labor are not the creations of government edict or command; but are most often among those unintended consequences of multitudes of self-interested individual actions and interactions.
  • They have developed theories of market competition and the role of the entrepreneur as the individuals always alert to market opportunities, and whose actions tend to bring about coordination between market supplies and demands.
  • The Austrian analysis of markets, competition and prices, led them to devastating critiques of the unworkability of all forms of socialist central planning, the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies in virtually all forms of government intervention and regulation, and a theory of money and the business cycle that points the finger of responsibility for inflations and recessions at the doorstep of government monetary and fiscal policies.
  • The philosophy of liberty proclaims that each individual is unique and possessing inherent rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • It is not surprising that classical liberal and libertarian ideas are often attacked. After all they are the ideas that consistently oppose the current political systems of plunder, privilege and power lusting.
  • That government, if it is to exist, is to serve as the protector and guardian of our distinct individual rights, and not the master of men who are obligated to sacrifice themselves for some asserted "national interest," "general welfare," or "common good."
  • The only reasonable meaning to the "common good" or the "general welfare" is when each individual is free to peacefully live his life as he chooses and is at liberty to voluntarily associate and interact with his fellow men for mutually beneficial improvements to their lives.
  • It is virtually inevitable that those who use political power for their own gain at their neighbor's expense will vehemently resist and oppose any attempt to stop them from feeding at the government trough.
  • there is everywhere a class of plundering peoples – politicians, bureaucrats, special interest groups – receiving tax-based income redistributions and subsidies and benefiting from anti-competitive regulations and protections against and at the expense of their fellow human beings.
  • This is the great battle of the twenty-first century;
  • Austrian Economics, not surprisingly, has been attacked precisely because of its insightful and cogent analysis of how it was government intervention and central bank monetary manipulation that generated the unsustainable boom in the last decade that set the stage for the inescapable bust, which the world is still suffering from.
  • There are "natural rights" libertarians
  • "utilitarian" or "consequentialist" libertarians.
  • most convincing case for human liberty
  • Because libertarians have not agreed about this among themselves, nor have they been able to persuade enough others in society to move the world further away from the collectivist premises and the interventionist-welfare state policies that guide so much that goes on in the world.
  • I happen to have been most strongly influenced by the "natural rights" defense of liberty, and especially as formulated by Ayn Rand in her philosophy of Objectivism.
  • First, it is argued that if one believes that the use of any and all forms of coercion are morally unacceptable in human relationships, then this should also imply that any compulsory taxation, even when for the funding of defense and legal justice, is unjustifiable. And, second, it is argued that the private sector could provide such admittedly essential services far more efficiently and cost-effectively than the monopoly agency of government. Murray Rothbard and David Friedman probably have been among the most well-known and articulate proponents of the anarcho-capitalist position over the last 50 years.
  • Others like the Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick and Ludwig von Mises have made the case for constitutionally limited government. Their counter arguments have centered on the ideas that conflicts over jurisdiction, disputes among private defense agencies contracted by different individuals who have disagreements, and the likelihood that "defense" would turn out to be a "natural monopoly" anyway – that is, a tendency for one agency to end up being the single provider of defense and judicial services over a wide geographical area – raise questions about the long-run workability and sustainability of competing defense companies in society.
  • From a moral perspective, I am in sympathy with the anarcho-capitalist position, in that I find the compulsory taking of people's income and wealth without their consent for whatever reason to be ethically repugnant.
  • We should focus on what we all agree upon:
  • This means that the Supreme Court has said that you are the slave of "society" and the government that represents "the people," since, in principle, anything that you do or not do can be argued to have some affect, positive or negative, on others.
  • Think about this Court decision. It is saying that if you do not buy health insurance the government will tax you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay the tax, the government will end up attempting to seize financial assets or real property you own in lieu of failure to pay. If you try to prevent this taking of your property, you are subject to arrest and imprisonment. If you resist arrest or imprisonment, the police have the authority to force you to comply – up to and including lethal force to subdue you into obedience.
  • the freedom and dignity of the individual human being; and the attempt whenever and wherever on our part to reduce, repeal and abolish all forms of regulation, control, restriction, prohibition on the peaceful and honest affairs of our fellow men.
  • Once you accept this premise, there is no end to the minutest detail and content of your life and actions the government cannot claim jurisdiction over to regulate, control or prohibit.
  • Here is that end-of-the-road of the notion of unlimited democratic rule by "the people" and those who claim to speak for "the people" and rule on their behalf.
  • Ayn Rand, of course, rejected any connection or compatibility with libertarianism. She argued this on two grounds. First, she felt that too frequently libertarians spoke of individual freedom, free markets and limited government, but failed to explicitly and clearly ground their political-economic ideas in a demonstrable philosophy of man, nature and society.
  • Government control of money is the potentially most dangerous and damaging form of government power short of outright socialism.
  • Rand's political philosophy arises out of the "natural rights" tradition, that rights are inherent in the nature of man and precede government.
  • Mises believed that rights were, in a sense, "social conventions" that had evolved out of the discovery that certain social institutional arrangements were more conducive to the mutual betterment of all members of society for achieving their individual goals and values
  • What they did agree upon was that, given their respective conceptions of the basis of individual rights, there was no social and economic system more consistent with the protection of those rights and more likely to generate the material and cultural achievements that are potentially possible than laissez-faire capitalism.
  • And in the twentieth century, Rand and Mises were two of the most principled and uncompromising advocates for the completely free market society
  • Second, she rejected the anarchist elements in the libertarian movement, believing that any reasonable analysis of the reality of man and the human condition strongly suggested the inescapable need for a single legal standard for defining and enforcing individual rights and a single authority to as impartially and "objectively" as possible enforce laws defending each individual's rights to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
  • "Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system . . .
  • A 'free' capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence.
  • From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits government interference to go.
  • Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all governmental controls short of expropriation."
  • Government basically has three ways to acquire the income and wealth of its citizens: taxation, borrowing and printing money
  • So, governments throughout history have turned to the monetary printing press to fund the expenditures not covered by taxes or borrowed money
  • This "non-neutral," or uneven, impact on prices and wages in the economy during the inflationary process brings in its wake distorted profit margins, misallocations of resources and labor and various mal-investments of capital. Here are the seeds for the artificial and unsustainable "booms" that invariably come crashing down in the "bust" once the monetary expansion that has set it all in motion is stopped or slowed down.
  • I believe that the choice and use of money should be left to the market, that is, to the free and voluntary interactive decisions of those buying and selling in the market.
  • I consider a private, competitive free banking system to be the only one consistent with a truly free market society.
Gary Edwards

Roger L. Simon » Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th? - 0 views

pjmedia.com/...a-in-a-pre-revolutionary-state

July-4th Roger-Simon American-Revolution Arab-Spring freedom-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Jul 13
     
    As we approach July 4, 2013, is America in a pre-revolutionary state? Are we headed for a Tahrir Square of our own with the attendant mammoth social turmoil, possibly even violence. Could it happen here? We are two-thirds of the way into the most incompetent presidency in our history. People everywhere are fed up. Even many of the so-called liberals who propelled Barack Obama into office have stopped defending him in the face of an unprecedented number of scandals coming at us one after the other like hideous monsters in some non-stop computer game. And now looming is the monster of monsters, ObamaCare, the healthcare reform almost no one wanted and fewer understood. It will be administered by the Internal Revenue Service, an organization that has been revealed to be a kind of post-modern American Gestapo, asking not just to examine our accounting books but the books we read . What could be more totalitarian than that? Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal warns the costs of ObamaCare are close to tripling what were promised , and the number of doctors in our country is rapidly diminishing. No more "My son, the doctor!" It doesn't pay. And young people most of all will not be able to afford escalating health insurance costs and will end up paying the fine to the IRS, simultaneously bankrupting the health system and enhancing the brutal power of the IRS - all this while unemployment numbers remain near historical highs. No one knows how many have given up looking for work while crony capitalist friends of the administration enrich themselves on mythological clean-energy projects. In fact, everywhere we look on this July Fourth sees a great civilization in decline. And much of that decline can be laid at the foot of the incumbent. Especially his own people, African Americans, have suffered.  Their unemployment numbers are catastrophic, their real needs ignored while hustlers like Sharpton, Jackson, and, sadly, even the president fan the flames of non-exi
Gary Edwards

Political Editors: Dick Morris Corrects the Record on Hillary Clinton - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44049

Hillary Political-Corruption

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Then Bill discusses Hillary’s legal career at the Rose Law firm. He doesn’t mention that she made partner when he was elected governor and was only hired when he got elected as attorney general. "He makes as if it was a public service job — it wasn’t. Her main job was to get state business, and she got tens-of-millions of dollars of state business, then hid her participation and the fees by taking an extra share of non-state business to compensate for the fees on state business that she brought in. Her other job was to call the state banking commissioner any time one of her banks got into trouble to get them off.
  • "Bill speaks at length how Hillary was a mother, juggling career and family, taking Chelsea to soccer games and stuff — that’s non-sense. Hillary was a mother but Chelsea in the Arkansas governor’s mansion had a staff of nannies and agents to drive her around and people to be with her, and Hillary didn’t have to bother with any of that. All of that was paid for by the state. "He says she became the warrior in chief over the family finances and that was true, and the result is she learned how to steal. "She accepted a $100,000 bribe from the poultry industry in return for Bill going easy on regulating them, despite new standards. Jim Blair, the poultry lobbyist, gave her $1,000 to invest in the Futures Market and lined up seven to eight other investors and their winnings were all deposited into Hillary’s account. She made $100,000 in a year and she was out. That essentially was a bribe.
  • ”[She did] a phony real-estate deal for Jim McDougal and the Madison Bank to deceive the federal regulators by pretending someone else was buying the property. She was called before a grand jury in 1995 about that but, conveniently, the billing records were lost, couldn’t be found and there wasn’t proof that she worked on it.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Bill talks about her work on the health care task force but doesn’t say the reason it didn’t pass was the task force was discredited because the meetings were all held in secret. A federal judge forced them open and fined the task force several hundred thousand dollars because of their secrecy. "He says that after the health care bill failed in 1994, Hillary went to work on adopting each piece of it piecemeal — mainly health insurance for children. "That is completely the opposite of the truth. The fact is when that bill failed, I called Hillary and I suggested that she support a proposal by Republican Bob Dole that we cover children, and she said, ‘We can’t just cover one part of this. You have to change everything or change nothing.’ Then in 1997 when I repeated that advice to Bill Clinton, we worked together to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program. I found a lot of the money for that in the tobacco settlement that my friend Dick Scruggs was negotiating.
  • "Then Bill extols her record in the U.S. Senate. In fact, she did practically nothing. There were seven or eight bills that she introduced that passed; almost all of were symbolic — renaming a courthouse, congratulating a high school team on winning the championship. There was only one vaguely substantive bill, and that had a lot of co-sponsors of whom Hillary was just one.
  • "Then he goes to her record in the State Department and manages to tell that story without mentioning the word Benghazi, without mentioning her secret emails, without mentioning he was getting tens of millions — $220 million in speaking fees in return for favorable actions by the State Department.
  • "Also totally lacking in the speech was anything about the war on terror — terror is a word you don’t hear at the Democratic Convention. "Bill says that Hillary passed tough sanctions on Iran for their nuclear program. The opposite is true. "Every time a tough sanction bill was introduced by Senators Menendez or Kirk, Hillary would send Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman to Capital Hill to testify against it and urge it not to pass, and it was over Hillary’s objections that those sanctions were put into place.
  • ”[Liberal columnist] Maureen Dowd called the speech by Bill Clinton “air brushed.” “It was a hell of a lot more than that — it was fiction. (Also see Morris’s comments after Clinton’s DNC acceptance speech. "It’s strategy and message will be interdicted by reality at every turn. … She basically has no message. … Her entire campaign is, ‘I’m a woman and I am running against Donald Trump. … She bean her speech by saying let’s compromise and work together. Is there any woman in the world less likely to compromise?”)
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16
     
    "Dick Morris is a nationally recognized political campaign adviser, analyst and author. He was the senior political adviser to Bill Clinton before and after his occupation of the White House. He was campaign manager of Clinton's 1996 re-election, and the architect of his successful "triangulation" rhetorical ruse. Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos said of Morris, "No single person had more power over [Bill Clinton]." This week, in a message entitled "What Bill Left Out, Morris corrected the record regarding Clinton's glowing remarks about Hillary Clinton, her personal attributes and professional achievements. Morris's insights into the Clintons are priceless. What follows is a transcript of Morris's comments: "Bill Clinton talked at length about Hillary's idealistic work in college and law school, but he omits that she was defending the Black Panthers who killed security guards; they were on trial in New Haven. She monitored the trial while she was in law school to find evidence that could be grounds for reversal in the event they were convicted. "That summer she went to work for the True-Haft (SP) law firm in CA, headed by True Haft who is the head of the CA Communist Party and that's when she got involved with Saul Alinsky, who became something of a mentor for the rest of her life. "Then Bill says that she went off to Massachusetts and he went to Arkansas, and eventually Hillary followed her heart to join him in Arkansas. He omits that she went to work for the Watergate Committee and was fired from that job for taking home evidence and hiding documents that they needed in the impeachment inquiry. Then she took the DC Bar exam and flunked it, she went to Arkansas because that is the only bar exam she could pass. "He talked about how in the 1970's she took all kinds of pro-bono cases to defend women and children. In her memoirs, she cites one which was a custody case and that's it. In fact, in 1975 she represen
Gary Edwards

The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement « naked ca... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...e-the-mortgage-settlement.html

Obama-banksters crony-banksterism Mortgage-fraud Foreclosure-Gate Banksters Banksters-of-America Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Feb 12
     
    Must read stuff.  The Obama Foreclosure Settlement Act is a clever exit strategy for criminal Banksters having committed the most egregious fraud.  A $9 Trillion dollar problem, rife with criminal activities, is settled for a mere $25 Billion, much of which will come out of the taxpayers hide thanks to Fannie and Freddie guarantees.  This deal stinks of typical Obama crony banksterism.  Now we need to watch for how many millions the Banksters pour into the newly authorized Obama Super PACS.  Should be interesting. excerpt: As we've said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn't you and me. It's bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners. 1. We've now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It's $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It's a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law....... 12. We'll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Inv
Gary Edwards

What the hell just happened? 'Tyranny By Executive Order' | by Constitutional Attorney ... - 0 views

www.redflagnews.com/...l-attorney-michael-connelly-jd

Tyranny-by-Executive-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13
     
    "What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama's signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought. Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it. Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use: "1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system." What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates our fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm. "2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system." This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says: "16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors
Paul Merrell

Making America Mediocre Again « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/making-america-mediocre-again

U.S. stats health

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The first signs of decline are physical. Citizens don’t grow as tall. They don’t live as long. They start killing each other in large numbers. Sounds like the post-mortem for a society that disappeared long ago, a conclusion that archaeologists deliver after sifting through bone fragments and pottery shards. Why, the puzzled scholars ask, did such a vibrant society, which produced beautiful art and remarkable scientific advances, fall apart so rapidly and leave so little behind in the unforgiving rainforest? This time, however, the diagnosis is being provided in real time. And the society in decline is the most powerful country in the world. According to the most recent global health surveys, the United States is witnessing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in nearly a quarter century. America is also the first high-income country to see its adults, on average, no longer growing taller. Writes Lenny Bernstein in The Washington Post: The reasons for the United States’ lag are well known. It has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any of the countries in the study, and the highest obesity rate. It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the “largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs,” the researchers wrote. I’d like to pin this one on Donald Trump. But U.S. decline has been ongoing for some time.
  • For instance, the United States ranked 16th in the 2014 Social Progress Index developed by Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School. Two years later, the United States slipped to 19th place, with particularly mediocre scores in environmental quality (#36), nutrition and basic medical care (#37), and access to basic knowledge (#40). Let’s compare that to Canada, which sat near the top of the rankings at number two in the SPI. Canada was a little better on environmental quality (#32), quite a bit better on basic medical care (#26), and a whole lot better on access to basic knowledge (#2). Even though Trump can’t be blamed for these mediocre social indicators, his party’s steadfast opposition to spending on social welfare and the environment certainly contributed to the problem. And Trump’s promise to “replace” Obamacare, cut social spending even further, and roll back regulatory oversight — all while boosting the Pentagon budget by an extraordinary 10 percent — will send the United States into free fall. The violent crime rate, which dropped nearly in half over the last 20 years despite what Trump claims, may well start to edge up as our pro-gun president makes firearms even more widely available and the economy takes a turn for the worse.
  • Predictions of the eclipse of American power have been around since Donald Trump was a 30-something playboy. It’s not just the overall health of the population and the toxicity of the environment. The United States has been hobbled by an enormous federal debt, an overextended global military presence, our failing infrastructure, and a paralyzed political system. It’s no wonder that so many Americans were sufficiently fed up in November to vote for anyone who promised to shake up the status quo.
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