Department of Homeland Security Moves to Install National License Plate Tracking System

Earlier today, I highlighted a program planned by the FCC named the Critical Information Needs study, which will embed “government researchers” into media organizations in order to make sure they are doing their job properly. This insane anti-free press measure is extraordinarily disturbing and now we find out that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has plans to outsource the creation of a gigantic, comprehensive nationwide license plate database to a private corporation.

The status quo is now overtly doubling down on surveillance in the wake of the Snowden revelations rather than reigning them in. Game is on folks. Things are getting very serious.

From the Washington Post:

The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

The national license-plate recognition database, which would draw data from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, would help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, according to a DHS solicitation. But the database could easily contain more than 1 billion records and could be shared with other law enforcement agencies, raising concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens who are under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

It’s for the children! How can you object to saving the children!

“It is important to note that this database would be run by a commercial enterprise, and the data would be collected and stored by the commercial enterprise, not the government,” she said.

Yeah, because that makes me feel so much better…

But civil liberties groups are not assuaged. “Ultimately, you’re creating a national database of location information,” said Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “When all that data is compiled and aggregated, you can track somebody as they’re going through their life.”

The agency said the length of time the data is retained would be up to the winning vendor.Vigilant Solutions, for instance, one of the leading providers of tag-reader data, keeps its records indefinitely.

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Is “Buy to Rent” Dead? – Rents on Blackstone Housing Bonds Plunge 7.6%

Just last week, I highlighted the fact that the return of subprime home loans was just another bankster scam to get private equity players and hedge funds out of the properties they had rushed into throughout the U.S. by dumping them on retail muppets. More evidence that this may indeed be the case emerged today … Read more

The Obama Administration Plans to Embed “Government Researchers” to Monitor Media Organizations

Last week, I highlighted the fact that the latest Press Freedom Index showcased a 13 point plunge in America’s press freedom to an embarrassing #46 position in the global ranking. If the authoritarians in the Obama Administration have their way, this country is set to fall much further in next year’s index.

Incredibly, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to roll out something called the Critical Information Needs study, which will embed government “researchers” into media organizations around the nation to make sure they are doing their job properly.

No this isn’t “conspiracy theory.” It is so real, and represents such a threat to the First Amendment, that a current FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai, recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, warning Americans of this scheme. He writes:

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

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Hot Pockets Recalls 8 Million Pounds of Meat Due to “Diseased and Unsound Animals”

Last year saw a great number of widely publicized instances of food fraud and general nastiness when it came to the various items many of us regularly put in our bodies. From “fake tuna,” to rat meat in the streets of Shanghai, to alcohol in New Jersey diluted with “river water,” the list was seemingly endless. While 2014 has … Read more

A Vital Message from Venezuela – “They Talk Like Marx, Rule Like Stalin…”

The following quote written on a piece of cardboard from the ongoing protests in Venezuela basically summarizes how the oligarchs, or the 0.01%, and their political henchmen rule in all countries around the world at the moment. Then they cry like little welfare babies when people criticize their behavior. Powerful stuff: They speak like Marx … Read more

How Obama’s Chief Negotiators on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty Received Huge Bonuses from Mega Banks

Anyone that has spent any time whatsoever looking into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty, understands that it is a oligarch crony capitalists’ wet dream. Being negotiated entirely in secret, the treaty is designed to institutionalize corporate rule, giving companies the ability to sue governments and prevent them from exerting regulatory control over their own societies.

Bill Moyers has described the treaty as “Death for Democracy,” and now, unsurprisingly, we find out that several of the main negotiators for the TPP have received huge payments from taxpayer bailed out “Too Big to Jail” banks.

From the Republic Report:

Officials tapped by the Obama administration to lead the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have received multimillion dollar bonuses from CitiGroup and Bank of America, financial disclosures obtained by Republic Report show.

Stefan Selig, a Bank of America investment banker nominated to become the Under Secretary for International Trade at the Department of Commerce, received more than $9 million in bonus pay as he was nominated to join the administration in November. The bonus pay came in addition to the $5.1 million in incentive pay awarded to Selig last year.

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America’s First Bitcoin ATM Debuts in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Thanks to regulations, the USSA has been behind the global curve with regard to the installation of Bitcoin ATMs. After all, Canada’s first machine was installed back in November, and it recorded $100,000 worth of transactions within the first week. Hopefully that trend is about to change, as Lamassu’s BTC machine is now operating in a cigar bar called Imbibe in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition, two Bitcoin ATMs from Robocoin are also set to be installed in Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas shortly (from what I know, I prefer Lamassu’s machines since they do not employ biometrics).

From Coindesk:

After months of rumors and speculation, the first bitcoin ATM in the United States is now in operation.

The machine, manufactured by Lammasu, is located in a cigar bar called Imbibe in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is being operated by Enchanted Bitcoin, run by Eric Stromberg.

New Mexico happens to be one of only two US states that do not require a money transmitter business (MSB) license to operate. The other is South Carolina.

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Meet Thomas Galante – The Corrupt Queens Head Librarian with a $2 Million Golden Parachute

An incredible story of shameless corruption by a “public servant” has been exposed by the New York Daily News. Sure we’ve all heard of banksters and Congress getting away with wild amounts of theft and lawlessness at the public’s expense and then walking off even wealthier for it, but it appears the epidemic of theft is spreading fast throughout society.

Meet Thomas Galante, head of the Queens Library. As “chief executive” of the library, we find out that his many duties consisted of a taxpayer funded $329,000 salary, a sports car, $140,000 in renovations to his office, including a $26,000 private smoking deck.

Oh, but that’s not it. No, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Galante was also working a side job as a “business consultant” for the Elmont Union Free School District in Long Island, a role that earned him an additional $143,000 annually. Wait, it gets even better. Now that all of this has been uncovered, he is set to receive a $2 million golden parachute if he is fired. $2 million for a head librarian.

This guy has learned very well from his proximity to Wall Street.

From the Daily News:

Queens Borough President Melinda Katz is demanding that trustees of the Queens Library rein in their out-of-control chief executive, Thomas Galante, and eliminate a secret $2 million golden parachute in his employment contract.

The Daily News reported earlier this month that Galante received a whopping $392,000 salary in 2013, plus a sports car, to run the borough’s taxpayer-funded library system. And The News was first to report that he spent nearly $140,000 on renovations to his executive offices — including a $26,000 private smoking deck.

At the same time, Galante has been raking in nearly $200,000 annually while moonlighting as a business consultant to a Long Island school district, new documents obtained by the The News show. 

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How the Mainstream Media Would Cover “Cash” if it Was a New Invention

Those of us involved in the Bitcoin world are all too familiar with the consistent hyperbolic, fear-mongering so pervasive in the mainstream media’s coverage of Bitcoin.  None of that should be surprising since many of them simply do not understand it, and when you couple ignorance with a natural reflexive response to defend the status quo, you get some pretty terrible reporting.

The death of Bitcoin has been greatly exaggerated many times, including last fall when the Silk Road was shut down. Yet rather than being destroyed by the episode, it came out far stronger. Something I expect to be the case again after the Mt. Gox situation (read my thoughts on it) is behind us.

Meanwhile, if you are sitting on a lot of BTC and want to directly move it into other assets, such as gold and silver (which have been moving sharply higher in 2014), it is really easy to do. Amagi Metals is a Denver precious metals dealer and one of the first to accept BTC.

Now from Ledra Capital is a amusing article demonstrating how the mainstream media might portray cash if it were invented today. The piece is titled “Bizarre Shadowy Paper-Based Payment System Being Rolled Out Worldwide”, and I have provided some excerpts below:

World governments announced a plan today to allow citizens to anonymously carry parts of their wealth on their person and exchange it with others using small pieces of colorful paper printed with nationalistic and Masonic imagery along with numbers that purportedly represent the amount of wealth each piece of paper represents (if the paper is not a counterfeit). These pieces of paper are formally a “note” from each nation’s central bank, but they are also called “cash” by many – this is a technical matter that is too complex to cover in our basic primer; Suffice it to say, that it is representative of the complexity and user-unfriendliness of this new system. 

The launch of cash has provoked an immediate reaction from law-enforcement agencies worldwide that universally condemned the development.

“Cash is a 100% anonymous and untraceable payments technology.   It is like a weapon of mass destruction launched against law enforcement,” said Mike Smith, the recently confirmed FBI Director.  “It is the perfect payment mechanism for criminals, drug cartels, terrorists, prostitution rings and money launderers.   We don’t know how we will be able to combat such a technology and fully expect that a new generation of super-criminals will emerge, working in the shadows of a world where they can conduct their illicit affairs without leaving a trace.” 

Banking Superintendent of New York State, Mike Smith had the following to say: “I can’t think of any reason that a law-abiding individual would want to use cash. At a bare minimum, we believe there should be a licensing procedure for individuals or businesses that plan to use cash, a ‘Cash-License’ as it were. This license will limit ‘cash’ to trust-worthy individuals who keep detailed auditable records of all their cash transactions in order to keep New York safe from criminals.”

Though hard to imagine, cash operates with no consumer protection at all.   If your ‘bills’ are stolen or lost, they are gone forever.

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Here’s What Happened When a Journalist Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society

Before we get into this post, let’s review the definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine:

Antisocial Personality Disorder:  A mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others. This behavior is often criminal.

Now for the symptoms:

Symptoms:

A person with antisocial personality disorder may:

  • Be able to act witty and charming
  • Be good at flattery and manipulating other people’s emotions
  • Break the law repeatedly
  • Disregard the safety of self and others
  • Have problems with substance abuse
  • Lie, steal, and fight often
  • Not show guilt or remorse
  • Often be angry or arrogant

How about treatment?

Treatment:

Antisocial personality disorder is one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat. People with this condition rarely seek treatment on their own. They may only start therapy when required to by a court.

Behavioral treatments, such as those that reward appropriate behavior and have negative consequences for illegal behavior, may hold the most promise. Certain forms of talk therapy are also being explored.

Exactly as many of us have said. Jail time and accountability are necessary to stop these people. Bailouts will only encourage continued sociopathic behavior, which is exactly what we have seen. Think about the above as you read the post below. Enjoy…

The following article by Kevin Roose was published late last night by New York Magazine, and it recounts what the journalist saw when he crashed Wall Street fraternity Kappa Beta Phi’s private party back in 2012. Some elements of his experience were already published a couple years back in a New York Times piece, but his latest article adds an additional perspective and recounts many outrageous aspects of the event I had never read before. This article is particularly important considering the recent trend of billionaires running around on financial television claiming they are being prosecuted for no reason.

Basically, it will confirm what everyone already thought. That a great many of these oligarch financiers are complete and total sociopaths and a menace to society.

From New York Magazine:

Recently, our nation’s financial chieftains have been feeling a little unloved. Venture capitalists are comparing the persecution of the rich to the plight ofJews at Kristallnacht, Wall Street titans are saying that they’re sick of being beaten up, and this week, a billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross, proclaimed that “the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons.”

Ross’s statement seemed particularly odd, because two years ago, I met Ross at an event that might single-handedly explain why the rest of the country still hates financial tycoons – the annual black-tie induction ceremony of a secret Wall Street fraternity called Kappa Beta Phi.

It was January 2012, and Ross, wearing a tuxedo and purple velvet moccasins embroidered with the fraternity’s Greek letters, was standing at the dais of the St. Regis Hotel ballroom, welcoming a crowd of two hundred wealthy and famous Wall Street figures to the Kappa Beta Phi dinner. Ross, the leader (or “Grand Swipe”) of the fraternity, was preparing to invite 21 new members — “neophytes,” as the group called them — to join its exclusive ranks.

Yeah Ross, what’s not to love about a guy like you.

Looking up at him from an elegant dinner of rack of lamb and foie gras were many of the most famous investors in the world, including executives from nearly every too-big-to-fail bank, private equity megafirm, and major hedge fund. AIG CEO Bob Benmosche was there, as were Wall Street superlawyer Marty Lipton and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear Stearns. And those were just the returning members. Among the neophytes were hedge fund billionaire and major Obama donor Marc Lasry and Joe Reece, a high-ranking dealmaker at Credit Suisse. All told, enough wealth and power was concentrated in the St. Regis that night that if you had dropped a bomb on the roof, global finance as we know it might have ceased to exist.

If you recall, last year Mr. Benmosche compared anger at Wall Street bonuses to the lynching of black people in the south. 

I’d heard whisperings about the existence of Kappa Beta Phi, whose members included both incredibly successful financiers (New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead, hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones) and incredibly unsuccessful ones (Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld, Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne, former New Jersey governor and MF Global flameout Jon Corzine). It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that functioned as a sort of one-percenter’s Friars Club. Each year, the group’s dinner features comedy skits, musical acts in drag, and off-color jokes, and its group’s privacy mantra is “What happens at the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis.” For eight decades, it worked. No outsider in living memory had witnessed the entire proceedings firsthand.

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