I travel every week. I get it about security. It is the way of the world today. I work hard, and use my brain everyday, and just want to have a good and quiet life with my family. I travel because my job requires it. So, I am not a wild extremist from either the left or the right. I saw all this coming over 25 years ago, and after trying a number of solutions to avoid the onslaught of laws diminishing our rights, and promoting more and more National Security Directives... I chose to stop being completely wigged out and start having a life. Still knowing all this was and is going on.
These "media Bombs" of late regarding the TSA Security Searches are artfully being directed and propagated by our friends with 'long term' federal security interests. They are also pretty much being promoted only within the United States (since I do travel alot). We are now experiencing the use of humiliation and anger regarding the new and now sexually invasive 'hand raping' to encourage travelers to travel less. All based upon fear of a terrorist attack.
The control of our mobility is the issue, and degradation of our rights (if we actually have any left) and personal liberty (which is much different than 'freedom') by the use of 'national security' measures. The backlash of the resistance to the hand searches will be the use of the X-Ray whether you like it or not.
I have been traveling internationally since I was 10. I have seen our ability to move about at will become more compromised, tedious and 'security' conscious under the guise of providing us with "safety" from terrorists. Instead, the terror is being propagated by our own insidious government, and the travel equivalent of Marshal Law is being foisted upon us in the name of 'security'.
By limiting our movement, we become captives of the state.
When money went digital (also a 40 year process of numbing people down with the convenience of digital transactions) - our financial privacy was lost. We have no financial privacy as we can be traced down to the penny of what was spent where - for the convenience of using credit and debit cards instead of cash.
Which brings me to the main point - We are now potentially monitorable via the following methods of electronic surveillance:
1. Mobile Phones
2. Internet
3. Digital Money
4. Travel - Passport digitization, X-Ray scanners, personal searched just short of cavity search.
5. Satellite 'zoom in' and infra-red monitoring.
We are now being numbed down to being humiliated and herded so that we are truly "sheeple".
Do not think this is accidental or without far reaching implications. Let me pose a couple of rhetorical questions:
First, however let me explain how the psychology is working
- the idea is to focus enough difficulty around an issue so that YOU the OBJECT of the whole effort will literally BEG for the Electronic Alternative to being searched, or tracked, or opt for what ever will seem to make it all easier - so you can continue to be further anesthesized. With enough discomfort, anger, and humiliation your behavior is being shaped over time to do exactly as those who are controlling you want you to do. (Simple "watch the birdie" techniques - while the more nefarious plots unfolds in the background). This is mass psychology being used on the masses. stick and carrot.
So - rather than being detained or body searched so that you can travel, would you prefer to have an x-ray of your body? Now is it making any sense?
Would the use of a Retina Scan assist you?
Would the implantation of a simple electronic chip under your skin that contains access all your personal information assist you in not having to fumble for change, paper money, or the plethora of credit cards make it all seem better?
One more thing... now that we have the Satellite Tracking technology down, what is preventing the capture of Al-Qaida leaders? Do you think they are actually serving a purpose in all this? YOU BET.
Without the Boogy Man creating havoc in the world indiscriminately and at focused venues - even with warnings.... The Security game would have no teeth.
Line of Propaganda:
"We are only here to assist you and make all these terrible inconveniences go away for you. Let us protect you, and take care of you, and most of all encourage you to become dependent upon us for your safety, monetary security, and comfort needs."
Who are the proponents of this? Why do they want this?
At our day to day economic level: Credit Bureaus, Banks, Merchants, Police, Ad Agencies, Marketing Companies, large producers of basic essentials, food producers... who ever is feeding the supply chain.
At the Global level the proponents are: Governments with visions of World Government, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) that want to set up watchdog groups.... let's say ..... for Global Warming... you know the Carbon Credit theory of re-distributing the wealth??? It goes on and on.
Why? Greed. Power. Control. Basic Human Conditions. We are our own worst enemy. We are now seeing our entire mass consciousness being played out before us in the media every day.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
TSA Security Issues are a diversion from real issues
I travel every week. I get it about security. It is the way of the world today. I work hard, and use my brain everyday, and just want to have a good and quiet life with my family. I travel because my job requires it. So, I am not a wild extremist from either the left or the right. I saw all this coming over 25 years ago, and after trying a number of solutions to avoid the onslaught of laws diminishing our rights, and promoting more and more National Security Directives... I chose to stop being completely wigged out and start having a life. Still knowing all this was and is going on.
These "media Bombs" of late regarding the TSA Security Searches are artfully being directed and propagated by our friends with 'long term' federal security interests. They are also pretty much being promoted only within the United States (since I do travel alot). We are now experiencing the use of humiliation and anger regarding the new and now sexually invasive 'hand raping' to encourage travelers to travel less. All based upon fear of a terrorist attack.
The control of our mobility is the issue, and degradation of our rights (if we actually have any left) and personal liberty (which is much different than 'freedom') by the use of 'national security' measures. The backlash of the resistance to the hand searches will be the use of the X-Ray whether you like it or not.
I have been traveling internationally since I was 10. I have seen our ability to move about at will become more compromised, tedious and 'security' conscious under the guise of providing us with "safety" from terrorists. Instead, the terror is being propagated by our own insidious government, and the travel equivalent of Marshal Law is being foisted upon us in the name of 'security'.
By limiting our movement, we become captives of the state.
When money went digital (also a 40 year process of numbing people down with the convenience of digital transactions) - our financial privacy was lost. We have no financial privacy as we can be traced down to the penny of what was spent where - for the convenience of using credit and debit cards instead of cash.
Which brings me to the main point - We are now potentially monitorable via the following methods of electronic surveillance:
1. Mobile Phones
2. Internet
3. Digital Money
4. Travel - Passport digitization, X-Ray scanners, personal searched just short of cavity search.
5. Satellite 'zoom in' and infra-red monitoring.
We are now being numbed down to being humiliated and herded so that we are truly "sheeple".
Do not think this is accidental or without far reaching implications. Let me pose a couple of rhetorical questions:
First, however let me explain how the psychology is working
- the idea is to focus enough difficulty around an issue so that YOU the OBJECT of the whole effort will literally BEG for the Electronic Alternative to being searched, or tracked, or opt for what ever will seem to make it all easier - so you can continue to be further anesthesized. With enough discomfort, anger, and humiliation your behavior is being shaped over time to do exactly as those who are controlling you want you to do. (Simple "watch the birdie" techniques - while the more nefarious plots unfolds in the background). This is mass psychology being used on the masses. stick and carrot.
So - rather than being detained or body searched so that you can travel, would you prefer to have an x-ray of your body? Now is it making any sense?
Would the use of a Retina Scan assist you?
Would the implantation of a simple electronic chip under your skin that contains access all your personal information assist you in not having to fumble for change, paper money, or the plethora of credit cards make it all seem better?
One more thing... now that we have the Satellite Tracking technology down, what is preventing the capture of Al-Qaida leaders? Do you think they are actually serving a purpose in all this? YOU BET.
Without the Boogy Man creating havoc in the world indiscriminately and at focused venues - even with warnings.... The Security game would have no teeth.
Line of Propaganda:
"We are only here to assist you and make all these terrible inconveniences go away for you. Let us protect you, and take care of you, and most of all encourage you to become dependent upon us for your safety, monetary security, and comfort needs."
Who are the proponents of this? Why do they want this?
At our day to day economic level: Credit Bureaus, Banks, Merchants, Police, Ad Agencies, Marketing Companies, large producers of basic essentials, food producers... who ever is feeding the supply chain.
At the Global level the proponents are: Governments with visions of World Government, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) that want to set up watchdog groups.... let's say ..... for Global Warming... you know the Carbon Credit theory of re-distributing the wealth??? It goes on and on.
Why? Greed. Power. Control. Basic Human Conditions. We are our own worst enemy. We are now seeing our entire mass consciousness being played out before us in the media every day.
These "media Bombs" of late regarding the TSA Security Searches are artfully being directed and propagated by our friends with 'long term' federal security interests. They are also pretty much being promoted only within the United States (since I do travel alot). We are now experiencing the use of humiliation and anger regarding the new and now sexually invasive 'hand raping' to encourage travelers to travel less. All based upon fear of a terrorist attack.
The control of our mobility is the issue, and degradation of our rights (if we actually have any left) and personal liberty (which is much different than 'freedom') by the use of 'national security' measures. The backlash of the resistance to the hand searches will be the use of the X-Ray whether you like it or not.
I have been traveling internationally since I was 10. I have seen our ability to move about at will become more compromised, tedious and 'security' conscious under the guise of providing us with "safety" from terrorists. Instead, the terror is being propagated by our own insidious government, and the travel equivalent of Marshal Law is being foisted upon us in the name of 'security'.
By limiting our movement, we become captives of the state.
When money went digital (also a 40 year process of numbing people down with the convenience of digital transactions) - our financial privacy was lost. We have no financial privacy as we can be traced down to the penny of what was spent where - for the convenience of using credit and debit cards instead of cash.
Which brings me to the main point - We are now potentially monitorable via the following methods of electronic surveillance:
1. Mobile Phones
2. Internet
3. Digital Money
4. Travel - Passport digitization, X-Ray scanners, personal searched just short of cavity search.
5. Satellite 'zoom in' and infra-red monitoring.
We are now being numbed down to being humiliated and herded so that we are truly "sheeple".
Do not think this is accidental or without far reaching implications. Let me pose a couple of rhetorical questions:
First, however let me explain how the psychology is working
- the idea is to focus enough difficulty around an issue so that YOU the OBJECT of the whole effort will literally BEG for the Electronic Alternative to being searched, or tracked, or opt for what ever will seem to make it all easier - so you can continue to be further anesthesized. With enough discomfort, anger, and humiliation your behavior is being shaped over time to do exactly as those who are controlling you want you to do. (Simple "watch the birdie" techniques - while the more nefarious plots unfolds in the background). This is mass psychology being used on the masses. stick and carrot.
So - rather than being detained or body searched so that you can travel, would you prefer to have an x-ray of your body? Now is it making any sense?
Would the use of a Retina Scan assist you?
Would the implantation of a simple electronic chip under your skin that contains access all your personal information assist you in not having to fumble for change, paper money, or the plethora of credit cards make it all seem better?
One more thing... now that we have the Satellite Tracking technology down, what is preventing the capture of Al-Qaida leaders? Do you think they are actually serving a purpose in all this? YOU BET.
Without the Boogy Man creating havoc in the world indiscriminately and at focused venues - even with warnings.... The Security game would have no teeth.
Line of Propaganda:
"We are only here to assist you and make all these terrible inconveniences go away for you. Let us protect you, and take care of you, and most of all encourage you to become dependent upon us for your safety, monetary security, and comfort needs."
Who are the proponents of this? Why do they want this?
At our day to day economic level: Credit Bureaus, Banks, Merchants, Police, Ad Agencies, Marketing Companies, large producers of basic essentials, food producers... who ever is feeding the supply chain.
At the Global level the proponents are: Governments with visions of World Government, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) that want to set up watchdog groups.... let's say ..... for Global Warming... you know the Carbon Credit theory of re-distributing the wealth??? It goes on and on.
Why? Greed. Power. Control. Basic Human Conditions. We are our own worst enemy. We are now seeing our entire mass consciousness being played out before us in the media every day.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Institutionalized Gangster Government
Institutionalized Gangster Government
July 5, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
Someone I’ve known for a long time who formerly didn’t follow current events or politics very closely used to ask me, “Are we still okay?” when particularly disturbing news items would make the headlines. My response until the late 1990s was usually a slightly overconfident, “Sure. This is a great country. We can handle this.”
That person hasn’t asked me that question for many years. We both know, as do millions of other Americans, that we haven’t been okay for some time and that the foundations supporting what has made this country so exceptional for so very long are crumbling.
We stopped being okay over a decade ago. In 1998, the country’s president repeatedly lied under oath in front of the American people. As George Will correctly asserted in January 2001: “There is no reasonable doubt that he committed and suborned perjury, tampered with witnesses and otherwise obstructed justice.” Additionally, credible allegations surfaced that, as Will noted, made it “reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president.” The failure of the United States Senate to remove Bill Clinton from office was a landmark defeat for the rule of law. Clinton himself didn’t merely survive impeachment; he has since thrived not in spite of it, but arguably because of it.
From that point forward, those whose stated agenda is to undermine this country’s essence knew that if they could only achieve sufficient power, they could probably get away with just about anything.
Meanwhile, over at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democratic Party cronies were already a half-dozen years into executing the first prong of their strategic offensive targeting the ruin of the housing industry, the financial sector, and ultimately the economy. Beginning in 1993, Fan and Fred systematically deceived the bond rating agencies and defrauded investors by seriously exaggerating the quality of the mortgage loans underlying their debt securities. Then, mere months after the Senate failed to carry out its constitutional duty with Mr. Clinton, Fannie Mae announced that it would begin serving as a conduit for loans to unqualified and undeserving borrowers. Fan and Fred, which followed a short time later, facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars in such risky loans.
Thus, in November 2008, assisted by the crisis Fan and Fred primarily created (which conveniently had come to a head just two months earlier), millions of dollars in unaccounted-for campaign contributions (many of them more than likely from foreign sources), an ineffective opponent, and a derelict Fourth Estate, Barack Obama won the presidency.
After only seventeen months in office, the rule of law, where it hasn’t been routed, hangs by a mere thread.
One of the earliest assaults came when the administration and its car czars took control of financially insolvent General Motors and Chrysler, and then orchestrated bankruptcy plans that deliberately shortchanged disfavored creditors to the benefit of the companies’ unions. Columnist Michael Barone characterized the campaign of intimidation against certain of Chrysler’s secured lenders as an “episode of Gangster Government.” Barone wrote that it was “likely to be part of a continuing series.”
Sadly, Barone has been vindicated in more ways than can be counted. The most visible, and most risible, is the $20 billion BP shakedown.
That the government has incompetently thwarted most attempts to keep the oil from the company’s incapacitated rig from reaching shore is beyond dispute. The most blatant failure was reported at Canada’s Financial Post:
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill … each Dutch ship (had) more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. …
The voracious Dutch vessels … continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. (But) nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
Incredibly, U.S. regulators would rather have hundreds of square miles of water and priceless shoreline polluted than contain the spill with equipment that might allow slightly less than perfect water back into the Gulf of Mexico.
When Venezuela’s state-run grocery chain recently allowed tens of thousand of metric tons of food to rot, Hugo Chavez’s solution was to conduct raids on privately run grocers, confiscating replacement goods as punishment for trumped-up charges of hoarding and gouging. When the Obama administration by its own inaction allowed a serious problem at a single oil rig to turn into an economic and environmental catastrophe, it conducted a demonizing blitz against BP that culminated with a $20 billion raid on the company’s treasury. Obama’s action is in substance far more lawless than the authoritarian Venezuelan’s raids.
Meanwhile, the press’s alleged watchdogs have turned into cheerleaders. David Sanger at the New York Times gleefully described Obama’s reestablishment of “command and control,” adoringly celebrated “the use of raw presidential power” against BP, and shamelessly excused the president’s unilateral action:
(The White House) conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.
Pravda in its Communist heyday couldn’t have outdone Mr. Sanger.
With the establishment press asleep and the blogosphere still in its investigative reporting infancy, imagine what we can’t see, and won’t see. Mark Levin raised the warning flag about this over a year ago:
Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them?
Now imagine what the statists in government can accomplish to further their agenda and stifle dissent in their arbitrary and largely unappealable rulings on what is and isn’t a “grandfathered” employer health care plan; what is or isn’t acceptable executive pay; and now, with the imminent passage of what Investors Business Daily called “financial deform,” which “financial services” firms, no matter how currently healthy, should be taken over for taking on too much “risk.”
What we have is institutionalized gangster government. There’s a single word for it — and it’s not okay.
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com
July 5, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
Someone I’ve known for a long time who formerly didn’t follow current events or politics very closely used to ask me, “Are we still okay?” when particularly disturbing news items would make the headlines. My response until the late 1990s was usually a slightly overconfident, “Sure. This is a great country. We can handle this.”
That person hasn’t asked me that question for many years. We both know, as do millions of other Americans, that we haven’t been okay for some time and that the foundations supporting what has made this country so exceptional for so very long are crumbling.
We stopped being okay over a decade ago. In 1998, the country’s president repeatedly lied under oath in front of the American people. As George Will correctly asserted in January 2001: “There is no reasonable doubt that he committed and suborned perjury, tampered with witnesses and otherwise obstructed justice.” Additionally, credible allegations surfaced that, as Will noted, made it “reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president.” The failure of the United States Senate to remove Bill Clinton from office was a landmark defeat for the rule of law. Clinton himself didn’t merely survive impeachment; he has since thrived not in spite of it, but arguably because of it.
From that point forward, those whose stated agenda is to undermine this country’s essence knew that if they could only achieve sufficient power, they could probably get away with just about anything.
Meanwhile, over at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democratic Party cronies were already a half-dozen years into executing the first prong of their strategic offensive targeting the ruin of the housing industry, the financial sector, and ultimately the economy. Beginning in 1993, Fan and Fred systematically deceived the bond rating agencies and defrauded investors by seriously exaggerating the quality of the mortgage loans underlying their debt securities. Then, mere months after the Senate failed to carry out its constitutional duty with Mr. Clinton, Fannie Mae announced that it would begin serving as a conduit for loans to unqualified and undeserving borrowers. Fan and Fred, which followed a short time later, facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars in such risky loans.
Thus, in November 2008, assisted by the crisis Fan and Fred primarily created (which conveniently had come to a head just two months earlier), millions of dollars in unaccounted-for campaign contributions (many of them more than likely from foreign sources), an ineffective opponent, and a derelict Fourth Estate, Barack Obama won the presidency.
After only seventeen months in office, the rule of law, where it hasn’t been routed, hangs by a mere thread.
One of the earliest assaults came when the administration and its car czars took control of financially insolvent General Motors and Chrysler, and then orchestrated bankruptcy plans that deliberately shortchanged disfavored creditors to the benefit of the companies’ unions. Columnist Michael Barone characterized the campaign of intimidation against certain of Chrysler’s secured lenders as an “episode of Gangster Government.” Barone wrote that it was “likely to be part of a continuing series.”
Sadly, Barone has been vindicated in more ways than can be counted. The most visible, and most risible, is the $20 billion BP shakedown.
That the government has incompetently thwarted most attempts to keep the oil from the company’s incapacitated rig from reaching shore is beyond dispute. The most blatant failure was reported at Canada’s Financial Post:
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill … each Dutch ship (had) more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. …
The voracious Dutch vessels … continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. (But) nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
Incredibly, U.S. regulators would rather have hundreds of square miles of water and priceless shoreline polluted than contain the spill with equipment that might allow slightly less than perfect water back into the Gulf of Mexico.
When Venezuela’s state-run grocery chain recently allowed tens of thousand of metric tons of food to rot, Hugo Chavez’s solution was to conduct raids on privately run grocers, confiscating replacement goods as punishment for trumped-up charges of hoarding and gouging. When the Obama administration by its own inaction allowed a serious problem at a single oil rig to turn into an economic and environmental catastrophe, it conducted a demonizing blitz against BP that culminated with a $20 billion raid on the company’s treasury. Obama’s action is in substance far more lawless than the authoritarian Venezuelan’s raids.
Meanwhile, the press’s alleged watchdogs have turned into cheerleaders. David Sanger at the New York Times gleefully described Obama’s reestablishment of “command and control,” adoringly celebrated “the use of raw presidential power” against BP, and shamelessly excused the president’s unilateral action:
(The White House) conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.
Pravda in its Communist heyday couldn’t have outdone Mr. Sanger.
With the establishment press asleep and the blogosphere still in its investigative reporting infancy, imagine what we can’t see, and won’t see. Mark Levin raised the warning flag about this over a year ago:
Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them?
Now imagine what the statists in government can accomplish to further their agenda and stifle dissent in their arbitrary and largely unappealable rulings on what is and isn’t a “grandfathered” employer health care plan; what is or isn’t acceptable executive pay; and now, with the imminent passage of what Investors Business Daily called “financial deform,” which “financial services” firms, no matter how currently healthy, should be taken over for taking on too much “risk.”
What we have is institutionalized gangster government. There’s a single word for it — and it’s not okay.
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com
Institutionalized Gangster Government
Institutionalized Gangster Government
July 5, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
Someone I’ve known for a long time who formerly didn’t follow current events or politics very closely used to ask me, “Are we still okay?” when particularly disturbing news items would make the headlines. My response until the late 1990s was usually a slightly overconfident, “Sure. This is a great country. We can handle this.”
That person hasn’t asked me that question for many years. We both know, as do millions of other Americans, that we haven’t been okay for some time and that the foundations supporting what has made this country so exceptional for so very long are crumbling.
We stopped being okay over a decade ago. In 1998, the country’s president repeatedly lied under oath in front of the American people. As George Will correctly asserted in January 2001: “There is no reasonable doubt that he committed and suborned perjury, tampered with witnesses and otherwise obstructed justice.” Additionally, credible allegations surfaced that, as Will noted, made it “reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president.” The failure of the United States Senate to remove Bill Clinton from office was a landmark defeat for the rule of law. Clinton himself didn’t merely survive impeachment; he has since thrived not in spite of it, but arguably because of it.
From that point forward, those whose stated agenda is to undermine this country’s essence knew that if they could only achieve sufficient power, they could probably get away with just about anything.
Meanwhile, over at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democratic Party cronies were already a half-dozen years into executing the first prong of their strategic offensive targeting the ruin of the housing industry, the financial sector, and ultimately the economy. Beginning in 1993, Fan and Fred systematically deceived the bond rating agencies and defrauded investors by seriously exaggerating the quality of the mortgage loans underlying their debt securities. Then, mere months after the Senate failed to carry out its constitutional duty with Mr. Clinton, Fannie Mae announced that it would begin serving as a conduit for loans to unqualified and undeserving borrowers. Fan and Fred, which followed a short time later, facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars in such risky loans.
Thus, in November 2008, assisted by the crisis Fan and Fred primarily created (which conveniently had come to a head just two months earlier), millions of dollars in unaccounted-for campaign contributions (many of them more than likely from foreign sources), an ineffective opponent, and a derelict Fourth Estate, Barack Obama won the presidency.
After only seventeen months in office, the rule of law, where it hasn’t been routed, hangs by a mere thread.
One of the earliest assaults came when the administration and its car czars took control of financially insolvent General Motors and Chrysler, and then orchestrated bankruptcy plans that deliberately shortchanged disfavored creditors to the benefit of the companies’ unions. Columnist Michael Barone characterized the campaign of intimidation against certain of Chrysler’s secured lenders as an “episode of Gangster Government.” Barone wrote that it was “likely to be part of a continuing series.”
Sadly, Barone has been vindicated in more ways than can be counted. The most visible, and most risible, is the $20 billion BP shakedown.
That the government has incompetently thwarted most attempts to keep the oil from the company’s incapacitated rig from reaching shore is beyond dispute. The most blatant failure was reported at Canada’s Financial Post:
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill … each Dutch ship (had) more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. …
The voracious Dutch vessels … continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. (But) nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
Incredibly, U.S. regulators would rather have hundreds of square miles of water and priceless shoreline polluted than contain the spill with equipment that might allow slightly less than perfect water back into the Gulf of Mexico.
When Venezuela’s state-run grocery chain recently allowed tens of thousand of metric tons of food to rot, Hugo Chavez’s solution was to conduct raids on privately run grocers, confiscating replacement goods as punishment for trumped-up charges of hoarding and gouging. When the Obama administration by its own inaction allowed a serious problem at a single oil rig to turn into an economic and environmental catastrophe, it conducted a demonizing blitz against BP that culminated with a $20 billion raid on the company’s treasury. Obama’s action is in substance far more lawless than the authoritarian Venezuelan’s raids.
Meanwhile, the press’s alleged watchdogs have turned into cheerleaders. David Sanger at the New York Times gleefully described Obama’s reestablishment of “command and control,” adoringly celebrated “the use of raw presidential power” against BP, and shamelessly excused the president’s unilateral action:
(The White House) conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.
Pravda in its Communist heyday couldn’t have outdone Mr. Sanger.
With the establishment press asleep and the blogosphere still in its investigative reporting infancy, imagine what we can’t see, and won’t see. Mark Levin raised the warning flag about this over a year ago:
Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them?
Now imagine what the statists in government can accomplish to further their agenda and stifle dissent in their arbitrary and largely unappealable rulings on what is and isn’t a “grandfathered” employer health care plan; what is or isn’t acceptable executive pay; and now, with the imminent passage of what Investors Business Daily called “financial deform,” which “financial services” firms, no matter how currently healthy, should be taken over for taking on too much “risk.”
What we have is institutionalized gangster government. There’s a single word for it — and it’s not okay.
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com
July 5, 2010 - by Tom Blumer
Someone I’ve known for a long time who formerly didn’t follow current events or politics very closely used to ask me, “Are we still okay?” when particularly disturbing news items would make the headlines. My response until the late 1990s was usually a slightly overconfident, “Sure. This is a great country. We can handle this.”
That person hasn’t asked me that question for many years. We both know, as do millions of other Americans, that we haven’t been okay for some time and that the foundations supporting what has made this country so exceptional for so very long are crumbling.
We stopped being okay over a decade ago. In 1998, the country’s president repeatedly lied under oath in front of the American people. As George Will correctly asserted in January 2001: “There is no reasonable doubt that he committed and suborned perjury, tampered with witnesses and otherwise obstructed justice.” Additionally, credible allegations surfaced that, as Will noted, made it “reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president.” The failure of the United States Senate to remove Bill Clinton from office was a landmark defeat for the rule of law. Clinton himself didn’t merely survive impeachment; he has since thrived not in spite of it, but arguably because of it.
From that point forward, those whose stated agenda is to undermine this country’s essence knew that if they could only achieve sufficient power, they could probably get away with just about anything.
Meanwhile, over at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democratic Party cronies were already a half-dozen years into executing the first prong of their strategic offensive targeting the ruin of the housing industry, the financial sector, and ultimately the economy. Beginning in 1993, Fan and Fred systematically deceived the bond rating agencies and defrauded investors by seriously exaggerating the quality of the mortgage loans underlying their debt securities. Then, mere months after the Senate failed to carry out its constitutional duty with Mr. Clinton, Fannie Mae announced that it would begin serving as a conduit for loans to unqualified and undeserving borrowers. Fan and Fred, which followed a short time later, facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars in such risky loans.
Thus, in November 2008, assisted by the crisis Fan and Fred primarily created (which conveniently had come to a head just two months earlier), millions of dollars in unaccounted-for campaign contributions (many of them more than likely from foreign sources), an ineffective opponent, and a derelict Fourth Estate, Barack Obama won the presidency.
After only seventeen months in office, the rule of law, where it hasn’t been routed, hangs by a mere thread.
One of the earliest assaults came when the administration and its car czars took control of financially insolvent General Motors and Chrysler, and then orchestrated bankruptcy plans that deliberately shortchanged disfavored creditors to the benefit of the companies’ unions. Columnist Michael Barone characterized the campaign of intimidation against certain of Chrysler’s secured lenders as an “episode of Gangster Government.” Barone wrote that it was “likely to be part of a continuing series.”
Sadly, Barone has been vindicated in more ways than can be counted. The most visible, and most risible, is the $20 billion BP shakedown.
That the government has incompetently thwarted most attempts to keep the oil from the company’s incapacitated rig from reaching shore is beyond dispute. The most blatant failure was reported at Canada’s Financial Post:
Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill … each Dutch ship (had) more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. …
The voracious Dutch vessels … continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. (But) nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
Incredibly, U.S. regulators would rather have hundreds of square miles of water and priceless shoreline polluted than contain the spill with equipment that might allow slightly less than perfect water back into the Gulf of Mexico.
When Venezuela’s state-run grocery chain recently allowed tens of thousand of metric tons of food to rot, Hugo Chavez’s solution was to conduct raids on privately run grocers, confiscating replacement goods as punishment for trumped-up charges of hoarding and gouging. When the Obama administration by its own inaction allowed a serious problem at a single oil rig to turn into an economic and environmental catastrophe, it conducted a demonizing blitz against BP that culminated with a $20 billion raid on the company’s treasury. Obama’s action is in substance far more lawless than the authoritarian Venezuelan’s raids.
Meanwhile, the press’s alleged watchdogs have turned into cheerleaders. David Sanger at the New York Times gleefully described Obama’s reestablishment of “command and control,” adoringly celebrated “the use of raw presidential power” against BP, and shamelessly excused the president’s unilateral action:
(The White House) conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.
Pravda in its Communist heyday couldn’t have outdone Mr. Sanger.
With the establishment press asleep and the blogosphere still in its investigative reporting infancy, imagine what we can’t see, and won’t see. Mark Levin raised the warning flag about this over a year ago:
Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them?
Now imagine what the statists in government can accomplish to further their agenda and stifle dissent in their arbitrary and largely unappealable rulings on what is and isn’t a “grandfathered” employer health care plan; what is or isn’t acceptable executive pay; and now, with the imminent passage of what Investors Business Daily called “financial deform,” which “financial services” firms, no matter how currently healthy, should be taken over for taking on too much “risk.”
What we have is institutionalized gangster government. There’s a single word for it — and it’s not okay.
Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
No Leadership in Prez Seat
Unfortunately, our president is not a leader. He is a law professor, who had some local success as a politician, before he was 'selected' by the post Kennedy faction of the Dems to carry the minority vote on a socialist platform that promised everything, and has delivered nothing but national debt.
The recent excuses for taking action (or not) to get the Gulf cleaned up are overshadowed by the trail of money and lobbying by BP leading to BO's front doorstep. Once again, it's all about the money. Nothin' but.
I am not against drilling by any means, but the series of dumb-ass errors that led to the burn-out of the drill assembly down at the hole was completely avoidable. To many numb-nuts on site.stumbing around the rig. Not enough procedure, not enough alertness. Kind of like our present Executive leadership.
We shoiuld always drill for oil, anywhere we can find it. But, seriously, let's keep the numb-nuts off these multi-billion dollar rigs and enterprises. I am from SE Texas, near Louisiana, and we have all grown up with rigs in the Gulf. I have sailed across the Gulf right through them on an 80 mile rhumb line from Galveston to Tampa many times.
Drilling for oil has always been a part of our lives. Following numb-nuts over the cliff has not - Presidential or otherwise.
The recent excuses for taking action (or not) to get the Gulf cleaned up are overshadowed by the trail of money and lobbying by BP leading to BO's front doorstep. Once again, it's all about the money. Nothin' but.
I am not against drilling by any means, but the series of dumb-ass errors that led to the burn-out of the drill assembly down at the hole was completely avoidable. To many numb-nuts on site.stumbing around the rig. Not enough procedure, not enough alertness. Kind of like our present Executive leadership.
We shoiuld always drill for oil, anywhere we can find it. But, seriously, let's keep the numb-nuts off these multi-billion dollar rigs and enterprises. I am from SE Texas, near Louisiana, and we have all grown up with rigs in the Gulf. I have sailed across the Gulf right through them on an 80 mile rhumb line from Galveston to Tampa many times.
Drilling for oil has always been a part of our lives. Following numb-nuts over the cliff has not - Presidential or otherwise.
No Leadership in Prez Seat
Unfortunately, our president is not a leader. He is a law professor, who had some local success as a politician, before he was 'selected' by the post Kennedy faction of the Dems to carry the minority vote on a socialist platform that promised everything, and has delivered nothing but national debt.
The recent excuses for taking action (or not) to get the Gulf cleaned up are overshadowed by the trail of money and lobbying by BP leading to BO's front doorstep. Once again, it's all about the money. Nothin' but.
I am not against drilling by any means, but the series of dumb-ass errors that led to the burn-out of the drill assembly down at the hole was completely avoidable. To many numb-nuts on site.stumbing around the rig. Not enough procedure, not enough alertness. Kind of like our present Executive leadership.
We shoiuld always drill for oil, anywhere we can find it. But, seriously, let's keep the numb-nuts off these multi-billion dollar rigs and enterprises. I am from SE Texas, near Louisiana, and we have all grown up with rigs in the Gulf. I have sailed across the Gulf right through them on an 80 mile rhumb line from Galveston to Tampa many times.
Drilling for oil has always been a part of our lives. Following numb-nuts over the cliff has not - Presidential or otherwise.
The recent excuses for taking action (or not) to get the Gulf cleaned up are overshadowed by the trail of money and lobbying by BP leading to BO's front doorstep. Once again, it's all about the money. Nothin' but.
I am not against drilling by any means, but the series of dumb-ass errors that led to the burn-out of the drill assembly down at the hole was completely avoidable. To many numb-nuts on site.stumbing around the rig. Not enough procedure, not enough alertness. Kind of like our present Executive leadership.
We shoiuld always drill for oil, anywhere we can find it. But, seriously, let's keep the numb-nuts off these multi-billion dollar rigs and enterprises. I am from SE Texas, near Louisiana, and we have all grown up with rigs in the Gulf. I have sailed across the Gulf right through them on an 80 mile rhumb line from Galveston to Tampa many times.
Drilling for oil has always been a part of our lives. Following numb-nuts over the cliff has not - Presidential or otherwise.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense
"... The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning."
-- Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense
"... The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning."
-- Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
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