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Gary Edwards

The Power to Regulate Commerce Across State Lines Is Also the Power to Regulate Non-Com... - 0 views

reason.com/...the-power-to-regulate-commerce

commerce-clause obamacare health-insurance

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Apr 10
     
    How does the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, allow Congress to prohibit the decision to not purchase health insurance-something that involves no commercial transactions, much less commercial transactions across state lines, and which couldn't possibly involve interstate commerce anyway given that there's currently no way to buy insurance across state lines.  Today, Cato Chairman Robert Levy has a much clearer explanation of how the Supreme Court has ruled on Commerce Clause cases which involve neither commerce nor the crossing of state lines. In Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich, he explains, the gist of the Supreme Court's decisions was that "if the failure to regulate would undercut a federal regulatory regime, then [the Supreme Court is] going to permit it." But, he argues, the individual mandate is still uncharted territory; the federal government isn't merely telling individuals what they can't do, it's telling them what they must do, and what they must do is purchase a product from a private company. As I've noted frequently, the CBO has called the mandate "an unprecedented form of federal action," and Levy's analysis tracks with that assessment. I still don't think I'd put money on the Supreme Court actually striking down the mandate, but Levy's argument that they should is fairly convincing. 
Paul Merrell

Trump signs executive order to slash regulations - 0 views

www.yahoo.com/...tions-151135855--business.html

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday that will seek to dramatically pare back federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 17
     
    Idiotic blindness, without examining the need for the repealed rules. Cluestick: most rules are adopted pursuant to an order by Congress or the Courts. Trump's order is at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/30/presidential-executive-order-reducing-regulation-and-controlling
Paul Merrell

Israel's settlement law: Consolidating apartheid | Israel | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...eft-legal-170208083626345.html

war & peace Palestine Israel annexation apartheid

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • "Israel has just opened the 'floodgates', and crossed a 'very, very thick red line'." These were the words of Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations' Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, in response to the passing of a bill at the Israeli Knesset on February 7 that retroactively legalises thousands of illegal settler homes, built on stolen Palestinian land. Mladenov's job title has grown so irrelevant in recent years that it merely delineates a reference to a bygone era: a "peace process" that has ensured the further destruction of whatever remained of the Palestinian homeland. Israeli politicians' approval of the bill is indeed an end of an era. We have reached the point where we can openly declare that the so-called peace process was an illusion from the start, for Israel had no intentions of ever conceding the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. In response to the passing of the bill, many news reports alluded to the fact that the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, riding a wave of right-wing populism, was the inspiration needed by equally right-wing Israeli politicians to cross that "very, very thick red line". There is truth to that, of course. But it is hardly the whole story.
  • The political map of the world is vastly changing. Just weeks before Trump made his way to the Oval Office, the international community strongly condemned Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.
  • That date, Trump's inauguration was the holy grail for Israel's right-wing politicians, who mobilised immediately after Trump's rise to power. Israel's intentions received additional impetus from Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May. Despite her government vote to condemn Israeli settlements at the UN, she too ranted against the US for its censure of Israel.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • With the UK duly pacified, and the US in full support of Israel, moving forward with annexing Palestinian land became an obvious choice for Israeli politicians. Bezalel Smotrich, a Knesset member of the extremist Jewish Home party, put it best. "We thank the American people for voting Trump into office, which was what gave us the opportunity for the bill to pass," he said shortly after the vote.
  • The so-called "Regulation Bill" will retroactively validate 4,000 illegal structures built on private Palestinian land. In the occupied Palestinian territories, all Jewish settlements are considered illegal under international law, as further indicated in UNSC Resolution 2334. There are also 97 illegal Jewish settlement outposts - a modest estimation - that are now set to be legalised and, naturally, expanded at the expense of Palestine. The price of these settlements has been paid mostly by US taxpayers' money, but also the blood and tears of Palestinians, generation after generation. It is important, though, that we realise that Israel's latest push to legalise illegal outposts and annex large swaths of the West Bank is the norm, not the exception.
  • But what is the Palestinian leadership doing about it? "I can't deny that the (bill) helps us to better explain our position. We couldn't have asked for anything more," a Palestinian Authority official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, as quoted by Shlomi Elder. WATCH: 'The settlers and the guards harass us and our children' (2:35) Elder writes: "The bill, whether it goes through or is blocked by the Supreme Court, already proves that Israel is not interested in a diplomatic resolution of the conflict."
  • The greatest mistake that the Palestinian leadership has committed (aside from its disgraceful disunity) was entrusting the US, Israel's main enabler, with managing a "peace process" that has allowed Israel time and resources to finish its colonial projects, while devastating Palestinian rights and political aspirations. Returning to the same old channels, using the same language, seeking salvation at the altar of the same old "two-state solution" will achieve nothing, but to waste further time and energy. It is Israel's obstinacy that is now leaving Palestinians (and Israelis) with one option, and only one option: equal citizenship in one single state or a horrific apartheid. No other "solution" suffices. In fact, the Regulation Bill is further proof that the Israeli government has already made its decision: consolidating apartheid in Palestine. If Trump and May find the logic of Netanyahu's apartheid acceptable, the rest of the world shouldn't. In the words of former President Jimmy Carter, "Israel will never find peace until it ... permit(s) the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights." That Israeli "permission" is yet to arrive, leaving the international community with the moral responsibility to exact it.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17
     
    Not mentioned in the article: the Knesset's Regulation Bill formally annexed territory inside the West Bank and holds that Israeli law, rather than military law, will now govern the annexed portions. That is the fact that establishes a clean break with the 2-state solution and flies in the face of international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly prohibits annexation and requires the immediate withdrawal of invading military forces from occupied territories immediately upon cessation of hostilities, which occurred in 1967. The two-state solution is dead, although the Regulation Bill will likely be overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. Trump gave Israel's ultra-right wing leaders way too much encouragement.
Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php

Libertarian Austrian-Economics Tariffs-NAFTA China Ron-Paul

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12
     
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Gary Edwards

Transnationalism vs. American Sovereignty « Tammy Bruce - 0 views

tammybruce.com/...m-vs-american-sovereignty.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13
     
    excerpt: "….Transnationalists want to rewrite the laws of war, do away with the death penalty, restrict gun rights and much more-all without having to win popular majorities or heed American constitutional limits. And these advocates are making major strides under an Obama administration that is itself a hotbed of transnational legal thinking…. To be clear, transnationalism isn't a conspiratorial enterprise. In the legal academy, its advocates have openly stated their aims and means. "International law now seeks to influence political outcomes within sovereign States," Anne-Marie Slaughter, then dean of Princeton's public-affairs school, wrote in an influential 2007 essay. International law, she went on, must expand to include "domestic choices previously left to the determination of national political processes" and be able to "alter domestic politics." The preferred entry point for importing foreign norms into American law is the U.S. court system. The Yale Law School scholar Howard Koh, a transnationalist advocate, has written that "domestic courts must play a key role in coordinating U.S. domestic constitutional rules with rules of foreign and international law." Over the past two decades, activist judges have increasingly cited "evolving" international standards to overturn state laws, and Mr. Koh has suggested that foreign norms can be "downloaded" into American law in this manner…. Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Koh held top posts at the State Department during Mr. Obama's first term, and their tenures coincided with an aggressive push to ratify or recognize as customary law… a host of … progressive causes. For proof that the transnationalist threat isn't merely theoretical, look no further than the European Union…. Today over half of the regulations that affect Europeans' lives are made by administrators in Brussels, not by national legislatures. These regulations include the EU's ban, announced in May, on restau
Gary Edwards

Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank: David Reilly - Bloomberg - 1 views

www.bloomberg.com/...barney-frank-david-reilly.html

Dodd-Frank-Act banksters financial-collapse Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Nov 13
     
    excerpt: "While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises. Nuggets Gleaned Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank's handiwork: -- For all its heft, the bill doesn't once mention the words "too-big-to-fail," the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery. -- Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for "no-more-bailouts" talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate's health-care bill look minuscule. -- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can't authorize these funds unless "there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back." Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well. More Bailouts -- The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms' debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are more bailouts to come. -- The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis. -- Don't worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on "whether setting up an electronic database" would be a help. Maybe they'll even get to use that Internet thingy. -- This group, among its many powers, can restrict the ability of a financial firm to trade for its own account. Perha
Gary Edwards

Birth of an Internet independence movement | CIO - 0 views

www.cio.com/...net-independence-movement.html

internet

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 May 15 - No Cached
  • The arrogance and utter incongruity of declaring Internet and telephone networks equivalent has led a group of friends, all of them reluctant activists, to convene an effort to restore Internet independence. So far, the group of “Tech Innovators” includes John Perry Barlow, Mark Cuban, Tim Draper, Tom Evslin, Dave Farber, Charlie Giancarlo, George Gilder, John Gilmore, Brian Martin, Bob Metcalfe, Ray Ozzie, Jeff Pulver, Michael Robertson, Scott McNealy and Les Vadasz. Through this civic initiative, we hope to defend the remarkable success of the Internet and lead a conversation toward the future — not the past, where laws enacted under FDR must inevitably lead us. The open Internet rules from the FCC end the “permissionless innovation” they purport to protect by inviting the commission to regulate computer networks for the first time. The uncertain benefits and certain unintended consequences of the policy reversal expose the communicating public to unnecessary risk and threaten to upend the success of the past 20 years. The Tech Innovators believe that by recognizing “Internet Independence Day,” Congress can help initiate and advance bipartisan legislation to restore the private-sector framework responsible for of the success of the Internet.
  • Americans today enjoy a thousand-fold improvement from the 56Kbps dial-up modems that 15 million Internet early adopters relied on in the ’90s. The Internet now reaches 3 billion people, and a proliferation of services push communication options far beyond the long-distance phone call of 1995. The FCC plan to impose public utility Title II provisions ends the policies responsible for these accomplishments. Domains subject to telephone-style regulations suffer stagnation without exception. A routine 10Mbps connection available as a nonregulated information service prior to the Open Internet Order would have cost $10,000 per month as a Title II data service in 1995. The insertion of fiat regulatory powers will prove fatal to the entrepreneurial energies responsible for building what FCC Chairman Wheeler calls “the most powerful network in the history of mankind” — a network built beyond the reach of FCC regulatory jurisdiction.
  • The Open Internet Order invents artificial distinctions between content companies, Internet providers and end users for the purposes of regulation. This will lead to the same types of regulatory arbitrage and innovation-deadening consequences as prior distinctions such as “long distance” or “intra-lata.” History demonstrates that asserting artificial market distinctions for purposes of regulation always invites arbitrage and unintended consequences. Resources White Paper 802.11ac: Wireless The Easy Way White Paper Web Application Acceleration: Practical Implementations See All Go The commission obtains jurisdiction by changing the definition of “public switched network” to include networks with IP addresses. The complete transformation of a policy landscape represents a decision the Constitution grants exclusively to Congress.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The coming litigation leaves the Internet ecosystem in jeopardy without regard to the outcome. The preference for a congressional action addressing current conditions and issues relative to the prospects of an 80-year-old regulatory framework should not be controversial. The privatization of the Internet represented an experiment. Restoring Internet independence merely recognizes the remarkable success of the commercial Internet.
  • Gary Edwards on 04 May 15
     
    "The 20th anniversary of the privatization of the Internet deserves recognition by the U.S. Congress and celebration by all Americans as "Internet Independence Day." Two decades ago, on April 30, 1995, the Internet was privatized with the decommissioning of the NSFNET backbone. State of the CIO 2015 More than 500 top IT leaders responded to our online survey to help us gauge the state of the READ NOW The past two decades of Internet-driven success were set in motion with the passage of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, championed by Sen. Al Gore and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. That decision of the U.S. government to step back and privatize the Internet led to a thriving and open Internet that provides a remarkable platform for innovation. Ironically, the Federal Communication Commission's recently announced Open Internet Order reasserts government control over the Internet by the means of repurposing Depression-era industrial policy meant to address a monopoly in voice-transmission technology. The FCC went down the dangerous and uncertain legal path of reverting to traditional, utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934."
Gary Edwards

Works and Days » Zero Jobs 101 - the Psychology of Alienating Employers - 0 views

pajamasmedia.com/...job-killing-101

VDH Obammunism financial-collapse crony-socialism

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
  • “This bunch doesn’t like me much and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.”
  • And the administration’s efforts to counteract these symbols and impressions by courting a high-profile, hyper-capitalist Warren Buffett, or a GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt have proven even more ironic:
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth;
  • the latter’s firm paid no 2010 U.S. income taxes on many of its profits and outsourced jobs overseas.
  • Borrow another $5 trillion?
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11
     
    Nobody lays it out so quickly and too the point as VDH..... awesome summary of sweeping reach.  I've been hesitant to apply the term "crony capitalism" to Obama even though his Bankster relationships and continuing bailouts scream loudly.  It seems to me that the term "crony socialism" better fits the full range of fascist power brokering Obama engages in.  Big Government, Big Banksters, Big Unions, Big Media, Big Education.  If anything, Obammunism is BIG! VDH excerpt: Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like "Millions of Green Jobs" nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of "fat cat", "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jet owners," etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha's Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways - all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.
Gary Edwards

Stansberry's Investment Advisory - 0 views

www.stansberryresearch.com/...PR

Banksters Porter-Stansberry financial-collapse dollar-destruction Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11 - No Cached
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11
       
      excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's foreign creditors finally stop lending us money, and demand repayment for our country's debts. The largest debts EVER accumulated in the history of mankind. intro: Barack Obama Impersonator Records Shocking "Speech"  It may be fiction for now... But this eye-opening "speech," recently recorded by a Barack Obama impersonator, is sending shock waves through the financial community. It could forever change how you think about our country and your safety. 
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11
     
    Comment:  While researching the September 2008 financial collapse, a freind introduced me to Porter Stansberry (thanks Marux!).  I've been following Porter through the Daily Crux Report ever since, and, as extreme as his opinions appear, time and again he has proven to be drop dead right.  This latest presentation summarizes Porter's thinking and is buttressed with facts and quotes.  The first part of the presentation is a fictional press conference dated December 2012.  This about 15 minutes.  Porter then follows that with near 45 minutes of facts and quotes woven into a comprehensive summary of how we got into this mess and what the possible outcomes going forward.   The basics are simple enough: the combination of Government borrowing, spending, printing and regulating is killing the dollar.  Our currency is very special in that it's the world's reserve currency; a good fortune that has unfortunately resulted in our spending and borrowing way more than we produce.  On top of this dilemma, the financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the world's Banksters offloading their $Trillions of debt and losses onto the US Treasury; the taxpayers.  So now we have the taxpayers holding the debt of an out of control socialist government spending, borrowing, and regulating us into the dirt regulating.  And, these same taxpayers picking up all the losses of the World's most greedy and evil criminals - the Banksters.  At the center of it all is the Federal Reserve, a world Bankster cartel in control of our currency, and printing it out like there's no tomorrow.  Porter talks about that tomorrow, and what it might look like if we the people do not take back our government and our currency.   excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's fore
Gary Edwards

Not What They Had in Mind: A History of Policies that Produced the Financial Crisis of ... - 0 views

www.scribd.com/...Not-What-They-Had-in-Mind

financial-crisis Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Sep 09
     
    Not What They Had in Mind: A History of Policies that Produced the Financial Crisis of 2008. GMU economist and popular blogger Arnold Kling has released a new paper titled: "NOT WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND: A History of Policies that Produced the Financial Crisis of 2008." Kling is very much of the view that if you had to choose between blaming private sector greed and public policy, the fault lies in the latter: As this paper will illustrate, the seeds for much of the current crisis were sown in the policy "solutions" to previous financial and economic crises. Any attempt to dissect and understand the current crisis that does not account for the complex history, evolution, and integrated nature of financial regulations will not yield meaningful lessons for today's policy makers. Among the topics he addresses: housing policy, bank capital regulations, monetary policy, and bank capital regulations.   Incredible
Paul Merrell

One Click Politics - 0 views

oneclickpolitics.com/...movetoamend

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Senate Joint Resolution 19 is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights at all. Please send a message to the authors of SJR19 -- let them know that Corporate Personhood MUST be included in the language of the amendment... What You Can Do: Help movetoamend accomplish these goals by contributing your power of voice. Take action now by sending a message to Congress telling them why these issues are important to you.
  • Formed in September 2009, Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.
  • Senate Joint Resolution 19 is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights at all. Please send a message to the authors of SJR19 -- let them know that Corporate Personhood MUST be included in the language of the amendment... What You Can Do: Help movetoamend accomplish these goals by contributing your power of voice. Take action now by sending a message to Congress telling them why these issues are important to you.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
     
    I have never forwarded action alerts to others by email. The typical action alert winds up sharing your email address with at least one other organization. The next thing you know you're getting donor solicitations from both the Republican and Democratic party central national coordinating committees. It's not just that I'm a political independent; it's an ongoing task to unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists. Today I got an action alert from Move to Amend, only the second I have received from the organization. This group does not share your email address with anyone. If you choose to participate in this action alert, which is nearing 1 million messages sent, there is a send button near the bottom of the page to participate. That takes you to a page where you can read the message that will be sent. Move to Amend is a non-partisan organization that has been working toward a constitutional amendment for around 4 years that would clear the way for Congress to regulate campaign contributions, in light of Supreme Court decisions declaring that corporations have a First Amendment right to make campaign contributions in any amount they desire. But their amendment would also abolish constitutional rights for all fictional legal "persons" other than human beings and government at the local, state, and national levels. Move to Amend has been going about the process the right way and to date has scored supporting resolutions in 16 state legislatures and hundreds of community governments. That's enough to get oligarchs worried. So there's a bill gathering steam in the U.S. Senate, SJR 19, that's a watered-down version. It grants Congress and the states power to regulate campaign contributions, but it does not speak to the problem of granting human constitutional rights to entities that have existence only in the eyes of the law. The Senate bill is here: http://goo.gl/Nkvfkg Our nation's Founders unmistakably did not contemplate that corporations would have constitution
Paul Merrell

China to 'Regulate' Foreign NGOs | The Diplomat - 0 views

thediplomat.com/...china-to-regulate-foreign-ngos

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy NGOs China Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • On Monday, China announced that it would move to “regulate” foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to keep political checks on these organizations and to prevent them from fomenting political unrest. NGO regulation is part of a new law being discussed this week, according to reports in Chinese state media. Reuters reports that the new law will primarily step up supervision of the “fast-growing” NGO sector in China. The law is under debate following a months-long investigation into foreign NGO operations in China as part of a national security initiative. Chinese President Xi Jinping himself headed the national panel under which the NGO investigation was conducted.
  • On the current debate over the national law, Xinhua, citing Deputy Public Security Minister Yang Huanning, notes that ”the bill aims to regulate the activities of overseas NGOs in China, protect their legal rights and interests, and promote exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and foreigners.” Additionally, under the law, all levels of government bureaucracy in China will be required to ”provide policy consultation, assistance and guidance for overseas NGOs so that they can effectively and legally operate in the mainland.” ”It is necessary to have a law to regulate, guide and supervise their activities,” Yang added. There is no confirmation of when this law might come into effect, but it could be as soon as early 2015. China’s anxiety over foreign NGOs multiplied following this year’s protests in Hong Kong, which Beijing attributed to hostile foreign forces. Recently, speaking to the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of its transfer to Chinese control, Xi Jinping warned Macau residents to guard against interference by these same foreign forces. Xi’s anxieties echo concerns in other countries. Most notably, Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia has banned several prominent U.S.-affiliated NGOs under the pretext of national security concerns.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 14
     
    No U.S.color revolutions will be permitted to get off the ground in China and Russia.
Paul Merrell

Killing Off Community Banks - Intended Consequence of Dodd-Frank? | WEB OF DEBT BLOG - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...nded-consequence-of-dodd-frank

banksters consolidation Dodd-Frank community-banks too-big-to-fail too-big-to-jail too-big-to-regulate

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Dodd-Frank regulations are so lethal to community banks that some say the intent was to force them to sell out to the megabanks. Community banks are rapidly disappearing — except in North Dakota, where they are thriving.  At over 2,300 pages, the Dodd Frank Act is the longest and most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature. It was supposed to end “too big to fail” and “bailouts,” and to “promote financial stability.” But Dodd-Frank’s “orderly liquidation authority” has replaced bailouts with bail-ins, meaning that in the event of insolvency, big banks are to recapitalize themselves with the savings of their creditors and depositors. The banks deemed too big are more than 30% bigger than before the Act was passed in 2010, and 80% bigger than before the banking crisis of 2008. The six largest US financial institutions now have assets of some $10 trillion, amounting to almost 60% of GDP; and they control nearly 50% of all bank deposits.
  • Meanwhile, their smaller competitors are struggling to survive. Community banks and credit unions are disappearing at the rate of one a day. Access to local banking services is disappearing along with them. Small and medium-size businesses – the ones that hire two-thirds of new employees – are having trouble getting loans; students are struggling with sky-high interest rates; homeowners have been replaced by hedge funds acting as absentee landlords; and bank fees are up, increasing the rolls of the unbanked and underbanked, and driving them into the predatory arms of payday lenders. Even some well-heeled clients are being rejected. In an October 19, 2015 article titled  “Big Banks to America’s Firms: We Don’t Want Your Cash,” the Wall Street Journal reported that some Wall Street banks are now telling big depositors to take their money elsewhere or be charged a deposit fee. Municipal governments are also being rejected as customers. Bank of America just announced that it no longer wants the business of some smaller cities, which have been given 90 days to find somewhere else to put their money. Hundreds of local BofA branches are also disappearing.
  • Hardest hit, however, are the community banks. Today there are 1,524 fewer banks with assets under $1 billion than there were in June 2010, before the Dodd-Frank regulations were signed into law. Collateral Damage or Intended Result?
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  • Obviously, making the big banks bigger also serves the interests of the megabanks, whose lobbyists are well known to have their fingerprints all over the legislation. How they have been able to manipulate the rules was seen last December, when legislation drafted by Citigroup and slipped into the Omnibus Spending Bill loosened the Dodd-Frank regulations on derivatives. As noted in a Mother Jones article before the legislation was passed: The Citi-drafted legislation will benefit five of the largest banks in the country—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. These financial institutions control more than 90 percent of the $700 trillion derivatives market. If this measure becomes law, these banks will be able to use FDIC-insured money to bet on nearly anything they want. And if there’s another economic downturn, they can count on a taxpayer bailout of their derivatives trading business.
  • Regulation is clearly inadequate to keep these banks honest and ensure that they serve the public interest. The world’s largest private banks have been caught in criminal acts that former bank fraud investigator Prof. William K. Black calls the greatest frauds in history. The litany of frauds involves more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud. According to US Attorney General Eric Holder, the guilty have gone unpunished because they are “too big to prosecute.” If they are too big to prosecute, they are too big to regulate.
Gary Edwards

Rand Paul's Tea Party Response: Full Text - 0 views

www.newsmax.com/...490118

Rand-Paul Libertarian USA-Constitution

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.
  • America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Feb 13
     
    Outstanding statement about what made America great, an dhow are government is destroying that greatness.  This is the full Text of Sen. Rand Paul's Tea Party Response to Obama's State of the Union Address: I speak to you tonight from Washington, D.C. The state of our economy is tenuous but our people remain the greatest example of freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. For the first time in history, men and women were guaranteed a chance to succeed based NOT on who your parents were but on your own initiative and desire to work. We are in danger, though, of forgetting what made us great. The President seems to think the country can continue to borrow $50,000 per second. The President believes that we should just squeeze more money out of those who are working. The path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this Administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation. Ronald Reagan said, government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem. Tonight, the President told the nation he disagrees. President Obama believes government is the solution: More government, more taxes, more debt. What the President fails to grasp is that the American system that rewards hard work is what made America so prosperous. What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations. He described a limited government that largely did not interfere with individuals and their pursuit of happiness. All that we are, all that we wish to be is now threatened by the notion that you can have something for nothing, that you can have your cake and ea
Gary Edwards

The secret corporate takeover of trade agreements | Business | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...e-takeover-of-trade-agreements

New-World-Order TTP

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 May 15 - No Cached
  • The US and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called free-trade agreements; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the EU. Today, such deals are more often referred to as partnerships, as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant. It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions. Perhaps the most invidious – and most dishonest – part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against rogue governments seizing their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate, and the US and other governments provide similar insurance. Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its partners have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own.
  • The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America’s own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes. This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking. The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits. In the future, if we discover that some other product causes health problems (think of asbestos), rather than facing lawsuits for the costs imposed on us, the manufacturer could sue governments for restraining them from killing more people. The same thing could happen if our governments impose more stringent regulations to protect us from the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • When I chaired Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers, when he was president, anti-environmentalists tried to enact a similar provision, called “regulatory takings”. They knew that once enacted, regulations would be brought to a halt, simply because government could not afford to pay the compensation. Fortunately, we succeeded in beating back the initiative, both in the courts and in the US Congress. But now the same groups are attempting an end run around democratic processes by inserting such provisions in trade bills, the contents of which are being kept largely secret from the public (but not from the corporations that are pushing for them). It is only from leaks, and from talking to government officials who seem more committed to democratic processes, that we know what is happening.
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  • Fundamental to America’s system of government is an impartial public judiciary, with legal standards built up over the decades, based on principles of transparency, precedent, and the opportunity to appeal unfavourable decisions. All of this is being set aside, as the new agreements call for private, non-transparent, and very expensive arbitration. Moreover, this arrangement is often rife with conflicts of interest; for example, arbitrators may be a judge in one case and an advocate in a related case. The proceedings are so expensive that Uruguay has had to turn to Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Americans committed to health to defend itself against Philip Morris. And, though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments – on labour and environmental standards, for example – citizens, unions, and civil society groups have no recourse. If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.
  • American supporters of such agreements point out that the US has been sued only a few times so far, and has not lost a case. Corporations, however, are just learning how to use these agreements to their advantage. And high-priced corporate lawyers in the US, Europe and Japan will likely outmatch the underpaid government lawyers attempting to defend the public interest. Worse still, corporations in advanced countries can create subsidiaries in member countries through which to invest back home, and then sue, giving them a new channel to bloc regulations. If there were a need for better property protection, and if this private, expensive dispute-resolution mechanism were superior to a public judiciary, we should be changing the law not just for well heeled foreign companies but also for our own citizens and small businesses. But there has been no suggestion that this is the case.
  • Rules and regulations determine the kind of economy and society in which people live. They affect relative bargaining power, with important implications for inequality, a growing problem around the world. The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the 21st century. I hope citizens in the US, Europe and the Pacific answer with a resounding no. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is a professor at Columbia University. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce Greenwald, is Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress
  • Gary Edwards on 13 May 15
     
    Economist Joseph Stiglitz takes on the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) trade agreement, explaining how corporations will use the agreement to side step environmental and regulatory laws of sovereign nations. Amazing stuff. No doubt Wall Street Money is behind these trade agreement. The Banksters are said to own over 40% of the world's corporations and these agreements are designed to establish corporate sovereignty while greatly diminishing state sovereignty. It's the New World Order. "Terms such as 'investor' and 'partner' are taking on new meanings as multinationals manipulate deals to take legal action against sovereign states"
Paul Merrell

Banks fined over $5 billion for rigging global currency markets | Toronto Star - 0 views

www.thestar.com/...g-global-currency-markets.html

banksters fraud litigation criminal-convictions

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • A group of global banks will pay more than $5 billion U.S. in penalties and plead guilty to rigging the world’s currency market, the first time in more than two decades that major players in the financial industry have admitted to criminal wrongdoing. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland conspired with one another to fix rates on U.S. dollars and euros traded in the huge global market for currencies, according to a resolution announced Wednesday between the banks and the U.S. Department of Justice. A group of currency traders, who called themselves “The Cartel,” allegedly shared customer orders through chat rooms and used that information to profit at the expense of their clients. The resolution is complex and involves multiple regulators in the U.S. and overseas.
  • The four banks will pay a combined $2.5 billion in criminal penalties to the DOJ for criminal manipulation of currency rates between December 2007 and January 2013, according to the agreement. The Federal Reserve is slapping them with an additional $1.6 billion in fines, as the banks’ chief regulator. Finally, British bank Barclays is paying an additional $1.3 billion to British and U.S. regulators for its role in the scheme. Another bank, Switzerland’s UBS, has agreed to plead guilty to manipulating key interest rates and will pay a separate criminal penalty of $203 million.
  • It is rare to see a bank plead guilty to wrongdoing. Even in the aftermath of the financial crisis, most financial companies reached “non-prosecution agreements” or “deferred prosecution agreements” with regulators, agreeing to pay billions in fines but not admitting any guilt. If any guilt were found, it was usually one of the bank’s subsidiaries or divisions — not the bank holding company.
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  • Big banks overall have already been fined billions of dollars for their role in the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. But even so, the latest penalties are big. Including a separate agreement with the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday and another announced last year, the group of banks will pay nearly $9 billion in fines for manipulating the $5.3 trillion global currency market. Unlike the stock and bond markets, currencies trade nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The market pauses two times a day, a moment known as “the fix.” Traders in the cartel allegedly shared client orders with rivals ahead of the “fix”, pumping up currency rates to make profits. Global companies, who do business in multiple currencies, rely on their banks to give them the closest thing to an official exchange rate each day. The banks are supposed to be looking out for them instead of conspiring to get even bigger profits by using customers’ orders against them. Travelers who regularly exchange currencies also need to get a fair price for their euros or dollars.
  • The number of traders who participated in the criminal activity was small. JPMorgan, in a statement, said the one trader involved has been fired. Citi said it fired nine employees involved. The agreement between the banks and the DOJ is subject to court approval. If approved, all five banks have agreed to three years of corporate probation overseen by a court. The banks will also help prosecutors with their investigations into individual criminal activity related to the currency market rigging. In 2012, HSBC avoided a legal battle that could further savage its reputation and undermine confidence in the global banking system by agreeing to pay $1.9 billion to settle a U.S. money-laundering probe. Another British bank, Standard Chartered, signed an agreement with New York regulators to settle a money-laundering investigation involving Iran with a $340 million payment. In 2014, the Bank of America reached a record $17 billion settlement to resolve an investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest ... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...n-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821

Auction 2016 Hillary Hillary-emails

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as "Classified," it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.But the details included in those "Classified" stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.
  • This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters."It's born classified," said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House's National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations."If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it's in U.S. channels and U.S. possession," he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was "blowing smoke."
  • Although it appears to be true for Clinton to say none of her emails included classification markings, a point she and her staff have emphasized, the government's standard nondisclosure agreement warns people authorized to handle classified information that it may not be marked that way and that it may come in oral form.The State Department disputed Reuters' analysis but declined requests to explain how it was incorrect.
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  • Clinton and her senior staff routinely sent foreign government information among themselves on unsecured networks several times a month, if the State Department's markings are correct. Within the 30 email threads reviewed by Reuters, Clinton herself sent at least 17 emails that contained this sort of information. In at least one case it was to a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, not in government. The information appears to include privately shared comments by a prime minister, several foreign ministers and a foreign spy chief, unredacted bits of the emails show. Typically, Clinton and her staff first learned the information in private meetings, telephone calls or, less often, in email exchanges with the foreign officials.
  • The findings of the Reuters review are separate from the recent analysis by the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, who said last month that his office found four emails that contained classified government secrets at the time they were sent in a sample of 40 emails not yet made public.The State Department has said it does not know whether the inspector general is correct.
  • The Reuters review also found that the declassification dates the department has been marking on these emails suggest the department might believe the information was classified all along. Gerlach said this was incorrect.
  • A series of presidential executive orders has governed how officials should handle the ceaseless incoming stream of raw, usually unmarked information they acquire in their work. Since at least 2003, they have emphasized that information shared by a foreign government with an expectation or agreement of confidentiality is the only kind that is "presumed" classified.The State Department's own regulations, as laid out in the Foreign Affairs Manual, have been unequivocal since at least 1999: all department employees "must ... safeguard foreign government and NATO RESTRICTED information as U.S. Government Confidential" or higher, according to the version in force in 2009, when these particular emails were sent.
  • A spokeswoman for one of the foreign governments whose information appears in Clinton's emails said, on condition of anonymity to protect diplomatic relations, that the information was shared confidentially in 2009 with Clinton and her senior staff.If so, it appears this information should have been classified at the time and not handled on a private unsecured email network, according to government regulations.The foreign government expects all private exchanges with U.S. officials to be treated that way, the spokeswoman for the foreign government said.Leonard, the former ISOO director, said this sort of information was improperly shared by officials through insecure channels more frequently than the public may realize, although more typically within the unsecured .gov email network than on private email accounts.With few exceptions, officials are forbidden from sending classified information even via the .gov email network and must use a dedicated secure network instead. The difference in Clinton's case, Leonard said, is that so-called "spillages" of classified information within the .gov network are easier to track and contain.
Paul Merrell

The Western Alliance Is Crumbling: EU Is Abandoning U.S. on Overthrowing Assad | Global... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5479566

war & peace Syria Russia Lebanon E.U. refugees TPP

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Europe is being overrun by refugees from American bombing campaigns in Libya and Syria, which created a failed state in Libya, and which threaten to do the same in Syria. Europe is thus being forced to separate itself from endorsing the U.S. bombing campaign that focuses against the Syrian government forces of the secular Shiite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, instead of against his fundamentalist Sunni Islamic opponents, the jihadist groups (all of which are Sunni), such as ISIS, and Al Qaeda in Syria (al-Nusra).
  • Russia announced on October 2nd that their bombing campaign against America’s allies in Syria — ISIS and Al Nusra (the latter being Al Qaeda in Syria) — will intensify and will last “three or four months.” U.S. President Barack Obama is insisting upon excluding Russia from any peace talks on Syria; the U.S. will not move forward with peace talks unless Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad first steps down. But Russia is the only serious military power against the jihadists who are trying to defeat Assad, and Russia is now committing itself also to providing Lebanon with weapons against the jihadists, who are America’s allies in Lebanon too.
  • That’s hardly the only ‘legacy’ issue for Obama — his war against Russia, via overthrowing Gaddafi, then Yanukovych, and his still trying to overthrow Assad — which is now forcing the break-up of the Western Alliance, over the resulting refugee-crisis. An even bigger such conflict within the Alliance concerns Obama’s proposed treaty with European states, the TTIP, which would give international corporations rights to sue national governments in non-appealable global private arbitration panels, the dictates from which will stand above any member-nation’s laws. Elected government officials will have no control over them. This supra-national mega-corporate effort by Obama is also part of his similar effort in his proposed TPP treaty with Asian nations, both of which are additionally aimed to isolate from international trade not just Russia, but China, so as to leave America’s large international corporations controlling virtually the entire world. As things now stand regarding these ‘trade’ deals, Obama will either need to eliminate some of his demands, or else the European Commission won’t be able to muster enough of its members to support Obama’s proposed treaty with the EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Also, some key European nations might reject Obama’s proposed treaty on regulations regarding financial and other services: TISA (Trade In Services Agreement). All three of Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals, including the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) between the U.S. and Asian countries, are the actual culmination of Obama’s Presidency, and they’re all about far more than just trade and economics. The main proposed deal with Europe might now be dead.
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  • Thirdly, I am opposed to the signing of an agreement with a power that legalizes widespread and systematic spying on my fellow European citizens and European businesses. Edward Snowden’s revelations are instructive in this regard. As long as the agreement does not protect the personal data of European and US citizens, it cannot be signed. Fourth, the United States proposes a transatlantic common financial space, but they adamantly refuse a common regulation of finance, and they refuse to abolish systematic discrimination by the US financial markets against European financial services. They want to have their cake and eat it too: I object to the idea of a common area without common rules, and I reject commercial discrimination. Fifth, I object to the questioning of European health protections. Washington must understand once and for all that notwithstanding its insistence, we do not want our plates or animals treated with growth hormones nor products derived from GMOs, or chemical decontamination of meat, or of genetically modified seeds or non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal feed. Sixth, I object to the signing of an agreement if it does not include the end of the US monetary dumping. Since the abolition of the gold convertibility of the dollar and the transition to the system of floating exchange rates, the dollar is both American national currency and the main unit for exchange reserves in the world. The Federal Reserve then continually practices monetary dumping, by influencing the amount of dollars available to facilitate exports from the United States. China proposes to eliminate this unfair advantage by making “special drawing rights” of the IMF the new global reference currency. But as things now stand, America’s monetary weapon has the same effect as customs duties against every other nation. [And he will not sign unless it’s removed.]
  • On September 27th, France’s newspaper SouthWest featured an exclusive interview with Matthias Fekl, France’s Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, in which he said that “France is considering all options, including outright termination of negotiations” on the TTIP. He explained that, ever since the negotiations began in 2013, “These negotiations have been and are being conducted in a total lack of transparency,” and that France has, as of yet, received “no serious offer from the Americans.” The reasons for this stunning public rejection had probably already been accurately listed more than a year ago. After all, France has, throughout all of the negotiations, received “no serious offer from the Americans”; not now, and not back at the start of the negotiations in 2013. The U.S. has been steadfast. Jean Arthuis, a member of the European Parliament, and formerly France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, headlined in Le Figaro, on 10 April 2014, “7 good reasons to oppose the transatlantic treaty”. There is no indication that the situation has changed since then, as regards the basic demands that President Obama is making. Arthuis said at that time: First, I am opposed to private arbitration of disputes between States and businesses. [It would place corporate arbitrators above any nation’s laws and enable them to make unappealable decisions whenever a corporation sues a nation for alleged damages for alleged violations of its rights by that nation of the trade-treaty.] Such a procedure is strictly contrary to the idea that I have of the sovereignty of States. … Secondly, I am opposed to any questioning of the European system of appellations of origin. Tomorrow, according to the US proposal, there would be a non-binding register, and only for wines and spirits. Such a reform would kill many European local products, whose value is based on their certified origin.
  • Seventh, beyond the audiovisual sector alone, which is the current standard of government that serves as a loincloth to its cowardice on all other European interests in these negotiations, I want all the cultural exceptions prohibited. In particular, it is unacceptable to allow the emerging digital services in Europe to be swept up by US giants such as Google, Amazon or Netflix. They’re giant absolute masters in tax optimization, which make Europe a “digital colony.” President Obama’s negotiator is his close personal friend, Michael Froman, a man who is even trying to force Europe to reduce its fuel standards against global warming and whose back-room actions run exactly contrary to Obama’s public rhetoric. Froman and Obama have been buddies since they worked together as editors on Harvard Law Review. He knows what Obama’s real goals are. Also: “Froman introduced Mr. Obama to Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary,” who had brought into the Clinton Administration Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and had championed (along with them) the ending of the regulations on banks that the previous Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had put into place. (President Bill Clinton signed that legislation just as he left office, and this enabled the long process to occur with MBS securities and with financial derivatives, which culminated with the 2008 crash, and this same legislation also enabled the mega-banks to get bailed out by U.S. taxpayers for their crash — on exactly the basis that FDR had outlawed.)
  • Froman has always been a pro-mega-corporate, pro-mega-bank champion, who favors only regulations which benefit America’s super-rich, no regulations which benefit the public. Froman’s introducing the Wall Street king Robert Rubin to the then-Senator Obama was crucial to Obama’s becoming enabled to win the U.S. Presidency; Robert Rubin’s contacts among the super-rich were essential in order for that — Obama’s getting a real chance to win the Presidency — to happen. It enabled Obama to compete effectively against Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. His winning Robert Rubin’s support was crucial to his becoming President. The chances, that President Obama will now be able to get the support from any entity but the U.S. Congress for his proposed TTIP treaty with Europe, are reducing by the day. Europe seems to be less corrupt than is the United States, after all. The only independent economic analysis that has been done of the proposed TTIP finds that the only beneficiaries from it will be large international corporations, especially ones that are based in the United States. Workers, consumers, and everybody else, will lose from it, if it passes into law. Apparently, enough European officials care about that, so as to be able to block the deal. Or else: Obama will cede on all seven of the grounds for Europe’s saying no. At this late date, that seems extremely unlikely.
Gary Edwards

The Feds Criminalize Ordinary Life - 0 views

cfif.org/...feds-criminalize-ordinary-life

Civil-Liberties Gestapo-Government Jackboot-Obammunism Federal-Regulations

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Ordinary life should not be treated as a criminal conspiracy.
  • Former U.S. attorney generals Ed Meese and Richard Thornburgh asked Congress last winter merely to ensure that any bills carrying criminal penalties be referred to the Judiciary Committee for review.
  • To their great discredit, the House GOP leadership failed to adopt such a rule.
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  • In truth, Congress should do far more.
  • It should undertake a comprehensive review of the federal criminal code – and perform some radical liposuction on it.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11
     
    Looks like the issue of Civil Liberties and the Obama Gestapo Government are getting traction in the main stream media.  So far the incredible increase in Obammunism's crushing Federal Regulations has been focused on the economic destruction caused.  The flip side of the Obammunism coin is that of Civil Liberties and the 10th Amendment getting similarly crushed. excerpt: Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem! Tuesday's Wall Street Journal featured an in-depth look at how federal laws increasingly apply criminal penalties for violations involving no mens rea, roughly translated as a "guilty mind." The stricture against criminal penalties for unwitting violations is an age-old, bedrock legal principle. Alas, in today's dangerously armed, bureaucratic super-state, ancient legal principles go by the wayside when politicians pretend to be "tough on crime" and when officious civil "servants" indulge their fetishes for power. U.S. governments at every level these days are prone to "overcriminalization," which means turning ordinary activity into violations of the law, turning what should be civil violations into criminal ones, and applying penalties far harsher than should be warranted. On the mens rea front, the Journal explains: "In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them…. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, plus thousands more embedded in federal regulations."
Gary Edwards

Carter: Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-explained-at-30-000-feet.html

Obammunism financial-collapse fascism crony-politics crony-socialism

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Party Doesn’t Matter
  • “I don’t understand why Washington does this to us," he resumes. By "us," he means people who run businesses of less- than-Fortune-500 size. He tells me that it doesn’t much matter which party is in office. Every change of power means a whole new set of rules to which he and those like him must respond. ‘‘I don’t understand,” he continues, “why Washington won’t just get out of our way and let us hire.”
  • Thinking of Selling
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • No `Installed Base'
  • `Invisible
  • “I know there are things the government has to do. But they need to find a way to do them without people like me having to bump into a new regulation every time we turn a corner.” He reflects for a moment, then finds the analogy he seeks. “Government should act like my assistant, not my boss.”
  • For medium-sized firms like his, however, there is little wiggle room to absorb the costs of regulatory change. Because he possesses neither lobbyists nor clout, he says, Washington doesn’t care whether he hires more workers or closes up shop.
  • Recessions have complex causes, but, as the man on the aisle reminded me, we do nothing to make things better when the companies on which we rely see Washington as adversary rather than partner.
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Sep 11
     
    Simplicity.  Who would have guessed it's this easy!  It turns out that Obammunism is a political formula of Spend Big, Borrow Big, Regulate with a heavy boot, Take care of your big big campaign contributors (Call it Fascism or Crony Politics - it's still the same criminal corruption of using power to enrich yourself and your friends at the expense of your countrymen). excerpt from a conversation on a plane flight that takes place between an ivy league elitist and a SMB business owner: Demand for his product is up. But he still won't hire. "Why not?" "Because I don't know how much it will cost," he explains. "How can I hire new workers today, when I don't know how much they will cost me tomorrow?" He's referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can't afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he's hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost.
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