Month: November 2015

How a Rural Community in Washington State Created its Own Internet Service

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The following story exemplifies the human spirit at its best, and provides an example of the kinds of things communities can achieve when they bound together to overcome adversity. The sky really is the limit, and as Doe Bay Internet Users Association founder, Chris Sutton, defiantly proclaims:

I think relying on corporate America to come save us all is just not going to happen, but if we all get together and share our resources, communities can do this themselves and be more resilient.

Here are excerpts from the excellent ArsTechnica article, How a Group of Neighbors Created Their Own Internet Service:

When you live somewhere with slow and unreliable Internet access, it usually seems like there’s nothing to do but complain. And that’s exactly what residents of Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, were doing in late 2013. Faced with CenturyLink service that was slow and outage-prone, residents gathered at a community potluck and lamented their current connectivity.

“Everyone was asking, ‘what can we do?’” resident Chris Brems recalls. “Then [Chris] Sutton stands up and says, ‘Well, we can do it ourselves.’”

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U.S. Military Spent $43 Million on a Gas Station in Afghanistan that Should Have Cost $500,000

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Earlier today, we learned that the U.S. government had raided a citizens victim fund to the tune of $1.5 billion in order to use the money for general expenses. It’s all starting to make sense now. When you’re spending $43 million on gas stations that should cost $500K, it doesn’t take long to run out of money.

Taxpayers lose. Again.

Reuters reports:

The U.S. Department of Defense spent nearly $43 million on a gas station in northern Afghanistan and has been unable to explain why it cost so much, a U.S. special inspector reported on Monday.

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How the U.S. Government is Raiding a Citizen Victim Relief Fund to Pay for General Expenses

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One of the primary “talking points” used by the Department of Justice to defend its practice of systematically deeming corporate criminals above the law via its used of deferred prosecution agreements, has been an emphasis on how much money it has earned in fines from criminal corporations. These fines were supposed to be distributed to help victimized American citizens. Not any more.

The Wall Street Journal reports that:

WASHINGTON—The government’s just-approved budget deal takes $1.5 billion from a fund for crime victims and uses it instead to help pay for federal spending, drawing on a growing reserve collected from settlements with banks and major corporations.

The unprecedented transfer, part of closed-door negotiations between the Obama administration and congressional leaders, has raised the ire of advocates. They say it violates the integrity of a decades-old program that funds safe havens for domestic violence victims, counseling for abused children and financial aid for murder victims’ families, among other programs.

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A Brief History on How the Federal Reserve Became the Undemocratic, Corrupt and Destructive Force it is Today

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Perhaps the most famous, and prescient, financial cartoon in American history is the depiction of the Federal Reserve Bank as a giant octopus that would come to parasitically suck the life out of all U.S. institutions as well as free markets. The image is taken from Alfred Owen Crozier’s US Money Vs Corporation Currency, “Aldrich Plan,” Wall Street Confessions! Great Bank Combine, published in 1912, just a year before the creation of the Federal Reserve. Here it is in all its glory:

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Our ancestors were wiser and far more educated than modern Americans about the dangers posed by a centralized, monopolistic system charged with the creation and distribution of money, and our society and economy have paid a very heavy price for its ignorance.

Indeed, some of today’s Fed critics aren’t even aware that the U.S. Central Bank originally had far less power than it does today. As concerned as they were, its early critics could never have imagined how perverted its mandate would become in the subsequent 100 years. A mandate that has now made it the single most powerful and destructive force on planet earth.

Earlier today, I came across an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which the author explains this transformation in just a few short paragraphs. Here’s some of what he wrote:

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Bank of America Admits – Central Bank Policy Enriched Wall Street While “Steamrolling” Main Street

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Wall Street is counting its winnings from seven years of easy money.

The results represent a clear victory for Wall Street over Main Street, according to the team of Michael Hartnett, BofA’s chief investment strategist.

“Zero rates and asset purchases of central banks have, thus far, proved much more favorable to Wall Street, capitalists, shadow banks, ‘unicorns,’ and so on than it has for Main Street, workers, savers, banks and the jobs market,” the BofA team wrote.

– From the Bloomberg article: Here’s How Much QE Helped Wall Street Steamroll Main Street 

In a refreshing bit of honesty from “Too Big to Fail and Jail” Wall Street firm Bank of America, the American peasants are informed about a reality with which they are all too familiar. That the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Bank bailed out the rich and powerful, while leaving average citizens high and dry.

It always amuses me when I come across a mainstream media headline to the effect of: “Why are Americans still so angry?”

Why are Americans so angry? Let’s see. Perhaps it’s because one of the greatest heists in American history was just perpetrated against them by their own government in collusion with the largest multi-national corporations and the country’s most undemocratic institution, the Federal Reserve Bank.

Because not only were the individuals who caused the most severe financial crisis in recent memory not punished for their crimes, but they were showered with trillions and trillions of dollars in bailouts and taxpayer backstops, and made far wealthier than they were before the crisis they caused.

Because 99.99% of the population have been crushed by this policy of “socialism for oligarchs” and they feel the intense pain of this decent into poverty every single day of their live.

That’s why Americans are still angry, and if more of them understood what actually happened, they’d be much more angry.

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How Arbitration Clauses are Stripping American Citizens of Their “Right to Go to Court”

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By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Thousands of cases brought by single plaintiffs over fraud, wrongful death and rape are now being decided behind closed doors. And the rules of arbitration largely favor companies, which can even steer cases to friendly arbitrators, interviews and records show.

The sharp shift away from the civil justice system has barely registered with Americans. F. Paul Bland Jr., the executive director of Public Justice, a national consumer advocacy group, attributed this to the tangle of bans placed inside clauses added to contracts that no one reads in the first place.

“Corporations are allowed to strip people of their constitutional right to go to court,” Mr. Bland said. “Imagine the reaction if you took away people’s Second Amendment right to own a gun.”

– From yesterday’s New York Times article: Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice

I’ve followed the dangerous trend of the increased corporate use of arbitration clauses in contracts for several years now, and yesterday’s New York Times investigation into their civil liberties destroying nature, is one of the best pieces I’ve seen on the subject to date.

What’s so fascinating about this article is it goes all the way back to the origins of the practice, during which lawyers representing big banks got together with Philadelphia attorney Alan S. Kaplinsky to strategize on how best to write class-action bans into arbitration clauses. It also explains how current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had been actively petitioning the high court to uphold such bans while he was a corporate lawyer, and then led the way to a 5-4 decision to solidify the bans after becoming Chief Justice.

In practice, what these bans essentially achieve is to allow companies to nickel and dime consumers and their employees while leaving very little recourse available. While the individual infractions are generally minor financial burdens, when aggregated across a large number of victims, it can amount to billions of dollars.

Let’s turn to some excerpts from the Times article for additional information:

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