Huffington Post

University of Denver Plans to Give George W. Bush the “‘Improving Human Condition” Award

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One of the more bizarre trends that I have covered this year has been the distribution of phony awards to high level crony political oligarchs either for PR purposes or for money.  I thought I had seen it all a couple of weeks ago when I read that Jeb Bush was set to present the “Liberty Medal” to Hillary Clinton.

Apparently the University of Denver was not to be outdone, as they planned to give the “Improving Human Condition” award to none other than George W. Bush! Thankfully, considerable outrage has led the University to rethink its choice, but it is inexcusable to begin with.  It is not only an embarrassment to the University of Denver, but also to the entire state of Colorado, my adopted home. From the Huffington Post:

Hundreds of students, staffers and alumni are protesting the University of Denver’s decision to honor former President George W. Bush with an award traditionally recognizing recipients for their work on behalf of humanity.

“It’s been mostly just a lot of surprise,” Seth Masket, associate professor of Political Science said of the award to be bestowed by the University’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

The school hosts the Korbel Dinner to present the award each year. In June, the Sept. 9 dinner was announced and invitations circulated both by mail and on the school’s website, pictured below, saying the 43rd president would be welcomed and honored as the 2013 recipient of the “Improving the Human Condition Award.”

On June 25, award protestor Taylor Gibson signed the petition and beseeched Korbel Dean Christopher Hill, “Don’t make a mockery of my degree.” The next day, Kiela Parks, an alumna and former employee at the University’s Office of Alumni and External Relations employee who worked at the 2011 and 2012 Korbel dinners, signed onto the movement.

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The Scorecard: 8,000 Wall Street Protesters Arrested, Zero Bankers

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America really has become the “land of the thief, home of the slave.”  While a minority of awake citizens desperately tries to shake their neighbors from their deep slumber, the masses continue to sit in front of the television, suck their thumbs and watch Desperate Housewives, while the oligarchs laugh incredulously at them all the … Read more

The IRS Claims it Can Read Your Email…Without a Warrant

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Truly remarkable how the establishment views the citizenry.  They quite clearly and openly view themselves as having full ownership of our lives, our work and our privacy.  Actually, they do not think we deserve to have privacy at all.  This is the exact mindset of all tyrannical regimes throughout human history, which is precisely why the founders made sure to include the 4th Amendment in the Constitution of these United States.  For those of you that need a reminder.

The 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So with that in mind, this is what the IRS thinks.  From the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — IRS documents released Wednesday suggest that the tax collection agency believes it can read American citizens’ emails without a warrant.

The files were released to the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request. The organization is working to determine just how broadly federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI or the IRS’ Criminal Tax Division interpret their authority to snoop through inboxes.

The idea of IRS agents poking through your email account might sound at the very least creepy, and maybe unconstitutional. But the IRS does have a legal leg to stand on: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 allows government agencies to in many cases obtain emails older than 180 days without a warrant.

In 1986 they decided this?  Who used email in 1986?

That’s why an internal 2009 IRS document claimed that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without a warrant.

Another 2009 file, the IRS Criminal Tax Division’s “Search Warrant Handbook,” showed that the division’s general counsel believed “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

What kind of crazy logic is that.  Says who?

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Joe Biden Spends $585,000 for a One Night Stay in Paris

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Your tax dollars at work!  I can’t wait until they start telling the population that we need collective sacrifice, while the political oligarchs act like Louis the XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1789.  Oh, and he recently spent $459,000 for a night in London as well!  No worries, the night in Paris is only 9,0000 … Read more

Income Growth for Bottom 90% in America Since 1966 is…59 Dollars

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We’ve all seen these statistics before in one form or another, but David Cay Johnston does an excellent job going into more detail for us in an article he published late last month.  As he correctly notes, when things get extreme like this you ultimately end up with serious social unrest.  Furthermore, as I have pointed out for years and years, this kind of disparity does not happen under free markets with rules and regulations applied equally to all.  It happens under totalitarian societies, whether fascism, communism or crony capitalist corporatism (which is the model in the USA).  It only happens when a very small oligarch class takes over the political process of a nation and then uses it to game the system.

However, I would take exception to Mr. Johnston’s conclusion that the root problem is the tax system.  While I do not for one moment deny that the oligarchs game the tax system to provide loopholes for themselves, this is not why the 1% of 1% has taken all the wealth of the nation.  This is much more related to the Federal Reserve and its policies of printing trillions of money out of thin air and distributing it to the oligarchs, either directly or through low interest loans.  If you tax the rich more, they will still make more because they will still have the access to the cheap money.  The Federal Reserve is the core cancer of the entire thing and they must be stopped.  Some excerpts below:

The average increase in real income reported by the bottom 90 percent of earners in 2011, compared with 1966, if measured at one inch, would extend almost five miles for the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

Remember, we got off the gold standard in 1971, after which the Federal Reserve could print as much as they wanted and distribute it wherever they wanted…and they have.

Incomes and tax revenues have grown from 2009 to 2011 as the economy recovered, but an astonishing 149 percent of the increased income went to the top 10 percent of earners.

If you wonder how that can happen, the answer is simple: Incomes fell for the bottom 90 percent.

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Congress Moves to DEREGULATE Wall Street

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The best part of this story is that Wall Street is, of course, anything but regulated. Nevertheless, the minuscule rules that do apply to the nation’s financial oligarchs are apparently just too much to bare.  It doesn’t seem to bother Congress that the TBTF banks are actively involved in offshore payday lending schemes with rates well over 500%, or that they destroyed multiple municipalities across the nation selling swaps, including picking away at the carcass of the once strong Detroit.  Nope, all that matters is that Congress’ pockets are lined with Federal Reserve Notes.  As expected, this is a bipartisan effort.  From the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan cadre of House lawmakers will move on legislation to deregulate Wall Street derivatives Wednesday, less than a week after Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) released adevastating report on the multibillion-dollar derivatives debacle at JPMorgan Chase.

“It is incredible that less than a week after new JPMorgan Whale hearings detailed how the bank’s London office piled up risk, hid losses, and dodged regulatory oversight, that some House members are again supporting the weakening of derivative safeguards.”

It’s not incredible Carl, it’s called payoffs.

Yet in an era of partisan gridlock in the nation’s capital, Democrats and Republicans have come together to repeal or weaken those rules. Although Obama may not want to sign a standalone package of Wall Street deregulation into law, bipartisan legislation could be inserted into a broader bill that the president might find difficult to reject.

I’m sure it’ll be real difficult for Barry to sign.  About as gut wrenching as signing the NDAA.

At a congressional hearing last week, Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker and current senior fellow at the public policy group Demos, testified on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform that exempting utilities from the rules would ultimately help Wall Street firms profit at the utilities’ expense.

“I had the uncomfortable opportunity to witness sales calls by derivatives specialists on governmental utilities,” Turbeville said. “I have seen the technique of fostering a sense of trust, encouraging an advisory relationship that can be exploited to sell an immensely profitable derivative when other alternatives could be better.”

The bills to be considered Wednesday also include legislation from Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) — another Goldman alum — that would roll back Dodd-Frank’s ban on taxpayer support for some kinds of derivatives trades. Himes has defended his bill as a way to ensure that more regulators oversee derivatives, though the measure is opposed by the Americans for Financial Reform.

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HSBC Faces More Money Laundering Accusations

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I’m shocked.  Shocked, appalled, horrified and betrayed.  Actually, I’d be shocked if this didn’t happen.  From Reuters: BUENOS AIRES, March 18 (Reuters) – Argentina’s tax agency said on Monday it has uncovered 392 million pesos ($77 million) in fraudulent transactions by HSBC Holdings Plc and said it has asked the judicial system to probe the … Read more

License Plate Readers to Track Every Car Entering New York City

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Mayor Bloomberg’s little police state is coming along quite nicely, as the city plans license plate reader cameras “in every lane of traffic on all of the bridges and tunnels that serve as entrances and exits to Manhattan.”  Oh and they also want to add unmanned drones to keep an eye on the plebes. Don’t even think about trying to sneak a 64 oz soda into NYC, Big Brother Bloomie is watching you!

From the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — The ring of steel is expanding. New York City Police Department Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced a “major project” at a budget hearing on Tuesday to install license plate reader cameras “in every lane of traffic on all of the bridges and tunnels that serve as entrances and exits to Manhattan.”

Soon, no one will be able to drive onto or off of the island without potentially being recorded.

Kelly also said the department has mounted a high-resolution camera on an NYPD helicopter and given it “sophisticated down-link technology to provide real-time, high-quality video of incidents as they unfold.” The commissioner has expressed interest in flying unmanned drones to watch over demonstrations as well.

Kelly did not state the cost of the license plate reader program. But along with data from other major NYPD electronic surveillance initiatives — the Argus cameras mounted on streets in neighborhoods and the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative that integrates private cameras from banks and other institutions — the license plate data will be fed into a $30-40 million comprehensive dashboard produced by Microsoft called the Domain Awareness System.

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Aspartame: Coming to a Milk Carton Near You (Without a Label)

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Rightly or wrongly, aspartame is a highly controversial artificial sweetener.  I’m no scientist and I haven’t researched it throughly enough to come to my own conclusion, but generally I try to eat minimally tampered with foods.  This is where this story begins to present serious issues for me.  The debate here is not whether aspartame will be allowed in milk; it already is.  The issue is whether or not dairy producers will have to let consumers know that it is there.  In a world where tuna isn’t tuna and beef is increasingly horse meat, we should demand more information than ever before as far as the substances we put in our bodies.  As usual, I would expect the FDA to side with the lobbyists and corporate America rather than consumers’ best interests.  From the Huffington Post:

Got diet milk? The dairy industry for the past three years has been hoping to sell you some under the guise of just plain “milk,” so that chocolate and strawberry varieties that contain artificial sweeteners would no longer need to carry a special label.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledged a 2009 petition from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation that seeks to drop the FDA requirement to label milk and other dairy products as “artificially sweetened” when they contain sweeteners such as aspartame.

Aspartame is used in a range of products, including diet soda and yogurt, and is sold to consumers under the brand-name Equal (which also includes some other ingredients). Some researchers have found that artificial sweeteners alter people’s brain chemistry, making them crave higher-calorie foods, which in turn makes them more prone to obesity and diabetes.

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In Latest Decision, Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Government Spying

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The decision in the highly anticipated Supreme Court case Clapper v. Amnesty International USA has arrived, and it’s not a good one for those of us that care about civil liberties.  Basically, the Supreme Court stated that the plaintiffs cannot challenge the warrantless wiretapping law because they cannot prove they have been victims of it.  The problem is that the program is so secretive, it is impossible to know if you are being listened to!  This is the kind of nonsense we have to deal with these days.  Meanwhile, it is very interesting that the five “conservative” justices sided with the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, while the four “liberal” justices were opposed.  What does that tell you about Obama?

From the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — Journalists and human rights advocates worried they are being swept up in an electronic dragnet cannot challenge the U.S. government’s secretive warrantless wiretapping program in a lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Tuesday. The court’s decision, handed down in a case called Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, will complicate civil libertarians’ efforts to push back against the post-9/11 expansion of surveillance.

Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement the ruling was a “disturbing decision” that “insulates the [warrantless wiretapping] statute from meaningful judicial review and leaves Americans’ privacy rights to the mercy of the political branches.”

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