Just hours after federal agents charged banker Allen Stanford with fleecing investors of $7 billion, the disgraced financier received a message from one of Congress' most powerful members, Pete Sessions.
``I love you and believe in you,'' said the e-mail sent on Feb. 17. ``If you want my ear/voice -- e-mail,'' it said, signed ``Pete.''
The message from the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee represents one of the many ties between members of Congress and the indicted banker that have caught the attention of federal agents.
The Justice Department is investigating millions of dollars Stanford and his staff contributed to lawmakers over the past decade to determine if the banker received special favors from politicians while building his spectacular offshore bank in Antigua, The Miami Herald has learned.
Agents are examining campaign dollars, as well as lavish Caribbean trips funded by Stanford for politicians and their spouses, feting them with lobster dinners and caviar.
The money Stanford gave Sessions and other lawmakers was stolen from his clients while he carried out what prosecutors now say was one of the nation's largest Ponzi schemes.
Sessions, 54, a longtime House member from Dallas who met with Stanford during two trips to the Caribbean, did not respond to interview requests.
Supporters say the lawmaker, who received $44,375 from Stanford and his staff, was not assigned to any of the committees with oversight over Stanford's bank and brokerages.
His press secretary, Emily Davis, said she was unable to comment on the e-mail sent at 11:31 a.m. on the day Stanford was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ``I haven't seen it, so I can't verify its authenticity at this time,'' she said.
But the message found on Stanford's computer servers and the contributions he made to Sessions and other lawmakers -- totaling $2.3 million -- are now part of the government's inquiry.
Records show Stanford also doled out $5 million on lobbying since 2001, setting up his own Washington firm last year with expensive furnishings and artwork -- the money plundered from his customers' accounts.
D.C. CONNECTIONS
Over the years, he took on battles to protect his banking network while fending off regulators.
In 2001, he pressed successfully to kill a bill that would have exposed the flow of millions into his secretive offshore bank in Antigua.
The next year, he helped block legislation that would have drawn more government scrutiny to his bank.
While he was fighting reforms to financial secrecy and offshore banking laws, Stanford was hobnobbing with dozens of lawmakers.
Stanford hosted New York Congressman John Sweeney's wedding dinner at his five-star restaurant in Antigua in 2004 -- toasting the couple for photographers -- and staged a cocktail fundraiser for now-disgraced Ohio congressman Bob Ney at his bayfront Miami office.
``He legitimized himself by having himself vetted by powerful members of Congress,'' said Steven Riger, a former vice president at Stanford's Miami brokerage. ``It was all about the public's perception.''
Kent Schaffer, Stanford's court-appointed attorney, said his client never asked for special favors. ``Stanford gave contributions to politicians, but there was nothing criminal behind it,'' he said.
The federal investigation comes after months of criticism from victims' groups complaining that elected leaders failed to vet Stanford before accepting money from him the past 10 years. If they had, they would have discovered that the U.S. State Department in 1999 concluded that Stanford helped create a haven for money-laundering in Antigua.
Most members of Congress contacted by The Herald declined to discuss their ties to the banker, other than to say they have since returned the contributions.
FIGHTING REFORMS
Stanford's foray into the Washington power game began in 2001, shortly after he was allowed to open a controversial trust office in Miami.
The special office was a boon to Stanford's bank, generating millions in the sale of certificates of deposit -- the money stuffed in pouches and sent on jets to his banking headquarters in Antigua.
But when a bill was created to compel offshore bankers to reveal the sources of money flowing into their banks, Stanford jumped into the fight to kill it.
The measure would have forced Stanford -- who was moving millions illegally through his Miami trust office -- to open his books to federal regulators.
``He wanted the complete freedom to move money offshore without any threat,'' said Jack Blum, a lawyer who testified before Congress supporting the legislation. ``He was cheerleading for the offshore tax havens.''
To combat the bill, Stanford launched a strategy he would use for the next eight years: He gave money to the party in power, including $40,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee and $100,000 to the inaugural committee of George W. Bush, records show.
By summer of 2001, the bill was dead.
In the ensuing years, Stanford's banking empire flourished, with the Miami office generating hundreds of millions of dollars, records show.
In late 2001, Stanford confronted another threat: A bill allowing state and federal regulators to share details about fraud cases -- which would have brought Stanford's brokerages under closer scrutiny -- landed in the Senate Banking Committee.
Though the Senate was now controlled by Democrats, Stanford was prepared: He had given $500,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002 -- his largest-ever contribution.
``I told him that the Democrats were going to take over, and he needed to make friends with them,'' recalled his lobbyist Ben Barnes, once Texas' lieutenant governor.
Stanford also doled out $100,000 to a national lobbying group to fight the measure.
The bill, which sparked sweeping opposition from brokerages and insurers, never made it to a vote.
ACTION IN ANTIGUA
While he was scoring points in Washington, Stanford was squaring off for a crisis at his banking headquarters in Antigua.
In 2003, investors began questioning the legitimacy of his certificates of deposit, which generated higher returns than major U.S. banks, and articles began appearing in news magazines about money-laundering in Antigua.
In addition, Stanford was drawing the scrutiny of the SEC, which was demanding to know where his bank was investing customers' money.
In the ensuing years, Stanford would play a dual role of staving off regulators -- paying $200,000 in bribes to Antiguan banking chief Leroy King -- while forging ties with members of Congress, court records show.
Those connections deepened when Stanford started hosting a series of congressional visits to Antigua.
It began in 2003, when lawmakers including Sessions, Ney, Sweeney, Gregory Meeks, Donald Payne, Max Sandlin and Phil Crane arrived in Antigua on a mission to ``promote relations'' with the Caribbean nation.
The cost of the January trip -- including nights in luxury hotels and two Stanford jets for travel -- came to $39,500, records show.
For four days, they gathered for talks on business in the Caribbean, trading jokes with Prime Minister Lester Bird and touring the island.
In time, the group of lawmakers, which became known as the ``Caribbean Caucus,'' would take 11 more trips -- the costs picked up by the Inter-American Economic Council, a nonprofit funded by Stanford.
A total of $311,307 was spent on the trips to places like Montego Bay, St. Croix and Key Biscayne. ``We were rolling out food, caviar, wine, lobster,'' recalled Stanford's personal chef, Jonas Hagg.
During a 2004 Antiguan trip, Sweeney and his 34-year-old girlfriend were married, with Stanford hosting the ceremony and reception for the New York Republican at the famed Pavilion Restaurant.
``If it wasn't for Allen, I certainly would not be here today,'' Sweeney told Stanford's newspaper, The Antigua Sun. ``He has done a tremendous job of promoting and raising the awareness of Antigua in the United States, and people take notice of a man of his standing and stature in the halls of Washington.''
Photos of Stanford and caucus members were splashed in company publications and press releases. ``You looked and you saw all these important people,'' Riger said. ``That legitimacy allowed him to go out and collect a lot of money.''
Stanford was not only funding the trips -- the money looted from his customers -- but also staging fundraisers.
He held an event at his office on the 21st floor of the Miami Center for Ohio house member Ney, who was later sentenced to 30 months in prison after admitting to accepting gifts and money from clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
He rallied his brokers when Sessions was in a tight race with Democrat Martin Frost in Texas in 2004.
``He got on the speakerphone and told everyone to give to Pete Sessions,'' said Riger. ``He said Sessions was good for our company and we needed to give to him.'' Stanford raised $38,875 in the final weeks of the campaign for Sessions, who defeated Frost.
THE INVESTIGATIONS
While he was forging ties in Washington, he was getting into deeper trouble with the SEC. By 2006, the agency had sent two confidential letters to the Antiguan government demanding information about the solvency of Stanford's bank, records show.
Both times, Stanford was aided by lead regulator King, who managed to keep the bank's finances secret while accepting thousands in bribes from Stanford -- their pledge sealed in a blood oath in Stanford's airplane hangar in Antigua, according to court records and interviews.
With pressure mounting from the SEC, Stanford increased his lobbying in Washington.
In 2008, he started his own lobby firm on 14th Street and New York Avenue, spending $2.2 million -- more than he spent the previous four years combined, records show.
``He was spreading his money around,'' said Blum, the Washington expert on money-laundering.
``It was a way of gaining legitimacy and getting people to say, `Hey, I'm OK.' ''
Just one month before the FBI launched a criminal probe into his banking empire, Stanford hosted a lavish gathering of powerful Washington insiders, with keynote speeches from Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, and Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense.
Also co-hosting the May event: Miami lawyer Yolanda Suarez, Stanford's longtime chief of staff.
The topic: the global financial crisis, and the private sector's need to work with government.
But Stanford's own crisis was about to explode.
On Feb. 17, armed with court orders, federal agents swarmed into his offices across the country, shutting down his operations and declaring that Stanford was running a massive fraud.
In his Houston headquarters, agents found reams of company documents, electronic records and e-mails received by Stanford in his final days, including the message from Sessions.
RUNNING FOR COVER
As the scandal unfolded, members of the Caribbean Caucus began returning their contributions.
Nineteen lawmakers gave back a total of $87,800 to the court-appointed receiver as of August. Others, including Meeks, Sessions, Sandlin, Sweeney and Crane, said they turned some of the money over to charities.
In addition, Democratic House member Charlie Rangel returned $11,800 to charities, and Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson $45,000 to charities, half of which came from a fundraiser at Stanford's Miami office in 2006.
``Just like a number of people, [they] started to run for cover the minute Allen was under scrutiny,'' said Schaffer, Stanford's attorney.
``People he had been very close to -- and never asked anything of -- all of a sudden are distancing themselves. Whether he's innocent or guilty, they don't really care. They worry about how it affects their image.''
As federal agents examine Stanford's political contributions, victims' groups have criticized lawmakers for failing to vet Stanford before accepting his donations and trips.
The State Department had singled out Stanford in a 1999 report for using his influence to weaken the Antiguan banking laws, creating ``one of the most attractive financial centers in the Caribbean for money launderers.''
``None of this was difficult to ascertain,'' said Bill Branscum, a former U.S. Treasury agent who investigated laundering in the Caribbean. ``With the position of public trust comes a consummate responsibility. They should have made it their business to figure out what was going on.''
Author/Associate Professor of History
Posted: December 29, 2009 12:24 PM
Paul Krugman recently penned an insightful article where he argues that the 1999-2009 decade should be called the "Big Zero" decade because over the course of ten years there was no real job growth or notable "progress" in tackling any of the nation's problems. But Krugman's view, I'm afraid, is overly optimistic. What we had in the 2000s was far, far worse than a "Big Zero." The last ten years have been so miserable for the United States that a "Big Zero" would be an immeasurable improvement compared to what we got. If we could freeze time and move the country back to January 1999 it would be like hitting the jackpot! With all its squandered wealth, wasted lives, despoiled environment, growing inequality, and a Supreme Court stacked to favor corporate power, a "Big Zero" is a distant, unattainable goal.
Ronald Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989, leading many historians and journalists to call the 1980s the "Reagan Era" or the "Age of Reagan." George W. Bush served from 2001 to 2009, but is it fair to us to refer to the 2000s as the "W. Era?" I don't think so.
It was the decade when the country experienced the corporate take-over of everything -- every value, every human interaction, every institution.
Bush stacked the Supreme Court with two relatively young Justices who can be counted on, in perpetuity, to rule against people and in favor of corporations every time their interests clash. He also stuffed the federal judiciary with torture enthusiasts, religious fanatics, and corporate servants.
It was a decade when a new Gilded Age took hold led by Robber Barons far worse and rapacious than any of those associated with the turn of the last century. Goldman Sachs' CEO Lloyd Blankfein, without irony, told the press that his financial behemoth was doing "God's work," just like John D. Rockefeller said over a century ago: "I believe the power to make money is a gift from God."
It was a decade where corporate advertising reached new levels with "word of mouth" marketing and "reality" TV shows that are little more than commercials posing as "television shows."
In November 1999, President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act by signing the odious Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that deregulated, once and for all, the financial sector. Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Rubin lit the fuse that exploded the American economy ten wretched years later traumatizing the nation and sapping its lifeblood.
There was a "War on Terror" and "video news releases" to manipulate the public. In the past ten years the nation's two dominant political parties finally merged to represent essentially the same corporate interests. It was the decade when the ideological viewpoint of the National Association of Manufacturers, which was formed in 1895 to trash workers' pensions as "handouts," came to dominate the economic policies of both parties. Labor unions took it in the chin suffering setback after setback as real wages declined, unemployment rose, and pensions dwindled.
It was the decade of Enron and Worldcom and Global Crossing and Tyco and all those other corporate criminal rackets. Joe Lieberman, who received campaign donations from Enron, held a hearing where he tisk-tisked the practices that his own cheerleading for deregulation helped cause. And don't forget Blackwater and Haliburton and all the other war profiteers that made a killing, and the wars themselves we'll be paying for in overt pay-outs and hidden social costs for many decades to come. Death on the installment plan we might call it.
It was the decade when the "race to the bottom" resulting from "free trade" deals like NAFTA and the WTO came to apotheosis. The outsourcing and international trade imbalances hollowed out the American economy, eliminated whole categories of manufacturing jobs, and pushed the U.S. on a trajectory less like Europe and more like Mexico. China owns us.
During the 2000 campaign there was a running joke that George W. Bush got so much record-breaking corporate campaign cash that he wasn't really a human being seeking the presidency but a corporation. We can call the 2000s the "Worse Than Zero" decade or the "Big Zero," or anything we wish, but what characterized it most for me was the near total control of corporations, especially over our civic institutions. All of the terrible economic and governing ideas from the Reagan era crested and then crashed in the last eighteen months leaving something far less than "zero" in their wake.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered the federal government to rethink how it protects the nation's secrets, in a move that was expected to declassify more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents and curb the number of government records hidden from the public.
Among the changes is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013.
Obama also reversed a decision by President George W. Bush that had allowed the intelligence community to block the release of a specific document, even if an interagency panel decided the information wouldn't harm national security.
Advocates for a more open government are cautiously cheering the move.
"Everything will depend on implementation," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. But the order "has tremendous potential to reduce the level of secrecy throughout the government."
In a memo to agency heads, Obama said he expects that the order will produce "measurable progress" toward greater openness in government while also protecting the nation's most important secrets.
"I will closely monitor the results," he promised.
The still-classified Cold War records would provide a wealth of data on U.S.-Soviet relations, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, diplomacy and espionage. A Soviet spy ring in the Navy led by John Walker headlined 1985, which became known as "The Year of the Spy."
On his first day in office, Obama instructed federal agencies to be more responsive to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act and he overturned an order by Bush that would have enabled former presidents and vice presidents to block release of sensitive records of their time in the White House.
The government spent more than $8.21 billion last year to create and safeguard classified information, and $43 million to declassify it, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government's security classification. The figures don't include data from the principal intelligence agencies, which is classified.
What TF are you talking about? The US mortgage market backing much of the worlds currency? Previous rules made US mortgages very stable? What previous rules? You don't know what TF you're talking about.
You're clearly outside of your league and outside your area of expertise. Stick with what you know which is not much, maybe aluminum siding or vinyl siding or an economy collecting aluminum cans cause you're way out of your league.
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re dallas/denton whatever (dallas)
Date: 2009-12-30, 12:06AM CST
Reply to: comm-gqgvh-1530062768@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
South Side Bank
701 W. Magnolia
Fort Worth, Texas 76104
(817) 927-7730
9 am - 5 pm, M-Fri
I dare say that most Americans would not hesitate to go back to the days when Bush and the republicans were in charge instead of the anti American, anti prosperity, bunch we have infecting the country now. The real winners in the next election will be the American people. No doubt they will remove the cancer that is distroying our way of life and enslaving future generations with a debt they can never pay off.
* Location: dallas
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
The lowest of the low was the Republican vote against funding and supporting our troops in the field at a time of war. As a device to stall health care, they tried to stop the appropriation of funds for our soldiers. There is no excuse for that; from that there is no return. Every single Republican member was willing to vote against cloture on funding our troops, and they admitted it was a tactic to obstruct health-care reform. The secretary of defense warned us all that a "no" vote "would immediately create a serious disruption in the worldwide activities of the Department of Defense." And yet every one of them was willing to vote "no." Almost all of them did vote "no"; some stayed away, but that's the same as "no" when you need 60 "yes" votes to proceed; voting "no" and hiding from the vote are the same result. And for those of us here on the floor to see it, it was clear; the three who voted "yes" did not cast their "yes" votes until all 60 Democratic votes had been tallied, and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion.
And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.
The insurance industry -- one of the most powerful lobbies in politics -- is another reason. The bad behavior you see on the Senate floor is the last, thrashing throes of the health insurance industry as it watches its business model die. You who are watching and listening know this business model if you or a loved one have been sick -- the business model that won't insure you if they think you'll get sick, or you have a pre-existing condition. The business model that if they insure you and you do get sick, Job One is to find loopholes to throw you off your coverage and abandon you alone to your illness. The business model, when they can't find that loophole, that they'll try to interfere with or deny you the care your doctor has ordered. And the business model that, when all else fails and they can't avoid you or abandon you or deny you, they just stiff the doctor and the hospital, and deny and delay their payments for as long as possible -- or perhaps tell the hospital to collect from you first -- and maybe they'll reimburse you. Good riddance to that business model. We know it all too well. It deserves a stake through its cold and greedy heart, but some of our colleagues here are fighting to the death to keep it alive.
But the biggest reason for these desperate acts by our colleagues is that we are gathering momentum. And we are gathering strength. And we are working toward our goal of passing this legislation. And when we do, the lying time is over.
The American public will see what actually comes to pass when we pass this bill as our new law. The American public will see first-hand the difference between what is, and what they were told. Facts, as the presiding officer has often said, are stubborn things. It is one thing to propagandize and scare people about the unknown; it is much harder to propagandize and scare people when they are seeing and feeling and touching something different.
This much is undeniable: poverty has decreased in Venezuela under Chávez's administration. According to the 2007 Social Panorama of Latin America, a report released by the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, between 2002 and 2006 Venezuela decreased poverty by 18.4 percent and extreme poverty by 12.3 percent, an achievement second in the region only to that of Argentina. The report attributed these dramatic decreases to "rapid GDP growth and the ongoing implementation of broad social programs" and recognized that the "swift pace of progress considerably brightens the prospects for further reductions in poverty and significantly increases the feasibility of meeting the first target associated with the first Millennium Development Goal."
Policies enacted since Chávez was elected have also helped redistribute the gains of Venezuela's record economic growth. Unemployment is down, employment in the formal sector is up, and the minimum wage has increased notably. More important, income has grown fastest for Venezuela's poorest. According to the polling firm Datanalisis, from 1998 to 2006 Venezuela's poorest sectors saw an increase in income of 445 percent, and the wealthiest saw a gain of 194 percent. These gains have come despite a concerted effort by certain sectors of the opposition to throw the country into crisis in 2002 and 2003. In a shocking omission, Rodríguez does not mention that the sabotage of the oil industry in late 2002 and early 2003 bled Venezuela of 24 percent of its GDP. By comparison, during four years of the Great Depression, the United States lost 29 percent of its GDP.
The policies of the Chávez administration have served to help lower poverty, increase access to necessary social services, and better distribute Venezuela's resources. But more than trust the numbers, one can turn to public opinion to verify this. According to a 2007 Latinobarómetro report, Venezuelans rank their country among the most democratic in the region, second only to Uruguay. On a number of measures -- equality between the sexes, the protection of private property, equality of opportunity, solidarity with the poor, social security, employment opportunities, and even income distribution -- respondents ranked Venezuela highest in the region. When asked how their families' economic situations would be in 12 months, 61 percent of the Venezuelan people said "much better" or "a bit better," higher than the figure for Brazil (60 percent) and the regional average (46 percent). On education and health services, 64 percent and 74 percent, respectively, expressed their satisfaction.
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Hey folks. Look at the graph below. See unemployment rate drop beginning at a point in time when Chavez brought Bush's greedy racist fraudulent CEO's at EXXON MOBIL and other oil companies under control? The moral of the story is simple. You cannot rely on three or four white people to make the right decision for an entire population. It's in their genes.........extreme childish greed, the result of poor upbringing.
If you're wondering why the right-wing media hates Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez so much, here's 2 reasons:
1) He's democratically elected.
2) He's reduced poverty drastically.
Based on these criteria, Chavez is kind of like the "anti-Bush", if you will.
Venezuela's National Statistics Institute reports that poverty in Venezuela has been reduced by a staggering 22.6% since Chavez first took office. And the unemployment rate has been nearly cut in half.
The media demonizes Chavez ostensibly because of actions against media outlets. This issue is as phony as the folksy cadence Sarah Palin used in the veep debate.
The Chavez administration did revoke the licenses of TV and radio stations that encouraged his assassination. But if a station in the United States in the '70s had urged listeners to shoot Nixon or Carter, the FCC would have taken as dim of a view of that as Chavez has of stations that called for his death.
"As companies become larger and more powerful here in the United States we Americans are losing more and more of our civil rights. We Americans are seeing our Washington Representative being replaced by elected officials that owe their soul to large companies that provided them with all the financing they needed to get elected. Our elected officials are becoming employees of Corporate America".
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has a garish knack for making the world think he's the most radical of radicals. So when the left-wing, anti-U.S. leader ascended a raucous stage in front of a petrochemical plant in eastern Venezuela today — May Day, the leftiest day of the year — and announced his government's takeover of the nation's lucrative heavy oil industry, it sent the usual panic through Washington and the international media. "It's national power!" shouted Chavez, who controls the hemisphere's largest crude reserves. "We can't have socialism if the state doesn't have control over its resources!"
But the truth — one that both Chavez and his archfoe, the Bush Administration, would prefer you not know — is that when it comes to oil nationalization, Hugo is hardly the most radical of his global peers. In fact, even after today's petro-theatrics, Chavez is just catching up with the rest of the pack.
From Mexico to China, more than 75% of the world's oil reserves are controlled by national oil companies today. Of the world's top 20 oil-producing firms, 14 are state-run. And even though Chavez has now stripped foreign oil companies like Exxon Mobil of any majority stakes they had in Venezuelan oil production projects — mandating that his state-run company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), have at least 60% ownership from here on out — he's at least allowing those private multinationals to continue taking part in the drilling.
Not so, for example, in Mexico or the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia. Washington touts those two countries as model energy allies, despite the fact that for more than half a century their national oil companies have barred U.S. and other foreign oil businesses from production ventures.
Apart from his fiery rhetoric, what makes Chavez's move seem more jarring is the fact that, until he came to power in 1999, Venezuela had been a trend-bucking oasis for Big Oil. Venezuela did nationalize its oil industry in 1976, but in the 1990s it had steadily reopened its fields to foreign investment — in some cases handing the multinationals deals that even conservative Venezuelans considered too sweet. Chavez has just as steadily, and stridently, reversed that policy, paring down the multinationals' ownership while ratcheting up their taxes and royalties. And because Venezuela is America's fourth-largest foreign crude supplier — providing the U.S. with almost 15% of its oil imports — each turn of his nationalization screw tends to provoke outsized alarm.
re Remember to vote democrat (dallas)
Date: 2009-12-24, 9:16PM CST
Reply to: comm-dkybk-1524094397@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Poor Nation, still suffering from your hate every thing white syndrome. How sad it must be to know that no matter what you do or how much you envy the white race, you will never be white.
Please stop torturing yourself and face reality. What you want most in your life was lost to you forever at the moment of conception. Accept your lot in life and stop wishing for the impossible, it will never happen. Even if they bleached you to a lovely shade of white, colored your hair blond, you could never pass as white.
Your limited intelligence would give you away.
I am sure your intelligence defficit is responsible for your not being able to comprehend the meaning of draft dodging. Google "Bill Clinton, draft dodger" for a better understanding.
While you're at it, research Obama's military service.
Now run along and get ready for bed, Santa will be here before long and he might just bring you that Pelosi blow up doll you have so wanted.
Nation, between hits on her crack pipe posted this:
The draft dodger that suckered you into a war in the middle east for their benefit.
Merry Christmas and may God bless you and your family
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re-Remember to vote democrat. (dallas) (NATION)
Date: 2009-12-24, 5:29PM CST
Reply to: comm-rpk25-1523990878@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
The bad news is the really great problem in this country is the systemic breakdown of one of the three branches of government: the Congress of the United States. And until it's repaired, [Obama] and this country are going to be undermined. We could have had health care legislation in a meaningful way that would have gone twice as far at solving our budget and our health care problems, but because of the irresponsibility and the systemic corruption of the United States Congress, we don't.
Two cities. The mansion on the hill; the sorrows in the valley. This is the central economic and political challenge facing the country, the administration, and the Democratic Congress (Republicans, frankly, don't seem to give a damn. Early on, they cast their bet on failure and their strategy on obstruction. This seems to be working for them, so they are letting that bet ride. Not one Republican would even cast a vote for the mildest of financial reforms)
The economic challenge goes beyond recovery. In fact, Wall Street's rescue, while necessary, now stands in the way of a prosperous economy. Banks are emerging from free fall more concentrated than ever, with an explicit promise that they are too big to fail. This is a guarantee of future financial catastrophe. They must be broken up or regulated like utilities. Banker's bonuses are simply a leading indicator. Their return to record levels means exactly that we are headed into another mess.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/main-street-and-wall-stre_b_401720.html
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The greedy racist chronic underachieving mutherfucking white, black and brown trash, Senators and Representatives need to be put on notice to get fixing the system they broke or get out of town.
Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.
Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”
But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.
However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.
Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.
But Bachmann isn’t the only welfare recipient on Capitol Hill. As it turns out, there is a filthy-rich class of absentee farmers—both in and out of Congress—who demand free-market rules by day and collect their government welfare checks in the mail at night, payments that subsidize businesses that otherwise would fail. Over the past couple of decades, welfare for the super-wealthy seems to be the only kind of welfare our society tolerates.
In the 11 years for which the Environmental Working Group has compiled data, the federal government paid out a total of $178 billion to American farmers. We’re not talking about the Joads here. The bulk of subsidies go to the wealthy, not small farmers, as Ken Cook, the group’s president, explained to the Central Valley (Calif.) Business Times:
American taxpayers have been writing farm subsidy checks to wealthy absentee land owners, state prison systems, universities, public corporations, and very large, well-heeled farm business operations without the government so much as asking the beneficiaries if they need our money. ... Even if you live smack in the middle of a big city, type in a ZIP code and you’ll find farm subsidy recipients.
Chuck Grassley, the longtime Republican senator from Iowa who warns his constituents of Obama’s “trend toward socialism,” has seen his family collect $1 million in federal handouts over an 11-year period, with Grassley’s son receiving $699,248 and the senator himself pocketing $238,974. Even Grassley’s grandson is learning to ride through life on training wheels, snagging $5,964 in 2005 and $2,363 in 2006. In the Grassley family they learn early how to enjoy other people’s money.
Sen. Grassley railed against government intervention in the health care market, telling The Washington Times, “Whenever the government does more ... that’s a movement toward socialism.” As the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, he ought to know, especially because the government has done more for him and his kin than for Americans struggling with high medical bills and mortgages. Even the free-market think tank the Heritage Foundation criticized Grassley on his deep connections to farming interests and his stubborn lack of transparency.
Then there’s Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., whose family has been on the government take for at least the past 11 years, pocketing some $500,000. The senator recently held a “prayercast” with Michele Bachmann to beseech God to kill health care reform as soon as possible because it would bring an evil socialist spirit into America. Like Bachmann, Brownback has a fierce belief in God, the free market and a two-year limit on all welfare benefits—unless it’s welfare to rich Republicans who don’t need it.
Not surprisingly, Blue Dog Democrats are on board with this welfare-for-the-rich thing. Max Baucus, the fiscally conservative Democratic senator from Montana who did his best to sabotage the health care reform process before it ever began, collected $250,000 in taxpayer subsidies to his family’s farm while fighting to keep Americans at the mercy of free-market health insurance. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, another Democrat, also helped hold the line against so-called socialized medicine for Americans who need assistance, even though her family farm business follows the socialized subsidy playbook to a T. The Lincolns pocketed $715,000 in farm subsidies over a 10-year period, and the senator even admitted to using $10,000 of it as petty cash in 2007. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota stayed true to her conservative free-market roots by voting against the public option. Meanwhile, her daddy, Lars Herseth, a former South Dakota legislator, collected a welfare jackpot of $844,725 paid out between 1995 and 2006.
That’s just the way the game is played these days. Republicans and conservative Democrats bitch and moan about the allegedly Marxist underpinnings of universal health care and do everything they can to deny struggling Americans access to social services. Meanwhile, many of them profit off taxpayers in a massive welfare program.
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.
Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.
The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved - Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) - is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians' work.
One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror".
While the CIA and the Palestinian Authority (PA) deny the US agency controls its Palestinian counterparts, neither denies that they interact closely in the West Bank. Details of that co-operation are emerging as some human rights organisations are beginning to question whether US intelligence agencies may be turning a blind eye to abusive interrogations conducted by other countries' intelligence agencies with whom they are working. According to the Palestinian watchdog al-Haq, human rights in the West Bank and Gaza have "gravely deteriorated due to the spreading violations committed by Palestinian actors" this year.
Most of those held without trial and allegedly tortured in the West Bank have been supporters of Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in 2006 but is denounced as a terrorist organisation by the PA - which in turn is dominated by the rival Fatah political faction - and by the US and EU. In the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has been in control for more than two years, there have been reports of its forces detaining and torturing Fatah sympathisers in the same way.
Among the human rights organisations that have documented or complained about the mistreatment of detainees held by the PA in the West Bank are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, al-Haq and the Israeli watchdog B'Tselem. Even the PA's human rights commission has expressed "deep concern" over the mistreatment of detainees.
The most common complaint is that detainees are severely beaten and subjected to a torture known as shabeh, during which they are shackled and forced to assume painful positions for long periods. There have also been reports of sleep deprivation, and of large numbers of detainees being crammed into small cells to prevent rest. Instead of being brought before civilian courts, almost all the detainees enter a system of military justice under which they need not be brought before a court for six months.
According to PA officials, between 400 and 500 Hamas sympathisers are held by the PSO and GI.
Some of the mistreatment has been so severe that at least three detainees have died in custody this year. The most recent was Haitham Amr, a 33-year-old nurse and Hamas supporter from Hebron who died four days after he was detained by GI officials last June. Extensive bruising around his kidneys suggested he had been beaten to death. Among those who died in GI custody last year was Majid al-Barghuti, 42, an imam at a village near Ramallah.
While there is no evidence that the CIA has been commissioning such mistreatment, human rights activists say it would end promptly if US pressure was brought to bear on the Palestinian authorities.
Shawan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq, said: "The Americans could stop it any time. All they would have to do is go to [prime minister] Salam Fayyad and tell him they were making it an issue.. Then they could deal with the specifics: they could tell him that detainees needed to be brought promptly before the courts."
A diplomat in the region said "at the very least" US intelligence officers were aware of the torture and not doing enough to stop it. He added: "There are a number of questions for the US administration: what is their objective, what are their rules of engagement? Do they train the GI and PSO according to the manual which was established by the previous administration, including water-boarding? Are they in control, or are they just witnessing?"
Sa'id Abu-Ali, the PA's interior minister, accepted detainees had been tortured and some had died, but said such abuses had not been official policy and steps were being taken to prevent them. He said such abuses "happen in every country in the world". Abu-Ali sought initially to deny the CIA was "deeply involved" with the two Palestinian intelligence agencies responsible for the torture of Hamas sympathisers, but then conceded that links did exist. "There is a connection, but there is no supervision by the Americans," he said. "It is solely a Palestinian affair. But the Americans help us."
The CIA does not deny working with the PSO and GI in the West Bank, although it will not say what use it has made of intelligence extracted during the interrogation of Hamas supporters. But it denies turning what one official described as "a Nelson's eye to abuse".
The CIA's spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, denied it played a supervisory role over the PSO or GI. "The notion that this agency somehow runs other intelligence services ... is simply wrong," he said. "The CIA ... only supports, and is interested in, lawful methods that produce sound intelligence."
Concern about detainee abuse is growing in the West Bank despite an effort by the international community to create Palestinian institutions that will guarantee greater security as a first step towards creating a Palestinian state. More than half of the PA's $2.8bn (Ł1.66bn) budget came from international donors last year; more than a quarter was swallowed up by the ministry of the interior and national security. Human Rights Watch and al-Haq have said that in raising the security capacity of the PA, donor countries have a responsibility to ensure it observes international human rights standards.
At the heart of the international effort is the creation of the Palestinian national security force, a 7,500-strong gendarmerie trained by US, British, Canadian and Turkish army officers under the command of a US general, Keith Dayton. Many Palestinians blame Dayton for the mistreatment of Hamas sympathisers, although the general's remit does not extend to either of the intelligence agencies responsible.
To be poor and white is a paradox in America. Whites, especially white males, are supposed to have an advantage they exploit mercilessly. Yet most of the poor people in the United States are white (51%) outnumbering blacks two to one and all other minority poverty groups combined. America is permeated with cultural myths about white skin's association with power, education and opportunity. Capitalist society teaches that we all get what we deserve, so if a white man does not succeed, it can only be due to laziness. But just like black and Latino ghetto dwellers, poor laboring whites live within a dead end social construction that all but guarantees failure. If your high school dropout daddy busted his ass for small bucks and never read a book in his life and your mama was a textile mill worker, chances are you are not going to be recruited by Yale Skull and Bones and grow up to be president of the United States, regardless of our national mythology to that effect. You are going to be pulling an eight-buck-an-hour shift work someplace and praying for enough overtime to make the heating bill. A worker.
The political left once supported these workers, stood on the lines taking its beatings at the plant gates alongside them. Now, comfortably ensconced in the middle class, the American left sees the same working whites as warmongering bigots, happy pawns of the empire. That is writing working folks off too cheaply, and it begs the question of how they came to be that way -- if they truly are. To cast them as a source of our deep national political problems is ridiculous. They are a symptom of the problems, and they may be making it worse because they are easily manipulated, or because they cannot tell an original idea from a beer fart. But they are not the root cause by any means. The left should take its cues from Malcolm X, who understood the need to educate and inform the entire African-American society before tackling the goal of unity. Same goes for white crackers. Nobody said it would be easy.
American Evangelicals Play Role In Uganda Effort To ‘Wipe Out’ Gays
Posted October 18th, 2009 by Wayne Besen
In March, American anti-gay activists traveled to Uganda for a conference that pledged to “wipe out” homosexuality. Seven months later, a draconian bill has been introduced that pledges to make good on this threat. The “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009” is so severe that it is designed to shred the spirit and suffocate the soul of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Ugandans. If it passes, Uganda will become a predator state that actively hunts down GLBT people to destroy them.
Uganda already punished gay intimacy with life in prison. But, apparently that was not harsh enough, with this bill penalizing anyone who “attempts to commit the offence” with up to seven years in jail. Additionally, a person charged will be forced to undergo an invasive medical examination to determine their HIV status. If the detainees are found to be HIV+, they may be executed.
This barbaric legislation stifles free speech by threatening anyone who is accused of “promoting” homosexuality with five to seven year prison sentences. Snitching on gay friends and family members is strongly encouraged because “failure to disclose the ‘offence’ within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.”
Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’s most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’s, converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (pictured top) to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’s leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’s “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’s conversion:
“So,” Doug Coe told us, “my friend said to the president, ‘why don’t you come and pray with me in America? I have a good group of friends—senators, congressmen—who I like to pray with, and they’d like to pray with you.’ And that president came to the Cedars (a religious retreat), and he met Jesus. And his name is Yoweri Museveni…And he is a good friend of the Family.”
The Family, of course, recently made headlines because one of its key members, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) had sex with his best friends wife, while they were working together. Another member, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), used one of the Family’s Washington properties to try to broker a deal to buy off the furious husband, who has since gone public with the Ensign scandal.
It is important for people to understand that The Fellowship and other anti-gay groups have long viewed Uganda as a laboratory to experiment with Christian theocracy. For example, fundamentalist organizations recently undermined successful HIV programs in Uganda by demanding abstinence only education, over condom use, which had been working to reduce infection rates.
This year’s notorious Kampala conference was the opening salvo in a campaign to crush GLBT lives. The seminar featured Scott Lively, author of The Pink Swastika, who blames the holocaust on gay people.
The hate forum also featured Don Schmierer, a board member of the “ex-gay” organization Exodus International, and Caleb Lee Brundidge, who works with discredited ex-gay “reorientation coach” Richard Cohen. These American “ex-gay” activists clearly left their stamp on this evil legislation, giving Ugandan officials a way to justify the abuse because they can claim that “sinful” gays can choose to change.
“This legislation further recognizes the fact that same sex attraction is not an innate and immutable characteristic and that people who experience this mental disorder can and have changed to a heterosexual orientation,” the bill said. “It also recognizes that because homosexuals are not born that way, but develop this disorder based on experiences and environmental conditions, it is preventable, especially among young people who are most vulnerable to recruitment into the homosexual lifestyle.”
Following the infamous conference, a Kampala newspaper named local gay people, placing their lives in immediate danger. Now, the government may soon declare it open season on GLBT individuals.
In 1994, I brought Rev. Mel White down to speak at an event in Fort Lauderdale. In his address, the former Christian right ghostwriter proclaimed of his previous employers, “They want you dead.”
The comment was at once riveting and alarmist to some in the crowd. Yet, the painful silence of anti-gay activists at home is making White appear downright prophetic. These Christian Colonialists invaded Uganda’s politics and culture, and the result is that they have ruined the lives of its GLBT citizens. The Fellowship, Exodus and other American fundamentalist organizations, appear quite unbothered by the poisonous fruits of their labor.
Uganda is a proxy in their culture war and we are witnessing exactly what these fanatics might do if they did not have the United States Constitution blocking their pious path to power. Let the record show that their “key man” controlled Uganda when a religious terror campaign was waged against an innocent minority – and these good Christians stood by and did not lift a finger to stop the horror.
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Posted December 15th, 2009 by Wayne Besen
A February 2008 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 16 percent of America’s 225 million adults are unaffiliated with any religion. According to the report, “When ‘childhood religion’ is compared against ‘current religion,’ the unaffiliated show a net increase of 8.8 percentage points, compared to a 7.5 point loss among Catholics, for example, or a 2.6 percent loss among Protestants.”
It is my belief that outrageously hypocritical behavior by conservative religious authorities is directly responsible for the surge in non-believers or those who shun organized religion. The ubiquitous scolds who dominate cable TV and Republican politics are too often conservatives of convenience, who believe they are exempt from practicing the strident rules that they preach.
For example, South Carolina’s First Lady, Jenny Sanford, filed for divorce last week after her husband, Gov. Mark Sanford (R), admitted an affair with a woman from Argentina. Until the scandal broke, Mark and Jenny posed as a beacon of Christian family values.
I can understand Jenny’s disgust with her husband, who left his four sons to cheat with his mistress on Father’s Day. But one can’t masquerade as a Bible-thumper when it comes to gay rights and other issues, and then say that the Bible is suddenly irrelevant when it comes to divorce.
Both Jenny and Mark profited from their charade, yet jilted Jenny wants to conveniently abandon biblical absolutism and utilize liberal divorce laws because her feelings are hurt. Sorry Jenny, but a mistress does not negate your marriage vows. Anyone can embrace the “sanctity of marriage” in good times. A true person of fundamentalist faith stays with the vows even when the relationship sours.
To highlight such hypocrisy, John Marcoa, a Sacramento Web-designer, has drafted a 2010 parody ballot measure that would ban divorce in California. Tellingly, the right wing organizations that fought to save marriage from gay couples have not lined up to support it.
From mega-churches to suburban strip mall ministries, fundamentalist youth rail against the secular culture, even as they ape it. They sport gaudy tattoos of Jesus, wear earrings in their noses and play imitation rock. On their fingers are silly chastity rings, when they really need chastity belts.
A recent New York Times magazine article points out that “More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once.”
Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean is the perfect spokesperson for liberal bashing libertines. She moralized over same-sex marriage, but expected forgiveness and understanding when, thanks to tabloid pictures, America got to know her in the biblical sense.
Perhaps the most amusing part of studying conservatives is their absurd claim that America is a Christian nation, which is impossible, because no two people can define what it means to be Christian. A new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report entitled, “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” concludes that people are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs”. Who knew crystals and Christ went so well together?
Last month, Watergate felon Chuck Colson joined a batch of wing nuts to write “The Manhattan Declaration”. This supposedly conservative manifesto began by shamelessly co-opting historical liberal successes. The Declaration reads:
“It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery…Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement…The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians…
It is true that Christians played a role in these movements. However, it was non-believers teaming up with liberal Christians to overcome the opposition of conservative Christians. The anti-gay signers of The Manhattan Declaration are the ideological heirs to those on the wrong side of history. It was remarkable how efficiently they scrubbed their own embarrassing past and replaced their monumental failures with liberal accomplishments.
Social conservatives are a loud bunch, but their power is slipping. I think back to Middle school, when I attended a Houston Rockets basketball game with my father. During a time out the “Voice of God” announced that a gay rights measure had been crushed. The enthusiastic crowd burst out in to loud cheers, which was quite devastating to a thirteen-year old coming to terms with his sexual orientation.
On Monday, Houston voters elected openly gay Annise Parker as mayor. Unlike my youth, I watched a Houston crowd cheer for progress instead of prejudice. No doubt there were countless social conservatives across the city slamming beers, ogling women who weren’t their wives and betting on sports – while bemoaning the city’s fallen values.
This is the lifestyle of today’s conservatives of convenience. They are all creed and no deed.
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(For some context, the official national unemployment rate is 10 percent, but the "underemployment rate" is 17.2 percent.)
Detroit city officials argue that, when workers who are underemployed are added to the calculation, the number of city residents who are out of work is close to one in every two.
The Detroit News reports:
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that for the year that ended in September, Michigan's official unemployment rate was 12.6 percent. Using the broadest definition of unemployment, the state unemployment rate was 20.9 percent, or 66 percent higher than the official rate. Since Detroit's official rate for October was 27 percent, that broader rate pushes the city's rate to as high as 44.8 percent."
The alarming numbers coming from Detroit officials are supported by another set of recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which stand in harsh contrast to the more positive national employment picture. The jobless rate in the Detroit MSA (metropolitan statistical area) increased 7.3 percentage points in just one year, the highest increase for any metro area in the nation.
Statewide, Michigan still leads the nation in official unemployment, with a rate of 15.1 percent. Homelessness, especially among those becoming homeless for the first time, is expected to jump at least 10 percent this year.
The employment situation, as The Detroit News suggests, is actually significantly worse for men in Detroit:
For a variety or reasons -- access to transportation, job availability and work skills -- an estimated 48.5 percent of male Detroiters ages 20 to 64 didn't have a job in 2008, according to census figures. For Michigan, it's 26.6 percent; for the United States, 21.7 percent.
The paper's calculations back up Mayor Dave Bing's assertion at last week's White House Jobs Summit that Detroit's unemployment rate was "probably close to 50 percent." Bing was in Washington to press the federal government to channel more money directly into city clean-up projects and infrastructure development. "We've got projects that are shovel-ready," he pleaded.
It's that time of the year when our friends and family ask what we want for the holidays.
But as we think of our own wish lists, it's easy to forget that too many families -- right here in America -- aren't even getting what they need this holiday season.
A shocking one in six Americans, including one in four children, suffers from food insecurity, according to a recent study by the United States Department of Agriculture. Families that can't make ends meet are often forced to skip meals -- sometimes even for days.
Please donate $30 -- enough to feed a family of four for a day -- or more to Feeding America this holiday season.
Feeding America is one of many important organizations working not just to feed the hungry, but to end hunger altogether here in America. Feeding America alone provides food to 25 million people each year, organizes communities to combat hunger, and advocates for policies to finally eradicate hunger in America.
Ending hunger in America is no small feat, but it's a worthy cause and one we can achieve working together.
Please donate $30 -- enough to feed a family of four for a day -- or more to Feeding America this holiday season.
In past years the Friends of Dick Durbin community has stepped up during the holidays to donate over $55,000 to provide plumpynut "ready-to-use food" to malnourished children in the developing world and buy school supplies for students in the desperately poor nation of Haiti.
But while our nation is blessed with abundance compared to these places, millions here know only scarcity, too. These families don't "want" our help -- they need it.
Please help fight hunger by donating to Feeding America today.
In a country as wealthy and prosperous as our own, no one should go hungry. Families should have access to food, and they shouldn't want for this basic human need -- especially during the holidays.
Thank you for donating generously to Feeding America, and Happy Holidays to you and yours.
Warm regards,
Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator
Visit DickDurbin.com | Support Feeding America
Paid for by Friends of Dick Durbin
101 West Grand Ave. #200
Chicago, IL 60610
Bankers, however, are betting that we will reject any call for redistributing wealth. After all, most of us, like Joe the Plumber, view the accumulation of wealth as an inalienable right as long as it's earned fair and square.
But do the super-rich really earn their wealth?
Financial wealth is a slippery concept especially as it slithers through a mountain of bailouts now running somewhere near $13 trillion. (TARP is a small part of the panoply of taxpayer financial guarantees for Wall Street.) Given that virtually every large bank would have gone under without our bailouts, how do we calculate who "earned" what?
For the three years prior to the crash, the 19 largest banks and investment houses "earned" about $300 billion, half of which went to bonuses. We now know that these profits came primarily from creating and trading financial instruments that turned out to have little or no value.
Supposedly, Wall Street's financial engineers "earned" their massive bonuses because they invented new ways to eliminate risk from complex securities layered on pools of incredibly risky debt. Wrong. When the risk returned with a vengeance, the $300 billion in profits turned into $300 billion of losses. The entire financial system froze and began to collapse a la 1929, causing trillions of dollars to disappear from our economy.
At this point the billionaire bailout society revealed itself as did the modern meaning of "earned wealth." When the financial sector imploded, the government bailed it out with our money. Obviously the earlier profits were phony as were the bonuses of the previous three years. (Did the bankers give back the bogus bonus money based entirely on fictitious profits? Hell no!)
It gets worse. After we poured our trillions into the financial system, the banks became profitable again, even as the rest of the economy suffered record unemployment. The banks, in fact, still are refusing to lend, which further drives up unemployment. Instead they are returning to risky trading practices, knowing the government will back them. To get free of pay restrictions, even the most troubled banks are quickly repaying their TARP money through a series of Ponzi moves. (See "Wall Street's Latest Ponzi Scheme: Bailout Repayments?")
Ok, you tell me: Who earned what? What value was really produced on Wall Street as our bailouts prop up the entire financial sector? Are bankers are actually "earning" anything at all? More to the point, are you really worried about redistributing wealth that derives entirely from this casino/bailout scam?
Our distorted wealth and income distribution, the worst since 1929, poses a clear and present danger to economic revival and to rebuilding a solid middle class. Here's one statistic from The Looting of America that still stuns me: In 1970 the ratio of the compensation of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average production worker was 45 to 1. By 2006 it was an astounding 1,723 to one! We didn't get there by accident.
Did these CEOs earn it fair and square? According to economic theory, that jump should reflect an enormous increase in their human capital. Did someone alter their genes to make them that much smarter? Does this reflect a miraculous jump in entrepreneurial skills?
The reality is much simpler. The rules changed.
From 1930 through the 1970s we understood that the key to America's well-being was a relatively compressed wealth and income distribution. Millionaires did not disappear, but during the Eisenhower years the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $3 million (in today's dollars) was 91 percent. Yes, there were loopholes galore, but the 1950s and 1960s are considered the most egalitarian years on record and working people developed into the world's largest middle class. This defined the American dream and it came about by design, not by accident.
During the deregulatory 1980s, the top tax rates dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent, while much of the New Deal's financial controls also were dismantled. You want to mint billionaires? That's how to do it.
Once the billionaire class was off and running, we faced a mounting series of booms and busts - from the savings and loan fiasco to the housing bubble. There was so much money at the top that the wealthy literally ran out of investments opportunities in the real economy. Wall Street, now unchained, did its job: It created fantasy finance securities to meet the unfulfilled investment demand.
If we don't get a grip on the demand -- billionaires' excessive wealth -- the casino will blossom again as Wall Street comes up with ever more sophisticated fantasy finance instruments. With billions of dollars at stake, they will find a way around the new regulations. You can bet on that.
This leaves us with two very problematic propositions:
First, the income distribution is so out of whack that progressive income taxes alone won't correct it. We also need wealth taxes on those with more than $500 million in net worth. (It's hard to make a case that anyone needs more than half a billion dollars.) Taxing 5 to 10 percent of this group's wealth each year would generate about $200 billion a year to help finance jobs programs and our growing debt. Also, it would help dry up demand for speculative investments
Second, we need to end casino banking: Instead of relying on a failed banking system and a new set of Rube Goldberg-like regulations, we should transform the 19 largest Wall Street firms (which control more than 60 percent of the nation's banking) into tightly regulated pubic utilities.
This is a frightening vision for libertarians, free-market ideologues, anti-government activists, Wall Street bankers and Joe the Plumber. But, if we truly value free enterprise in the real economy, we must seriously consider wealth redistribution and bank nationalization.
re;All Republicans working against fixing economy
Date: 2009-12-15, 10:08PM CST
Reply to: comm-qyfky-1512233463@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
"Continuing government deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted, not in the touted increased competition, but rather in an accelerating wave of corporate mergers and acquisitions that have produced a handful of multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates. The largest of these conglomerates are rapidly growing even bigger by consuming their competition, almost tripling in size during the 1990s."
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It's gonna take getting every Repugnican out of office to bring this economy and government back to the people.
How The federal Reserve Controls America (More Than Mind Control)
Date: 2009-12-15, 2:26PM CST
Reply to: comm-druyv-1511583815@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry.
While applauding House passage Friday of overhaul legislation and urging quick Senate action, Obama expressed frustration with banks that were helped by a taxpayer bailout and now are "fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists" against new government controls.
In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said the economy is only now beginning to recover from the "irresponsibility" of Wall Street institutions that "gambled on risky loans and complex financial products" in pursuit of short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences.
"It was, as some have put it, risk management without the management," he said.
The president also told CBS' "60 Minutes" that "the people on Wall Street still don't get it. ... They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at the banks. Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year ... in decades and you guys caused the problem," Obama said in an excerpt released in advance of Sunday night's broadcast of his interview.
No House Republicans voted for the bill, and 27 Democrats voted against it. Opponents argue that the broad legislation overreaches and would institutionalize bailouts for the financial industry.
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is working on its own version of the package.
In his address, Obama contended that the worst economic downturn since the Depression wouldn't have happened if the rules governing Wall Street been clearer and enforcement tougher.
Obama singled out Republicans and industry lobbyists for trying to block the changes.
Last week, top House Republicans urged more than 100 financial industry lobbyists to work harder to defeat the bill. Lobbyists have spent more than $300 million this year trying to scuttle the bill.
Opponents say that the changes would limit consumer choice and that added federal oversight would stunt financial market innovation.
Obama suggested that was one risk worth taking.
"Americans don't choose to be victimized by mysterious fees, changing terms and pages and pages of fine print. And while innovation should be encouraged, risky schemes that threaten our entire economy should not," he said. "We can't afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown."
Obama has scheduled a meeting Monday at the White House with financial services industry leaders to seek support for his effort to tighten federal oversight of the industry and to limit pay for top executives at institutions that accepted billions in bailout money from the government.
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reader comments.
Figures. Colorado springs: right wing capital of the world.
Before Reagan got into office there were no homeless in Colorado Springs. I grew up there. I know. I walked and rode my bike through every inch of the town and didn't see a single homeless person or even an old fashion hobo.
With in a couple years of Reagan getting into office there were homeless everywhere, living in caves in Williams Canyon and camped along the Gold Camp Road.
By the way, while we are at it, the real estate developers and right wing politicians have wrecked Colorado Springs. It used to be the pride of the state: beautiful city, low crime, and quiet life style but the republicans turned it into a continuous strip mall, with no city planning. North circle drive = arm pit of the universe. They would sell their own mother to make a dollar.
The greedy racist fraudulent white trash newspaper owners just want to sell newspapers to pay for that fake and fraudulent $15,000.00 per month house payment and keep their wetback house keepers and yard trimming hoes so they can continue to live in their self induced white trash fantasy land lifestyles. Are you getting it yet? Do you know how it works yet dumb ass? Plus don't forget they have to pay for all those toys for their white trash kids.............piano lessons, swimming lessons, ballet, cricket, drug treatment, lacrosse.................you know all that fake fantasy land BS.
LEAVE TIGER WOODS ALONE (DISTURBIA)
Date: 2009-12-11, 11:42PM CST
Reply to: see below
ACORN claimed in its lawsuit that Congress' decision to cut off its funding was unconstitutional because it punitively targeted an organization.
A lawyer for ACORN says the decision sends a sharp message to Congress that it can't single out an individual or organization without due process.
ACORN portrays itself as an advocate for low-income and minority homebuyers and others. Critics say it has violated the tax-exempt status of some affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities.
Also ICE has arrested nearly 300 illegal wetback Mexican aliens in Southern California and preparing them for deportation........Asta la vista jotos...back to casa............Happy holidays.
Glenn Beck conflict of interest. goldline.com sales were 50% more after Glenn Beck used his FOX Television show to promote to buy gold. What a great sales man.
Clarion Fund (radicalislam.org) is a controversial New York City-based nonprofit organization[1] founded in 2006 whose stated mission is "to educate Americans about issues of national security," with its main focus on what it calls "the most urgent threat of radical Islam."[2] The organization was founded by Canadian-Israeli[3] film producer Raphael Shore.[4]
According to Clarion Fund's incorporation papers, it is based at the same address as Aish Hatorah, a pro-Israel organization.[5] The three founders of The Clarion Fund are or were full-time employees of Aish HaTorah.[6] Raphael Shore, the leader of The Clarion Fund is also a full-time employee of Aish HaTorah.[6] The Clarion Fund has collaborated with pro-Israel media watch organization HonestReporting in the production of its films. HonestReporting originally was a project of Aish Hatorah.[5]
In September 2008, the group gained attention by distributing, with the aid of the Endowment for Middle East Truth,[5] free copies of the film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, produced and co-written by Shore, by mail and in newspaper supplements.[7] The Fund has reportedly sent 28 million DVDs to at least 70 newspapers in swing states to place at the doorstep of newspaper subscribers.[8]
Critics have criticized the Clarion Fund's distribution of Obsession, objecting to scenes of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers as misleadingly portraying Islam as a threatening religion bent on the destruction of Western civilization.[9]
Supporters of the film disagree with this characterization, calling it "required viewing" and noting that it been a selection at several film festivals, where it has won jury prizes.[10]
The movie starts with a disclaimer: "This is a film about radical Islamic terror. A dangerous ideology, fueled by religious hatred. It's important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror. This is not a film about them. This is a film about a radical worldview, and the threat it poses to us all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike."[11][12][13][14][15]
In September 2008, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the Clarion Fund's DVD distribution claiming that it was an attempt to influence the 2008 US presidential election. As evidence of inappropriate political bias on the part of The Clarion Fund, AP cited Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania reporting "that a Clarion Fund Web site ran a pro-McCain article before it attracted notice and was taken down."[16][17]
The Clarion Fund, who's website only identifies the group as "a 501(c)(3) organization. We are independent and do not accept funding from the U.S. Government, political institutions, or foreign organizations." It does not identify who it's board of directors are, but says it's "mission is to educate Americans about issues of national security." Their focus "is on the most urgent threat of radical Islam. By utilizing the following three mediums, Clarion Fund is helping Americans understand that the mainstream media is not adequately conveying the reality of radical Islam."
Through some web digging, I was able to identify three players, Raphael Shore who is a Canadian citizen who is the producer/co-writer of the film and founder of the Clarion Fund, Wayne Kopping, a South African national, the director and co-writer and Gregory Ross, who is the communications director of this New York based non-profit group. Ross was "originally from Los Angeles and have lived overseas for many years. I moved back to LA from New York after 9-11, and a stint on Wall Street, and started working in the Hollywood Entertainment community." Ross does not disclose how the film was produced, but is quoted as saying "The film was financed by a concerned citizen who has a long standing relationship with our organization. The cost was under $500k and it took over a year to complete." Something about this group doesn't pass the smell test, particularly when no information is available about its donors and board of directors.
Maybe most concerning about this film is that, according to Ross "I know that the U.S. Department of the Navy uses the film and that it has also been shown on Capitol Hill on many occasions in order to education politicians. We have also screened it at countless universities and colleges. However we are unsure as to if it is being used in their curriculums – we certainly hope it is." A film that
By law, 501(c)(3) organizations are not permitted to engage in political activity, endorse or oppose political candidates, or donate money or time to political campaigns, so it was surprising to learn that there was an article on the group's new Web site, www.radicalislam.org, that backed Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The article discussed both candidates and concludes:
"McCain's policies seek to confront radical Islamic extremism and terrorism and roll it back while [Barack] Obama's, although intending to do the same, could in fact make the situation facing the West even worse."
According to Clarion Fund director of communications Gregory Ross, the article "crossed the line" and was removed.
Gregory Ross also said in an interview with Frontpage magazine, a right-wing online publication, "we are just a few weeks from completely our next documentary, “The Third Jihad” - though it is not a sequel. This new film will take a look at radical Islam’s activities here in the U.S. We should be releasing the film in early October. So stay tuned."
Stay tuned indeed, as this group tries to scare voters with their own form of psychological terrorism.
________________________________________________
LOOK AT RADICAL ISLAM.ORG (DISTURBIA)
Date: 2009-12-08, 2:11AM CST
Reply to: see below
Even though Broidy is cooperating with the still unfolding probe, his guilty plea to a felony charge of rewarding official misconduct -- including bribing one official by helping finance his B-list movie and giving $90,000 to another one's girlfriend -- could mean up to four years in prison.
Broidy -- who also served on the board of trustees for the Simon Wiesenthal Center -- also resigned as chairman of Markstone Capital Group, agreeing to forfeit $18 million to the state of New York.
"It was an old-fashioned case of payoffs to state officials," Cuomo said. "This case is effectively bribery of state officials."
Broidy, a longtime fixture on the Los Angeles' Republican fundraising scene, served as a former committee chairman for the Republican National Committee and appointed to the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2006 by George W. Bush.
Broidy's plea marks the fifth criminal plea in the ongoing investigation into whether decisions over how to invest retirees' money were illegally influenced by money and politics.
A spokesman for Mr. Broidy said in a prepared statement: "Mr. Broidy regrets the actions that brought about this course of events, but is pleased to have resolved this matter with the NYAG and will be cooperating in the ongoing investigation."
According to officials, Broidy also admitted to spending $75,000 to take comptroller's officials on lavish trips to Israel and Italy. He said payments were concealed in false invoices submitted to the comptroller's office.
He said he gave $300,000 to help finance a B-list movie called "Chooch," linked to a senior executive with the state pension fund. In addition Broidy paid over $90,000 to the girlfriend of a high-ranking OSC official from April 2004 through October 2005. The payments were used to cover the girlfriend's living expenses and rent. Broidy also covered the girlfriend's hospital bills. Broidy also agreed to pay $5,500 a month to a relative of the girlfriend beginning in October 2003, for a total of $44,000. These payments were concealed through a sham loan agreement between Broidy and the relative.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Broidy has also received four subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission since May, three seeking documents and one calling on him to appear.
At least one subpoena called on Broidy to disclose all of his contacts with Alfred J.R. Villalobos, a middleman who has received at least $70 million in fees to help investment managers get business at the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Emerald Companies will be submitting permitting and zoning plans to the city this week as the next step toward building an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detainee facility in Mineral Wells.
“I see no stumbling blocks or hindrances at this point,” Steve Afeman, chief operating officer of Emerald Companies, said. There maybe a shortage of construction workers but I think we can hire illegals if no one complains, and when they get through building the facility we can lock em up in it.
The Mineral Wells Industrial Foundation and Emerald Companies entered into an option agreement Jan. 15.
“Basically, they’ve got 90 days to exercise their option … or they don’t get the land,” Industrial Foundation’s Steve Butcher said. “This makes us [feel the project] is moving ahead.”
If Emerald Companies meets the time frame for several milestones for getting funding and finalizing a deal with the city, Butcher said, the land will be theirs to keep.
Emerald Companies approached city officials in early 2007 about building and operating a detention facility for illegal immigrants, where they would be temporarily housed prior to deportation.
After considering renting property from the city on the runway last year, Emerald decided to return to their original plan for the detention center to be built on 60 acres of raw land north of the helipad at Mineral Wells Municipal Airport. The site does not have direct access to the runway.
The land is the last piece of property owned by the Industrial Foundation, which seeks to attract jobs and help Mineral Wells grow, Butcher said, so they are now talking with the city and county about finding more funding.
The city must reach an agreement with ICE to house detainees and will contract out with Emerald Companies.
City Manager Lance Howerton said the city will be looking to broaden the definition of correctional facilities in the zoning ordinance which was adopted in 1998 to encompass how the Corrections Corporation of America pre-parole transfer facility currently operates in Mineral Wells and allow for the detainee detention facility.
"We can't run econometric models. The numbers aren't good enough," says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York.
One challenge in performing any calculations is agreeing on the number of undocumented workers. Only estimates exist, and they range from 9 million to 20 million. The conventional estimate is 11 million. But no one really knows for sure.
By way of contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates how many people out of a workforce of 143 million are unemployed. Last month, 7,193,000, or 4.8 percent, were out pounding the pavement.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which is in favor of some restrictions on immigration, recently issued a report looking at jobs and undocumented workers. One of its conclusions was that between March 2000 and March 2005, only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults went to people born in the US.
"This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18- to 64-year-old population," writes Steve Camarota, director of research.
Howard Hayghe, an economist at the Department of Labor, confirms that this number is correct. But he also points out that by 2005, the economy was doing a better job of producing jobs - and the percentage of native-born residents finding jobs rose to 41 percent. In other words, the stronger economy absorbed more workers of all educational levels. "The more office buildings you build, the more people you need to clean them. The more roads you build, the more workers you need," says Mr. Hayghe.
In addition to the 7 million Americans looking for jobs, another 1.5 million are considered to be "marginally attached" - that is, not actively looking for work. Moreover, some 386,000 are counted as "discouraged" workers. And there are about 19 million, including students and senior citizens, who are not in the workforce.
"If we close the borders and have less undocumented workers, it would put some upward pressure on overall wages," says Mr. Chan. "It's no secret business will have to pay workers more money."
The National Academy of Science reported in Dropping Out - Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005 that from 1980 to 1995 there was a 44% of the decline in the real wages of high school dropouts as a result of immigration. Since Black and Hispanics Americans lead the statistics in dropping out of high school this means that illegal aliens affect these two groups the greatest and is a great contributor to the high unemployment rate in this segment of the population.
A commentary by Dan Stein, Executive Director, Federation for American Immigration Reform in Mass Immigration Takes Greatest Toll on African-Americans notes that:
"In some cases the influx of immigrants has allowed native-born workers to move up the ladder. But in all too many other instances, mass immigration has moved American workers off the ladder entirely, particularly Black Americans. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences done during the economic boom of the late-1990s, the dramatic rise in immigration was a direct cause of dramatic declines in jobs and income for Americans with a high school education or less.
If one tracks the economic progress of African-Americans, or the lack of it, over the past century there is an unmistakable correlation with patterns of immigration. Blacks have made the greatest economic advances during periods of low immigration, while economic conditions have stagnated or regressed during period of high immigration."
The prestigious Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns recently published a report, The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface, which claims that the illegal alien population is double the official government estimates and that the Government vastly underestimates the cost of illegal immigration. According to Bear Stearns:
* The illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million - roughly the population of New York State.
* Between 4 and 6 million jobs have shifted to the underground economy since 1990. These are not "jobs Americans won't do, but rather jobs Americans used to do.
* On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.
* There are approximately 5 million illegal workers who are collecting wages on a cash basis and are avoiding both income and FICA taxes.
* The United States is hooked on cheap, illegal workers and is deferring the costs of providing public services to these quasi-Americans.
Long before the nation was flooded with illegal aliens somebody picked the lettuce, mowed the grass, flipped burgers, dug the ditches, and cleaned hotel rooms. These entry level jobs were done by guest agricultural workers, the working poor, legal immigrants and, in the summer, by students. Given supply and demand in a capitalistic society and there still are plenty of legal immigrants and resident Americans who would do these jobs at a fair and free market wage.
As Victor Davis Hanson recently noted in Rethinking illegal immigration:
"Areas in the United States that have experienced far less illegal immigration seem to have no insurmountable problems manning restaurants, cutting lawns or serving the needs of hotel guests. Travel to the Midwest, for example, and you'll see students are employed as cooks and maids. Construction relies on legal laborers. The evidence suggests massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents - while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States."
When illegal aliens take these jobs they not only take jobs from American teens and drive the wages down but also deny entry level work and the ladder of opportunity from the working poor and legal immigrants thus making the American Dream harder to obtain. Additionally, even Wal-Mart can't hire all the retirees who want to work part time. Have you ever gone to Las Vegas? Next time note all the retirees working in the restaurants.
As noted by Frosty Wooldridge in Our Country Coming Undone:
"Illegal immigration hurts America's poor. In a recent account in the New York Times, Black children suffered 50% greater poverty in the past 10 years due to immigration. Illegal immigrants compete for jobs normally done by America's poor. A study by the Center For Immigration Studies wrote that "Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled and it's hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration because it tends to reduce wages for U.S. workers.
... Cheap labor from illegal immigration is not "cheap." It's subsidized by all of us in the form of our tax dollars paying for their services. It makes a few employers wealthy at the expense of all of us."
Steven Malanga notes in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy, "A handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill." Sounds like a great deal for some employers but, as usual, the taxpayers are the ones getting ripped off.
An October 16, 2006 article in the Boston Globe, by Andrew M. Sum and Paul E. Harrington, Two kinds of immigration, notes:
"The overall effects of new immigrant inflows from 2000 to 2005 on American labor markets are unprecedented ... new immigrants accounted for 86 percent of the total gain in employment that the nation experienced over the past five years. Our analysis suggests that close to two-thirds of these new immigrant arrivals were unauthorized. Among males, all of the net growth in employment between 2000 and 2005 was attributable to new immigrants. This extraordinary finding casts serious doubt on the common contention that new immigrants simply take jobs that Americans do not want.
Worse still, the impact of this displacement of native-born workers and established immigrants was concentrated among young people ... Available evidence shows that there has been a high rate of displacement of younger, native-born male workers and younger women without four-year college degrees by newer immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. Our own statistical analysis of native-born adults under 25 revealed that higher inflows of new immigrant workers in their state of residence hurt their ability to find jobs. The negative effects were larger for young men than for women, for young adults with no postsecondary schooling, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males.
The notion that there is a shortage of unskilled, low-educated workers in the United States and in Massachusetts is a canard. The evidence - ranging from employment rates to measures of changes in annual earnings, weekly wages, and employee benefits - reveals a surplus of less- educated workers in both national and state labor markets. The lifetime earnings of adults without high school diplomas over the past 25 years have declined catastrophically, and these declines have imposed increasing fiscal burdens on the rest of the taxpaying public."
A May 8, 2006 article in the Washington Times, Immigrants and wages, reports:
"Examining more closely the pattern within the 2000-2005 period provides compelling evidence illegal immigrants have been used deliberately to force down wages. In most industries that use illegal immigrants heavily, inflation-adjusted wages rose modestly during the first years of the current decade. Yet soon after, they dropped significantly. Obviously, the nation's restaurateurs, hoteliers, contractors and cleaners decided paying workers $12 per hour and often less, with few or no benefits, was outrageous. In response, they stepped up efforts to bring Mexican and Central American labor markets and standards into the United States.
The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay. If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout U.S. history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren't good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.
Denying pauper-wage industries the crutch of a wage-depressing flood of illegal immigrants is essential for keeping the United States a high-wage, First World economy. It is also essential for offering real economic opportunity to legal immigrants and native-born low-income Americans. The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay."
Steven Malanga also stated in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy:
"Consequently, as the waves of immigration continue, the sheer number of those competing for low-skilled service jobs makes economic progress difficult. A study of the impact of immigration on New York City's restaurant business, for instance, found that 60 percent of immigrant workers do not receive regular raises, while 70 percent had never been promoted. One Mexican dishwasher aptly captured the downward pressure that all these arriving workers put on wages by telling the study's authors about his frustrating search for a 50-cent raise after working for $6.50 an hour: "I visited a few restaurants asking for $7 an hour, but they only offered me $5.50 or $6," he said. "I had to beg [for a job]."
Similarly, immigration is also pushing some native-born workers out of jobs, as Kenyon College economists showed in the California nail-salon workforce. Over a 16-year period starting in the late 1980s, some 35,600 mostly Vietnamese immigrant women flooded into the industry, a mass migration that equaled the total number of jobs in the industry before the immigrants arrived. Though the new workers created a labor surplus that led to lower prices, new services, and somewhat more demand, the economists estimate that as a result, 10,000 native-born workers either left the industry or never bothered entering it.
With all the MSM hand wringing over the plight of the illegal alien workers recently rounded up at the Swift meat processing plants across the US in December of 2006, few reported that it was knowingly going on for years, as noted by Joel Dyer in an article in the Greeley Tribune, Meatpacking industry has a long history of reliance on immigrant laborer, and that management used illegal labor and the high turn over to artificially keep wages down.
You probably also missed the AP article in the Greeley Tribune, Former Dallas employees sue Swift alleging wage manipulation, where some former employees aren't too happy about the way Swift kept the wages down.
As for doing the dirty work that Americans just won't do, even at those artificially depressed wages, did you happen to see another report in the Greeley Tribune by Bill Jackson, More applicants applying for Swift & Co., on your local news where it was reported that 800 citizens and legal immigrants applied for the few dozen vacant positions in the Greeley meat packing plant?
That little fact, which goes counter the MSM's constant blather, was also reported by Fernando Quintero in the Rocky Mountain News in Loss for one is another's gain - Applicants line up to fill jobs left empty by Swift plant raid but it didn't make the national news cycle either.
So even with the depressed wages, caused by illegal aliens, it would appear that there are still a lot of legal immigrants and Americans willing to do the jobs the MSM say only illegal immigrants will do.
All of these dynamics were actually illustrated in another raid as noted in a January 17, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, An immigration raid aids Blacks for a time, where it was reported:
"STILLMORE, Ga. -- After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.
But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared "Increased Wages" at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour -- more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them Black -- the plant hired about 200.
... For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant's processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.
The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes."
Note that the plant once had predominantly Black workers but then replaced most of them with illegal alien Hispanic workers at lower wages. When the illegal aliens were removed, the Black workers got their jobs back and the wages went up. The article continues to go on talking about the problems of the plant keeping its new workers at such low wages. However, this is not an argument for needing workers that will "do the work Americans won't do" but illustrates that the free market equilibrium of supply and demand is still not functioning in the plant. Rather than pay a decent age to get good workers, the mindset is still to pay the lowest wage possible for a dirty job so consumers can pay ten cents less for a pound for chicken. The use of cheap labor also inhibits modernization, automation, and mechanization where productivity would go up resulting in even more skilled and higher priced employees producing more packaged chicken than lower priced employees for the same total labor costs. Unfortunately, until all the illegal aliens working in all the other chicken processing plants have been removed the free market will still be distorted.
Given the current excitement amongst the Democrats by the potential Presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, it is worth remembering an article by Robert Engler from 2004, A goblin is haunting Barack Obamas election campaign to become the Democratic senator from Illinois. That goblin is in the shape ... where it was noted:
"The fact of the matter is, illegal immigration, especially illegal immigration from Mexico, is hurting Black Americans. If Democratic candidates ever getting around to speaking the truth, they will have to tell Black voters that illegal immigration is taking jobs away from Black Americans, cutting into resources available for welfare, and restructuring public schools and many urban areas. In short, the votes of Latinos are brought by the Democrats at the expense of Black America.
Tony Brown, author of What Mama Taught Me, knows all too well how Black Americans are injured by illegal immigration. He writes, '''The U. S. Census Bureau reported in the New York Times... the poor Black and Latino communities lose the most income of any group of Americans, including all Americans who did not finish high school and all Americans who are paying higher taxes to subsidize welfare benefits for illegal immigrants and businesses that hire them. Illegal immigrants overuse welfare benefits and services and underpay income taxes for a net loss to local, state and federal taxpayers.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) http://www.fairus.org, has also documented the detrimental impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. In California, Blacks are being forced out from communities like South Central, Los Angeles, where they have long lived. ''This once predominantly Black neighborhood is becoming largely Hispanic. South Central is being transformed. Here we talk about 'Black flight.' People are leaving neighborhoods where they have lived for years because they don't feel like they belong any more reports Terry Anderson in the San Francisco Examiner, (Feb. 3, 1999.)"
The Federation for American Immigration Reform continues in its report that, ''Other statistics are also sobering: a GAO study found that a decade of heavy immigration to Los Angeles had changed the janitorial industry from a mostly native Black, unionized workforce to one of non-unionized Latinos, many of whom were illegal aliens. According to the Census, the employment of Black Americans as hotel workers in California dropped 30 percent in the 1980s, while the number of immigrants with such jobs rose 166 percent. A similar story can be told of the garment industry, the restaurant business, hospital work, and public service jobs.'' One can expect Blacks in Illinois to suffer the same declines as illegal immigration from Mexico continues.
Immigration researcher and commentator Roy Beck noted in his 1996 book, The Case Against Immigration that: ''To review the Black side of our nation's immigration tradition is to observe African Americans periodically trying to climb the mainstream economic ladder, only to be shoved aside each time. It is to see one immigrant wave after another climb onto and up that ladder while planting their feet on the backs of Black Americans ... The most racist policy in this country for the past 25 years has been our immigration policy, because it has been the worst thing that has happened to Blacks from the federal government since slavery.''
The Harvest Institute also documents the impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. ''Dr. Claud Anderson, president of The Harvest Institute, a Black research and education organization, announced that The Harvest Institute does not support President Bush's recently proposed amnesty for illegal immigrant aliens and has released an Information Alert (available at www.harvestinstitute.org). Dr. Anderson said, ''Despite the stance of many civil rights groups, immigration's impact on native Blacks and their communities is disproportionate, direct and devastating. Blacks are losing faith because the government continues a pattern of bestowing the rights that should first go to native Blacks to immigrants from foreign countries. Native Blacks are ignored and patronized with symbolic and ceremonial actions by both political parties. The issue of immigration is roiling within Black communities and has become ... divisive.''
As the Democrat's ''multicultural'' candidate, Barack Obama has little to say about this multicultural issue. You can read his position papers and look at his website and find no recognition that illegal immigration from Mexico is hurting Black Americans. One has to wonder what kind of immigration policy Obama will vote for if he ever becomes a U. S. Senator. One has to wonder even more why Black Americans continue to vote Democratic, when the Democrats are not looking out for their interests.''
This article is referenced not to slam Obama or the Democrats, because the collateral damage from illegal aliens is affecting all Americans of all political parties, but to illustrate that the Democrats know it disproportionately impacts their primary voting block the greatest but still are doing nothing about it illustrating it doesn't make any difference what political party the inept politicians belong to.
As noted in Debating the effect of undocumented workers:
"Workers who have been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.
"It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers," economists Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada wrote. "The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts."
The study concluded that the rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers over the past decade, has contributed to a breakdown in the nation's labor laws and labor standards, undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century."
It is not just a Black or Hispanic thing. Illegal immigration hurts all Americans. As noted by T.J. Bonner in Judicial Watch's Special Report, New Fronts In The Immigration Battle:
"You cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate [is] $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions. On the other hand, people who have no interest in this country, [who] live [with] 15 adult males, unrelated, in a one-bedroom apartment ...[and] send most of their money back home – They are more than willing to take those jobs."
"This is a scene that is actually being played out in America thousands of times a day," CAPS President, Diana Hull, said. "The people in the very building in which we filmed the commercial actually had panic in their eyes because they have seen this scenario playing out too often lately in their workplaces."
The coalition's primary goal is to educate by calling attention to the disconnect between American immigration policy and the reality of the economic crisis and jobs situation. Hull said, "This policy of importing millions of workers at a time of economic constriction and widespread loss of available jobs to replace those that are lost to American workers defies logic and common sense, let alone fairness. With 11 million Americans unable to find work, our government continues to bring in more foreign workers."
CAPS and its associates offer a welcome suggestion to the new administration's alleged jobs creation plan. "President Obama and his team estimate they can create 2 million jobs over the next two years by spending a trillion dollars of taxpayer money," Hull said. "But by severely limiting the flow of foreign workers at this critical time, we can save over 2 million American jobs for American workers without spending a dime."
re: piss off date (texas)
Date: 2009-11-30, 3:45PM CST
Reply to: comm-n7uqp-1488718556@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
some very good points and advice!!! well done!
THANK YOU !!!
FYI...........school holidays, aside from Christmas and Easter are for things like memorial day, labor day, martin luther king day, presidents day, etc., etc.
Hinchey is from a historically Republican district (though it includes Democrat-heavy in places like Woodstock and Ithaca) and his statement seemed to shock Shuster.
"Look what happened. Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan. How we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al Qaeda."
Hinchey alleged that bin Laden was let go because "the previous administration... knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq."
"Oh, there's no question about that because the leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of Al Queda because there was a sense that they didn't want to capture him."
Shuster began talking over Hinchey: "You can accuse them of malfeasance, you can accuse them of dropping the ball, of having an awful plan, and all of them would be justified, but to suggest that they would deliberately let, deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could justify the war in Iraq... That will strike a lot of people as crazy."
Hinchey leaned back and smiled wrily. "I don't think it'll strike a lot of people as crazy. I think it'll strike a lot of people as very accurate."