The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4% of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some charities gave even less. For example: Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families. Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids. (Source: Above the law-America’s worst charities (CNN))
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This chart is from 2005. Read below for updated information. Lol! Outrageous compensation for some charity CEOs has gotten even more outrageous.
When deciding which charities to donate to, many people consider an important factor to be the “efficiency” of these organizations — that is, what percentage of the monies taken in by a given charity goes to funding its mission rather than being eaten up by costs such as fundraising activities, salaries, and other administrative overhead.
The [chart] reproduced above, which began circulating in 2005 and has been re-circulated every year since then. . . . We attempt to present accurate and up-to-date information about the named charities below.
It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse.
They’ve decided to speak out.
True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.
But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.
Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, for instance, is not worried about OWS:
“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
Former New York gurbernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the billing firm Paychex, offered his wisdom while his half-his-age tennis champion girlfriend hung on his arm:
“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
#2 According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 1979 and 2007 income growth for the top 1 percent of all U.S. income earners was an astounding 390 percent. For the bottom 90 percent, income growth was only 5 percent over that same time period.
#3 According to a joint House and Senate report entitled “Income Inequality and the Great Recession“, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.
#4 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent is the only group that saw its share of our national income increase between 1979 and 2007.
#5 The wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.
#6 More than 50 percent of all stocks and bonds are owned by just 1 percent of the population.
US congress today is about as powerful as a student council in high school. Remember high school? Changing the student council, or even forming a new student council “party”, never changed anything. The principal makes all the key decisions. The principal runs things.
The unelected evil banker elite have started making our key decisions today. The unelected evil banker elite think they should run things. They are the problem. Unfortunately, US congress has become as impotent as a high school student council. Here’s the bottom line:
Until politicians and media pundits start talking about true economic regime change–shutting down the FED and arresting the evil banker elite, they are irrelevant. Discussing tiny little adjustments at the margin (changing the student council) is a tactic used by the evil banker elite to weaken and slow down the profound changes that are needed. It is just like high school principals who use the student council to dissipate student anger away from themselves by pretending that the student council actually makes a difference–it doesn’t.
Shut down the FED and arrest the evil elite bankers.
The first question we should ask any candidate for President is this: If elected, will you promise to arrest every banker for whom we have probable cause to believe they committed a crime?
If the Answer is Yes, we will listen. But, if the Answer is No, then we ought not to listen as any candidate who does not listen to us is against us and not for us.
This is a non-negotiable issue. If you will not arrest the people who stole tens of trillions of dollars, how will you put an end to Bailouts, Austerity Cuts and Mindless Tax Increases?
I don’t care if you are a member of my political party, my religion, my race, my gender or my veterans group. I don’t care how photogenic your children are. I don’t care about any other issues you run off at the mouth about.
The largest transfer of wealth from the public to private sector is about to begin. The federal government will be bulk-selling the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private investors — vulture funds.
These homes, which are now the property of the U.S. government, the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. citizens collectively, are going to be sold to private investor conglomerates at extraordinarily large discounts to real value.
You and I will not be allowed to participate. These investors will come from the private-equity and hedge-fund community, Goldman Sachs and its derivatives, as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds that can bring a billion dollars or more to each transaction.
In the process, these investors will instantaneously become the largest improved real estate owners and landlords in the world. The U.S. taxpayer will get pennies on the dollar for these homes and then be allowed to rent them back at market rates. (Source)
Here we finally see the hidden motivation and the real purpose of crashing the real estate market: creating an excuse to force people out of their homes, making it easy for lenders to grab their homes. The lenders then are “bailed-out” by the Federal Reserve, who passes the bill on to the tax payers. Once the lenders are bailed out they no longer want to hold actual properties, so they quickly sell all their repossessed homes to giant hedge funds for pennies on the dollar. The lenders know they have to sell quickly before anyone realizes what they did, before anyone files legal actions. Lol! Once the homes are sold off just try and get them back. Can’t be done. Bwahahahaha !!
Crashing the real estate market was necessary to take homes from ordinary people, so they could then transfer them to the wealthy–who will turn around and rent them back to the very people who lost homes.
Voila! Wealth transfer mission $$ accomplished.
Ahem, why not just give the discount on the homes to the folks who live in them?
[Why are we reading about this in the Jerusalem Post and not the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal? . . . Although accepting free trips from lobbyists is illegal for Congress members under US anti-graft and corruption laws, the trips to Israel have been granted a special exception by the Congress. (Source) ]
Big Corporations Don’t Pay Taxes–taxes are for the little people
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
A new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress “are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people.
Many have had the sneaking suspicion that our elected “leaders” in Congress are not going to Washington D.C. to represent us…but for their own personal gain. This video may just validate that assessment!Using the net worth data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics we found a disturbing trend. The analysis of the information in this video has not been seen by anyone…not on Fox News…not on CNN…and you have not read about this in the Wall Street Journal…yet. After watching the video click HERE to view “The List” (Source)
Transocean Ltd., the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that caused immeasurable damage to the Gulf, recently gave its top executives “two thirds of their total possible safety bonuses.”
This was despite the explosion of its oil rig that killed 11 people and spilled over 200 million gallons of toxic oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Why did execs get “safety” bonuses?
For achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”
Note: Please do not confuse this with the Transocean, Ltd world headquarters building.
Update 3/17/2011: More Tax Cuts for the Rich: Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to cut the tax rate for the richest of the rich to 25%. To pay for it he would like to see popular middle class tax deductions eliminated. This would add $2 trillion to the public debt over a decade, but well worth it in terms of campaign contributions. (Source)
Our choice is this. Find the money or lose our civilization. If we want safety, hire cops; if we want education, hire teachers; if we want roads, pay construction workers; if we want clean air, food, drugs and water, pay inspectors. If we want chaos, don’t. (Source)
Wall Street banks caused the economic crisis that has left millions unemployed, foreclosed-on, and without prospects in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
This crisis has, in turn, caused massive tax revenue shortfalls for the federal government and for state governments across the country: nearly $300 billion combined for 50 states in the years since the crisis began.
To deal with these budget woes, politicians are cutting public spending: laying off teachers, attacking public sector workers, raiding pensions, closing hospitals, and eliminating essential services for children, veterans, and the elderly. Download full report here
A huge upwelling is happening in the heart of humanity and it is an internal thing. It is coming from an unseen place and it can’t be defended against by those seeking to hinder its growth. . . We are awakening and we are seeing that we have a deeply shared common cause. (Source)
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Why is Wisconsin Governor Walker leading such a visible attack on Wisconsin’s public employees?
Bashing public employee unions is a smokescreen to hide yet another fat cat scam to grab State assets.
Smokescreen
Right now everyone thinks this is about unions and collective bargaining and the rights of the worker. BUT, what Wisconsin Governor Walker really wants is for Democrats to just “compromise” and pass his budget law “as is”–a budget law that authorizes selling off of Wisconsin’s state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight.
It’s Enron-style cronyism all over again.
Here’s how the scam is set up:
1) Koch Brothers get their puppet Governor Walker in power
2) Governor Walker gins up a crisis
3) Democrats and Progressives take the bait and counter-protest on collective bargaining
4) Governor Walker will compromise on collective bargaining if the rest of the budget is passed as is
5) Bill passes, with trojan horse give-a-way to the Koch Brothers nested in
6) Koch Brothers will buy Wisconsin state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight
7) Koch Brothers get the best vertical monopoly in a generation (Source)
Here’s the actual language in Governor Walker’s pending budget law. Read it for yourself. It will authorize him to sell off Wisconsin’s state-owned power utilities for pennies on the dollar, in closed unsolicitated bids, for which there will be no oversight:
Strange Bedfellows: The right, which usually sees the government as the villain, now wants states to have the right to declare bankruptcy and default on their payments to bondholders. Of course their goal is not the losses to the bondholdrs (who will turn out to mostly be pension funds – the middle class), but to enable “restructuring contracts” and thus force government workers, police, firemen, etc. to accept vastly lower wages and benefits. But the big prize is letting/forcing states to privatize everything. Roads, water systems, parks… Look at it this way, if Grover Norquist is for it, it cannot be good for the great majority of us. (Source)
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama promised to end the Bush tax cuts for the top earners, arguing that it’s necessary to cut the federal deficit and has a minimal stimulative effect on the economy. (Source)
What Obama did December, 2010:
December 06, 2010: President Obama has agreed to extend tax cuts for the rich in a deal with a total cost estimated by the NY Times at $900 billion over the next two years. (Source1, Source2)
What Obama saysnow:
I will fight to end tax cuts for rich in 2012. (Source)
Arguing with the forces that appear to be, legitimizes them. They are illegitimate and have no real basis for existence as they are. They are parasitical entities. They are ticks. (Source)
PhD economist Michael Hudson says that the financial “parasites” are “sucking as much money out” as they can before “jumping ship”. . . The problem with parasites is not merely that they siphon off the food and nourishment of their host, crippling its reproductive power, but that they take over the host’s brain as well. The parasite tricks the host into thinking that it is feeding itself. (Source)
Sacculina Carcini parasite
Saculina Carcini is an extraordinary creature, a barnacle that degenerates practically into a plant. It starts life as a free-swimming larva that invades a crab then changes into a microscopic slug, which plunges into the crab’s underside and sprouts “roots” that draw in nutrients from the crab’s blood.
The crab’s immune system cannot fight off Sacculina. but continues living with the parasite filling its entire body and begins to change into a new sort of creature. One that exists to serve the parasite. Externally it appears the same, but internally it is merely a puppet controlled by the intruder. (Source)
See any parallels?
But one cannot defend the actions of Team Obama on taking office. Law, policy and politics all pointed in one direction: turn the systemically dangerous banks over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Insure the depositors, replace the management, fire the lobbyists, audit the books, prosecute the frauds, and restructure and downsize the institutions. The financial system would have been cleaned up. And the big bankers would have been beaten as a political force.
Team Obama did none of these things. Instead they announced “stress tests,” plainly designed so as to obscure the banks’ true condition. They pressured the Federal Accounting Standards Board to permit the banks to ignore the market value of their toxic assets. Management stayed in place. They prosecuted no one. The Fed cut the cost of funds to zero. The President justified all this by repeating, many times, that the goal of policy was “to get credit flowing again.”
The banks threw a party. Reported profits soared, as did bonuses. With free funds, the banks could make money with no risk, by lending back to the Treasury. (Source)
Economic collapse just happens–no one is at fault. Don’t listen if you hear otherwise.
There was no wrong doing at all in the current economic crash, nor in the subsequent $X trillion dollar giveaways bailouts:
Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites? The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion. The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black.
Who could have known?
Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mess? Zero, none, nada, zip. Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started or achieved.
That is simply outrageous considering the width and breadth of the many crimes committed. (Source)
Where are the fact finding commissions, the grand juries?
Trust us . . .
Where is any accountability at all?
Relax, ok? . . . Now, repeat after me: there was NO wrong doing--at all. None. No one is at fault.
“The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.” — U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009 (Source)
People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties. . . . We cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail. (Source)
Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. See this, this and this. (Source)
One of the things that’s most troubling to people is there seems to be very little relationship between who drove this crisis, the big financial institutions, the CEOs, regulators who didn’t do their job, and the people who are paying the price, which are millions of people who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their life savings. (Source)
In the land of endless affirmative action for the rich, the smart money is on the banks. (Source)
It should be clear to anyone with a little more intelligence than a turnip that the bailouts were nothing more than calculated theft from ‘the people’ in order to cover the inconvenient results of Wall Streets greed and mistakes and to allow for wholesale robbery in name of protecting the system. (Source) . . . for example (Source2):
A consistent question since the financial crisis in 2008 is why has the federal government not prosecuted any senior executives for their roles in the collapse of firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns or the risky investments that led to bailouts of onetime financial giants like the American International Group, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How can companies worth billions of dollars just a few months earlier suddenly collapse in 2008 without someone being held responsible? (Source)
US Federal Government loves to repeat whatever the wealthiest 1/10th of 1% of America tells them–no matter how stupid:
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It’s bi-partisan–in addition to Republicans such as Mitch McConnell: “a group of House Democrats who tout “fiscal responsibility” as their core belief – are championing the extension of $70-billion-per-year tax cuts for the highest income-earners.” (Source)
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This for the rest of us . . .
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Some of you can see and some of you know there’s more to what is going on than you can see. We need to act upon our faith in greater possibility and let our ideals become something more than words we trot out to make ourselves look good around hypocrites who do the same. We are not the same. We have the ability to find the way out because we have not lied to ourselves to protect our places among the contemptible of our times. (Source)
Here’s your real problem. You see the truth. You know what I’m talking about but you got no faith in the truth . . . because somebody with money looked more powerful to you than the force that makes existence possible. You piss on the sunlight of your own survival. . . . These tools of the darkness are only what they are; limited and allowed access, dependent on your fear of them. One who does not fear them has nothing to fear as will be demonstrated shortly. Yes, they are going to Hell but Hell for them is nothing more than the impossibility of escaping from the eternal cycle of shooting fish in a barrel …but you, you could have had a soul and you spent your time felating your abusers in order to live insignificantly and in fear of a death that is guaranteed by your worship of what despises you the most. Well, they’re back again and you’re still sure you can pick the queen in that Three Card Monte game you call your life. You disappoint me but that is nothing like the disappointment you are going to experience when it all gets revealed to you. (Source)
I think the reader will have an easier time of it if he/she acknowledges that everything is upside down and backwards and accepts and recognizes the protection that comes to those with the courage to see things as they are. (Source)
In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt “held by the public” increased by $2.5260 trillion. (Source)
This works out to $22,158 of new federal debt added for each and every US household. How is that calculated? Lets do the math:
$2,526,000,000,000 / 114,000,000 US households = $22,158 per US household
When President Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the total federal debt held by the public stood at 6.3073 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. As of Aug. 20, 2010, after the first nineteen months of President Obama’s term, the total federal debt held by the public had grown to a total of $8.8333 trillion, an increase of $2.5260 trillion.
“Debt held by the public,” includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself.
Check out the sweetheart deal the Indymac boys were given by the FDIC. The billion dollar question is…“Does the government really wanna clean up this mess?”
When you set about repressing people’s freedom of speech and movement, you have created a problem. When you make their jobs and their savings disappear you have created another problem. When you send men and women to fight wars for profit or to serve the interest of a foreign nation that sees them as less than human, you have created another problem. When you fail to see to the aftercare of these soldiers you have created yet another problem.
The very rich and powerful have put themselves in a most undesirable position. Instead of making sure that the underclass has enough to get by and then keeping all the usual distractions in operation, they have overstepped themselves. Their greed and lust for power and wealth and their disdain for public opinion, which they demonstrate by their arrogant disregard for what others think; believing themselves to be above the reach and judgment of those they consider beneath them, is going to come back on them with a fury. The King Louis and Marie Antoinette mindset never goes out of style with those driven mad by vanity and self-interest. It comes with the territory.
Most of the time, they can keep this in check and go right on living their privileged lives by recognizing the limits to which they can abuse the ordinary lives. In this age of material darkness they have lost their perspective. They have over reached themselves. They have put themselves in peril by placing themselves too far above their fellows and basically… sucking the oxygen out of the living room of life.
They have continued to steal when they already had more than they could ever need or ever spend. They made public displays of their wealth, while showing a calloused indifference to the plight of the people they stole their money from.
They have awakened a beast in the hearts of the populace.
Those who have brought the world to this state and who press for even greater injuries are long past the point where reason and understanding can have any impact on their iniquities. They believe they are beyond judgment and they are determined to reap the ultimate degree of suffering from the lives of those they torment for their profit and pleasure. – Les Visible (Source)
They have awakened a beast in the hearts of the populace – Les Vision
For example, recently, an unknown person has been hacking into Facebook and putting this “wake up” video (re-posted below) onto many people’s Facebook profile pages:
A few comments posted on ATS regarding this video (Source):
The video is a powerful wake-up call, and is allegedly being posted to people’s facebook pages without their consent, and without knowledge of who did it. The video is very good. So is the message.
WTF IT’S NOT FUNNY!!! This crap is really annoying and everyone who has it, including me, doesn’t know what is doing. Changed my password but this crap really annoys me!
I love this guy. Heroes are awesome. America needs hope!
I’d like to note – This why they want an internet kill switch…. Because imagine a day where almost 20% of the videos being posted on youtube are of this sort of stuff….. It would be as if someone walked into the cave with a torch.
I think the video and hack was a wasted effort. Only like %5 of the worlds population will even understand what the guy said, the rest wont even care.
Racial and ethnic tension is a persistent human calamity. Kyrgyzstan is only a recent example of explosive racial/ethnic conflict–in the last few weeks around 400,000 people have been displaced and about 2,000 are estimated to have been killed. The circumstances leading to this problem aren’t completely unlike the United States. The violence in Kyrgyzstan started with extreme frustration, took root in land disputes, and then was fueled by government corruption and increases in living expenses. Source (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/19/c_13358406.htm)
Sound familiar?
The environment, culture and economy in the United States today is tense, and many are extremely frustrated.
There are upwards of 1 in 5 people who are unemployed but want a job. Many are simultaneously struggling to pay down debt. Compounding the stress over personal finances is the government’s questionable management of public finances. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and oil spills aren’t helping either. Source (http://www.gallup.com/poll/139346/No-Improvement-Gallup-Underemployment-Rate-May.aspx)
History shows us that under such apprehensive circumstances groups of people may lash out at others–irrationally laying blame on other groups.
Illegal immigration along the United States’ southern border has been a festering sore to many Americans for decades.
I feel illegal immigration may be coming to a head and, if it does, could easily erupt into violence.
What makes me think illegal immigration may be coming to a head now?
Yahoo news gives us easy access into the thoughts of the online public. How? The online comment section for each news article provides not only a mechanism for open discourse, but also a “Thumbs up” and “Thumbs down” rating system where each reader can indicate their approval or disapproval of a specific comment. Although not a random sample it serve as a readings of sentiment–as sign posts.
I’ve done a little research on Yahoo News articles and found an astonishing number of hateful comments getting voted up, with copious approval ratings. Many times hateful comments were favored 10 to 1 over more subdued, rational comments. I do not agree with the hateful sentiment being expressed. I find it an ominous sign.
Here’s a few examples illustrating America’s festering frustration and malevolence–from Yahoo News:
Example 1–Yahoo News Headline: “Mexico teen killed by US Border Patrol, anger high”
387/40 “Lets invade Mexico and give them something to complain about.”
762/28 “hey i got an idea,,,,,,,dont cross the border!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
321/9 “When we finally decided to crack down on some of these illegals, you knew there would be violence. I just hope and pray we don’t back down now”
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Example 3–An Online Game: An online “game” requiring the shooting of Mexicans crossing the United States Border has been played over 923,000 times on one web site alone. The game is called “Border Patrol.” It has a rating of 3.5 stars and over 18,000 votes. There are many racial comments made between Mexican/Latino and (mostly) white individuals on this site are explicitly stating they will kill members of the opposing ethnicity. Check it out. Source: http://nerdnirvana.org/g4m3s/borderpatrol.htm
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Examples 4 & 5–Yahoo News Headlines: Many to most comments on the following two stories involve further acts of violence, and some outright killing, of Mexicans. Check out the comments for yourself:
Americans may take little notice of international ethnic hate crimes (such as is currently happening in Kyrgyzstan), but how will Americans react when if it erupts at home?
Afterward, if it explodes into violence, we’ll all chant together: “Who could have known?“
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More examples of specific hate crimes committed recently:
About sixty Mexican soldiers attacked a training camp of the armed group Los Zetas in Nuevo Leon
How explosive? What do you think? The following pics are from a May, 2010 raid on drug traffickers by the Mexican army near Nuevo Leon, in the province of Higueras, Mexico, less than 100 miles south of the US-Mexican border. (Source)
See anything here that might pose a problem?
Can drug violence become racial/ethnic violence?
Can drug lords become warlords?
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Over 200 assualt rifles
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Uniforms and hundreds of ammo clips
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Other seized equipment
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The city of Ciudad Juarez was recently designated the most dangerous city in the world after Mogadishu. Yeah, that’s in Somalia, where the US lost two Blackhawks and the crews got hacked up with machetes. Juarez, second best death hole on the planet today, beats out Baghdad and Kabul and adjoins the US city of El Paso. The politicians are too busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, air dumping trillions of dollars for our ’freedom’, while here at home Ciudad Juarez is inches south of sovereign US territory and is a war zone? Yeah. (Source)
Mexican Drug Territories
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There are quite a few Cartels controlling different areas but by far my favourite group are Los Zetas. These motherfuckers scare the shit out of me. These guys started out as a legit group of elite Mexican military officers trained in counter insurgency ops, small group and aerial assault, advanced comms, fuck, you name it, these guys have gotten training in it at Bragg and at the euphemistically named “School of the Americas” which is basically a South American assassin training school in Georgia that makes Amnesty International want to rage quit the whole game.
They went rogue in the late 80s after witnessing the huge profits they were missing out on by staying legit. These guys are even better equipped then the Mexican army, wearing body armor, fielding AKs, ARs, 50cals, Stinger missiles and RPGs. They also operate helos and have shitloads of up armored SUVs and are experts in demo and advanced comms. These guys wiretap the Mexican government to make sure any bribes made get delivered on. They also employ armies of teen look out kids and hordes of prostitutes who suck cock for intel from unsuspecting targeted customers. Los Zetas are not only involved in drug smuggling, but extortion rackets, kidnapping, jail breakouts and human trafficking. (Source)
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Deconstructing the sovereign United States
Our southern border remains unsecured allowing millions to enter the country at will. At the same time and since 1990 with the creation of free trade zones, what can only be estimated at hundreds of thousands if not millions, of foreign nationals are transplanted into the US under the EB-5 visa program.
Quietly, out of sight of most of the public, the deconstruction of the sovereign United States is underway. Already at work was the Security & Prosperity Partnership begun by Bush which creates the North American Union and obliterates our borders with Canada and Mexico for the free movement of goods and people (referred to as “human capital”) to benefit corporate business. It is this agreement that stands in the way of our southern border being secured. The S&PP is still rolling on out of the public’s eye as working groups continue planning the evisceration of the US for corporate interests
Prior to the creation of S&PP was the “Enterprise for the America’s” established in 1990 by George HW Bush which created the now prolific and pervasive “Free Trade Zones” (FTZ’s) that exist right here in virtually every state of the US. While these zones must obey local and state laws special permission must obtained and a request for entry into the FTZ has to be initiated in the event of any investigation. These can of course be denied by questioning jurisdictional authority as the FTZ has essentially been redefined and protected as foreign sovereign territory.
To accommodate these zones, trans-model transportation centers are being constructed at airports across the country. Billed as transportation hubs to centralize services, these airports also include taxi, bus, train and trucking and warehousing and manufacturing centers. They also include something most people are not at all aware of; free trade zones where the unemployed from other countries are ferried into the US under EB-5 visas. Once here under the visa, the investor and his mobile work force can move unhindered into any other free trade zone in the US. (Source)
Another series of leaked State Department cables made public this week by WikiLeaks lend credence to investigative reports on gun trafficking and the drug war published by Narco News as far back as 2009.
The big battles in the drug war in Mexico are “not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns,” Narco News reported in March 2009, against the grain, at a time when the mainstream media was pushing a narrative that assigned the blame for the rising tide of weapons flowing into Mexico to U.S. gun stores and gun shows.
Rather, we reported at the time, “the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.”
Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives.
The State Department cables released recently by WikiLeaks support Narco News’ reporting and also confirm that our government is very aware of the fact that U.S military munitions are finding their way into Mexico, and into the hands of narco-trafficking organizations, via a multi-billion dollar stream of private-sector and Pentagon arms exports.
Narco News, in a report in December 2008 [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
Tosh Plumlee, a former CIA asset who still has deep connections in the covert world, told Narco News recently that a special-operations task force under Pentagon command, which has provided training to Mexican troops south of the border, has previously “… found [in Mexico] hundreds of [U.S.-made] M-67s [grenades] as well as thousands of rounds of machine gun-type ammo, .50 [and] .30 [caliber] and the famous [U.S.-made] M-16 — most later confirmed as being shipped from Guatemala into Mexico as well as from USA vendors. …”
Similarly, an AP video report from May 2009 confirms that “M16 machine guns” have been seized from Mexican criminal groups engaged in the drug war.
“It’s unclear how cartels are getting military grade weapons,” the AP report states.
Narco News offered an answer to that question in March 2009, when it reported that the deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars.
Those exports are approved through the State Department, under a program known as Direct Commercial Sales. A sister program, called Foreign Military Sales, is overseen by the Pentagon and also taps U.S. contractors to manufacture weapons (such as machine guns and grenades) for export to foreign entities, including companies and governments.
Between 2005 and 2009, a total of $41 billion worth of U.S. defense articles were exported under the FMS program and a total of nearly $60 billion via the DCS program, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The bulk of those exports went to seven nations, including South Korea, but Mexico, too, was a receiving nation, with some $204 million in military arms shipments approved for export in fiscal year 2008 alone, according to the most recently available DCS report.
So, based on that evidence, it is clear that there is a grand river of military-grade munitions flowing out of major gun factories in the U.S. and being exported globally — completely bypassing the mom-and-pop gun store. That river of doom, however, does not bypass the drug war in Mexico.
The WikiLeaks Cables
Two separate diplomatic cables that came out of the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, in early 2009 discuss drug war-related attacks on the U.S. consulate in that city as well as on a Monterrey TV station — with each incident involving the use of U.S. military grenades.
From a State Department cable created on Jan. 12, 2009, by the American Consul General in Monterrey and sent to the Secretary of State, U.S. Northcom and other U.S. consulates:
On January 6 the Televisa TV station in Monterrey was attacked by unknown assailants, who shot eight .40 caliber rounds into the station wall and threw a grenade over a fence into the parking lot, which exploded but did not injure anyone.
… The Consulate [in Monterrey] was attacked in a similar manner on October 11, 2008, and is located approximately one mile from the Televisa station.
… The investigators recovered the grenade fuse spoon, which appears to be from a US military M67 fragmentation grenade. ATF is investigating if any M67 grenades from this lot were exported to foreign militaries. The M67 grenade is different than the M26 grenade [an older U.S.-made grenade from the Vietnam era] used to attack the Consulate on October 11, but five M67 grenades were recovered during a raid several days after the Consulate attack in a Gulf Cartel warehouse. [Emphasis added.]
So the State Department cable makes clear that the attacks on the TV station and on the consulate itself involved military grade explosives made in the USA that somehow found their way to Mexico. A second cable issued in March 2009 lays out the plausible path those grenades followed on their journey to Mexico’s drug war.
From a cable issued by the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey on March 3, 2009, and sent to the Secretary of State, the FBI as well as various other consulates:
AmConsulate General Monterrey’s ATF Office, the ATF Explosives Technology Branch, and AmEmbassy Mexico DAO have been working with Mexican law enforcement authorities to identify the origin of various grenades and other explosive devices recovered locally over the past few months, including the unexploded M26A2 fragmentation grenade hurled at the Consulate itself during the October 11, 2008 attack. Other ordnance recovered includes 21 grenades recovered by Mexican law enforcement on October 16, 2008 after a raid at a narco-warehouse in Guadalupe (a working class suburb of Monterrey), and twenty-five 40mm explosive projectiles, a U.S. M203 40mm grenade launcher, and three South Korean K400 fragmentation grenades recovered the same day in an abandoned armored vehicle that suspected narco-traffickers used to escape apprehension.
Local Mexican law enforcement has recovered a Grenade spoon and pull ring from an exploded hand grenade used in a January 6, 2009 attack on Televisa Monterrey, a Monterrey television station. Based upon ATF examination, it appears that the grenade used in the attack on the Consulate has the same lot number, and is of similar design and style, as the three of the grenades found at the narco-warehouse in Guadalupe. On January 7, 2009, the Mexican Army recovered 14 [U.S.-made] M-67 fragmentation grenades and 1 K400 fragmentation grenade in Durango City, Durango. ….
The lot numbers of some of the grenades recovered, including the grenade used in the attack on Televisa, indicate that previously ordnance with these same lot numbers may have been sold by the USG [U.S. Government] to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s via the Foreign Military Sales program. We would like to thank AmEmbassy San Salvador for its ongoing efforts to query the Government of El Salvador as whether any of its stocks of grenades and other munitions have been diverted or are otherwise unaccounted for. [Emphasis added.]
Again, this is the U.S. state Department confirming that it suspects U.S. military munitions sold in the 1990s to a foreign military were subsequently diverted to Mexican narco-traffickers.
‘A secret operation to run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels — overseen by U.S. government agents — threatens to become a major scandal for the Obama administration.
The operation, called “Fast and Furious,” was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona. ATF sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.
But once across the border, the agency seemed to lose track of the weapons. Hundreds of AK-47s and Barrett .50 caliber rifles — favorites of warring drug cartels —made it easily into the hands of some of Mexico’s most ruthless crime organizations.’
February 11, 2011: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Mexican reporters that drugs like marijuana can never be legalized because “there is just too much money in it.” (Source) [But] Legalization would actually drive down drug prices, which would in turn be a disincentive to drug lords to continue selling as they currently do. . . There is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal.” . . . Others say that Clinton’s statements were not birthed out of ignorance, but rather are a clear reflection of central government efforts to protect the illegal drug market. A 1998 PBS investigation, for instance, explains how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) relies on international drug dealing to finance covert operations, which offers insight into the real reasons for the war on drugs (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front…). (Source)
CIA Drug Smuggling:
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This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo’s infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005. (Source)
It Begins: The IMF-sponsored looting of Greece has begun. They will “privatize” the railways, the water and sewerage services, the postal service, the airports, cut the wages and pensions for public workers, and increase sales, fuel and alcohol taxes and send them directly to the banks. (Source)
Greece plans to sell stakes in railway and water companies and the postal service to raise 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) and help reduce a budget deficit that sparked the debt crisis across southern Europe.
“We decided to accelerate the privatizations process,” Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told reporters in Athens today. The government aims to raise 1 billion euros a year for the next three years from the sales. (Source)
America is controlled by what economists call rent-seeking behaviour. Virtually everyone important has a revenue stream, and they don’t want anyone to take that revenue stream away. So pharma and insurance companies, who would have been damaged badly by single payer (they would have lost hundreds of billions) made sure that a plan to provide everyone with better health care for a third less than current costs was never even considered.
The most important game in America today is the contest for control of government, so that government can directly or indirectly give you money. Health care “reform” in which the government decided to force Americans to buy private health insurance or be fined is merely the latest (and most blatant) example. Virtually every industry, from finance to telecom to agriculture is involved in this game. It is in all their interests to make sure the game continues, but they do fight amongst each other for the spoils. (Source)
How the nation’s biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece
By: MATT TAIBBI
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Our economic crisis is not an accident. It’s the result of unchecked greed run rampant. Matt Taibbi shares the story of how a big NY bank preyed on Jefferson County, AL–exposing a much larger game plan.
Who will join the party next–at our expense?
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While for many Americans the financial crisis remains an abstraction, a confusing mess of complex transactions that took place on a cloud high above Manhattan sometime in the mid-2000s, in Jefferson County you can actually see the rank criminality of the crisis economy with your own eyes . . . our days of laughing at other countries are over. It’s our turn to get laughed at. (Source)
Educate yourself. Click on the link, read his 6-page article:
It took more than two years, but there might finally be some capital sentences handed out for crimes committed during the financial crisis. That’s metaphorically speaking, of course. Like the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, whose head was sacrificed during the Enron debacle, the once-proud financial auditing firm Ernst and Young now looks poised to take a spin down the toilet of history thanks to its role in the Lehman Brothers debacle.
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is about to file civil fraud charges against E&Y for the work it did helping Lehman cook its books during 2007 and 2008. The short version of what happened goes something like this. Lehman Brothers, like all the other big banks on Wall Street in those years, was nearing insolvency and desperate for cash. In advance of its quarterly reports in 2007, the firm executed a series of something called Repo 105 transactions in an attempt to make their balance sheet look healthier than it was.
These Repo 105 transactions are just loans that Ernst and Young and Lehman Brothers conspired to book as revenue from sales. If I go to you and I ask you to lend me a hundred bucks to pay for Knicks tickets, that’s a loan, and you and I and the SEC and every investor on Wall Street all know I’m in debt to you, that I owe you a hundred bucks.
Here’s how Lehman Brothers paid for their Knicks tickets: a week before the game, they went to you and offered to you “sell” you their worthless puke-stained lava lamp for a hundred bucks, with the understanding that two days after the Knicks game, it would come back and “buy” the lamp back for the same $100 (plus a small commission for your trouble). And when Lehman pocketed that $100 from the initial transaction, they decided to call that not borrowing but a true sale, i.e. they booked that hundred bucks as revenue from an honest sale of a worthless piece-of-shit lava lamp.
In 2007 and 2008 Lehman would do this before the end of every quarter. They would “sell” billions of dollars of assets, typically bonds, to various companies, and use that money to pay down debt before the quarter’s end, so that they didn’t look so flat-ass broke to investors. Then, a week or so after the end of the quarter, they would go out and borrow more money, and then “buy” the assets back. The reasons they did this were myriad, but in most cases the assets they were “selling” were depressed in value at the time and could not have been sold at anything like face value had they really gone out on the market and tried. So instead of really “selling” these items on their balance sheet, they worked together with other companies to jury-rig these “repurchase” agreements that looked like sales but were actually loans.
Lehman was doing massive amounts of these deals every quarter. In the second quarter of 2008, they lightened up their balance sheets with $50 billion worth of Repo agreements. This technique, apparently known as “window dressing,” isn’t that much different conceptually from the Enron-style book-doctoring that used “independent” special purpose vehicles to hide liabilities. In this case Lehman didn’t use shell companies but instead scattered its dent in the financial atmosphere by booking loans as sales. Ernst and Young, which made over $100 million in fees between 2001 and 2008 working with Lehman, aided the process by signing off on Lehman’s crazy accounting. In the report by bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas that came out last March, he describes how Ernst and Young threw up a brilliant “We’re not corrupt, we’re just incredibly stupid” defense when confronted with the question of the $50 billion in Repo 105s in the second quarter of 2008. The report (a PDF of which you can view here) talks about what E&Y’s Lehman auditor Hillary Hansen had to say when future E&Y whistleblower Michael Lee confronted her about the $50 billion in Repos:
During the Examiner’s interview of Hansen, Hansen recalled that while Ernst & Young questioned Lee about his May 16, 2008 letter, Lee “rattled off” a list of additional issues and concerns he held, one of which was Lehman’s use of Repo 105 transactions. Ernst & Young had no further conversations with Lee about Repo 105 transactions. Prior to her interview of Lee in June 2008, Hansen had heard the term Repo 105 “thrown around” but she did not know its meaning…
In other words, the lead auditor reviewing one of the world’s largest investment banks had no idea what a series of regularly-occurring billion-dollar transactions committed by her main client were, and apparently wasn’t interested. It also didn’t seem to bother E&Y that Lehman was not disclosing any of this to its investors in its SEC filings.
My guess is that this suit is the beginning of the end for Ernst and Young and, who knows, may be the beginning of a series of investigations that ultimately take down the auditors and ratings agencies that made the financial crisis possible. Without accountants and raters signing off on all the bogus derivative math and bad bookkeeping, a lot of this mess would never have happened. Zero Hedge has an excellent piece detailing all the ass-covering and finger-pointing going on at Ernst and Young; check it out if you have time.
Update 12/20/2010–According to the Wall St Journal:
Auditors Face Fraud Charge: New York Set to Allege Ernst & Young Stood By as Lehman Cooked Its Books
New York prosecutors are poised to file civil fraud charges against Ernst & Young for its alleged role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers, saying the Big Four accounting firm stood by while the investment bank misled investors about its financial health, people familiar with the matter said.
Yeah, right.
State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is close to filing the case, which would mark the first time a major accounting firm was targeted for its role in the financial crisis. The suit stems from transactions Lehman allegedly carried out to make its risk appear lower than it actually was.
The whistle-blower was Matthew Lee, a Lehman Brothers senior vice president. He had complained to his boss, and eventually wrote a letter in May 2008 to senior Lehman executives expressing concern that the Repo 105 transactions violated Lehman’s ethics code by misleading investors and regulators about the true value of the firm’s assets. Days later, Mr. Lee was ousted from the firm.
According to the Lehman bankruptcy examiner’s report, Ernst & Young auditors saw the letter, and later interviewed Mr. Lee after he was let go from Lehman. Ernst & Young previously said in a statement that Lehman management determined Mr. Lee’s “allegations were unfounded.” (Source)
Original Dregs of the Future blog post on March 16, 2010:
Lehman Bros. CEO
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A 2,200-page examiner’s report into the collapse of the 158-year old institution, published last week, uncovered in forensic detail evidence that Lehman used “balance sheet manipulation” to mislead investors and regulators. (Source)
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Aren’t highly paid CPA auditors supposed to warn us about this sort of thing?
Apparently not:
Ernst & Young came under fire this week after the court-appointed examiner in the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc bankruptcy said the audit firm did not challenge accounting gimmicks that allowed Lehman to hide some $50 billion in assets in 2008, while claiming it had reduced its overall leverage levels.
Ernst & Young, CPAs. We help firms to Screw the Public . . . "Quality In Everything We Do"
Ernst & Young said in a statement: “Our last audit of the company was for the fiscal year ending November 30, 2007. Our opinion indicated that Lehman’s financial statements for that year were fairly presented in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and we remain of that view [because] after an exhaustive investigation the examiner made no findings in his report that Lehman’s assets or liabilities were improperly valued or accounted for incorrectly in Lehman’s November 30, 2007, financial statements.” (Source)
Accounting, what a scam profession…a method of keeping the books based upon “generally accepted principles” and subject to Congressional rule changes (when those “generally accepted principles” would declare the largest banks in the nation insolvent at the most inopportune time). The profession of financial accounting has disgraced and discredited itself in my eyes; they’re almost as big a bunch of liars and frauds as bond rating firms…
To think Lehman’s was the only big investment house to manipulate its balance sheet via repos would be naive. The whole point of accounting has become to find ways to crook the books without going to jail. Ask Barclays. (Source)
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Just as a vampire can’t stand to be seen and thus avoids the light of day at all costs, as it is only able to operate by the deceptive cover of darkness, so the very nature of the institutions and operations by which the phantom wetikonomy functions must be kept hidden from the light of public awareness. The financial instruments of the wetikonomy are purposely crafted to be incredibly complex and hard to understand so as to hide and obfuscate the theft that is happening. Hiding the reality of what they are doing is one of the ‘chief features’ of wetiko finance. Replacing transparency with opacity, it has become standard account-ing practice in the wetikonomy to ‘cook the books’ so as to avoid being held account-able. If clearly illuminated and exposed to the light of collective disclosure and transparency, the shell-game and Ponzi scheme that IS the global financial system will be revealed to be the staggering and unlawful deception that it is. (Source)
Out of every $1 in income gain made in the last decade, 65 cents went to one guy, while 90 other folks fought over 12 cents. The rich have won. (Source)
The top 1% get almost 90% of the gains during 2002-2007
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What a time to be an oligarch! Folks, there is no way we can have economic prosperity in this country when the top 1% has all of the money. The middle class is basically being destroyed right in front of our very eyes. Consumption economies die when the consumers have no money to consume! Here is the reality that America has realized: If you are not part of the 1% club in this country you are nothing but a victimized pawn as the elite continue to line their pockets with our nation’s income. (Source)
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“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.” — John Adams
It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99 percent of the U.S. population no longer has political representation. The U.S. economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us. (Source)
If we include “involuntary part-time” and “discouraged workers” — the unemployment rate is over 20%
Personal bankruptcies are up 32% in 2009 from 2008, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60% of them, and over 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance
25% of current mortgages underwater (i.e., the home is worth less than the mortgage) and 13 million U.S. families, or about 11% of all US households, are expected to lose their home by 2014. [Deutsche Bank's forecast is even worse: "The percentage of 'underwater' loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes"]
2009 was a record-breaking year for Wall Street bonuses, as firms issued $150 billion to their executives (i.e., a gift of over $1000 from every US household)–these bonuses are a direct result of our tax dollars
The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record.
From: The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class (Source)
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Increased taxes, reduced benefits: U.S. state and local governments, in terms of their share of the economy, are more than 50% larger than the federal government. Local government has a huge impact on the overall economy. Since state governments can’t run operational deficits, we’ll see tremendous fiscal tightening, and that restraint — whether it’s tax increases or civil servants being furloughed or services being cut — will slow growth. It will also significantly offset the policy stimulus measures coming out of Washington. (Source)
What will State budget cuts in social services mean to the middle class? Here’s an example:
911, What Credit Card Will You Be Using? In Tracy, CA, the first thing the 911 operator wants to know is your 911 account number (a $48 annual fee lets you have unlimited medical emergency calls) or how you are going to pay the $300 fee it takes to get the emergency service on a one-time basis. (Source)
Watch & Learn: Moody’s has joined S&P in warning Greece that if it does not drastically reduce its budget deficits bycutting social services, public payrolls and pension costs, it will suffer a multi-step cut in its bond ratings, making the bankers ever richer at the country’s expense. Of course this sort of banker blackmail would never work in the USA. (Source)
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Hmmm
Lol! Even casino gambling is crashing: “The state Gaming Control Board today released its “Gaming Abstract” for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, showing a net loss of $6.7 billion among the 260 major casinos in Nevada.” (Source)
Maybe Americans now have less money to throw away.
