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How Mayor Bloomberg is Buying Off Elections All Across America

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As if it’s not bad enough that we live in a country where crony capitalism is so entrenched that the oligarchs never face justice and are consistently bailed out on the tax payers’ dime, but now we have to suffer from oligarchs using their fortunes to buy-off elections all over the country.  I am specifically referring to one of the biggest hypocrites alive today, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Super PAC, Independence USA.  I want to highlight two recent stories in order to demonstrate exactly what this particular oligarch is up to.  First, from a recent Washington Post article:

It’s a bad day when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s political action committee rolls into town to take you on.

Former congresswoman Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) is finding that out the hard way right now, as she suffers from a barrage of ads from the super PAC, also known as Independence USA.

The PAC, which has backed gun control supporters and targeted those who oppose it, regardless of party, has so far spent about 20 times the amount Halvorson has been able to raise for her campaign in the special election to replace former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.). While Halvorson has raised just about $100,000, Independence USA has spent $2.16 million against her, citing her ‘A’ rating from the NRA.

So because “Your Highness” Bloomberg doesn’t like guns (except when it’s the people protecting him that have them), he overwhelms an Illinois election with money to defeat the pro-gun candidate.  The outcome?  She lost.  This is what Bloomie had to say in the aftermath:

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Crony Capitalist “Uncle” Warren Buffett Drives Company Profits Using Derivatives

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As regular readers know all too well, there are few people in these United States that I find more disingenuous than the mainstream media celebrated, crony capitalist extraordinaire Warren Buffett.  The man who used to warn about trade deficits, the U.S. dollar’s vulnerable position and famously called the derivatives “weapons of mass financial destruction,” has become nothing more than a political stooge for the status quo ever since he was bailed out in the financial crisis.  So with the derivatives market bigger and more dangerous than ever, you’d expect “Uncle Warren” to be shouting from the rooftops about how much risk they pose right?  Wrong.  Rather, America’s number one crony is using derivatives to drive earnings at his company, Berkshire Hathaway, and pimping stocks on CNBC like a cheap used car salesman every other day.  From Bloomberg:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) said fourth- quarter profit rose 49 percent on gains tied to derivatives wagers made by billionaire Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett.

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Net income rose to $4.55 billion, or $2,757 a share, from $3.05 billion, or $1,846, a year earlier, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said today in a statement. Gains on derivatives surged to $1.4 billion from $163 million.

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Public Education is About to Get A Lot More Orwellian…

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Where to begin. While the concept described in this article will seem reasonable to many at first glance, this is a very dangerous idea in my opinion.  Do we really want a national database of all public school children from K-12?  Even if the database only stored basic information like math and reading abilities I would still be against it, but this goes much, much further than that.  In some cases the database will cover “student hobbies, career goals and attitudes toward school.”  So I suppose whatever Facebook fails to capture, this thing will.  Just think about the potential for future abuse.  What if someone in the Federal government down the road wants to be able to identify disobedient children from an early age and track them.  If they have a “negative attitude” toward the public school system will they be flagged as “undesirable” at a young age? What a potential Orwellian nightmare this could become.  From Reuters:

(Reuters) – An education technology conference this week in Austin, Texas, will clang with bells and whistles as startups eagerly show off their latest wares.

But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school – even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students’ information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

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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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The Really, Really Creepy Thing About “Google Glass”

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Google glass.  Just the latest breakthrough technology that everyone seems to be talking about.  I’m not a tech savvy guy and for much of my life I’ve been a pretty late adopter of new technologies, but the big brother concerns associated with the Google Glass seem worth highlighting.  From Mark Hurst:

Google Glass might change your life, but not in the way you think. There’s something else Google Glass makes possible that no one – no one – has talked about yet, and so today I’m writing this blog post to describe it.

The key experiential question of Google Glass isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who’s wearing them. I’ll give an easy example. Your one-on-one conversation with someone wearing Google Glass is likely to be annoying, because you’ll suspect that you don’t have their undivided attention. And you can’t comfortably ask them to take the glasses off (especially when, inevitably, the device is integrated into prescription lenses). Finally – here’s where the problems really start – you don’t know if they’re taking a video of you.

Now pretend you don’t know a single person who wears Google Glass… and take a walk outside. Anywhere you go in public – any store, any sidewalk, any bus or subway – you’re liable to be recorded: audio and video. Fifty people on the bus might be Glassless, but if a single person wearing Glass gets on, you – and all 49 other passengers – could be recorded. Not just for a temporary throwaway video buffer, like a security camera, but recorded, stored permanently, and shared to the world.

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“Wanted” Signs Emerge in Oakland as Residents Police Themselves

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So this is what is happening in Oakland, one of the many forgotten about, left-behind corners of America.  From CBS:

OAKLAND (KPIX 5) – Oakland’s crime problems have gotten so bad that some people aren’t even bothering to call the cops anymore; instead, they’re trying to solve and prevent crimes themselves.

In a neighborhood that has started to feel like the wild west, people have even started posting “wanted” signs.

Personally, I think this is the only “Wanted” sign that people should be putting up all over America.

Bernank Wanted Sign

You have to walk around in your house with a gun to feel safe here,” said Alaska Tarvins of the Arcadia Park Board of Directors.

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New Study Shows 59% of “Tuna” Sold in the U.S. Isn’t Tuna

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This is just the latest revelation in the stealth inflation and food fraud theme I have written about frequently in recent months.  The non-profit group Oceana took samples of 1,215 fish sold in the U.S. and genetic tests found that that 59% of those labeled tuna were mislabeled. It seems that “white tuna” should be … Read more

The Latest Drone War Strategy: UK Government Revokes Citizenship Then Kills

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The UK’s Independent published an eye-opening article yesterday that details what is likely to be an increasingly popular strategy by authoritarian governments in the Western world that do not wish to be tied down with antiquated and prosaic notions such as the rule of law and basic human decency.  Basically, what the article exposes is that the UK’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, has the authority to strip British citizens of their passports if they are suspected terrorists.  Not only does she have this authority, but she has used it at least 16 times since 2010.  Unfortunately for those that end up with their citizenship stripped, they tend to end up in the crosshairs of a U.S. “freedom bird.”  From The Independent:

The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial program that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.

Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.

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Meet Mary Jo White: The Next SEC Chief and a Guaranteed Wall Street Patsy

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Obama’s nominee to head the SEC, Mary Jo White, is just another gatekeeper appointed to make sure no one ever goes after the Wall Street crime syndicate.  As I have written about many times in the past, Obama does not nominate anyone to a high position of power in government who will not behave like a good little lapdog for Wall Street.

Despite Obama’s propagandist statement about how “you don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” her background implies she will function as a useful servant to the financial oligarchs.  Forget for a second about that fact at her recent firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP her clients included the usual suspects such as such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), and UBS AG, but she is actually known as the prosecutor who popularized the “slap Wall Street on the wrist” approach.  From Bloomberg:

As Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor during the 1990s, Mary Jo White could have sought the corporate equivalent of the death penalty: indicting Prudential Securities Inc. for fraudulently marketing $8 billion in ruinous energy partnerships to small investors.

Instead, Prudential’s attorneys pressed White, who had earned notice as an aggressive litigator in terrorism and organized crime cases, to consider something less punitive. She ultimately accepted, agreeing to a $330 million fine and placing Prudential on probation, allowing it to avoid criminal charges.

White’s record on white-collar cases reveals a more practical streak. Her invention of corporate probation, or deferred prosecution, in the Prudential matter was later copied by scores of U.S. attorneys seeking punishment for a company without going to trial.

“Practical” means having no balls and laying down to Wall Street crimes.

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Colorado’s Governor Goes Off the Deep End: Drinks Fracking Fluid and Threatens Local Communities

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I haven’t taken a strong stance for or against fracking because, despite my background as an energy analyst, I just don’t feel like I have enough understanding to take an aggressive posture either way.  Fracking could very well be one of those complex issues where the truth lies somewhere in between both sides’ arguments.  In any event, one thing that I can say I am completely and totally appalled by and opposed to is the approach of the Governor of my adopted state of Colorado, John Hickenlooper.

It seems as if Governor Hickenlooper is taking a page out of the federal playbook in thinking he is a mini-dictator.  The fact that my governor’s strategy to deal with reasonable concerns about fracking in our communities is to threaten them with lawsuits is entirely unacceptable.  Looks like I need to spend a bit more time on local issues going forward.  From the Huffington Post:

In a recent interview with CBS4, Hickenlooper told Shaun Boyd in no uncertain terms that the state will sue any city that bans hydraulic fracturing within their borders.

When the controversial natural gas drilling technique also known as “fracking” was banned in Longmont in 2012, the state sued the town claiming that the city’s oil and gas regulations illegally overstepped the state’s authority to regulate the industry.

And just this month, the city of Fort Collins gave initial approval to a ban of most oil and natural gas exploration including hydraulic fracturing within the city limits and Hickenlooper says that the state is prepared to sue Fort Collins. A day after the city announced the initial approval, the oil industry also suggested that it may take legal action against the city if the ban goes into effect, The Coloradoan reported last week.

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