tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6580059507062656012024-02-20T17:49:51.642-05:00The PACIFIC GATE POSTChallenging Perception on Business, Culture & Politics -
"Raider of The Lost Bark" by JAMES RAIDERUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger220125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-10238400086831203202015-02-07T22:18:00.000-05:002015-02-07T22:18:05.705-05:00Obama, The Ultimate Senior Banker’s President<!--EndFragment--><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">For sixty four years, the world enjoyed some degree
of stability, perhaps greater than at any previous period in history, with the
United States performing the expensive, but indispensable role of
“stabilizer.” There had been regional wars, and provincial atrocities often
localized to sectarian disputes, but most of the world went about its business,
criss-crossing oceans and borders to grow trade, or travelling to distant
vacations. 9/11 changed behaviours, nevertheless, we continued on our
paths, but did so with a little more caution on our air-travels. Then,
with the power of wealthy and powerful senior bankers behind him, an unknown,
untried, and utterly inexperienced junior Senator was placed in the Oval
Office.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;font-size: 12pt;">"Six
years beyond his election, it is now difficult to ascribe descriptives to
our world that don’t signify chaos. For six years we witnessed with
astonishment as the Obama Administration puzzled us and the world with
decisions that held no common sense. Autocratic and presumptuous
decisions, smothered in ignorance, shouted to the world that the United States
was standing down, . . . everywhere.</span><br />
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<i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">Defence
missile shield in Poland? No. We have no interest in defending Europeans,
or counterbalancing Putin’s USSR Empire reconstruction plans. Putin shot an
airliner out of the sky? We’ll have to get some facts on that, soon, and I
won’t sleep until . . . But look over there, our good friends the Muslim
Brotherhood, brought down that nasty Mubarak, . . . oops, Egypt broke?
Nevermind, the Arab Spring is in full bloom. Hillary, while you’re
racking up a million miles aboard flying hotels, go take care of bringing
down Qaddafi, . . . oops, damn, Lybia’s on fire. Yah, but good news,
we’ll tell all our enemies how and when we’re vacating Iraq and, . . . oh damn,
ISIS you say? Hell don’t worry, they’re just a JV team. Syria? Really?
Well at least those arms we smuggled to those rebels from Lybia are doing their
job. Assad is cowering, isn’t he? Never mind, nice work
Hillary, this should help you in 2016, or not. The Saudis and their
neighbours are funding ISIS and Al Quaeda? Nah, they’re my real friends.
Iran? Of course they’ll become a nuclear power. Get used to it. But don’t
worry folks, the whole Middle East isn’t on fire, you’re looking at the glow of
golden sunsets and you’re confused. And Europe’s problems? Those
countries launched the colonialist invasions which abused peoples around the
world. They deserve what they’re getting. Asia? What’s Asia? Fighting
over some islands? People trying to leave poverty? Hah.</span></i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">Reality
beyond the minds of the narcissistic Administration is a world where too many
nations are in complete disarray, where broken states have no power centers,
where too many nations are consumed with overwhelming economic problems, and
where country after country is punctured with political and religious battles
that will take decades to settle. It almost matters little which
direction one looks, Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Libya, . . . well OK, most of
Africa and all of the Middle East, Europe with the EU in jeopardy,
China’s communists flexing newfound muscles against their neighbours, and
Putin taking advantage of a weak President and a confused Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;font-size: 12pt;">A feeble
President unable to lead, or inspire the great Nation he was elected to lead,
and unable to lead the world, is better than anything the senior bankers in
their most private and most wild dreams could have engineered. They may have
bought this Administration into office, but there’s no way they could have
predicted their luck. What luck?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">Further
accentuating the chaos governing the troubled world, is a multitude of
“bubbles,” including major bank debts, national bank debts, government debt,
and artificial inflation of equity markets, all fed by senior and central
bankers who have no solutions other than to throw worthless Central Bank paper
into the chaos. In ignorance, bankers hope something happens as they
delay the inevitable, and hope no one notices the fundamental insanity of the
historically high debt being created.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">Amidst
this strife, America’s geopolitical and economic stability provides the world’s
wealth with the only safe haven, . . . relatively. It matters
little that unemployment is at record highs, or that new jobs are not good
paying full time jobs, or that almost 50 million Americans depend on food
stamps in silent misery, America is considered as the only safe place to park cash.
The more the chaos, the more America’s attraction as a shelter, better than any
other on Earth. America is perceived by the world as being physically
isolated, with a powerful military and with laws which minimize corruption.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">The
unprecedented accelerating dissolution of the international community into
discord and disorder has made the United States the only secure
depository. Whether cash extracted from oil wells by kings and kleptocrats,
or cash from the drug world, cash scammed off the top from nations such as
Mexico, Brazil, or China, trillions of dollars extracted from autocratic
governments need parking. Not only are senior bankers happy to oblige in
movement of cash, or sale of U.S. bonds, the conversion of foreign assets and
wealth to “dollars” hides the reality of the abuse which central bankers have
perpetrated on a Nation which appears confused and in fear of the uncertain
future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">There is
no possible way that Goldman Sachs and friends believe their extreme luck as
they accumulate hundreds of billions in personal wealth. </span></b><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">They could not have foretold their good fortunes when they
purchased a Presidency totally ignorant of things economic – manipulate, yes,
but this level of luck? Not a chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">By
the time their abuse comes to an abrupt end, and the “indentured species” known
as the American middle class collapses under unrepayable debt, the senior
bankers will no longer care who occupies the White House.</span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-39422722415711892912014-03-13T13:32:00.000-04:002014-03-13T13:32:00.473-04:00The Age Of The Great American DissolveAmerica’s consciousness has shifted. We live in a predominantly unstable and unpredictable world, a situation long accepted as the norm, however, we also live during the first period of history in which America’s prominence in the world and its own vision and notion of itself, has been blurred. A majority of Americans have adopted self doubt and the confidence America has held through much of its story has been dissipated.<br />
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Through the fog of apprehension Americans plucked an unknown to take the helm of their governance. The fog did not lift, and in fact with the unknown’s propagation of envy, the opacity and anxiety intensified and the unknown was reelected.
Unease and apprehension rarely if ever translate into positive decisions. For the Nation, this retrenchment of confidence will not lead to growth where it is most necessary and where it would be most felt — in that parat of the population not employed by government and not part of the economic 1%ers. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">America was not built on coveting the neighbour’s wealth nor on wealth seizure and redistribution. America was built by the work of many, and it flourished majestically on the grand ideas and on the creativity of a few. Those few were all those creative minds who advanced innovation in their businesses. Those few have been our entrepreneurs who enabled breakthroughs in all areas of human endeavour, lifting the whole to ever greater levels in quality of life. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The self hatred of socialism, that deplorable consequence and tendency of a lazy mind, condemns the independence of thought and heart. It condemns entrepreneurialism and reviles it as a blight on society along with capitalism. As this pernicious socialism creeps toward communism, it imposes stifling taxes and regulations on the very engines which prosperity depends on. We currently have schismatic leadership which has followed the socialist playbook for five years, in attempt to build a society controlled by a self serving political elite. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The disintegration of the single greatest human experiment is accelerated by a complicit mainstream media, unable to find common sense as it drowns in the debris of stupor oiled with the insanity which comes when you believe in your own intellectually superiority. With few exceptions, the liberal media covers for an out-of-control Administration, and lies about the economic conditions of a Nation struggling with stratospheric levels of public and private indebtedness. But don’t stress about your monthly debt payments, after all, statistics indicate that collectively we hold many times more in asset values than the size of our personal debt, so just keep working those two jobs and you’ll survive, . . . OK, three jobs. And when interest rates rise, well, . . . nevermind, you’ll figure it out, really, don’t worry. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Economic literacy is not a prerequisite to grasping the obvious financial realities flooding the neighbourhoods across the Nation. That the Federal Reserve has played a major role in the disintegration of the dollar, in the indebtedness of all Americans and in the disintegration of ‘savings’ is not a secret, and yet the Nation is numbed. The Nation is accepting of an invisible, all-wise, and all-knowing group placing it in a permanent vat of destructive debt, washing an unwilling economy with hundreds of billions of cash it cannot and will not use. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The stupefied populace accepts the government’s insinuation into all areas of life, social, personal, economic and spiritual — it has become the norm that Bernanke and Obama will tell the world anything they politically need no matter how absurd, or prevaricative. Whatever they lay on the Nation, the Nation accepts in its slide into lethargy. For some obscure reason America does not wonder why a small band of unenlightened, uncreative, and ignorant economists wield so much Control, and manipulate markets that natural laws tells us should be Free. Do any of these people understand the entrepreneur? They can’t. The Fed, just as with this Administration, is led by pontificating ideologues and academics splashing around in a confused theoretical quagmire of manipulation.
Two incomes per household has become a necessity whether in marriage or in combination of incomes by two or three friends under one roof, as purchasing power of the dollar has been brutalized by a vapid, self serving, pariah — The Federal Reserve, serving its owners and bountifully satisfying a willfully harmful and oblivious Administration. The days when savings were encouraged have become eclipsed by endemic propagation of debt and the breeding of pervasive risk-taking with our cash. In our indolence, we succumbed. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The two income necessity places an especially vile pressure on single parents, particularly single mothers, literally forcing them into the arms of the government. The majority of them want jobs, want to go to work and would rather not be wholly dependent. It would flow against the grain of human nature for them to feel otherwise, however, the age of massive and invasive government is upon us, and the more people the government can corral into its paddock, and the more difficult the government can make it to escape, the greater the support for the socialist mindset. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">We read and hear about a fading “middle class” and that without it, society will slide into feudalism. What middle class? That middle 95% of the population? That’s not the middle class. That’s America. A very few bankers and “Wall Streeters” at the top of the fiat-currency financial food-chain are firmly in control. And you, the middle class — don’t you believe your lying eyes as you witness the legions of unemployed and underemployed in every neighbourhood around you, desperately looking for jobs. Your eyes, your common sense, and your intuition are wrong. Just plain wrong. Everything’s fine. Ignore the fact that for over two generations your wealth has been drained by The Fed, and coagulated into the imperious pockets of its caretakers. The stock market is frothing with exuberance, can’t you see how wonderful things are? Just go meditate yourself into a continued euphoric indifference, or better still, just go back to sleep. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> For five years now, we have regularly been provided with a constant flow of evidence pointing to the a politicization of government bureaucracy that now enforces ideologically-sprung mandates. That kind of orchestration and direction can only have come from one place — the White House. Unfortunately, that arrogant, hubristic, and sanctimonious attitude permeated so many of the federal government departments, that a reversal of this monopolistic calcification will prove impossible once any new Administration takes over. Anything and anyone not stepping in line with the socialist ideology and rustling any leaves in political opposition, will find the powers of the DOJ, or the FBI, or the NSA, or the CIA, or the IRS, launched against them. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">We are living in an age when the democratic process has been thwarted by ideological bureaucracies stoked by political ambitions. At the same time we have allowed laws to be trampled without regularity of enforcement, and stood-by as capitalism became corrupted without recourse.
</span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">From the heights of bold confidence led by entrepreneurs forging new paths toward flourishing prosperity where the claim to opportunity was distruted more broadly than ever in its history, America has dissolved into a state of confusion and indecision, with apathy as its next stop to being overrun by the self-hate which embraces and implements the socialist dicta.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-49787215340155090592013-09-09T16:39:00.003-04:002013-09-09T16:42:14.871-04:00The Line Of Courage and Determination In The Sand<span style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span>2181 years ago a Roman consul Gaius Popillius Laenas, delivered one of the earliest known “Line In The Sand” ultimatums against King Antiochus IV of Syria. Is there a message buried in a two millennium old event that might inform Barack Obama as he rattles the military might over which American voters handed him <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e8c63f0a-6b27-4add-8ff4-800e43020f82" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="08d92da9-070e-4a62-a891-ff38a2b4f5c0" grcontextid="title:0">title</span> of Commander In Chief (CIC)?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">Antiochus was a descendent of Seleucus, an Alexander the Great general who had taken Syria as his quarter of Alexander’s Empire upon the young Emperor’s untimely death. Antiochus had violently conquered, pillaged, and generally run amuck around the Eastern Mediterranean controlling Israel, capturing Cyprus and overrunning all of Egypt, except for Alexandria.</span><br />
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When Antiochus decided to also take control of Alexandria in 168BC, Rome’s tolerance for his exploits withered. Rome’s Senate appointed a Roman Consul as its ambassador to stop Antiochus’ further advance. The Senate sent Gaius Popillius Laenas, bestowing in Popillius Authority to carry the full power of Rome’s military might, and to speak and act on Rome’s behalf. The assignment commissioned Popillius to stop a powerful army marching under Antiochus’ leadership.</div>
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In 168BC Rome was the most powerful nation on Earth with the largest army. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d099112b-d91a-4c43-8d52-2f3967e75bbb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c5a3e9cc-c4b0-4f00-aad2-ec23909644e8" grcontextid="Popillius’:0">Popillius’</span> commission might have seemed straightforward enough, were it not for the fact that the Roman Senate dispatched their envoy by ship along with only a dozen attendants (<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4decc7fe-b6d6-4c59-a6cc-300ffd602d20" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c5a3e9cc-c4b0-4f00-aad2-ec23909644e8" grcontextid="lictors:1">lictors</span>) in support.</div>
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History tells us that Popillius landed at Alexandria, and confronted King Antiochus confidently leading a wall of Syrian soldiers marching along the Nile toward the great ancient city. The confrontation was apparently short and effective. Antiochus <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="dbbbf04d-b79c-49d5-817f-1cb6eb1c87c0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="204bec4b-73d2-4786-b84b-fb4651bc9c7e" grcontextid="intructed:0">intructed</span> Popillius that Rome had no business in Egypt, to which Popillius replied that neither did Syria. Then Popillius did something which must have taken some degree of daring and courage. He told Antiochus that he was offending the Roman Senate, and the people of Rome and that he had been instructed to make the King return to Syria. What <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7fb84e4b-c04c-428b-aef7-582a91cec010" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5cd91d39-a906-4b80-b3cf-e90041dc2741" grcontextid="scene:0">scene</span> that must have been – a dozen men <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0efcca2b-35e2-479a-95e6-a4e2669240ad" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5cd91d39-a906-4b80-b3cf-e90041dc2741" grcontextid="facing:1">facing</span> an army, and telling its leader to go home.</div>
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Not surprisingly, the request was met with laughter, and the 168BC version of Oh <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="63caa6b3-6729-4d01-adfe-e86a8495e7e5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="cfa0ef8f-97f3-4490-a76b-d6021a92ab8c" grcontextid="yah:0">yah</span>, you and whose army? <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="32b28249-f5e8-41ae-9290-a8547c701692" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c9b4ef6f-d34f-42e7-a87d-717f8e0fe3a0" grcontextid="with:0">with</span> Antiochus asking, “how are you going to make me go home? Where is your army?”</div>
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<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="949b5bab-87be-4fbf-8f0e-6eb4693a4262" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9d92e791-58f6-4852-8928-dc193fb58757" grcontextid="Popillius:0">Popillius</span> explained to Antiochus something like, “I am everything that is Rome. I am Rome. I am Rome’s largest army. Go home.”</div>
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If observed from one hundred feet above the setting just outside Alexandria through the eyes of a falcon, this is one of those moments in history, which would have provided boundless admiration for an almost solitary Roman Consul. Gaius Popillius Laenas remained steadfast through the exchange, and with another, “No,” from Antiochus, Popillius drew a complete circle around the King in the Egyptian soil, with his staff.</div>
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Against the backdrop of the Syrian army looking <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d3e83053-6bd4-4d05-a0fd-eeef2afb5ea3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fa18b4a4-68f9-454b-97e5-9b419fa7cc4a" grcontextid="on:0">on</span>, Popillius instructed their King, “Before you step out of this circle, think again, and when you do step out of it, be facing East, and go home to Syria.”</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
History informs us that King Antiochus IV turned around and marched with his army out of Egypt.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Much can be learned from Popillius and his superiors in 168BC, including:</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
1. Understand the power you have at your disposal and how to use it.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
2. Establish its most effective and beneficial application.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
3. Effectively negotiate with a strategy to do so, rather than ad libbing on the fly with whatever non-sense your ego feels necessary.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
4. Delegate authority. If you’re surrounded by head-nodding advisors, the bench isn’t deep enough to be delegated any authority. Deepen your bench.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
5. Deliver the message concisely, clearly, emphatically and with uncompromising confidence. That dramatically affects the reception of the message.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
6. Here is a simple one which seems a long reach for the current CIC – Mean what you say.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
7. When you set out on a mission, have a plan and hold the determination to implement it.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
8. Don’t blink.</div>
<div>
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span><br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-28807992157083848542013-09-09T16:36:00.002-04:002013-09-09T16:36:34.975-04:00Obama's Syrian Distraction<span style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">Who would ever have thought that <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7f73cce5-f7ab-4c12-9902-2d76ee4274f8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="97ef714d-918e-4622-b0e8-7673df4165d4" grcontextid="examination:0">examination</span> of the continuing dire economic struggles distressing most Americans would completely disappear from the headlines and from public discussion? Who would have believed that America’s stature in the world would be shaken over a failed state like Syria? But here we are. Americans are scrambling for part-time jobs, while listening to dictators insulting the resident of their most powerful office – the office they revere above all others.</span><br />
<span style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The Oval Office has been imbued with almost magisterial spirit by a Nation founded on revolutionary determination. The Presidency has since Washington been expected to personify the resolution, character and tenacity of those who first recoiled against the unreasonable arrogance of royalty. That inspiration, which America breathed into the Oval Office since its creation 224 years ago, has lifted many common men who sought and accepted the responsibilities of the office to become greater than they were.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Whoever it <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="309dc748-722b-47dc-bf11-9d1531b52816" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="99c359ec-2d49-4d26-af1c-abff758cc548" grcontextid="elects:0">elects</span> to its Oval Office, America looks for the individual to fill that room fully. It has every right to expect that person to ‘rise to the occasion,’ and it wants to feel that in that four or eight year undertaking, the President will reflect America’s own dreams, aspirations, resolution, forthrightness, and honor. America wants its President to reflect its greatness. Today, in a time of economic distress, Americans more than ever need a President who can provide the prospect of diminishing anguish.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
No one expects a President to have all the answers, but it is reasonable to expect a President to attempt leading positively, surrounded by the best minds America has to offer for input on strategic thinking, analysis, design and implementation.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
After five years of an Obama Presidency slamming business and industry, and littered with scandals ranging from IRS targeting conservatives, to Benghazi lies, to Solyndra, and to the NSA, America is presented with a deliberate provocation of the international community and an insane debate on WAR.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
<b><span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2943fb2f-4bf8-4fff-9a72-fa620ebba7cd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="996c0d4c-50d6-4065-854d-73b116f29a57" grcontextid="What:0">What</span> WAR? Obama’s WAR.</b> The Western MSM is misrepresenting the most important question: Who will Obama’s ego be fighting? We’ve heard it’s just a “shot across the bow” of Assad. Let’s be clear, this is not a WAR about abuse of internationally prevailing modes of conduct on the use of poisonous chemical gas, although such provides poignant carriage, lifting emotions enough to confuse common sense. This is not about indignation on the death of an estimated 100,000 dead Syrians. It can’t be. Many times that number have died at the hands of Iranian leaders, Chinese leaders, and sundry African war lords without consequence. This is not really about Iran and Israel.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
The WAR noise is about ego and vexation, with a dose of revenge to be inflicted on a seemingly weak adversary (Assad) on the part of a slighted personality who made serious missteps in front of the world, Barack Obama. Not a slighted<i> Office of The President</i>, but a slighted individual, Barack Obama.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Other scandals grown from this Administration’s mismanagement and ineptitude, have cost lives, . . . Benghazi and the ATF ‘Fast and Furious,’ to name two. Syria’s civil war has been used as a personal platform to rebuild the Obama Administration’s disintegrating credibility, erase the long list of scandals from public consciousness, assuage an ego in dire need of approval, and provide Obama with a lasting legacy on the world stage. Whatever the wishful thinking, missiles fired into Syria will provide <i>none</i> of these.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Barack Obama going to WAR with <i>“My military”</i> will inevitably ignite <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9947b7a5-7bd6-453b-837e-23bdf79444fd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bc563a6e-a799-434b-9622-f172cbce408c" grcontextid="widescale:0">widescale</span> slaughter across the Middle East.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
At some point, Barack Obama became convinced that he could flex some military might. After all, spiking the ball immediately after the hit on Bin Laden had been so well received by the devoted. Even many conservatives had approved. Had it not been a glorious hour? Too many secrets were <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8af20d7c-6878-4ae5-a04a-804faf7f4d74" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33266c10-8444-45bb-a149-741d836be203" grcontextid="blurted:0">blurted</span> out, endangering certain members of <i>“His military,” </i>but what <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5cd144d0-a8e0-4494-bec8-65e1c40fb63c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33266c10-8444-45bb-a149-741d836be203" grcontextid="marvelous triumph:1">marvelous triumph</span> that <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ae74b8e9-582a-4a20-8637-3ec95753e45f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33266c10-8444-45bb-a149-741d836be203" grcontextid="operation:2">operation</span> had been. And all the media had cheered.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Knowledge, capacity for strategic thinking based on <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d4e0ec16-a4f3-45bb-bcef-9971987384ea" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="57a53109-a983-41e2-94bb-fc8238820f09" grcontextid="engaged:0">engaged</span> practical understanding, analysis based on input from <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2d27189a-ea11-435c-983c-6e3a112867af" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="57a53109-a983-41e2-94bb-fc8238820f09" grcontextid="depth:1">depth</span> of counsel equipped with independent, even contrarian minds, experience, and propensity to be decisive, are required when that so-called 3:00am phone call comes in. The WAR discourse which the world is now <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="17b85afb-6da3-44d7-8eab-e1460be8c5b0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b1114a51-45dd-48c2-b3a4-93802d1b44ba" grcontextid="enbroiled:0">enbroiled</span> in, did not get launched by a 3:00am phone call. It comes from the imagination of Barack Obama. The man who actually said this past week <b>while in a</b> <b>foreign country</b>, <i>“my credibility isn’t on the line. . . . . America’s credibility is on the line”</i> lacks all of those competencies.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Libya presented no long term calamitous consequences because it presented no significant import to foreign unfriendly Nations. Egypt offered even less of material consequence to serious foreign rivals. Both Libya and Egypt also offered little of strategic substance to our foes.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Syria (Assad), presents a completely different strategic creature to two very powerful adversaries, Russia and Iran, or more accurately, Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei. Putin has been buoyed by the stratospheric prices which oil and gas have enjoyed in recent years. Assad has been a useful customer of Putin arms, and provides Putin with a growing naval presence on the Mediteranean, Tardus, which is his only foreign military base. Putin also has long term plans for Syria’s geography. He has a cozy relationship with Khamenei who needs to sell his oil and gas, particularly his gas in the vast South Pars gas field. Putin wants his Gasprom to build the pipeline through Syria which will quench the gas thirst of energy-consuming countries, particularly those of the EU. Assad provides Putin and Khamenei an agreeable conduit for gas, as well as a pathway for arms and ammunition with which Iran can continue to attack Israel and kill its citizens. For icing on his energy cake, Putin has his eye on the undeveloped offshore gas fields which can be accessed from Syria’s Alawite region on the shores of the Mediteranean.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
An attack on Assad, is a provocation which threatens Putin and Khamenei at home, and in their pocket books. Putin may not care if Syria remains whole, as long as enough of it remains under his control, and enables him to fulfill his ‘energy’ dollar objectives.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
And Israel? It would applaud the disintegration of Syria by anyone and by any means. Who could blame it? Its priority is a removal of Assad and his replacement with someone less antipathetic to Israel in its conflict with Iran. Israel may not be confident that it can control whoever the ‘rebel leader’ might be who will rise to power if Assad is removed, but what it is certain of, is that it cannot ‘deal’ with Assad. It is looking for a new Syrian leader, and does not subscribe to <i>“better the enemy you know.”</i> However, Israel expects a severing of relations between Syria and Iran, should a new leader be installed. That can only occur with force since Khamenei is not about to let Israel and the United States gain an upper hand in Syria.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Putin may be considered coarse, but he is a strategic thinker. He took total control of Russia’s vast disjointed socioeconomic and political landscape through a thorough, effective, forceful, sometimes ruthless, campaign. He now rules that nation with a firm hand. In order to maintain his ‘strongman’ image at home, Putin can hardly allow loss of Syria from his sphere of influence. He also knows that for different reasons, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar want to weaken Syria’s relationship with Iran.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Putin has not forgotten his loss of Gaddafi’s billions in contracts when he failed to prevent the obliteration of the Libyan regime, from his seat on the UN’s Security Council. How could this Administration not have fully grasped that a blow <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="73917da6-c4ef-4067-ae01-5dcc6cde0f0b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b840fc92-bbe5-497b-ac65-4ab2cd2faa21" grcontextid="on:0">on</span> Syria would be nowhere near as much a slam on Khamenei, as it would be a blast to Putin, to his ego, and to his personal <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3ccde47a-3071-42b7-81aa-b5264efa67dd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b840fc92-bbe5-497b-ac65-4ab2cd2faa21" grcontextid="pocket-book:1">pocket-book</span>. How could it not envisage that Putin would not stand down? <b>Could NOT </b>stand down?</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Putin also knows that Obama made such a mistake on Syria, that he purposely tweaked Obama’s ego with a reference to his being a <i>“Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.” </i>Putin is the man in charge of Syria and he has declared himself its protector. He is the only one with whom a deal can be negotiated. Syria, being decimated by a conflagration of disparate armed insurgents, will end up not only broken psychologically, but will end up divided into zones of ‘influence.’</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Obama has successfully blustered American taxpayers for five years, but he isn’t so effective at deceiving, or negotiating with Putin or Khamenei.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Obama’s bluff has been called. Barack Obama must stand down unless he wants to militarily engage Putin, militarily engage Khamenei, find the overnight blockage of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, and watch the price of oil rise sharply, further burdening America with higher costs of living. Obama should not seek more excuses for his <i>“shots across Assad’s bow”</i> to indulge his own image. He must back off on the <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4fc05863-c23a-4fdd-8635-bf3d54330812" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5f2508c4-ad9b-45b0-8dcb-6536713276c6" grcontextid="fearmongering:0">fearmongering</span> and warmongering.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
As Europe continues to teeter on the edge of an unprecedented debt abyss, and the U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b5ae17de-9fc3-4d3a-874e-dc0f93b40cd2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2c47c13d-d024-4acf-b176-430361e513b4" grcontextid="cannot:0">cannot</span> find a foothold on the path to recovery, American taxpayers cannot afford, and will not afford, Barack Obama’s self-satisfaction through military action against Syria. Barack Obama has not risen to the occasion of the Presidency.</div>
<div style="color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 24px;">
The Oval Office will survive his insecurities and maladroit management of all things Presidential, but Obama’s image may not recover from his Syrian diversion.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-55759167577206804032013-08-25T23:27:00.003-04:002013-08-25T23:27:52.909-04:00Generational Gapping – $222 Trillion Worth of Schism
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<i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">“Since the masses are
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3605c246-20b2-4657-ac1d-3b8a1f720d3b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b721b584-c454-48a0-8fab-3613241d9d69" grcontextid="always:0">always</span> eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="de554b08-3926-476a-b64d-99279d8e3db6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4ce507f1-b0f8-4b54-987f-60de9405f528" grcontextid="arrange:0">arrange</span> as facts.” </span></i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">This scornful observation
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="318b4e17-d967-4c46-b5e4-2ae9a6107868" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3717f2c9-5942-4ec6-9983-086e8ba33742" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> our human nature is attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, an astute
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3e0926a4-7596-4fc4-9eae-53f844727896" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ed9877bf-1f55-4bd6-aee6-749e502eba08" grcontextid="politician:0">politician</span> and long persevering survivor of the French revolution and
Napoleonic eras. Senior politicians and government mandarins in
Washington <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c855be6a-883f-4907-824f-5a5490eb8b4a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="018b1c19-5f52-46c4-9860-dc0be79cd244" grcontextid="are schooled:0">are schooled</span> in understanding and using the insight divulged by this
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c710d00b-c9fa-49de-9b84-fe3d8ba4dc80" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8f8676ef-4f84-4035-92c7-98c103136e20" grcontextid="derogatory:0">derogatory</span> statement. They must be. The most extensive, pervasive
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cbbf862c-edc6-4e0d-9132-fa7b19ccfd0d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c52e428a-701d-483b-93bd-c65d24a81dbc" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> obscene rearrangement of facts has become one of the biggest lies ever
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="82e56a3d-249f-455f-a2bd-2fe4a580b4af" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d1d625b7-ffd8-45b0-b303-330b84d829e5" grcontextid="floated:0">floated</span> in history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Even those who depend on
Dave Letterman or perhaps a Kardashian for remaining informed, <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f7356103-d6d8-433e-8e0b-033ce3cbb15d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="beac948f-18b7-406d-a598-0120ab94ae5c" grcontextid="are:0">are</span> aware that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="88bc4dfb-8f60-4273-b680-70a05bdbdc30" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b4e85a1c-44b9-4de1-9d05-f236cc5fa21d" grcontextid="there:0">there</span> exists a large National debt hanging over the United States. Many
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="79dbfbc3-f3de-49c3-bbaf-056091632883" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="06125da8-df5a-4d23-9bac-ad5e6be87fee" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> us are even aware that the often repeated amount of $17.2 trillion is an
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="40e6bd68-b7ba-4b74-bd66-f4d4e8c747b7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="66d8df9e-5645-4710-9cb8-1edb10348e24" grcontextid="enormous amount:0">enormous amount</span> of debt, however, it has too many zeros to be taken seriously
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ad828a0c-3b7b-47b9-a7f2-5f23cfa2a7f9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="910dd70b-cc9d-4d84-bd15-929dd538ad67" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> in any case, we heard, or read somewhere that it’s too big a debt to ever
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ff3af76a-6d63-42fe-a0a2-e81a662306da" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8ed97552-7eaf-495a-8554-708c05d24111" grcontextid="be:0">be</span> repaid. Fortunately for the Baby Boomer generation, the younger
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="80683a4e-4206-40e0-8d17-94cc70be7dd6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="205bd949-9156-474d-96c8-cee1838adfb3" grcontextid="generations:0">generations</span> are too preoccupied with earning a living, or searching how they
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="abe3b31c-43b2-439b-9bb7-58490d4a69b1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33e6887f-43d2-40d4-860f-e863307eaf7a" grcontextid="might:0">might</span> earn one, to be angered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">These younger generations
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="476912b4-f4b0-498f-afc0-6d89ae7db34c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ac4a3425-c11b-4d22-a548-0f82bb20aa7e" grcontextid="have:0">have</span> every right to believe what they have been told. It is not unreasonable
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a8ce3790-32ab-443b-becf-e93f12fafad0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33134265-b902-45e6-81cc-4c15a6582278" grcontextid="for:0">for</span> them to embrace the notion that since their efforts will partially finance
78 million Boomers <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c39bfaef-d3ba-4771-ab30-fe5421f0e9fa" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ed0ebfa6-e8f8-4442-a1f0-d031506d957c" grcontextid="into:0">into</span> retirement, their own social security and health care
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9fe4f30f-8e98-457e-bc8f-1acf512c2220" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6c12168a-e404-4010-97a9-d73b01148fe5" grcontextid="needs:0">needs</span> will be taken care of when the time comes to retire. It is also
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4424a743-4846-40a9-ab25-a07e1731caf7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e7c57266-9423-4f5c-b5db-378751539e0b" grcontextid="reasonable:0">reasonable</span> for them to accept the veracity of the government’s representation
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="874394e6-dbb1-443d-a377-937b8e91bcf6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d546abaa-c189-4a38-aa50-46ea0c82affb" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> $17.2 trillion in debt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Twenty five years ago,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="71cea05b-acbc-444a-b700-a11f311aa64d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e58ce4e0-e753-4b93-b44a-12735111bef8" grcontextid="governments:0">governments</span> and corporations promised Boomers generous pensions and benefits.
Promises were cheap and easily made when the future was so far into the very
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="70f78498-33ae-46a4-b4d7-7f4f49a4becf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7c336fc6-122c-48a7-bbd7-ffbe1d09b27d" grcontextid="distant:0">distant</span> and murky horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Remembering Talleyrand’s
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1343bb05-32e1-4fb2-89fb-d8fc21425c42" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9f9a4e36-35cf-4be8-a719-827ed9eee20c" grcontextid="acumen:0">acumen</span>, we dig a little further and discover that there are some numbers
(<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a007b494-a031-49f6-bd9a-b7e7139cb7c0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9621348c-f742-4b7f-80dd-f925e7c28aa6" grcontextid="facts:0">facts</span>) missing in the $17.2 trillion. One website offers <a href="http://www.truthinaccounting.org/"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">a running amount</span></a> which already exceeds $74
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e9b5a561-1ecc-47de-a9f1-ff422d398044" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4f8de52d-4e7e-4dff-83a8-e12457e80547" grcontextid="trillion:0">trillion</span> in debt using different methodologies in the calculations. Why
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="432e1a3a-5c82-4fea-82e7-eebc3b25478a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fec65566-22fd-4028-86a0-4398b7537e80" grcontextid="such:0">such</span> significant variance? Accrual accounting – meaning the debt is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f7260f2d-dbd1-41af-80ed-16a077bd7229" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dac504e6-c9af-441a-a32a-19bfe794dbca" grcontextid="accounted:0">accounted</span> for when the obligation is entered into. How does the government
“<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7449c431-585d-4022-90ef-01a7e78e5236" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5a8f0023-e575-4e63-a474-0c370a8af109" grcontextid="arrange:0">arrange</span> facts?” It uses <i>cash accounting,</i> which accounts for
Medicare and Social Security as debt when they come due. We hear nothing
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a9a94ef4-1aa2-4482-8f61-e6efe152f0d4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="26e6530f-8ac8-4155-b65d-02ed92f4849f" grcontextid="from:0">from</span> Washington about balancing the budget on a fully accounted and accrued
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f63d3f9b-b458-4609-9e91-8711902afc6f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="62acb970-3532-496d-9faf-4af58bf9bb99" grcontextid="manner:0">manner</span>. We don’t even hear any suggestions <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7191a68a-d305-4d01-a501-50cf2da180e7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0d5ecdbe-4977-4c9e-9632-c517e19d785e" grcontextid="on:0">on</span> real spending cuts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Most Boomers heading into
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="71eefb70-0ba7-4f57-b4f1-50782ab1c5e3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="025428d8-1e23-4cd7-a5ab-3392b7460a62" grcontextid="retirement:0">retirement</span>, or dreaming of doing so cannot <i>trust</i> the trust funds which
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e3dfac7a-8684-4eb2-84c3-98e1121e39fe" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b5c6a25f-6965-4506-a802-524d969cbac9" grcontextid="career:0">career</span> politicians and bureaucrats pretend <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d3c996c9-f995-404a-a33b-e3d9c9a62944" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b5c6a25f-6965-4506-a802-524d969cbac9" grcontextid="guarantee:1">guarantee</span> their future well
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="819ca138-0365-4daa-82be-397f90c50d97" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1289c64f-4acb-4929-9ea1-9c192e61da8a" grcontextid="being:0">being</span>. Social Security? There’s no guarantee of such for either
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="785e1005-a473-4edc-bbb6-19c141d70540" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3c772183-92f9-4343-b609-7d30edb25ed5" grcontextid="Boomers:0">Boomers</span>, or their children, or their grandchildren. The only prevailing
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="184125da-0c90-4452-8883-f650eda34d61" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="33eea8c4-7e04-4454-96ac-7f14e9bc1340" grcontextid="guarantee:0">guarantee</span> appears to be that the money will run out, then, nothing.
When? Well that’s easy. That’s when . . . <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="adaa8fb8-5887-4e52-ba18-8bc7fb6b5767" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f067de93-fdb8-4cbf-8b1a-c1d28e13d07b" grcontextid="umm:0">umm</span>, oh no, another
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5e9e07ca-b4fb-4701-9d29-26ee1b006650" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b45e6a42-3122-4aeb-a025-923ad4058491" grcontextid="review:0">review</span> of the “facts?” Now what? The Fiscal Gap. That 74 with
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b79dc3a8-0999-4ab4-8ad0-186d8e717270" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="39c1e932-7ffc-41a6-a27b-9d193efab6bf" grcontextid="a:0">a</span> dozen zeros following may look ominous, but it does not fully represent the
Nation’s indebtedness. The gap between costs and funds collected through
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="824888af-395d-432b-8083-0eb3a40f8347" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="36022f87-2376-41d0-9eae-7b00201b65a4" grcontextid="time:0">time</span>, is the Fiscal Gap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ae2cb3d1-a9ca-47ba-9e61-24d82df01b35" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="190567da-2e07-4a62-8d07-ca17684ba05f" grcontextid="A:0">A</span> Boston University
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7d2f6737-49b0-416b-a56b-118a3b657b72" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a0afc241-fe9a-4e3a-b622-0fcb16213226" grcontextid="economics:0">economics</span> professor Larry Kotlikoff <a href="http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1375978556.php"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">calculated the fiscal gap</span></a>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1a31e2bc-3436-495c-b453-a656511a3fe2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9a0ab669-63a0-4039-867c-c9258ba7705d" grcontextid="including:0">including</span> unfunded liabilities, debt service costs and the mortgage guarantees
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6fd45192-04bd-4427-8559-9dc0f5e1c29b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1a1b326c-6ee4-4aaf-b073-810acad8cf6f" grcontextid="under:0">under</span> FDIC, and Fannie, and Freddie Mac and he came up with a present value of
$222 trillion. That is over 13 times the total U.S. GDP. Obviously <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="82041d0d-3934-46a6-aada-07966a574a2d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e43ccb85-7bc7-43b9-988c-ab6e2cd698b5" grcontextid="there:0">there</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0d757f3e-5dc6-4c73-81b0-47ab88c8b0cf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="02b6896f-ce5f-4616-b705-c76fb501b104" grcontextid="is:0">is</span> room for error in this number, as the world will force events which will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9bbdda91-dc3d-4eaa-8e93-b01f4582ae1c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="12b8bce5-8994-43c2-a313-378d9cb414ee" grcontextid="impact:0">impact</span> future costs and revenues. The amount remains menacing regardless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">As we
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="fd1b4cd5-16c6-4b3a-b7e9-26f3016782dd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="427809e8-856d-42ed-8dab-8d7fb09d4256" grcontextid="watch:0">watch</span> the Keynesian Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke destroy savings and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5fd4a6c5-ad28-4c66-b5eb-d1bdc3869672" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ec0781fe-be11-4c85-80ec-302100dc85c6" grcontextid="generate:0">generate</span> $80 billion a month in quantitative easing, encouraged by progressive
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0cec65e7-239a-4b9b-a16f-fd61ede71413" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5dc6a223-6130-4ec3-9caa-62ce231fc34a" grcontextid="politicos:0">politicos</span> spending lavishly to buy and retain votes, we know there is no
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1f3bfaad-8e7f-4072-b276-3eca41c2a7ae" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fb274fa9-8fde-41de-bb52-09ad87d8f19b" grcontextid="possible method:0">possible method</span> whereby the fiscal gap will be tightened. Future
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="56604b43-1297-4a5e-bba4-1e0e8230341d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ab461d27-67e2-46ba-bf49-6e545d541d7b" grcontextid="generations:0">generations</span> will wonder how we were ever able to feel no compunction to elect
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="09b062e0-d007-4b6e-95a0-2b372cc8ba92" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f2b03044-0293-40b7-82f9-b1fafea15e5d" grcontextid="anyone:0">anyone</span> with skills, with leadership, with will, or with a plan. They will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e75636a0-149c-4970-bce2-1bb870fbf2c9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a2fd51a0-f9a4-4ede-b8d9-9c8de28dc6af" grcontextid="wonder:0">wonder</span> why we were incapable of discerning facts from fiction. They will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="74bec94b-a553-4ddb-a442-49b5f12f334a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5472291b-a8bb-4d48-ae4d-0c0fe3813ed8" grcontextid="wonder:0">wonder</span> if we understood Talleyrand.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-41845241273032989052013-08-25T23:24:00.002-04:002013-08-25T23:24:33.462-04:00Open Letter To All 18 Year Olds<!--EndFragment-->
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<br />
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Congratulations on your
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="30871504-7d0d-4e94-ac21-48628af7c684" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="216c9b87-9ef1-4c10-a929-85f805713451" grcontextid="arrival:0">arrival</span> to the voter list, and congratulations to all who are graduating.
Some of you are heading into colleges and universities. Some of you are
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="098cdee1-8a2b-4db6-b120-954420f70c80" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="22d8238f-4d81-4e00-8317-6ee44068aabb" grcontextid="hitting:0">hitting</span> the streets to knock on doors in search of jobs. Some of you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="46f8d607-b7cf-4f72-bdf8-be3d3dc5a7d7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="63beac69-7bfc-420c-aca1-b92ff9661290" grcontextid="already:0">already</span> have hit those streets and have been successful, while others
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="06c290c0-161d-42f2-87c0-50a97f5daee7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7bec98b0-8e65-4a3a-b786-593fbac832e4" grcontextid="have:0">have</span> discovered undemanding solace in a particular corner of a parent’s
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0ed93fa4-28a7-41d7-bdfd-5d0455732216" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="22c5ad9c-3932-4ae7-9222-3591f32f6787" grcontextid="couch:0">couch</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">Whatever your priorities
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="94a4bf4b-a7a9-4016-8832-81e8f3f6a940" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="790bd780-0399-437d-87c9-a13fc6ac7c19" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> whatever your circumstance, remember this admonition, </span><i style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">you are the first
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="55f8a90c-2ff6-4814-85da-3a09f52ee2c1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8b9c0fce-4bf3-434d-a7a3-144fc0dc2c4c" grcontextid="generation:0">generation</span>, since the founding of this great Nation, which will never retire</i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">.
Ever. Oh, a very few of you will inherit some shrunk fortunes, which will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="af1ac303-f175-4727-93bd-eb91ecbf8bac" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8b7a4b37-17a2-49e2-841b-2830b7e357fb" grcontextid="keep:0">keep</span> declining in <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="da76eed8-d511-4030-96d9-dd0da204105f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8b7a4b37-17a2-49e2-841b-2830b7e357fb" grcontextid="lock-step:1">lock-step</span> with the shrinking dollar, but most of you will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4a106d10-a9b8-4340-943c-f459aa584991" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dfdb19a4-6ab7-450d-b570-ddb9d95f6825" grcontextid="have:0">have</span> to make your own way with the tools you have appropriated.</span><br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">You will spend a majority
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="99d9e53a-8573-4ff1-9580-bf4883a0bb68" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bb276c14-d249-4af8-877c-579313e3c0a1" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> your waking moments competing with millions of new arrivals for jobs in a
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="892d3613-59a0-4328-b182-0f94d6d2879f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="38d25d55-0b8c-4af7-9cfa-0ed66bdea6d2" grcontextid="shrinking job:0">shrinking job</span> market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">You will live under the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="34b99630-74b6-4b7a-beb2-313201c300c5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8557769c-68f0-477d-aa7e-54f5bd9aa789" grcontextid="invasive:0">invasive</span> <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1c6f93c2-cfbb-42c6-9d01-48c2b2de86ff" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8557769c-68f0-477d-aa7e-54f5bd9aa789" grcontextid="cloud:1">cloud</span> of the state, manipulated at federal, state and local levels by
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="013e270b-85bb-411b-a358-e827c2e0c9a8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="25209c01-d02f-43bc-bc9c-9ac96197d95b" grcontextid="ideologically:0">ideologically</span> entrenched government bureaucracies. You saw how the power
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9d449cda-24a8-4da2-92d4-2d4c39edd2a2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1580aa85-85a3-4be5-9c43-4861e928d2de" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> the IRS was used to attack those who did not support liberal socialist
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d0622a23-b10e-4800-8e92-064540431386" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="83f48e34-1c17-4ef5-9746-16793f0633b3" grcontextid="ideologues:0">ideologues</span>. If you consider yourselves open minded, how does this brazen
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8859b2c9-3c43-4b38-b935-d3406ac9b227" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7b00513d-4f0e-4ce5-9229-1d45244d1eda" grcontextid="assault:0">assault</span> on your rights correspond with your own common sense? Are these
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cd5b75cb-0e59-4e24-afa6-9319c852b12f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5edf8e94-b58a-45f9-b663-da82170db28d" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> actions of a government which you feel comforted by? Is this
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d3685288-f722-4e8a-861d-a78b6cb2150a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="84a208c2-52c9-46b9-a377-83fffb1f4cef" grcontextid="Administration:0">Administration</span> <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8f649e83-7531-4e98-87bb-62d361d71cb1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="84a208c2-52c9-46b9-a377-83fffb1f4cef" grcontextid="designing:1">designing</span> a country which you believe will be conducive to <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="68369ddb-8bc2-40eb-9883-074a6bf17f08" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="84a208c2-52c9-46b9-a377-83fffb1f4cef" grcontextid="your:2">your</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="561ab8dc-d137-4b05-8264-5822704594ad" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a696c8ed-5eb2-4131-a987-162e0d013253" grcontextid="enjoyment:0">enjoyment</span> of successful employment, or to a rewarding personal life?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Are you aware of the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6e9f1439-851f-4bcd-9325-8fb3569fc96b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0575e40b-abc8-460d-9709-230d84d5bf5c" grcontextid="changes:0">changes</span> being implemented in your healthcare system? Do you realize that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="14bf79ee-13e9-49c0-879c-49ec2c961202" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6d1af9d9-67b1-4eaf-8abe-7bd226af532a" grcontextid="you:0">you</span> will not be able to find a family doctor for yourself or your loved
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9bf177e0-3b84-4873-a8f5-b8d307737773" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6d03bcce-d002-45cf-84cd-7dc13a1468fc" grcontextid="ones:0">ones</span>? When your time comes to need a doctor, you will discover that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="725a8189-dd8c-471f-8c73-cacdc66a1bc8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d6b3b95c-8ab2-4660-b258-ed9ba8b13b32" grcontextid="private:0">private</span> practices will have become an institution of the past. You will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7b260f58-0016-4009-9374-2c8b21723d2e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fdfa8ffb-a7eb-45b4-a917-553c85104418" grcontextid="be:0">be</span> required to consult GPs working out of clinics. You will wait hours to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e170ba63-ea20-44e7-967f-2ec0def9189c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="73931845-4438-4e86-ad46-7b754274c0ba" grcontextid="be:0">be</span> served, and when you require serious medical attention, such as an
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7876e01d-ee4d-40c2-a32f-6d1c23d50713" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="53a409b0-cc7d-4d45-99f4-b6b4bca583e5" grcontextid="operation:0">operation</span>, you will wait, and you will wait. You will not wait a month or
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3e47550b-f69a-433a-b363-0b762e4de60b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="cebdba7e-0e74-4e63-b00b-9690c9512f87" grcontextid="two:0">two</span>, but a year or two. As you get older, and older, you will discover
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a6b06290-6117-46f0-baff-d122512084d1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9d5afb1c-9b2e-48f3-9b87-6969a370af39" grcontextid="that:0">that</span> even <i>that</i> mediocre level of service will slowly, but assuredly
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0383e2af-1741-49aa-b8d1-11f7ed9d805d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ebd6c39f-fc03-47f6-8454-54b9a8b7a302" grcontextid="decline:0">decline</span>. The system will not have enough funding to provide you with the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3e2501ed-33dd-487f-8dd2-7f5640141386" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="41a11b64-b15b-42d2-82ce-77d1242733c8" grcontextid="medical:0">medical</span> care you think you have paid for and deserve. Many decisions will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0573125d-ff94-4229-a069-f3bdebe3728c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e30f9fc4-077b-4445-bf59-0074779db380" grcontextid="be:0">be</span> beyond your control, and your needs will be secondary to the priorities of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f7e53230-3fdd-4e32-8852-9c23c8665cef" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ebff470b-c9d9-4caa-9fbe-d4b601d1f5ff" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> ’system’ and its financial viability. Bureaucrats, doctors and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ab15d289-d063-453f-8539-b1d81c8036ad" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="41339750-d606-47da-afef-76640daf33f1" grcontextid="surgeons:0">surgeons</span>, will make decisions on your behalf without your input.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">You will eventually come to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a6e0993a-615f-4641-bd46-74799baa2756" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5a13a1af-7d69-4489-9d9c-d55914c7cc19" grcontextid="know:0">know</span> that the lingering fear in your gut over the long delays for that <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bff71b95-6d50-4fc9-8db2-e19b711e1dc9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5a13a1af-7d69-4489-9d9c-d55914c7cc19" grcontextid="critical:1">critical</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="32030546-4df9-40dc-b0b1-a6495bc2b6da" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2df17f4a-3e0d-4d04-b816-0af7f0e97dd2" grcontextid="operation:0">operation</span>, were well founded, and out of your hands. You will find that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="750fff5a-b106-4f96-884b-3f921e4e5c9e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="95617f25-7854-470d-9c61-ca5ec88502f0" grcontextid="many:0">many</span> operations will be considered ‘<b>elective’</b> even if they are
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="926ad017-77d9-4c78-b4ba-e02467025131" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="14440e1d-e423-4815-a139-ba5e76790265" grcontextid="critical:0">critical</span> to your <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="338aba59-3d99-4a0f-8cbf-e6c1e840addb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="14440e1d-e423-4815-a139-ba5e76790265" grcontextid="wellbeing:1">wellbeing</span> and long term health. Remember that term. It
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3cbcbfdd-1ca5-459f-bcf4-cfbc2426f0cb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4db9f782-2bff-4d07-8fe8-0ad923ec19f3" grcontextid="will:0">will</span> one day haunt you and will come to cost you. The bureaucracy will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7fdc215a-776c-48b1-80d1-cfb73784ebbc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e7cb4722-8dba-4519-a4a6-6ee303c35825" grcontextid="make:0">make</span> most of those decisions for you. But most of you don’t care about doctors
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4a4bd8c3-b5f0-4def-a274-c757e6ccddc2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="91489a5a-954a-44e4-a4a8-6cbc32be5a4e" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> health concerns right now. Such are the concerns of ‘<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="45c6cac3-2e6b-4456-bb74-6a693903e709" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9ec1edd4-0ad3-4ba2-bf80-f66ed59f53c4" grcontextid="old:0">old</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="99cdb8dc-e6e6-4ad9-9892-3c348d75fb17" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a51aa34a-a9ec-4372-bd1a-bda565f457af" grcontextid="people:0">people</span>.’ Still, in violation of the Constitution, this President has
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0e14d7ba-a19b-4e81-ab59-3e73b7549095" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9f5bb9e6-aa88-4e82-86da-0e5cb86698c4" grcontextid="decreed:0">decreed</span> that you are now forced to purchase health insurance. Yes,
‘<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="fbca3294-631c-4107-87e1-cdfd9ea5a8a3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6bca4257-1f15-46af-9928-9b805802ef48" grcontextid="forced:0">forced</span>.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Let’s look at what else has
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2665e4ed-accc-4d9c-ab35-bf3a3cc777bb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8f4dcf67-5bdc-4892-8e2a-087dc68ebe24" grcontextid="occurred:0">occurred</span> while you were awaiting your consequential graduation to ‘voter.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Your Nation’s Constitution
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="28eaf51a-e812-4d15-806b-a8b676866e2c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="40ea9ae0-2520-48a3-88c7-69adbc24de09" grcontextid="has:0">has</span> been <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f8a2588e-570b-4a75-afef-aab00e18d6da" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="40ea9ae0-2520-48a3-88c7-69adbc24de09" grcontextid="highjacked:1">highjacked</span> and abused by an Administration which considers itself
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ca5bb44f-3940-45ee-8406-e229a9709f06" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="463dbd27-7576-4d34-8d00-83817509156b" grcontextid="above:0">above</span> the need to heed the Constitution’s most fundamental principles and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="75861609-3904-4b6a-862c-8eb090d0ab92" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ff349196-a8aa-44f0-9579-3fd5036e9077" grcontextid="tenets:0">tenets</span> – the very principles the President swore to uphold. You may have left
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bd8f166e-3f5b-4628-9107-53070a50c7d9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9ed68c50-0665-40c9-8861-c8b74400cf1d" grcontextid="primary:0">primary</span> school when America was a Constitutional Republic, but you are
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="aaa69c6a-0f15-4516-9f43-0879a135b47b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="af18a1e0-acec-4390-99fd-d2220cf2298c" grcontextid="graduating:0">graduating</span> as it is irreversibly being converted into a crony capitalist nation
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3aa976b8-c629-43e2-a1ed-24f27723a388" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c592b3b3-d944-4612-9231-fdb78c1114af" grcontextid="centrally:0">centrally</span> controlled by a despotic government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Your Supreme Court has
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0b378aa6-58f8-4f56-b449-113d71688c0d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d93abb13-8a6f-439f-b4fa-817d9e6b2095" grcontextid="become:0">become</span> a political vehicle used as a pandering legislative agency obligated to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="11cb3d5b-8918-41aa-ae35-e93eebffdd15" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0ac5172b-1712-46e6-a3ac-b56fb27488d3" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> Administration which positioned the justices. For example, <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8f7ffe3c-77e0-48d7-b888-cc0de1588b7c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f2527bc2-02b5-42df-9e4e-911bd560603b" grcontextid="your:0">your</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1a53913b-1301-4fc3-bc1b-46c32fd866f4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1fdb7df9-176b-4a61-a81b-ce695e482f80" grcontextid="Supreme Court:0">Supreme Court</span> judged the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7e126522-4323-4e72-b393-fa69df07474c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0ce17fab-85d9-44ba-aba9-560ff738b567" grcontextid="being:0">being</span> Constitutional. It decided that the government <i>can</i> force you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="eff4d3ab-e05a-449c-9e66-99ee4b9e9288" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f0d2a76c-fca5-4088-97fe-9eaccd3144b6" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> purchase insurance. How did <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0cb83f70-cb69-412b-b9ba-8d0f79beaa82" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="893f97b8-41f4-4515-91f6-1ebcd570fbfb" grcontextid="it justify that:0">it justify that</span>? It executed a logistical
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b10d5394-8ab6-4a7a-af57-b256daefa7fe" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8df71723-5e70-4a88-a3ef-de0907fe953c" grcontextid="summersault:0">summersault</span> and qualified the enforcement of a financial penalty as being a
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="acc248d0-59ef-4e30-bed6-4f9acadc7647" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="28504c94-6aec-4972-91ea-5de3af83c4c1" grcontextid="tax:0">tax</span>. Penalty = Tax = Constitution? You
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6a1aba33-f03f-4b9c-8412-75d862a0daca" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8feb7896-e881-4b39-80e2-a1f272b4b22b" grcontextid="know:0">know</span>, like <i>“it depends on what the definition of is, is.” </i>Just <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f445231b-a3c1-4c89-9302-e2481b3ce353" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8feb7896-e881-4b39-80e2-a1f272b4b22b" grcontextid="make:1">make</span> it
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9cb17b15-a996-4dff-b244-acdfb1e6548f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f4f6e21a-694b-418f-9334-0639fb5508d1" grcontextid="up:0">up</span> as you go along. Who’s going to tell the Supremes they can’t? No one,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="eaa10ad2-e38f-44e2-9f71-596388b6fded" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="91702354-d3dd-419e-b7da-c7404c5840e0" grcontextid="it:0">it</span> seems. But remember this: Chief Justice John Roberts, Sonia
Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan don’t know what
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="53e517e4-2a2a-4244-a370-b8c6780721e7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ecff1247-803a-4412-a3a4-7e6ad2c360cd" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> meaning of “is,” is. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Antonin
Scalia and Clarence Thomas have understood perfectly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Your Administration has
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d2e066f3-d103-4f21-bf94-3ae494904822" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bbe14f31-40d6-479f-ba5d-c03c12fc784f" grcontextid="disregarded:0">disregarded</span> the fundamental separation of powers, as it imposed its political
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7a9044a9-664f-4092-8dec-d0139232939e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="310c2f8c-0567-4e89-84c7-a0c76a5e5c48" grcontextid="ideology:0">ideology</span> on the vast bureaucracy of the state. In its violation of the
Constitution, the Administration has usurped your powers. Only those with
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3fee78d7-7c90-4248-acac-7e72e63142eb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9629eb00-4c17-48e5-96d1-69fbf4c6aea8" grcontextid="short:0">short</span> memories will have forgotten that in January of 2012, the President
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="fba9f823-d19c-4a64-a48b-9a85dcc0df47" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="819b5c43-2f26-4674-bd17-bc57338cacb2" grcontextid="trashed:0">trashed</span> the Senate’s power of “advice and consent” as mandated by the Constitution
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="24bff769-2746-497e-8ae8-77f870369632" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="01535b3d-2639-4a22-aac1-a5e42c515f76" grcontextid="when:0">when</span> he made the unprecedented appointments of four commissions including three
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b77c512d-1e44-407c-8ba7-048c881a5826" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b3f7be1f-4f0e-47f7-ad05-5c01528396cc" grcontextid="members:0">members</span> to the National Labor Relations Board one <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="56e0528a-3d6f-458c-9a85-12849c4f53b2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b3f7be1f-4f0e-47f7-ad05-5c01528396cc" grcontextid="to:1">to</span> the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (CFPB). Take a few minutes sometime to dig into what
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1ebe3aae-cb15-4951-bd84-ba34efb745fd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a6834687-3fd2-49d2-82a0-bb1bdd524cee" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> CFPB digs into, then compile in your heads what you have learned <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="954b3b32-c494-446e-b996-eb1bb67773d5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a6834687-3fd2-49d2-82a0-bb1bdd524cee" grcontextid="of:1">of</span> the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e643cd66-8e9e-472d-8363-d7fa257b2f63" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="452d7a8f-c6be-4e85-b7b6-331cdd98a58a" grcontextid="bureaucratic:0">bureaucratic</span> overreach which this Administration has shown a propensity for,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3d789241-c98a-47e7-8c1e-ce44793155db" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a4fb111c-f61f-4ea7-82a1-9d4509ba5fb4" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> surprise – just another intrusive organization invading your financial
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="aa0fabf0-c3f9-4b65-bed8-e408f7ed810b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="356fea9b-5aac-4a8c-bc4b-78eb1436d982" grcontextid="affairs:0">affairs</span>. How great is that? You may not care today, but wait a few years
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6c24f76b-4e87-4c68-8eb5-4441d3353838" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6de82aaf-675c-4e45-a253-bbb1bb8f465f" grcontextid="when:0">when</span> you locate microscopes in places you weren’t aware you had opened
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ded8e7bc-5a04-46fa-a9fe-fe6b57b9923a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7d73ff52-d961-442a-b48b-59f087c629fc" grcontextid="for:0">for</span> encroachment. Your grumbling will be audible, but it will be
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ff2b0c3f-f274-42a1-829c-1fd12a0def99" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6147a80d-fc42-4b47-aacf-5bef3ca4bdb0" grcontextid="pointless:0">pointless</span> against the obnoxious wave of deaf conceit flowing from Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Your Nation is being transformed
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e6f3ab30-bc56-47c2-b0f8-28ddfb081661" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="179b6a23-bc80-479b-8102-7c6e8bf86bc1" grcontextid="into:0">into</span> an authoritarian socialist motherland. Don’t look for the process to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b4df7cd2-1bec-4b49-b4ff-1c726e59ccf7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="041551e8-bf9d-4609-8a32-e2cf05eca7a8" grcontextid="jump:0">jump</span> the track and ride onto the fictional collectivist utopia some of you have
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="548abf54-dc11-4ead-b012-398e77408a68" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="94ca48dd-cf08-49fc-8a81-3260320fee61" grcontextid="thought:0">thought</span> you’d inhale yourselves into. You are stepping onto a train led
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2e5dcf21-3b5e-4f5b-97cd-c43e191e2345" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6002b93a-e99e-4d6e-a247-fdd945d5bb08" grcontextid="by:0">by</span> a dysfunctional egoistic cluster of self-loathing individuals who have
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="86b567a9-5efa-4ebd-90e7-c39750738a0d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1d83ecdf-9df4-4de2-a8aa-aeda3b537900" grcontextid="little:0">little</span> respect for any of you. You will either be herded into the corral
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2b64c7be-6006-465f-b390-f3d91ca7ed3a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d6d8f656-c1be-4f67-95a4-d182f00650a1" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> sycophants, receiving handouts for your capitulation, or you will be locked
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="103e6766-0d6e-4738-b10d-8c382b288550" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="93c57ba5-a881-4fad-8128-61675bc77f23" grcontextid="out:0">out</span> of the compound, hoping the wind sweeps crumbs your way for sustenance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Fear has only been one of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0588415f-ccfe-4378-93ef-e34247498e6e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f1fd935b-7d82-4153-b4b1-bf7efe4bb72d" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> effectively used motivators in the conversion of your Nation. The
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b369d1f5-76c5-43c3-8569-182315abff05" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4edb8c13-437d-4513-b662-7b2e966bc1d3" grcontextid="transformation:0">transformation</span> was not an accident – it has been willful. Led by
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="db598cf8-3414-48d4-96cf-d1e9cca142f0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8e404406-ea60-403b-98ea-bd321053454e" grcontextid="sanctimonious:0">sanctimonious</span> people convinced that they morally know better what is right for
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a1b79f3f-69ce-4979-9c02-f113706a00c5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5b512306-f93e-4ac0-9d27-2cdf0e98a9e8" grcontextid="all:0">all</span> others, these individuals are immersed in ideologies diametrically opposed
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cdb6b7c0-0e9e-4df1-a761-39c9ec1e3cd0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b1c94723-e272-466e-a3fa-d3fa76f283f4" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> the original intentions of the Framers of your Constitution. All levels of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5e725f10-a8f9-4870-ab90-b1a3d21886a1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="21343a58-9893-42aa-9799-589b3308533c" grcontextid="your:0">your</span> system of governance are being altered. The process has not been
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="45fb01e4-3e5f-4428-a595-eba31f54a38a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d8aa8c88-79a9-43f9-be9c-dcf18d1d8b4d" grcontextid="subtle:0">subtle</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">While you were preoccupied
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="131b1d3b-eaa8-4de0-bbe4-c57e965984f5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="710aff71-9aec-4c71-a247-e423772ba4e0" grcontextid="with:0">with</span> Legend of Zelda and distracted with the suitability of the name given to a
Hollywood star’s new baby, your leaders in Washington made endless decisions
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0229e3c6-f011-447c-8e69-ac05cf869b6f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d0c08f53-4666-4d50-b4b9-04a38e0f8a9b" grcontextid="rooted:0">rooted</span> in fear. For example, the fear of terrorists legitimized excessive
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f28f4b71-10a6-4b32-a811-6c0c0a28121e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="daead998-87cd-4a6a-a5f5-9036d1d28484" grcontextid="invasion:0">invasion</span> of your privacy. The fear of global financial calamity justified
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="aa3bdd84-102d-44f0-95d6-66333fa2b27a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8ee1b457-cf17-4461-9b18-f6c23f8f738e" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> rationalized in panic, a massive borrowing to bail-out too-big-to-fail
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0f60376d-f063-453a-9feb-cc4990245a93" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d365d547-2ff0-4d55-a3c9-529047ac1c24" grcontextid="financial:0">financial</span> institutions and auto manufacturers which should never have been
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b0f1edaf-ffd0-4499-a64e-65bc0c4d6dc1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e94f054e-45ed-452b-9019-914e1b20a0ba" grcontextid="allowed:0">allowed</span> to survive incompetence and fraud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">The amount of extravagant
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="469ed026-d468-433d-a35f-490d184becec" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e8239917-fca1-4c8d-bb1e-e0e313b658b1" grcontextid="borrowing:0">borrowing</span>, orchestrated in your name, will become more meaningful to all of you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="465fd783-da65-47dc-b563-56275f7f9724" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e1bbb87a-17a0-4da0-861b-cb5e9b10a9d1" grcontextid="as:0">as</span> that reality empties your wallets and bank accounts in the coming
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ac54e6d6-2f56-4db9-963f-a869c3b4660b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="247668f8-b4c0-40b1-9566-60dc3c316d08" grcontextid="years:0">years</span>. Taxes were raised, and will continue to be raised by your leaders
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a7b5d97f-d75b-48fb-b733-6c5d74ae5032" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="de24c5aa-be0f-4dbf-ad6b-f0ff30be3f19" grcontextid="who:0">who</span> <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="03dbe227-8baf-4ec3-af55-a04012511295" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="de24c5aa-be0f-4dbf-ad6b-f0ff30be3f19" grcontextid="know:1">know</span> of no other method to raise money for their grand plans, <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="85b0e60b-58e8-4e70-977d-4900ed8050c4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="de24c5aa-be0f-4dbf-ad6b-f0ff30be3f19" grcontextid="their:2">their</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cb4793d6-ca48-4b5a-8388-6deed395d282" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3aebce8c-4bd8-4269-a2df-14468b8102e5" grcontextid="fantasies:0">fantasies</span> and their personal fortunes. They have convinced a <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d987f20c-40a9-463e-ace0-e2cd3847fc60" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="75aa5669-b693-4596-9f87-ba86b312c7cc" grcontextid="bare:0">bare</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f92e08bb-dc51-4f76-9d7d-de53452b7ad9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="389b41d7-ae93-4f10-86df-6f9adf58efcb" grcontextid="majority:0">majority</span> of your parents, and your grandparents, that <b>the bigger the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d1b16d2b-b68a-4c4d-a740-6ac4a14e7a1c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c0126caf-e986-49bf-8360-117798868a3f" grcontextid="government:0">government</span>, the better the government</b>, and <b>the more effectively it can
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e98bd5ed-6922-401e-a71f-a384213b6630" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a8217f21-b992-4f1b-832d-b6282062d2c9" grcontextid="take:0">take</span> care of them</b>. Your parents and your grandparents watched
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f20e549e-0927-4dcb-a36e-041995d9be66" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="99bece3a-85f3-4d10-bcfb-9586f8d81eab" grcontextid="submissively:0">submissively</span> as their taxes rose, but you will be punished with a double
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="32dd899a-eebb-426a-a63e-221c84ba6191" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e54a9eee-fde4-41ef-a533-f0c72ef31f21" grcontextid="whammy:0">whammy</span>. Your taxes will not only continue to rise, but you and <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="111bc70a-7b98-42bf-911a-2aee6d489a37" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6144dd43-c7b1-4e7e-83cf-1e66d543b04e" grcontextid="your:0">your</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0bdc7ead-2d82-43ca-9acf-3f016cc8a0b8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="10f5d678-b1e6-4127-9154-0aea64de2544" grcontextid="children:0">children</span> are the generations which will also be responsible for that giant debt
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5231c9ca-0717-4889-9fed-7eac307e7f94" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fe4259ff-19b0-4da3-9451-04cb1935bfcb" grcontextid="accumulated:0">accumulated</span> for the benefit of predecessors. That debt is a tax burden <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4f7a8e9d-e887-43eb-a41a-691f0af4b451" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c714f0f2-b063-4ce1-9b9e-2e5f3659d5af" grcontextid="by:0">by</span> a
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cfbb2e4c-8133-404c-b70e-480f165154e6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="87996170-ca14-41b7-b666-aec90a867dc0" grcontextid="different:0">different</span> name, and you will have no choice but to bear it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">You are an indentured
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d830cdd1-f913-4ed2-a048-18f2c7da0814" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1132e9df-2560-4c30-b043-5d4520112eda" grcontextid="generation:0">generation</span>. Like it or not, understand it or not, you are trapped in a lifelong
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bc1f2dd6-01bc-412a-b0c1-bbde228867b5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="873a7060-5141-40c0-9031-99a7322cf6f1" grcontextid="vice:0">vice</span> of debt. You are stepping out into a society which has long been
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f76a8ed0-40b4-42dd-bbd8-a83ea9173f61" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="614e070f-3413-4d0f-9a1d-fc910a3def72" grcontextid="convinced:0">convinced</span> that ‘debt is good’. It doesn’t know why it believes that, but
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="80bed8fa-325b-43e2-bc30-5ad59770e300" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="30d91a15-c11b-4a85-a858-b5c212971240" grcontextid="since:0">since</span> it’s been promulgated and recited so ardently for over half a century,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ebab01c5-19c1-4c64-aee5-786b51def765" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="575fb857-4bd4-405f-b3ce-a4b3bd286b69" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> baffling refrain has saturated every pore of your world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">You will eventually come to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="16942fc3-fa2f-426a-ab4c-89421e3faa01" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d8e1dc3c-f059-4fc5-afed-e52302c9f693" grcontextid="familiarize:0">familiarize</span> yourselves with the significance of organizations such as The
Federal Reserve, or the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel,
Switzerland. These organizations influence your <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2195d1fd-b69d-4aca-a8e6-c22d14fb0f6f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2a3f0255-000d-4391-8f97-a8c21d601d8f" grcontextid="wellbeing:0">wellbeing</span> and the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5c9b3178-73f4-4306-b696-40dadbcc46c0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7fb89e9d-79d7-4947-8e80-d10de2e33397" grcontextid="wellbeing:0">wellbeing</span> of the Nation you thought was yours. You do not control these
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cc6359d6-5744-43bf-871d-c5dcc3bf1bd3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="06b89ded-2742-4aaa-bfff-37267653acf1" grcontextid="organizations:0">organizations</span>, you do not own them, and neither does your government.
Most of you have little knowledge of what they are, or what they do, and <i>they</i>,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7b631647-46f9-4dd6-b201-a85657437c75" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c36e50c8-c598-48b9-bd95-629d297430d0" grcontextid="like:0">like</span> to keep it that way. The Federal Reserve is your Central Bank and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="75e20f29-51e9-4e7d-a6c2-c09b60f72fa3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3d629cd7-3287-4fa1-83e9-29d501a688ec" grcontextid="is:0">is</span> an offshore entity owned by a group of U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ca260227-5855-4f52-831e-9f222568341b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1b93e7f9-60c1-415a-8996-16aa35453214" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> European Banks, well, it’s
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="65f61761-1ca1-4b85-973e-682cdd335621" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e9177013-e159-4f64-918b-154fcf3179ea" grcontextid="not:0">not</span> really yours, but it’s the organization which impacts your every waking
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="102be144-d8c5-4911-9fe8-949c35cf776f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8237d916-b84c-4d42-b413-b03ac11394c7" grcontextid="moment:0">moment</span>. Central banks are not managed by practical individuals with any
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="97a3f8e1-c89f-4514-8ba5-a5f770ba18bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="cba0ce32-cb3f-4942-9b5f-46804ebff1e9" grcontextid="experience:0">experience</span> which can inspire their decisions. They are economists
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d0cda5e3-bc42-4c56-a720-104cdb44e54b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="502deff5-091b-429f-bb08-34e8644198e1" grcontextid="immersed:0">immersed</span> in theoretical concepts and abstractions from which they dictate the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a1966644-64d3-4965-96e4-5731a31cadd7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dc8e1eef-a18c-4f9e-a32d-e0b23d91d55e" grcontextid="direction:0">direction</span> and tenor of your present and your future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Do you recall growing up
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a5a8027d-7898-4458-84ec-451249298a57" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ff8aa2ef-70b8-4f00-a32b-ae3fdc393f11" grcontextid="believing:0">believing</span> that cartels were illegal, and that Unicorns could heal the sick and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="311db9f3-8143-49a1-a3bd-80765e044af2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8f3efdb6-adbc-42f0-b1e9-2196328d606c" grcontextid="purify:0">purify</span> water? Do you remember feeling comforted by the thought that there
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4574e272-08a1-4191-9db8-40973ced9523" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dbb473e5-3349-41e1-a50a-ec401b196c35" grcontextid="were:0">were</span> laws against <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="14a3262d-da76-4bda-a280-0937d481bf7e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dbb473e5-3349-41e1-a50a-ec401b196c35" grcontextid="oligopolistic:1">oligopolistic</span> environments and monopolistic practices?
Yes? But you don’t wonder how or why all the large banks charge the same
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="361b8fc9-666b-46df-8139-1f8a0a3b411b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f6529096-7902-4fba-ab01-0bcfa8e2b645" grcontextid="interest:0">interest</span> rates on loans? No surprise, no one else does either. Sure,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d9e29419-7d91-46ef-b162-51d2b02cd291" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6aeb7782-43c6-4ad6-bd60-624ee59e88a8" grcontextid="there:0">there</span> are laws against price fixing, and it would be wonderful if there existed
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="fa452c22-2dca-45dd-bc45-a7b6908dacd5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e20de612-432f-4172-a58e-909f93e618f2" grcontextid="real:0">real</span> competition in banking, but, well, but nothing. The Bank for
International Settlements, is where the heads of central banks go to decide
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d4f9b548-0b8b-4deb-887f-4f3f66727d05" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fbe8e64f-21cb-4292-98d1-74f62cf4f820" grcontextid="your:0">your</span> destiny. They deserve somewhere to meet that is comfortably out of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="02975d57-84c1-4cf1-9913-cb8ad11f3bfc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4e01eb99-4cc9-4e4d-bd5b-b865815a92a4" grcontextid="sight:0">sight</span> of boisterous crowds with prying eyes and placards, and of course, they
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="19cdc1cd-ce02-4f47-a8fa-a8894af2bc9d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f2d67f4f-edd1-40c8-9598-ee21d1c85d78" grcontextid="occasionally:0">occasionally</span> need a clearing house, so the BIS is <i>their</i> bank.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">As you grab hold of your
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b2da9595-79f7-4787-8fa4-42c747565283" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="39ec1a04-3c0f-41ed-a0dd-afad53bb6fc1" grcontextid="life:0">life</span> and step into your tomorrows, you might recall a few of these
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="eb9902cc-60fc-48aa-b2f8-f2c330abe663" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7a757cf0-29bf-4093-a56d-ec5419636d7e" grcontextid="exhortations:0">exhortations</span>. Since most of you like to think of yourselves as
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5d7860f9-9282-47fc-8c84-a3071a653b5d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="56531ffc-3799-47b3-bebd-c506974c2564" grcontextid="being:0">being</span> of sound mind, please accept that your government was never originally
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1ac21795-6a3e-4101-8a2d-d030b003a1e1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e07620a3-3121-49b3-9a62-6aa09ac89699" grcontextid="intended:0">intended</span> to trample your rights, at least as the Framers of the Constitution
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2fcfd73a-b5fd-48a9-976e-07dfa804ef15" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0c4fdb11-63a2-44d8-82f2-039465e5faa2" grcontextid="intended:0">intended</span> it, and astutely structured it. Assess what personal freedom you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="039bb776-63c6-4bb0-93fc-18d221afa071" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="074d13fa-7a9b-4649-b0f8-0fa68a9e4588" grcontextid="have:0">have</span> lost, then assert your own lines in the sand beyond which you will
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ba8dc1b1-19e2-4c95-a010-4e98c482a788" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a70102b6-f752-4a4c-ba3d-cef79dc0df6a" grcontextid="not:0">not</span> allow intrusion and oppression. If you don’t, others will decide for
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b3473629-a0d2-4492-b16b-3702e7995dfb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="23be3735-1ded-4a3c-af1b-db0af39e58e0" grcontextid="you:0">you</span> and you will find yourself trapped in an ideological corral, unable to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="efaa8a70-6e74-4d7f-8582-c420f47a80a0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0ae92fad-8926-4f19-b72e-32cbb23095da" grcontextid="breath:0">breath</span> the Freedom which might have been yours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Take responsibility for
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="51a91cff-7746-452c-aace-e9630196183e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="51ec5c3a-2a74-4328-a998-5e7ac8c42f36" grcontextid="your:0">your</span> actions, particularly your mistakes, ignoring the example you have
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="23b7874a-fe4f-46b6-8174-ef5ffd949ac1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3d9fca0c-fdcf-40c5-bc33-184d705991a2" grcontextid="witnessed:0">witnessed</span> of the current President. The acknowledgement will inform <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0e91a189-395a-4c3c-8d44-3c04d2977752" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="51ef048f-c9c4-4e3c-bc5b-598df2b9de75" grcontextid="your:0">your</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9aa72457-ed6f-4585-b58a-e85c42e18933" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="419aca3c-a714-4af2-bf1b-4ecbbfb45540" grcontextid="own:0">own</span> development and growth. <b>Ascribing blame onto others vacates your
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8ab8b6b0-806a-47f8-912d-c6dc513aad39" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1b387b6e-5183-43ab-bb71-8d63a7a97b47" grcontextid="capacities:0">capacities</span> to learn anything.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">One
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="50b4d57c-b515-4c0c-90df-b542f4c2e6e8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4b5fd549-214c-424f-a40f-ff11fd86ae9b" grcontextid="more:0">more</span> proposition:</span></i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <b>Reject most of the concocted ‘wisdom’
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e56d1bf5-f924-4f11-b179-5ebcc998d3c9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="079b6f99-1ed6-4dbf-bc28-db41c46396e7" grcontextid="you:0">you</span> have been fed</b> and absorbed throughout your school years since
Kindergarten. Spurn the fantasies. <b>As you make your way, heed your own
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1b470d7a-66fb-4ec6-b1c4-a2bce69c0044" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2c8db99a-1153-45be-b55d-87c10aeb39d1" grcontextid="common:0">common</span> sense, and your own intuition.</b></span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-22898061833479477162013-08-25T23:20:00.003-04:002013-08-25T23:20:46.268-04:002008 Election Fraud With New Life?<!--EndFragment--><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">The blatant application of political pressure
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="64041380-e34b-40bd-975f-52bcf9f96d0e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c8e9fc6e-db62-4719-9e9c-bccbf33dcf36" grcontextid="applied:0">applied</span> through powerful government bureaucracies such as the IRS, is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="39065422-2dab-4cf9-9364-ee546487c58a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c23da211-7060-4027-896e-ed4fdf30b113" grcontextid="arrogant:0">arrogant</span> abuse of power in the extreme. Obviously. These proven abuses now
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0dd88f7f-fec4-4c70-b7e2-6f68d9d58a3f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="448cb816-d5d2-4f1d-a725-580f53baf26c" grcontextid="provide:0">provide</span> us very fresh perspectives on other fraudulent manifestations of
National import perpetrated by an immoral political machine whose genealogy is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5fd1969d-95e4-4546-9f8f-d42bc61c872e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a6a06753-2e12-4cf2-b446-ff4e8e2d0676" grcontextid="rooted:0">rooted</span> in Chicago.</span><br />
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">A major such event which
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="01d148b7-891a-48be-915f-cd2da2c52d1c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e0ba60b9-eabb-4f8d-85d1-456f19227690" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> MSM has willfully refused to cover before, during and after its denouement,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2518e7c2-98ee-4bc1-a1d4-cc7b741b2303" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6c98791c-e040-48b6-ac10-5026a97738fd" grcontextid="is:0">is</span> the conviction of two Democratic political operatives convicted in a <b>fraud
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1b882f9f-d334-4907-b0d0-23affbb2565b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5e774956-0625-4626-8e75-d1c9c3dea38d" grcontextid="which:0">which</span> put Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the presidential primary ballot
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b314bc69-f221-44fc-b751-f02c9357c759" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c1db2999-6271-4031-9987-5fb3635d09a5" grcontextid="in:0">in</span> Indiana in the 2008 election</b>. Democratic officials and workers had been
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1b75fe24-c8fc-4bc5-ac5b-dc918a0808e2" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f0db45a3-4b5e-4597-a3f5-c85fddf85eb8" grcontextid="ordered:0">ordered</span> to fake names and signatures that Obama and Clinton needed to qualify
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="14d88c00-d8cb-44e0-b3c5-b659ee6e0130" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3ceac305-62a1-42ab-92d1-210d3f5a0af8" grcontextid="for:0">for</span> the presidential race. This significant story which began in 2008,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="97057939-dc82-4756-9294-f69dee3e0d1c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6f4b5e64-c766-4b84-a4e7-600abc41482c" grcontextid="well:0">well</span> before the Presidential campaign, remained in the shadows and continues to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2414fb2d-f217-4fcd-906d-bb515880aa6d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8f8bab26-9f19-4c18-94ae-6cacd48d3fd6" grcontextid="remain:0">remain</span> there, but it has culminated in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/officials-found-guilty-in-obama-clinton-ballot-petition-fraud/"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> April of this
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5029102f-62ac-4d9c-b8d0-2776e222c8d4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f60c05b6-146d-4b2e-b51c-964a764fa983" grcontextid="year:0">year</span> with</span></a>,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">“Former longtime St. Joseph
County Democratic party Chairman Butch Morgan Jr. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="85e1ddaf-da98-4351-ba19-d310c1be35bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c4e795a0-0278-45ba-a76a-a75c5353b5e0" grcontextid="was:0">was</span> found guilty
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e6ea5944-cd76-461e-86c0-a62c9ed8696c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7577c5d7-0ec5-4095-8183-f64310c5b8dd" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> felony conspiracy counts to commit petition fraud and forgery, and <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="549a2092-253e-4244-9f3f-45ffee03d4c1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7577c5d7-0ec5-4095-8183-f64310c5b8dd" grcontextid="former:1">former</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8685d40b-6abd-4d30-b7e9-724f34ca22d9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c340eec4-741c-4393-bcd5-51e782a4efda" grcontextid="county:0">county</span> Board of Elections worker Dustin Blythe was found guilty of felony
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="58e1acf1-8602-471c-ade1-310e3b5219ce" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="de9cdcdb-4086-4e84-ad59-07c6db7f629e" grcontextid="forgery:0">forgery</span> counts and falsely making a petition, after being accused of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7fc5930b-a680-4fa7-9a42-2e7fab800d98" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="14a78d36-98d0-4a01-bbe2-6cee2e2fe9dc" grcontextid="faking:0">faking</span> petitions that enabled Obama, then an Illinois Senator, to get on
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f615b8fd-539c-4238-a978-bd165a235569" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="52a03916-847a-4c60-84a4-02e51421ddc7" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> presidential primary ballot for his first run for the White House.”</span></i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">After only <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e49f8c1c-d4cf-434e-862f-293480875987" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9f60c90d-dc01-48fe-b4d9-84efe42e20df" grcontextid="three hours of:0">three hours of</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="28796492-4bf4-4b3c-930b-7798277b77c4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="52ac1f34-de5f-47f5-844c-0b9a95f8c974" grcontextid="deliberation:0">deliberation</span> the political minions were found guilty on all
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0800fe5e-f517-48f2-8a84-41d10e933fdf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="60ed3615-eb53-4c92-92e1-9bec125823fe" grcontextid="counts:0">counts</span>. Morgan has been called the ‘mastermind’ behind the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="24d6897c-f258-42c3-bc8e-377227428d2d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f6d1f98c-5a0a-41bc-906e-5061ff3121ef" grcontextid="operation:0">operation</span>. Really? He and his crew risked their lives just because they
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="539af0b9-70d8-47b8-94bd-8d5850c68db5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e69e65b5-0b40-41eb-bd2e-6e7157eca205" grcontextid="believed:0">believed</span> Obama might be a great President? That is what we are to swallow
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="106a8176-10eb-4cb9-b99c-c8ce50259d19" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="62bde2a8-f259-45f7-90cf-6e472048bd0e" grcontextid="as:0">as</span> motivation? Given the recent IRS revelations, there is no credibility
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="98098384-bc4b-4575-9c75-0889b507e986" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9b81545f-5340-442b-9288-40e655174a3b" grcontextid="in:0">in</span> the claim that Morgan did not get orders from much higher up the Democratic
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="065d2458-cdeb-4cbe-ace5-ae2ff92cf876" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ad3de92e-7def-4b6f-ac81-6104567257f7" grcontextid="food:0">food</span> chain. We can no longer apply any specks of credence to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9bd56cc7-ae30-4b16-bc16-31c3fb761b4b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5a80f187-7255-45c0-b543-05046c9e71c7" grcontextid="investigations:0">investigations</span> digging through the political gutters of the Democratic machine.
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b38cfce8-006d-46e8-85ab-f926319d4c14" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2ba50a78-0a2e-47e7-94cb-7504f6156cfe" grcontextid="None:0">None</span> is deserved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Here’s the crux of the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1ffce293-d1ca-4454-aaac-0eb29c783c1c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="86591ebe-1727-420d-92b0-7737481f90a1" grcontextid="solemnity:0">solemnity</span> with which this fraud must be assessed:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Indiana State law required
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f541bb3f-913b-4dcb-ad8b-f1eec3ca736e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9261acf4-ed4a-491a-a1da-edc5cba18aee" grcontextid="candidates:0">candidates</span> to collect 500 signatures from each of nine congressional districts.
<b>Clinton had 704</b>, and <b>Obama had 534</b><i> (just 34 above the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c2a4b2e8-bcf5-40b9-8a56-fe07fd448280" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="edca2d9d-41a3-4da8-a23d-dc71beabc7ed" grcontextid="tread:0">tread</span>-water line)</i>. 9 of Obama’s petition pages were forged – each
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b473321d-b4d6-488d-af89-6b0ee026279d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="43119569-0e8d-432c-89ce-da190a6c463f" grcontextid="page:0">page</span> had 10 names, therefore 90 names rendered worthless would have dropped him
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4dc1fa4d-64fa-4893-9f4b-76f339bed780" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b3ea4653-1738-40b1-ab89-aa623b3dbf78" grcontextid="well:0">well</span> <b>below</b> the 500 limit. Clinton had 13 petitions forged (<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2d6df6e8-5cdf-41b4-b273-bc3b0f3635a4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="245d4ca4-4f73-4748-8fdf-1923c713fd85" grcontextid="x:0">x</span>
10 =130 fakes), but that would have left Clinton well <b>above</b> the 500
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0a347ee2-2995-416f-a5b9-27383f04778d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="adde7c04-fd3f-472d-8402-921e6aaa7718" grcontextid="limit:0">limit</span>. Had this information surfaced in time, Obama would have been bounced
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="64741b95-b9af-4993-ba35-1fa3352de732" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="645d5421-a560-467e-ac8d-f609a370daac" grcontextid="from:0">from</span> the ballot, so who knows what might have occurred <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="31fbe574-3e96-4896-8c53-482beb050e07" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="645d5421-a560-467e-ac8d-f609a370daac" grcontextid="to:1">to</span> the Obama Chicago
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="10ce9c86-8841-4ba1-9ded-636beb6794af" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4c94f28a-0231-4208-ac8c-2d07b8289178" grcontextid="political:0">political</span> machine. Clinton would have received all 72 delegates, and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="13df5b25-b8fe-417e-88f1-34334165918b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ca2f0d8a-f6d6-424e-8f6e-922319e41b4c" grcontextid="would:0">would</span> have had the wind at her back with a very dark cloud looming over the
Obama campaign. The details didn’t surface until 2011 when Board of
Registration worker Lucas Burkett decided to put on a whistleblower coat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">The only humorous element
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a41902bc-e245-463c-bf6a-32bd3110eea4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a05eb56d-1891-41aa-a6fd-d7249c7d594a" grcontextid="in:0">in</span> this dismal saga of fraud is that if we examine some of the pages of
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="79a8f97b-88cc-4223-b985-f09525e72fb6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="fa5c6974-68e8-41eb-9e32-f780e36657a2" grcontextid="signatures:0">signatures</span>, it is laughably obvious that the same ‘hand’ signed all the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1462adda-6ee9-4875-b2e5-94bcb974537c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="18964369-796c-4171-9463-90ab03a1eb31" grcontextid="signatures:0">signatures</span> on numerous pages, <i>with the same pen</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">The ramifications of this story in
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a46946c9-28b6-47b5-bd08-ab96a55ea21c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5cdf1fa8-8da6-4588-9d56-ad5f830cc346" grcontextid="the:0">the</span> aftermath of scandals swirling around the Oval Office and seething out its
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e03e1ea6-e48f-4dd0-acb0-e6e8cd4a88da" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7fad00d2-f3e5-490a-b191-bc0c33c4418b" grcontextid="windows:0">windows</span>, will likely be, well, <i>nothing</i>. You cannot find
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5ce9510e-9583-42ed-aa7c-83e5149e50b3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="03671a32-a48f-416b-85a7-304fbfd0d8eb" grcontextid="dishonourable:0">dishonourable</span> mention of anything remotely connected to this proven fraud in
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7cc8636d-889a-4ee9-a1fa-361062252c1d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2b3ca444-8399-433f-9f07-c8816212c9ec" grcontextid="any:0">any</span> of the liberal progressive media. The NYT seems never to have heard
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="47501c29-eaf9-4cac-bd0c-097eb90a163a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3f7be654-5145-4824-be58-84d6b2445b93" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> this truly outrageous event in American political history, and neither have
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="56f6da3a-b8f1-4b90-85e1-fff44ffaa870" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d1eac517-c600-4274-a902-a1ed6169ac20" grcontextid="any:0">any</span> of the other major news outlets, other than Fox News.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">These
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f28425f7-e223-4b42-9d02-dbedabe30e70" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bf3d6d3c-107a-43e4-9b95-6bab222ba123" grcontextid="convictions:0">convictions</span> did more than put into question the 2008 nomination of Barack
Obama,<b> they shake the foundation of the 2008 Presidential election outcome</b>.
Regardless how high in the Democratic Party this deception really began,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0b48229c-46f6-4fc8-b7c6-6a77cb9e0e20" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="122b03c8-1035-4ce1-bfa7-daa7e6288892" grcontextid="it:0">it</span> will not touch Obama. None of these scandals will, it seems. He just
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9734af32-1b3b-4fb9-a362-86cd30b69c11" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="eeeab935-adfb-46c7-b58c-4b131f898cf3" grcontextid="doesn’t:0">doesn’t</span> know anything about any of them. He was out for lunch that day, and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6ccbfbea-9c66-4d18-a8e8-94070858341b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="da9eda8b-8b1d-4c1d-8482-ffddb2e82040" grcontextid="that:0">that</span> day, and that one. The crickets are deafening.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-65735946002510903152013-08-25T23:17:00.005-04:002013-08-25T23:18:21.267-04:00Holder’s Ego Provides Insight Into Presidential Weakness<!--EndFragment--><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">The onslaught of evidence pouring out of this White
House of individual rights knowingly being ignored and invasions of all things
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2f7d7ce1-9f6f-4e27-81b1-5ec95989c02b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8293b815-e5f4-4d32-8eea-047b577d8a27" grcontextid="personal:0">personal</span> being justified for ideological purposes, seems to have the passive
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8768ae87-a23d-4ee8-b1f6-fd2de8f9e45c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d4f8a366-60ad-499e-8576-13d3628860cc" grcontextid="approval:0">approval</span> of the MSM. We may be legitimately confused as to which scandal
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="19f6d5ca-11af-4fc6-b52c-22ba587fb94e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d9a91f5c-50b6-4284-9517-625d05f58e53" grcontextid="is:0">is</span> the most egregious, however, we are not confused as to the revelations these
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="adfedc0f-1663-472f-8bf2-a8cab07b6343" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="305fadaa-1cf4-4487-a150-11c00157f44c" grcontextid="scandals:0">scandals</span> reveal. Much is rotten in this Administration, but who is in
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c20a897a-efff-427c-92d4-2e4de6fd724d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="52c41a60-a8b2-4a4d-bf47-08294a0905e1" grcontextid="charge:0">charge</span>?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">This Administration is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0a1db3c3-1424-4c24-acef-768ca023be5a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="534dcf0c-927e-42e3-9787-1fe9d04302ef" grcontextid="being:0">being</span> allowed unparalleled room for distorting <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="2cd45d50-ea88-4654-9414-917b9627755e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="534dcf0c-927e-42e3-9787-1fe9d04302ef" grcontextid="truth:1">truth</span>, and twisting reality as
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c02f27d6-e9c1-46e4-885e-fd3a1547fcb0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0ba0b4ee-4ef3-45bc-9101-2076655180e3" grcontextid="it:0">it</span> is being written. Apples are oranges, and oranges are moonbeams, and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0836f69b-0407-4c2a-8661-9608c63f1c51" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9798b593-afc1-4e78-ab7d-dc4a5057fb2a" grcontextid="moonbeams:0">moonbeams</span> are . . . <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a7339044-792f-4772-b71f-c0cd6cb65437" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d0bf9264-7add-4b0e-8265-8c9439048c0d" grcontextid="who:0">who</span> knows, oh wait, maybe they’re those things that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ea347f86-9573-43df-8c40-62126db97d60" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="08f6c794-0bd8-4f2e-9d65-09d00447531e" grcontextid="magically:0">magically</span> light up the sanctified <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8fe1e33d-a0aa-4944-9e1e-09cc5fb20d12" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="08f6c794-0bd8-4f2e-9d65-09d00447531e" grcontextid="teleprompter:1">teleprompter</span> revealing enchanting divine
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="938cda34-d9d9-411d-b6d8-8e9706a9ba42" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3ee85869-9c54-4169-8e03-e8206211a36a" grcontextid="tenants:0">tenants</span> from the Oval Office, doesn’t matter, reality is whatever this
White House decides to feed us in bite-sized talking-points.
Verisimilitude is now the product of creativity from a cubicle somewhere
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="115ea5a6-6df3-48ac-818b-f8f72b3070de" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9733bc67-4e1c-4faf-9589-93d913e2a397" grcontextid="below:0">below</span> the Oval Office, and truth has become a relative term.</span><br />
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
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<br />
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">From the bowels of this
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="16ff69d2-6dc1-462d-8ea6-58c2c6075e52" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="471e48fb-b324-4dd5-bc52-4e32c29957b7" grcontextid="quagmire:0">quagmire</span> and confusion, struts the Attorney General of The United States <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="02153836-d33b-430d-83c3-d768892fcf65" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="471e48fb-b324-4dd5-bc52-4e32c29957b7" grcontextid="into:1">into</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4085b517-8e6a-435d-a7b4-58bcc1278d82" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4517fc5f-3e73-4551-89a2-a6471858fd62" grcontextid="an:0">an</span><a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/will-eric-holder-have-resign-verizon-scandal-grows-1294885"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> interview</span></a>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d353bdf6-6d9c-432c-9396-36f6a19f0e19" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5f3c642e-30c7-4416-89bb-a35eb6a37dc1" grcontextid="with:0">with</span> progressive propaganda network NBC, making what has to be one of the more
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="379d4095-d679-490f-9c94-5c559fec7623" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7c584308-f49a-4ab5-899a-19887eed3249" grcontextid="obnoxious:0">obnoxious</span> public statements ever made by an AG, <i>“There’s some things
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e7a65667-4c86-4c84-8a59-7047230753bc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="345fbb3f-f5be-4d45-bc30-86bc60bef946" grcontextid="that:0">that</span> I want to do, some things I want to get done. I’ve discussed that with the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="248db958-19b4-4971-a3c0-70f413272de1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="04d8604d-db93-4dc8-aab7-2c7de0aa2002" grcontextid="president:0">president</span>. And once I <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d5c1df68-61cd-44cf-99d7-59f33c82b454" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ec33d664-a487-4b30-b22b-73ff68f890b4" grcontextid="have finished:0">have finished</span> that, <b>I’ll sit down with him and we’ll
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="83f8b0a1-e26d-4a4e-a495-0c6b92ae0023" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="01812472-9dc5-4281-94c8-aadc356af500" grcontextid="determine:0">determine</span> when it’s time to make a transition</b> to a new attorney general.
No, <b>I have no intention of doing so now.</b>“</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">TRANSLATION: <i> ”When
I’m good and ready and when I feel like it, I’ll sit down with the President
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="34718d2b-3781-4eaa-a621-df88546f3292" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="17b5ab92-46ab-4f09-b9df-75cddc6d4b78" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> I’ll inform him of what I’m doing. Until then I’ll do whatever I want
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="50a48a58-4ddd-46fa-958d-a73cf3b5cb24" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="38bdce1d-778e-4894-8ee7-0bdb659b82e9" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> do, I will tell you whatever I’m in the mood to tell you. If you don’t
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bcea9efa-eb4f-4b8b-bc61-00ed55b91b5d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8af45775-da1b-430b-9046-ec14136b6443" grcontextid="like:0">like</span> it, eat it. There is nothing you can do about it.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Whether or not Holder is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b52b0aa5-25a4-4332-8248-f17d74d9afd9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b9c1891a-32af-44b8-9a4b-fb14f9af8f61" grcontextid="demonstrating:0">demonstrating</span> an overabundance of arrogance, it is clear that he is not <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="5b292c0e-ac41-407e-81a7-335e7aacaf4e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b9c1891a-32af-44b8-9a4b-fb14f9af8f61" grcontextid="taking:1">taking</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8202016d-48e2-4211-90ca-78fbb3bbe508" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6c4f4161-9a7a-4b44-b50f-6f039b9dc10f" grcontextid="orders:0">orders</span> from the President – maybe from no one, or he might meet with Jarrett if
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="84770485-ae88-48a0-8ab6-e1f78c8196c1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9f20117e-8bfe-4d13-b930-ca40a8ee7c82" grcontextid="he’s:0">he’s</span> so inclined, but the President? It seems not. Do his words
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="89884a97-e15c-4eee-b2b7-f8a1155b2fe6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3a12148c-7669-4a3e-b08a-4da0d65845de" grcontextid="demonstrate:0">demonstrate</span> a respect for the individual which the Constitution tells him <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0edaedaf-4126-41af-a70b-3c1030557c64" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3a12148c-7669-4a3e-b08a-4da0d65845de" grcontextid="is:1">is</span>
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a3b622d3-1f7f-4ba3-b5fa-6db7a4a6dcd6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="527ca025-1984-434e-8d13-4a31d3759767" grcontextid="his:0">his</span> boss? Quite the opposite – he thinks his boss is weak, otherwise he
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="825e8778-d88b-40e9-a6d2-688d07f0b157" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="79b0a66a-650a-481d-bfa0-90b0c2ad9e76" grcontextid="would:0">would</span> not have been so discourteous and insolent. Why did NBC not pick-up
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="86bbd9cb-3544-45e2-b60b-962f9a5d0324" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8e670712-39ce-4004-9b6e-3901f48f6ee7" grcontextid="on:0">on</span> this egoistic statement?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Why
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b164be46-0a30-4c04-a124-374593b65bb7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f56c1257-615c-4a8a-9d81-d81402a1ee2a" grcontextid="is:0">is</span> the MSM not wondering who is really in charge? Is it afraid to ask? <b>Holder
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e9eb8e1b-6866-4ea2-95e2-482e2bab9a0f" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="98b6ac9b-9d83-4a3b-8415-a38567e756fc" grcontextid="made:0">made</span> it clear, his boss isn’t.</b></span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-29518740392211238722013-08-25T23:14:00.002-04:002013-08-25T23:14:48.101-04:00Apple Succumbs To Political Pressure<!--EndFragment--><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12pt;">One of the world’s great companies provided us
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="82728102-9f7e-44ed-94bc-b165ea86ad92" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a9840865-f50c-4b0d-8daa-0ea961f45e0f" grcontextid="evidence:0">evidence</span> of the extent to which political maneuvering can influence an American
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9c0fa3b0-a4a3-460e-abbe-c369fed8d2cd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b9adc286-0df7-4b76-9ba1-8b55c37b09f5" grcontextid="company:0">company</span>. The last time Apple was occupying the front page of any news
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c79ce36d-b845-4b04-b9d4-b00440e4c6ae" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="200db7f1-abc6-4296-abe5-da468901a792" grcontextid="vehicle:0">vehicle</span>, it was defending itself against Carl Levin’s (D-MI) Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.</span><br />
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">With wide-grinning sidekick
John McCain at his side, Levin led a liberal charge against Apple, accusing the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="955f5e87-6920-4c06-b71b-4ab23f79e06e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0b4e8c30-5e7f-4e7c-90a3-fb29733ed9e9" grcontextid="largest:0">largest</span> taxpayer in the Nation of avoiding taxes on its $44 billion in earnings
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ce2625aa-4a69-45a6-bf43-6b2c0ccb99bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7a19b868-8049-4216-8eeb-1520b8aa2155" grcontextid="from:0">from</span> overseas businesses. </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/05/21/apple-called-a-tax-dodger-by-senate-committee-apple-says-system-needs-to-be-dramatically-simplified/" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Levin’s words</span></a><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1cdad003-8e01-453c-b4b6-c958d5b7ae0a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ea49f2c3-4a2e-40d3-8648-52f0e6e98ad8" grcontextid="were:0">were</span> specifically accusatory of Apple, </span><i style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">“the real issue is the billions in
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="33b816ca-69d2-4c52-a73f-5defd557a3a5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="14f29a78-db11-46f2-83b1-8f68dbeeb010" grcontextid="taxes:0">taxes</span> it has not paid.”</i><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;"> Apple has not broken any laws and is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c0b4ece8-2009-42d2-a3f8-84cd16ebce0a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9001b8a6-959b-4e23-8168-d7d4b177dd2f" grcontextid="conducting:0">conducting</span> itself as everyone and every company does – it maximizes
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8364a858-2aed-4942-b731-f06f38430506" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b9295959-7c29-4704-89d2-89d0b640fe22" grcontextid="profitability:0">profitability</span> and minimizes taxes.</span><br />
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<br />
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Whenever you appear on the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3e4fda15-cddd-4aa5-b711-f73d412e2a6a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ce57a9a1-19aa-4d1b-989c-75a9f26cccf3" grcontextid="national:0">national</span> stage, peered at from above by a long-sitting Senator, looking at you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f025fa84-9260-4f11-bbc0-b08eecd6e573" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="a198126a-6982-4783-86ed-1081eeaa24ba" grcontextid="down:0">down</span> his nose, over the rim of his reading glasses, it matters little what is
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6ed1f749-af55-4cc2-8595-bc2f7e821181" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d4b777d8-a26f-4b37-ae2f-2177d1038b5c" grcontextid="being:0">being</span> asked, you just look like you have done something wrong. You must be
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="68856868-73a5-4e46-bb2e-362de518c4a0" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6e897ff2-0e8e-42d7-af26-c0fa24326be9" grcontextid="guilty:0">guilty</span>. Why else would you be dragged <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="89a20eca-a29a-440e-b2ce-416338245d8a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="417265ca-ba77-4518-8f7e-542e7f6b314c" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> a public interrogation on such a
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4391d90b-2f2b-4645-8503-39dc90f8ad1e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="cb4fbaab-b9e6-4f00-b263-f2977756a590" grcontextid="distinguished:0">distinguished</span> stage?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Tim Cook testified, <i>“We
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="160149e0-c33b-4da6-be98-69b2c4a69a41" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1e81b049-6871-4610-a17c-2199d0d1044d" grcontextid="not:0">not</span> only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws. We
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d5298ae9-ebed-4b01-9efc-e118fc938b47" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d740a0b4-274b-4c9b-9a7f-8edbf38f511e" grcontextid="don’t:0">don’t</span> depend on tax gimmicks. We don’t move intellectual property offshore and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="996ae3ff-2a02-41d9-9229-16be801f0021" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="381586a1-40c6-4db7-9277-7e2d4d1f2f01" grcontextid="use:0">use</span> it to sell our products back to the United States to avoid taxes. We
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b975a1ff-8cad-4ad6-afee-d3881e0c6cfc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1cc1fa9d-92ca-40e0-abd6-a65ba3db9b6c" grcontextid="don’t:0">don’t</span> stash money on some Caribbean island. We don’t move our money from our
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="84dee704-2159-449f-a47d-ff2f727a23af" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="aea530ea-d7aa-40b8-9627-0b258546dd32" grcontextid="foreign:0">foreign</span> subsidiaries to fund our U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3143b808-cfa2-4752-804a-4ca146aca89e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="11e3d088-d4f5-44e3-aacf-44e0d0e247a7" grcontextid="business:0">business</span> in order to skirt the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="15517bb9-6d78-4a71-8cd0-64b0cdf21785" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="502aab19-5895-41d4-bee8-22140f6fdbb4" grcontextid="repatriation:0">repatriation</span> tax.” </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Doesn’t matter Tim, you
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4aff6b92-00bb-43ee-a692-7639fc2333b7" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="869ec106-5790-45ac-9501-3e0289823aab" grcontextid="lost:0">lost</span>, and in reality, you were just getting squeezed. The grandstanding was
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="84649b69-429d-4871-8b25-80d40d22e280" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f4493c11-84dd-4c68-a39e-5aecf0e9b7d4" grcontextid="pathetically:0">pathetically</span> transparent, but the MSM was playing right along with the script
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a4e8a110-b627-4838-9810-f4eb066a699e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="32961fba-2de8-41e8-9ec4-d2abd52ffd71" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> the refrain across all news channels convinced the widely dispersed flock.
The MSM also could not help itself and it ground into our <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="526d39fb-26b9-49d6-9846-17afb4f08728" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1d330218-0400-472d-b6ab-69f44dbaa41a" grcontextid="percepts:0">percepts</span> the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6faaa6f2-1d25-4c75-aa94-a7b1a183950d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="30248b4c-e654-4ee5-991f-8a1b8adfbc06" grcontextid="recently:0">recently</span> published suspicions on the working conditions <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9fd60a7e-4aa0-4e60-bba2-106d85d7aeb6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="30248b4c-e654-4ee5-991f-8a1b8adfbc06" grcontextid="inside:1">inside</span> the Chinese
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="81224d88-6b92-4d3a-b3c3-825562b2f784" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b2d46b41-2724-4baa-81ea-8e09cf3336f8" grcontextid="manufacturing:0">manufacturing</span> facilities spitting out iPhones and iPads by the millions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">In the hateful climate of
Chicago-brand strong-arming, newly perfected by the present Administration,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a79f39d5-5c4c-4b15-bd85-f8186e0bb2ac" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5c4b3c5a-efbe-4f2f-ad34-c8cd9dd6fc95" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> being perpetrated on corporate America, how does one stop the public
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9f3ebbb9-967e-4a40-89ba-2967c4fbe00c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="919ea7f6-28b8-44de-be34-5911cb6ad424" grcontextid="humiliation:0">humiliation</span>? How does one stem the public reaction against your brand for being
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b000fc10-8ca4-4534-9859-97643d57d2ca" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5c40b95d-1155-4296-b921-d9ecdc8f4bf2" grcontextid="so:0">so</span> unpatriotic? How does one react to very public extortion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Claiming that you’re not
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c37b3da9-3d8a-4b92-9a64-2e33b9fb4311" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6fbe87ca-8dde-4bdc-9d23-d8f3324535b4" grcontextid="guilty:0">guilty</span> of wrongdoing and evidencing that you are a diligent citizen in good
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b9c1dd05-8365-46bf-ad97-6ff2ce7a6b78" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f74f450b-b177-47ed-8acb-9957a67107d1" grcontextid="standing:0">standing</span> paying all taxes owed, has little <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0454fd2a-060b-4bd7-a142-1ac601ec93cb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f74f450b-b177-47ed-8acb-9957a67107d1" grcontextid="affect:1">affect</span> on the advancing assault on
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="41d89547-c775-4613-ac0f-3911544d7792" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="30239677-dcc1-401b-b566-6e74f15ffcc3" grcontextid="your:0">your</span> credibility. The Washington establishment and the Federal bureaucracy,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3c58e8bd-aba5-48c5-b3d5-ca3eda542b0d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5fa03ef3-c68f-4543-a087-85b67edebbe6" grcontextid="emboldened:0">emboldened</span> by an MSM-fortified, arrogant, and vindictive Administration, have
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="36ab116d-6774-498b-bd7b-712e11cf9a0d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dd188ed6-c125-43ed-a54c-09f3b8610ddf" grcontextid="launched:0">launched</span> a never before encountered <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="a6f89b59-9ef5-42af-98fd-6f11951e54cf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dd188ed6-c125-43ed-a54c-09f3b8610ddf" grcontextid="enemy:1">enemy</span>, and an impossible foe against which
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="c879d227-e647-4e42-8532-1e0473e5b341" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="25ede7c2-5328-4ed9-8b99-62f2576343ba" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> prosecute a war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Tim Cook has spent his life
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="30f67e07-f3e3-4e4f-8983-69f9cb22782c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8c830c76-729b-4c26-ae56-faba138f7162" grcontextid="as:0">as</span> a corporate manager. A loyal worker, a doer, a workaholic. He
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6ec8b34d-158c-4d71-b7f2-f116d2926c17" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="43ab73ff-af17-4594-9f03-75e33ed8b6de" grcontextid="built:0">built</span> Apple’s unsurpassed manufacturing ‘system’ under the demanding guidance
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7f424f4e-215a-4382-a85e-e7a7c1b0d2bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="11a5b9c6-33c1-4fdc-89a3-a19bddd14f58" grcontextid="of:0">of</span> Steve Jobs. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="dfe475d4-25b8-4eda-83a7-236a004dc842" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b4547053-21eb-4bd4-8bf1-877436f60b42" grcontextid="Cook:0">Cook</span> is a foreigner to Washington politics. On the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="169de2e2-da30-4b3d-a0e8-1179129e0a51" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b010cf24-735f-4468-9813-20f995b83328" grcontextid="other:0">other</span> hand, when shareholders pressure you <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="04c2fe6f-0840-4f8f-b454-e353d4102b54" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b010cf24-735f-4468-9813-20f995b83328" grcontextid="to perform:1">to perform</span> your fiduciary duty in
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7cba518e-fabf-4f11-8884-fa62c4809eef" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="414a3a72-9681-443e-a22a-adb6e38fb76a" grcontextid="exchange:0">exchange</span> for making you a <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="981d2dce-3eb7-4823-a2ef-85636ee4c4bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="414a3a72-9681-443e-a22a-adb6e38fb76a" grcontextid="centimillionaire:1">centimillionaire</span>, you do what you believe you have to
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="93645d53-b2df-485a-b58d-981607329b1e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4fab2853-edb7-4ce0-bc8f-ff72b8491588" grcontextid="do:0">do</span>. You succumb and you ingratiate yourself with the overwhelming, and
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="78ce6e95-c801-4cdd-8008-cca0da0c318e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="63bcb568-f38c-4dd6-a87b-849bd31984c5" grcontextid="very:0">very</span> political powers threatening your future well-being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">For Tim Cook, that
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f1e2935d-186b-4e72-92b3-1d9a0b3dc8eb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5257b866-de9a-4beb-af6e-f39bdcb9c726" grcontextid="ingratiation:0">ingratiation</span> will take on numerous manifestations, and currently includes the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="904310eb-9fa4-4454-8fb5-7a09e217f643" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ee3f575b-e4e7-4721-8426-dc4100d5c329" grcontextid="hiring:0">hiring</span> of Obama’s recent head of the <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/27/EPA-email-Scandal-worse-than-originally-thought"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) Lisa Jackson</span></a>. Lisa who?
Well, she’s become very influential around the beltway. And
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="05ab3a3e-baef-4e87-9492-c5c28d2993c4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="9dec10fa-5c5a-450e-a167-171dbed7c302" grcontextid="yes:0">yes</span>, that’s the same Lisa Jackson embroiled in the multi-horned <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/04/epa-accused-singling-out-conservative-groups-amid-irs-scandal/"><span style="color: #d90e1e; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">scandal now
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="af3ca486-a04a-42a8-9bca-1de0e20275bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2c014dda-e38f-4287-a4fb-3a2bc634e964" grcontextid="boiling:0">boiling</span> at the EPA</span></a>. Similar story to the IRS abuse of power – just
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8ae508d9-98aa-40e0-8c8b-6a3448420b09" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3490d175-2e34-4ce6-8875-e9737bd9b078" grcontextid="different:0">different</span> people and different part of the monstrous Federal bureaucracy acting
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7bda75de-3af8-429d-81e0-37bee66ecab8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1896a72e-35d3-4cbc-b3ed-2f436001569f" grcontextid="very:0">very</span> politically.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
Who will this Lisa be
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="cb26db81-2158-4c63-88bd-83167570d497" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d2088832-82b4-4990-a51e-b85a52515409" grcontextid="reporting:0">reporting</span> to at Apple? Why, she’ll be reporting to Tim. If Tim
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="02d51716-1b97-4884-a8b1-7cb535a12137" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ece7d85e-510e-4d2b-9bb9-1cfc9be237eb" grcontextid="delivers:0">delivers</span> enough guilt money to the right causes important to Lisa’s former
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6c818849-e5e8-4d92-b559-cbc5518520bd" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="86920b5b-6ebd-4bd5-9fde-9f20a298d4a5" grcontextid="bosses:0">bosses</span>, she’ll open doors along Penitent Boulevard and she will guide Tim
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="22cc5cba-57b7-4dc3-b3db-628b4317a818" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e6ef5d37-6a0a-41af-b439-2d0b86b98e24" grcontextid="through:0">through</span> the appropriate hallways which will eventually lead him and Apple
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="289ad466-c2ec-4df3-a945-3b7de264a2b5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b72a621a-453c-4f4d-b4c9-8ac99a8b23a5" grcontextid="to:0">to</span> salvation. Tim will see the light. He will understand the full
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7992a98c-4245-40e1-999f-820d18f68711" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="32174d10-3663-4d37-befa-abe3910307c9" grcontextid="meaning:0">meaning</span> of shakedown.</div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Reviewing Tim Cook’s rationalizations
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="876f2280-44d9-4ab3-b741-38315e0e976c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d66ec359-ac96-4dc2-828c-36d5c612b79f" grcontextid="for:0">for</span> the <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="da525b4a-708b-46c5-bdb7-2cc46799155e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d66ec359-ac96-4dc2-828c-36d5c612b79f" grcontextid="hire:1">hire</span>, and his explanations for the ‘new job,’ <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="95a24cd5-78f6-4b9c-adb4-090f52813b3e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d66ec359-ac96-4dc2-828c-36d5c612b79f" grcontextid="is:2">is</span> very <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6492e656-c42c-402c-abd5-a6661f5d6a9a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="d66ec359-ac96-4dc2-828c-36d5c612b79f" grcontextid="simply:3">simply</span>, . . .
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f1549bb3-3ac1-4833-9d3b-81aa2ac1d960" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7009e3d5-743b-4ce6-b88b-7ac2e49e25f8" grcontextid="embarrassing:0">embarrassing</span>. He’s skating very obviously and uttering hollow non-sense,
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="27bc3638-216e-4889-8c6f-7ad77ffcd32e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4c8d05d1-5dea-4ab2-8776-e4dd036dc80b" grcontextid="but:0">but</span> he has a job to keep and he has to ensure that the company he manages walks
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0428128f-e7a9-4ecc-8149-098a60ae3bf5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="b6718de6-a25b-489f-a930-4d6f5ad534b0" grcontextid="in:0">in</span> goose-step with demands and expectations of a politicized bureaucracy and a
Washington machine bending to a regal Presidency.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Unfortunately,
Apple’s new hire may have difficulty managing the company’s advance along the
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e01ed052-8241-4628-ae77-10f36816524b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="482366fe-bfcd-4432-bf9c-df94ca16d89d" grcontextid="road:0">road</span> to redemption as her past actions, while head of the EPA under this
Administration, place her in the eye of a widening scandal. This hiring
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="94641893-bc11-4b85-b968-a212a07a03cf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="548765e8-06a2-4dfb-b267-b98fbcf32e80" grcontextid="may:0">may</span> prove to be Tim Cook’s version of Jumping The Shark.</span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-56416691545930772122013-04-11T14:15:00.003-04:002013-04-11T14:16:29.109-04:00Why is outsourcing of banking services just not right?Companies from Victoria to Halifax have been outsourcing services to Asia and South Asia for years. Why the sudden furor against RBC, the banking giant?
Canadians have passively, and sometimes approvingly accepted promises of lower costs from corporations whether they were large retailers, banks, or telecommunications businesses.<br />
<span class="fullpost"><br /></span>
<span class="fullpost">
News regarding outsourcing by RBC surfaces, requiring Canada’s largest financial institution to issue the very ‘corporate’ and sterile response, “External suppliers with the right skills allow us to introduce new efficiencies, continually improve our service at reduced cost and reinvest in initiatives that enhance the client experience.” The reaction? Something akin to mutiny instinctively stirred across the Canadian landscape. How could the largest bank, which last year posted profits of $7.5 billion on revenues of $29.8 billion, dare to outsource services? Any services? There is not a company on this continent which in its wildest fantasies would dare forecast such ebulliently hyperbolized rate of profitability. So why does it seem so wrong? Why such response to the loss of 45 jobs? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Canada long ago transformed away from a manufacturing economy, and toward a knowledge and service based economy with the service sector now representing three quarters of the nation’s GDP. Outsourcing by companies in the services sector has a directly degraded Canada’s economic health and will severely impair the country’s future well-being. This damage will be more severe than the impact from transplanted Canadian ‘manufacturing’ to cheap labour regions of the world. The country’s ‘value added’ manufacturing represents less and less of the economy, currently accounting for Ten per cent (10%) of all jobs now when in 2000 is was 15 per cent (15%). Still, whether outsourcing services or offshoring jobs, the harm has been relentless and severe. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Outsourcing of any sort harms the long term economic health of the country which succumbs to its allure, and it particularly harms the development and education of its own labour force. When one considers this in the context of a country which has, for two decades, been saddled with an out of control and often fraudulent immigration system, the consequence is devastating to the Canadian taxpayer, and to all those seeking satisfactory employment. This situation is particularly worrisome to the many Canadians saddled with overwhelming monthly interest payments, only two weeks of financial cushion, subdued by fear of being just steps from insolvency. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Unfortunately there are some functions related to our very personal affairs which should never see foreign shores. Banking is one such commission which we entrust to institutions we believe should maintain principles and ethics in direct symmetry with our own. We in effect trust the Boards of Directors and the senior executives to do the right thing on our behalf with respect to our private property, our security and our privacy. Depositors are justifiably upset and their concerns of potential for security breaches are well-founded. Private information located on servers which are being accessed by employees on the other side of the world opens up the potential for mistakes, and worse, it increases the odds of serious breaches in security. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The CEO of a bank cannot pretend to be incapable of influence on the contractor’s management, its employees and its methodologies. An outsourcing company is in effect the ‘employee’ of the outsourcer. A CEO also cannot disassociate from those foreign employees as if they are ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’, and they should not be dismissed for PR purposes with “we cannot be blamed.” Such disavowal is disingenuous and unprincipled. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The outsourcing bank’s CEO should not only take full responsibility for any actions taken by any part of its ‘outsourcing service,’ but should also be and should feel responsible for such actions. A competent and diligent CEO would ‘know’ and would be intimately familiar of such service providers, just as he would be expected to be intimately acquainted with any department within his company’s structure. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The current dustup over the banks outsourcing to iGate (the services provider from Bangalore), revolves around IT functions. A prominent excuse served up with some regularity is that there is a dearth of IT talent in Canada. That refrain, used by proponents of loose immigration laws and lax visa rules, as well as firms cutting costs by outsourcing, is old and without merit. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Ask the graduates of Waterloo Engineering, or of BCIT in Vancouver, of the past 5 years how difficult it has been for them to find gainful employment in their chosen fields with incomes commensurate with their deliverables. Of course if you believe Canada’s mainstream media, you’d be convinced that high tech jobs existed in abundance and were readily available for the picking. You would believe that companies absolutely have to go to India, China, Russia etc., to find IT talent. What you don’t get much of is the ‘intent’ behind the reduction of ‘labour’ costs of Canadian IT personnel, or the lack of willingness to pay talented graduates their worth and commensurate compensation rewarding their risk of conquering absurdly expensive scholarships. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Let’s admit we do not wish to pay our graduates what they’re worth, instead of pretending there aren’t enough of them, or that they don’t have the qualifications. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Ask the baristas in any Starbucks how the job hunt is going with their masters degrees. Ask yourself why unemployment among Canadians of ages between 15 and 24 is at over 15%. Actually, ask the young adults in front of the counter surfing the net at your nearest Starbucks, how the job hunt is going. To those who have found jobs, ask if those are full-time jobs making use of their skills, providing all usual benefits. The underemployed college and university graduates are in fact taking up any ‘unskilled’ jobs which might be available, thereby further shoving the ‘unskilled’ individuals further down into the ‘never-employed’ ranks. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The RBC and other Canadian companies are not contracting iGate because they cannot find skilled employees. As we know, the iGate employees are being trained BY existing employees who will be punted from their jobs. Does that suggest to you that outsourcing is a result of talent scarcity? Not much. A reality facing CEOs, which rarely if ever levitates through the MSM and into our consciousness is the fact that Canada has for some years felt constricting real economic growth and uncertainty. This particular reality has pushed many business leaders to tighten all expenses (use outsourcing where ever possible), and delay capital expenditures. Results have been positive for the bottom line, but not for healthy income increases of the rank and file. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">These moves to improve that ‘bottom line’ are now agitating the ire of depositors whose responses and actions will be felt across the country, and may have long term repercussions on hiring practices of large companies.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-33444225107504063162013-04-05T13:41:00.001-04:002013-04-05T13:41:35.885-04:00Insight From Jethro Tull’s Ian AndersonDuring an interview with The Telegraph three years ago, the musical wizard Ian Anderson, leader of trailblazing rock ensemble Jethro Tull, made an observation which voters might do well to take to-hand for inspiration as they next step into polls determined to anoint a new leader with the gift of substantial power over their lives.<br />
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The somewhat insightful <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/6102159/Fame-and-Fortune-Jethro-Tulls-Ian-Anderson.html" target="_blank">question asked of Anderson by Mark Anstead</a> was, “Now that you are better off, are you happier?” </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">He answered, “Yes, of course. The contrary position is something I can’t imagine. But if I hadn’t been a musician I probably would have signed up as a police cadet and I don’t think I would have been any less happy doing that. I would just have been working without the same sense of financial responsibility towards others.” </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The answer tells much of the common sense with which the music legend has lived his life. However, for all those of us desperately job hunting and for all those now rethinking what nature of individual is essential to lead a Nation toiling through economic hardship, the answer holds more pertinence. Anderson has always personally managed all of his and his band’s affairs including its contracts, bookings, and accounting, with his wife of 37 years, Shona. He is a superbly talented musician who resisted the lower-hanging temptations to which celebrity rockers so readily succumb, and at the peak of his more entrepreneurial ventures, Anderson managed over four hundred people. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Ian Anderson’s observation of the “sense of financial responsibility for others” reveals an introspection which can only be achieved through ‘doing’ it – it being the running of a successful business, large or small, and being singularly responsible for incomes of employees. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur nor would the world function if we were, however, when your responsibility spreads beyond your own familial charge and you become accountable for the sustenance of other individuals, something visceral occurs which can be characterized as a teachable moment. When you have to ensure that there is cash enough to cut that check, you know. You know the stress felt and you know the effort infused in all facets of guiding a business to prosperity, any prosperity. You know everything that comes with not only signing those checks, but with having been responsible for assuring that the checks you sign don’t bounce. Society cannot teach you that in a classroom at MIT or at Harvard. You can only appropriate that knowledge through experience. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">In the next private and intimate voting poll, as you bestow your name in support of a Presidential nominee, satisfy yourself that the would-be leader has felt and learned that very powerful piece of knowledge. Confer your vote on one who has seized that “sense of financial responsibility towards others.”
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-12019861861358353352013-04-02T21:07:00.001-04:002013-04-02T21:07:05.078-04:00U.S. Leadership Void Squanders Influence - China Steps InDuring this period in American history when the economy, business, trade and currency have taken pivotal positions in the Nation’s psyche, the country is led by what may well be the most economically uninterested Administration it has ever elected.<br />
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Loudly professing to fight for the vast middle class, the Obama Administration’s actions are taking the Nation galloping toward the destruction of middle-class incomes, toward upwardly spiralling middle-class taxes, toward bloated government, and toward overwhelming debt. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">As the expansive middle-class heads off to work at its one or two jobs each day, it has the right to expect its leadership to do the job it gets handsomely rewarded to do. That job includes paying attention to all matters which affect the long term health and stability of the country. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">We were not surprised to discover ineptitude such as the State Department’s decisions in Libya or in Egypt, nor were we astonished at cover-ups attempting to hide the incompetence. However, of more import to the middle-class is the blundering neglect and disregard this Administration has shown to economic matters which will directly impact the long term health of America – both its economic condition and its military strength. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">After four years of the current Administration’s platitudes, but prevailing economic indolence, we are presented with abundance of tell-tale ‘canaries in the coal mine’ evidencing a methane cloud sweeping across the whole country trying hard to drag it into a state of international subordination. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The EU leadership’s attitude toward Cyprus bank depositors forecasts the future imposition of punishment on Spaniards, Italians, and other profligate governments. Any word from the White House? This act by Brussels is criminal expropriation of personal property, telling of an imperious inclination. But who cares? Surely the EU’s action cannot be a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the American middle-class. It’s just those funny Europeans who speak strange languages, and anyway, we’re not like Europe and surely our leadership would not want to emulate theirs. So let’s look at ‘telling’ events elsewhere for more suitable ‘canaries’. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Let’s skip to the other side of the world where Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard, head of the labor party, is heading to China to slide Australia further into the Chinese sphere of influence through the signing of an agreement to allow for the direct conversion of Australian dollars into Chinese Yuan. Reducing the need for Australian businesses to convert U.S. Dollars (the greenback is the predominant currency middleman), in trade with China reduces some costs incurred by Australian companies. More importantly, this arrangement provides China a more direct and less expensive access to the raw materials it requires to fuel its own growth and increase its wealth. What of Chinese exporters to Australia? China is promising better prices and better payment terms under this new agreement. How perfect is that seduction? This Australian maneuver could be dismissed as a minor ‘canary,’ representing a trivial event relative to the global daily trade turnover of over $US3 trillion. Such an event is nevertheless an economic and political statement, highlighting the progress in the long term internationalization of the yuan. China is buying up all the mining companies and raw source materials it can in Australia, as it is doing elsewhere. It has done a successful job of hiding the reality that the communist party, which controls China, also controls most entities who ‘acquire’ foreign assets, and it influences any which it does not fully control. Down the road, that centrally manipulated ideological mindset will have massive control over foreign economies. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Brazil is moving in the same direction with a $30 billion currency swap with China. Such arrangements are expected with other Chinese trading partners including the United Kingdom and Japan. This new and consequential trend is about receding the greenback’s and America’s prominence. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">In Canada, the disdain and the disrespect which the Obama Administration has shown for its leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and for its economy, has pushed that country to bend over backwards for China. When the head of CSIS (Canada’s equivalent to the CIA), mentioned that the Chinese government had infiltrated the Federal and Provincial governments at the highest levels, the country’s predominantly liberal media admonished him and shut him down. How dare he talk against a country so busily buying up Canada’s natural resources. How dare he be so politically incorrect? The Canadian MSM actually placed the label ‘racist’ on him. As for Stephen Harper? Since Obama is not only uninterested, but recalcitrant, Harper is determined to forge a trading relationship with China to the point where everything is ‘for sale,’ including the out-of-control indebtedness of Canadians who now on average owe more than the average American. A whole generation of indentured citizens seems apathetic to its plight. China finances construction of hundreds of thousands of pigeon-hole condos, selling them to Canadians who cannot afford them. How is that for a perfect storm? A currency agreement with China such as Australia is entering into, can only be just over the horizon for Canada, further erecting the yuan’s position and sidelining the U.S. dollar. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">As any country’s trade with China increases relative to that country’s other trading partners, China’s ability to dictate trading ‘conditions’ increases. In Europe, the general weakening of the Euro trading block opens the door to sidelining the greenback. China can hardly be accused of being subtle in its efforts toward economic dominance. Here is a statement from a Professor Yu, who was a member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China and an economic adviser to the government ”It is a simple case of invoicing and settlement currency, it is not about making the yuan a reserve currency.’’ Of course. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Australia, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and, . . . and, . . . and, all depend on America for security. Individuals in much of the world go about their day, conscious that America has for as long as they’ve been alive, been a positive influence on their safety and on their stability, and most importantly on their freedom. The capacity to provide that stability has been financed by the strength of America’s economic engine, the health of its currency and confidence in its ability to lead. Flaccidly standing-by as ‘friendly’ economies become smothered and influenced by a communist government does not augur well for our well-being and our way of life. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">History dictates that maintaining a strong position on the global stage is essential for self-preservation and is imperative for the preservation of freedom and core values. It requires interested, visionary, and inspiring leadership. True leadership cannot be concocted through alchemy, or fashioned on a Hollywood back-lot, or discharged through a teleprompter. It is innate. Before more canaries prognosticate degradation of the Nation’s international stature, America’s taxpayers should make themselves heard, and demand pro-active leadership in Washington.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-44506789911206722032013-03-20T14:02:00.000-04:002013-03-20T14:02:12.407-04:00Cyprus: A Moral Dilemma?<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">The volume of ink and airtime being propelled our way on the country of the week, dissecting and analyzing its past, present, and future, may well catapult the name of a small island at the eastern end of the Mediterranean into a verb. How long before North Americans get </span><i style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">“Cyprussed”</i><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">The details of the Cyprus predicament, such as they are, or such as authorities will allow them to be known, are now burdens of discussions from San Francisco’s Market Street to Paris’ Champs Élysées.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">We are spectators to the consequences when a country has surrendered control over its currency, the final vestige of its sovereignty, to a foreign entity. As we witness the beginning of an endgame when debt is out of control, we passively observe an inquisition and remain impotent bystanders as the inquisition evolves into an imposition. On this imposition, there cannot be enough light shed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">Bank depositors are an ideal low hanging fruit and with a government’s help, become easy targets. Rationalizing the ‘plucking’ is performed with reasonable dexterity, as we are informed that, well, after all, those are corrupt banks who launder cash, and tose deposits are half owned by Russian oligarchs, and other unscrupulous individuals from the Ukraine, or elsewhere across Europe, and we won’t hurt the little depositors too much. And oh by the way, Russia uses these bank accounts to send arms to Syria. Of course we shouldn’t here ask why these banks received any bailout money in the first place, or why they will receive more under <b>any</b> conditions, given that they are so fraudulent, . . . no point making the Euro leadership queasy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">We will hear much in the coming days about accelerated ‘restructuring’ of debt and deleveraging of the worst banks and sovereigns, and we will be told that, <i>“this is a good thing so don’t worry too much about that ten percent (10%) being stolen outright from depositors. We’re cleaning up bank balance sheets, so we’re charging a small fee. It could be worse, we could let the banks just close their doors and the depositors would really be out tens of billions in cash.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">My personal favorite rationalization is the one that presents this decision by the EU as reducing the need to further tax the overburdened taxpayers, and diminishing reductions to the beneficiaries of public spending. Sure. No point reducing spending, just go after the rich, especially the corrupt foreign rich holding cash in Cyprus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">All of the once-sovereign nations who adopted the Euro must go along with decisions made on their behalf by bureaucrats in Brussels, which to no-one’s surprise are supported by the IMF and its managing director Christine Lagarde, Ms. Statist Liberal herself. The bankers are in control of the biggest game on earth and governments will tow the line guided by ideologically entrenched self-righteous and uninformed politicians and bureaucrats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">Brussels may also be tweaking Putin’s ears through these actions, requiring Putin to make a decision. What could go wrong with that stroke of genius? Keep in mind that Russian banks have tens of billions on loan to Russian controlled businesses based in Cyprus. Putin really has no choice. He could step in with three billion or so to shore up the banks in which he and his comrades have stashed billions, however, if he did so, Cyprus would slide further into the arms of the great bear to the North. Putin would squeeze drastic concessions <i>(called ‘gas deposits’)</i> from the Cyprus leadership, and Brussels and the Europeans would be presented with a further quandary. Hmm, make that a <b>worse</b> quandary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">European leadership in Brussels has dictated implementation of a historical decision, very consistent with the general socialist leanings of their governments which says, <b>Private Property Is NOT Sacrosanct</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">Corruption in Cyprus is a side story diversion, and the structure of the final imposition is not relevant. A decision was made. The EU did nothing over the years to bring any real pressure to bear on the fraudulent bank practices prevalent in Cyprus, so now that there is a serious problem of debt, “the end justifies the means”? This rather parallels the inaction of the Justice Department in Washington. Will the outcome also be duplicated here? Will expropriation become common-place, . . . and justified <b>as long as it’s not ME?</b> Does the Attorney General know enough, or does he have any will to enforce laws which were abused by senior bankers throughout the ramp-up to the economic implosion? None that we’ve seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">We may find it sad, perhaps even humorous in an unsettling way when dictators grab private companies and property in places like Venezuela, or some other foreign lands, but we can’t ignore it when leaders of ‘Western’ nations become convinced that wholesale cash-grabbing from private bank accounts makes any sense.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">As if we don’t have enough anxiety, now we have to accept the very real potential which an older generation warned us of – banks and governments cannot be trusted to always do the right thing particularly when under pressure. This is not a question of <i>“if they can do it to Cyprus, will they do it here?”</i> They <b>will</b> do it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12px;">Morals and principals have already been subdued by fear and self-interests. It is now a question of, <i>“when will we get Cyprussed?”</i> No morals to see here. Move along.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-82450204372354448232013-03-07T19:37:00.003-05:002013-03-07T20:18:21.871-05:00Negotiating Over Dinner?<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">Rand Paul took the rare and risky measure of filibustering in an effort to illicit an answer from the Administration on a critical stray from the Constitution – drone strikes on American citizens in America. In a show of solidarity with Paul’s historically lengthy (almost 9 hours), and audacious move, twelve Republican Senators went to dinner with President Obama. Alright, so there may be another term more appropriate than </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“solidarity”</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;"> to describe their exit stage left – still, surely they must have wished him well while out dining and pretending to be negotiating spending cuts with Obama. Or, perhaps they were more inclined to demonstrate solidarity with Obama than with Paul.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">What were they really doing? The media is painting a rosy picture of this momentous dinner and sells it as proof of effort from the President, and evidence of how far he is willing to go to make a deal and be accommodating, or reasonable. Adulation from the Washington Post is typical, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The GOP’s tax orthodoxy remains too strong, and the fear of conservative primary challenges too fresh, for a bit of outreach to wildly change the odds. But at least the president will have done everything he can, and everyone — including many Republicans — will know it.”</em></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Obama goes to dinner with 12 Republicans and this is going to accomplish the goal of an agreement on real <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">spending cuts? Not a chance.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Lindsey Graham SC</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Bob Corker TN</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Kelly Ayotte NH</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">John McCain AZ</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Richard Burr NC</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Saxby Chambliss GA</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Dan Coates IN</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Mike Johanns NE</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Pat Toomey PA</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Tom Coburn OK</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Ron Johnson WI</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">John Hoeven ND, and Barack Obama, WH,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">. . . . all collectively accomplished exactly what?</span></div>
<ol style="background-color: #fff3cd; border: 0px; color: #1d140b; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 24px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">A crowd does NOT negotiate anything.</span></li>
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">A meaningful negotiation is held between two or three, not a baker’s dozen and its entourage.</span></li>
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">Over dinner <span style="border: 0px; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> that baker’s </span>dozen might as well be a throng treating itself to a pointless Party on the taxpayer’s dime.</span></li>
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner shows pandering, not reasonableness in negotiating.</span></li>
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner gifts the tax-and-spend President the photo op he needs.</span></li>
<li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;">A dozen Republicans showing up for dinner lets Obama off the hook and out of the corner he’s in, providing him fodder for more tales he can then tell to the media which is more than willing to applaud</span><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Does anyone really believe this dinner will lift gridlock and move Obama from his ideological stance? . . . . Well, other than the media? It seems more and more of the public is disbelieving.</span></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: white;">Dinners are used for stimulating or promoting familiarity. These 12 don’t know who Obama is yet? Four years and this bunch is still not clear? Serious and meaningful negotiations are done in a boardroom in private, or in a cave in the hills, but not over a lavish dinner with a parade of limousines and security agent Escalades putting on a very public exhibition of extravagance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">ABC views this particular performance as marking a new approach for Obama. Really? How insightful is that? Some hard negotiations are mandatory, not just necessary, to bring spending under control. We shall not hold breaths for fear of turning blue on the outcome of this <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">new outreach</strong>.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-15190669003428741922013-03-04T15:00:00.000-05:002013-03-04T15:08:54.043-05:00China? With friends like this...For 20 years Canada’s wide, open door immigration policy toward China has buoyed the country's real estate prices, auto sales, and food sales. For Canada’s exporters of raw materials, China has principally been a willing purchaser of low cost wood pulp and byproducts, as well as ores, nickel, copper, slag, ash and potash. Should we ask how much ‘value added’ participated in these exports? No. The answer is an embarrassment. <br />
<br />
Canada’s overwhelmingly askewed trade ‘imbalance’ with China was -$23,610,999,607 for the first nine months of 2012. There is very little effort expended, or financial clout brought to bear on the evolution of Canadian ‘value added’. Canada has found it so much easier to sell raw materials, and to perform ‘banking’ tasks, than to manufacture finished, or even semi-finished products and then export them. Canada has for too long enjoyed picking the seemingly very low-hanging fruit. <br />
<br />
The senior executives managing the handful of major banks who control Canada’s economic landscape have particularly enjoyed the past two supremely fruitful decades of low-risk real-estate and auto loan businesses to the newcomers. With the support of media such as the CBC, the Toronto Star, and the Globe & Mail, an echo chamber has muffled any and all pushback on anything related to China by members of parliament, or by a majority in the current crop of senior business leaders. Referring to the last Harper/Hu meeting, the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/06/19/f-canada-china-trade.html" target="_blank">CBC described it as, “exciting time.”</a> No sign of critical, or discerning thinking there, but undoubtedly way too much breathless adulation.<br />
<br />
Even evidence of surreptitious electronic espionage are dismissed, or muffled, lest they stir politically uncomfortable notions which might impact negatively on an artificial and unsustainably propped-up economy. There are bank bonuses to be cashed, cramped pigeon holes in the sky called condos to be sold, and foreign-made cars to be retailed. Distaste for all things 'politically incorrect', fear of reprisal, and fear of racist accusations have muffled the emergence of facts and realities. <br />
<br />
China has fuelled Canada’s growth for two decades, and yet, scarcely a word is spoken or printed of China’s ruthless communist party, or that country's centrally manipulated economy, and the communist party's tight control over foreign asset acquisitions. Is there any real insight offered on the long term impact? Not an article in sight about China’s Princelings, and all those who are connected to them, or their direct impact on the Canadian financial and real estate machines. Reality, however, has a way or eventually floating to the surface, no matter how hard it is repressed. This week a couple of hard slaps to the face are waking us up to the harsh and brutal truth that China is not our friend, not our partner, nor is it our well-wisher. On two fronts, Canada and its real allies received a cold shower.<br />
<br />
Yi Gang, the deputy governor of China's central bank threatened a currency war and stated that <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20130302-china-fully-prepared-currency-war-banker-0" target="_blank">Beijing was “fully prepared,”</a> for such, and <i>“in terms of both monetary policies and other mechanism arrangement, China will take into full account the quantitative easing policies implemented by central banks of foreign countries."</i> Nothing subtle or quietly diplomatic about this throw-down of the gauntlet. He was not only addressing Japan, which has allowed the yen to slide, but he was delivering a thunderous warning to the West, including Canada which follows dutifully whatever The Fed dictates. <br />
<br />
Also thunderous, though perhaps more troubling, was the news that Chinese anti-aircraft, heat-seeking missiles have been discovered in an Iranian shipment of arms heading for rebels in Northern Yemen. What could possibly go wrong when a cargo of Chinese missiles, 316,000 Kalashnikov cartridges, 63,000 PK machine gun cartridges, 12,000 cartridges for 12.7 millimeter DShK machine guns and 95 RPG-7 launchers, and 17,000 blocks of Iranian-made C-4 plastic explosives are introduced into the region? What could go wrong with such serious weaponry in the hands of terrorist?<br />
<br />
Everything could go wrong. Flying cities known as commercial aircraft are particularly uncomfortable when heat-seeking missiles are heading in their general direction. Yes, what could go wrong when China-armed-Iran-armed terrorists come to your neighborhood?<br />
<br />
In its own best interest, Canada should be more forthright with the realities presented by China and its communist government, and we should be reminded that Canada has an important international role to play in the support of its real allies, rather than bending just a little too far, suppliantly, to those who blow an ill wind.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-72416111639449421232013-03-02T01:21:00.000-05:002013-03-02T01:23:29.279-05:00In The Bubble of Stupidity<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">The brilliant and colourful
English Lit professor and occasional philosopher Marshall McLuhan presciently
wrote, <i>“Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The Politician will
be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be
much more powerful than he could ever be.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--> <span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia;">McLuhan passed away in
December of 1980, yet he seems to have had the capacity to perceive so many
vacuous celebrity politicians which today fill our electoral landscape – empty
vessels which float to re-election on electoral carpets of wishful thinking and
ignorance. With an uninquisitive media abstaining from accurate reporting, the
misinformed public remains in the dark.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">No-where is that ignorance
of “<i>imagery</i>” politicians in more glorious display than on all matters
economic. Politicians may not hold forth on brain surgery or Mars landings, but
they certainly expound profusely on the economy and its forces. This week
we were treated to a rather typical display of incomprehensible idiocy by none
other than a Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee. Perhaps
we should underline “<b>Financial</b><u> Services Committee</u>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Congresswoman Maxine Waters
made the following statement,<i>“Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee
and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is
trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing
because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs–and he said
that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t
need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs
losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost–and so he made it very clear
he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and
in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by
sequestration. . . . . And so, we are here today, one more time, talking about
women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and
families and have a decent quality of life–sequestration will set us back. All
of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">So there you have it from
very near the top of the Nation’s political hierarchy – a statement providing
clear insight into the frightening lack of comprehension with which the
country’s financial affairs are supervised. Let’s ignore the absurd
claim, <i>“170 million jobs that could be lost,”</i> since there are only </span><a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm"><span style="color: #d90e1e; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">141,614,000 jobs as of January 2013</span></a><span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> in total – and well, anyone can make a mistake when making a
supposedly critical statement to the Nation. No?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Of greater import is
Waters’ description and characterization of Bernanke’s presentation to her
Committee? Does she, or any other member of her Committee understand
enough of what Bernanke is doing, or why? She states, “<i>he came
to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to
stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s
trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs.” </i>Huh?
Does anyone ask her how her brain connects all those dots? That would be
embarrassing, since the dots don’t connect.<i> </i> They don’t and
they can’t. Did anyone on her committee ask Bernanke to connect those
dots?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Her statement demonstrates
that this “<i>imagery</i>” politician is lost and baffled by economic matters
and realities, but she is evidently confident of achieving a successful outcome
for herself through the spewing of unintelligible gibberish as long as it is
followed by a comment about the sky falling on single women and children.
Pretend to somehow be protecting single women and children, which is even
better than championing motherhood and apple pies, and Walters succeeds in
propping her own statue another day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Waters is simply another
fear-mongering politician ignorant of the fact that the Fiscal Cliff is only
reducing some of the planned increases in <i>discretionary</i> spending.
Almost nothing will be cut from <i>mandatory</i> entitlement programs –
Social Security, and Medicare, or from debt interest payments. The
Nation’s financial problems rests primarily on mandatory expenditures and their
looming explosion. Should someone point that out?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 24.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">With the quality of
economic acuity we are subject to, as demonstrated by politicians of the Waters
caliber, it is hardly surprising that nothing is being done to bring spending
and debt under control. Nothing is being done to restrain the excessive
growth of government. The complexity is too difficult for uninformed and
uncreative minds of the “<i>imagery</i>” politicians to confront. It is so much
easier to ignore a complicated reality, particularly when doing so might throw
shadows on their ideology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #16100b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Let's take another prod from Marshall McLuhan’s stimulative mind, in which he
prophetically defined mindsets of the current leadership in Washington, <b><i>“I
wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”</i></b></span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-43378049214466214032013-02-12T14:48:00.001-05:002013-02-12T14:48:54.091-05:00A Critical Turning Point In American History<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">We progress, marching forward leaving behind us a trail of yesterdays, filled with events large and small, assembling memories, but some of the more momentous occurrences rise to a superior level which we include in our collective “history.” In that wake of our advance some of those momentous waves swell further, rising to become events that only hindsight can identify as pivotal moments in that shared recollection.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">Such hindsight is not always 20/20. We may be aware of the events as they unfold, but their significance and impact on our march forward is not always self evident and years may pass before they become so. Self-serving motivations too often imbue the retrospective lenses with prisms which deliver infinite varieties of perspectives. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">For over four years we have been instructed by those supposedly most knowledgeable and most insightful, occupying positions of leadership advancing society forward beyond the now and into the great unknown, that a new and magically wondrous elixir named “QE” would be the salve to all anxieties. It matters little that QE stands for Quantitative Easing, and may as well conjure up notions of a long-reigning monarch, since its true long-term consequences appear beyond our collective comprehension. Nevertheless, its impact is not as benign as one queen’s influence on ‘her people’. With minimal scrutiny or analysis by most of our media, but with the unrestrained approval of Congress and the Administration, The Federal Reserve proceeds with its unrestrained expansionary monetary policy. It pretends that this is good medicine for a Nation yearning for a return to economic growth, unaware that a printing press, while capable of printing unlimited dollars, cannot print a single job. It also pretends that its expansionary fiscal policy is enabling the hoped-for purchase of homes and cars. It pretends that low interests rates render the escalating debt load inconsequential. The reality is very different.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">QE, QE1, QE2, QE3, and QE4 ad infinitum, indulge the Federal government’s insatiable expectations of unrestrained spending. The Fed will continue to buy up billions in Treasuries and Mortgage Backed Securities from member banks well into the future (on your behalf – and remember that those major too-big-to-fail banks are still burdened with toxic debt). The Fed’s actions will also enable Tim Geithner to sustain his schemes for financing friends of the Administration such as he did the unions in the GM bailout, or the brilliantly invested hundreds of millions in Solyndra.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The QE program is to continue until unemployment falls below 6.5%, or inflation rises above 2.5%, and the interest rate of 0% will be held until at least 2015. Other than those who watch their savings shrink each month, does anyone care? Not Congress, certainly. We may have structurally experienced the boiling frog metaphor.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The mandate of The Fed is supposedly to support job creation and to keep inflation in check. It pretends to be concerned with inflation while creating truckloads of debt. How is this not going to produce run-away inflation in the long-term? It can be argued that real inflation has been running at well above the government published 2% – your own cost of all goods will provide some indication. Additionally, 0% interest has not and will not launch a rush to banks for loans. 0% interest is, however, rewarding The Fed’s friends with the cheapest money they’ve ever had access to, enabling them to make money without risk – enabling never before seen executive bonuses. This action by Ben Bernanke in fact works against new or riskier businesses looking for loans from their local B. of A. or Wells Fargo bank managers.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">‘Liquidity’ is not the barrier preventing the creation of jobs by corporate America, large or small. What else do we know?</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">• We know that larger corporations are refraining from investing in capital goods and are only tepidly bankrolling increased productivity.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">• We know that most of the bank reserve increases since 2008 are sitting idly on the sidelines, as is a vast amount of corporate cash.</span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">• We know that current unemployment is ‘structural unemployment,’ which could mature into a long-term malignant disorder. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that new dollars created without the ‘backing’ of relative increases in economic activity (gold was once used as backing), places excessive downward pressure on the value of all dollars. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that one major constraint to job growth is the current lack of confidence, and that uncertainty can be diminished, even eradicated, with energized leadership. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that unrestrained government spending stimulates very little confidence, and fear expands to fill that void, stifling ‘job creation’ by companies afraid to stray from the secure status quo. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that The Fed’s activities have resulted in relative decreases in the dollar’s purchasing power manifested in our increased prices for staples such as gasoline and food, and for those who can afford to, the purchase of gold. As recently as late 2008 you could purchase an ounce of gold for under $1,000. Today that ounce costs between $1,650 and $1,700. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that The Fed actions have aggressively replaced personal ‘interest income’ with ‘dividend income’ since 2008. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that rates of inflation have been understated by the Federal Government, just as the rates of unemployment have been understated. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that Congress will not cut back on expenditures and we know that the current Administration is steadfast in its advance of more spending. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that the unfunded future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare present a financial challenge far greater than the current total National debt. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that The Fed has independent control of the printing presses and provided the Washington Treasury with seemingly unrestrained amounts of magic cash (read ‘ability to spend’) through debt loaded onto the backs of all taxpayers, while at the same time restraining and suppressing the economy. </span><br />
<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
• We know that most of the political establishment in Washington has been unable to resist the temptations driven by self-interest and is willingly, and knowingly acceding to overindulgent debt financing. </span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px; span: #002e3f;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12px;">We know, but are we in denial?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Are we pretending and rationalizing those nasty gremlins away by convincing ourselves that the all-knowing elected leaders, their appointees and their friendly neighborhood banking masterminds will solve our worse problems? Are we convinced that the Washington centers of influence will somehow coalesce supernal erudition into a pathway around the inevitable economic implosion which our love affair with debt has created? Surely there must be good reason for some experts to be promoting profligate spending. No? Are we accepting rationalizations from QE believers that unlike the personal debt borne by consumers, the Federal government can simply, though carefully, arrange to have printed evermore of the world’s favorite currency to nurse its debt affliction? With other nations also devaluing their currencies such as the Yen or the Euro, almost in lockstep with the U.S., are we clasped together with them in an only-slightly-out-of-phase race to the bottom?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">We must be convinced that experts know something we don’t and that they have grasped concepts which eluded Thomas Jefferson when he wrote in 1814, </span><i style="font-size: 12px;">“We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper.”</i><span style="font-size: 12px;"> In a world where opinion has transplanted knowledge, authenticity is infused into unworthy illusions. Does a majority of Society really believe that it cannot accept reductions in deficit spending while it refuses to acknowledge the need for financial diligence over growing government and unaffordable entitlement programs? Does Washington really reflect the Nation’s wishes? What is clear, is that personal considerations, personal influence and personal wealth have vanquished the halls of power in the Capital.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; min-height: 14px; span: #002e3f;"><span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia;">The political leadership has succumbed to the irresistibly seductive<i> ‘Easy Money’</i> of the incomparably powerful and historically unprecedented Federal Reserve.</span>
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There is nothing subliminal about the seduction which has taken full and absolute control of Washington. There has been nothing subtle or concealed about the production of new debt, and there has been no subtlety of process in the devaluation of the dollar. Washington’s addiction is unmistakable, and particularly disturbing is that this addiction has so far had few serious consequences for those holding positions of power.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">How did we get here?</span>
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">Let’s recall some of the more infamous proclamations of just over four years ago. Assertions such as, <i>“this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime economic nightmare,” </i>and<i> “the world’s most cataclysmic financial crisis since the Great Depression,” </i>or how about,<i> “world’s impending financial Armageddon.” </i>These unnerving and sinister shrieks instilled fear into the consciousness of every resident on Capitol Hill. The perplexed and readily pliant media ensured that the apprehension blossomed into an epidemic. Admonitions of terror were used by Hank Paulson, then Treasury Secretary and formerly CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Ben Bernanke, currently Chairman of The Fed, who only months earlier in mid 2008 had proclaimed that all was well in the economy and that there was no chance that the subprime market problems would impact the broader economic health of the Nation. And their views on the taxpayer backed Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, . . . what, me worry? And yet, here we were, listening to fear, terror, panic, foreboding and threats. And what were the titans of Wall Street demanding as shivers ran up and down the spines of Washington’s decision makers? A blank check made out to cash with no conditions. <i>“Too big to fail” </i>along with, <i>“bailout,”</i> became household terms.</span>
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The shivering spines turned into talking heads on every evening news outlet in the Nation, parroting that the once-in-a-lifetime impending armagedon had, <i>“left us no choice.”</i> The money was borrowed, the checks were cashed by friends of The Treasury and The Fed, and then the declarations evolved. We heard from politicians with newfound bravery, <i>“whew that was close, but weren’t we great, we saved the Nation from doom,” </i>and the ‘inside’ players changed chairs with Geithner replacing Paulson at Treasury. Across the country almost everyone with a keyboard and a microphone could repeat the chant, <i>“we were on the edge of a cataclysmic crisis, but The Fed and Treasury saved the day.”</i> The cry had a rhythm and a plurality accepted this new gospel. A new Administration moved through 2009 and 2010 with an acceleration of long-term financial commitments and borrowing, along with unrestrained check cashing particularly in favor of friendly ‘contributors’. The Nation had stepped over a threshold and into a new paradigm.</span>
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The Nation had become desensitized. Its elected officials and the banks had surely known something the rest of us did not comprehend. On the Hill, the affliction spread as a realization that astronomically huge amounts of money could be created seemingly out of thin air and thrown at, . . . well just thrown at whatever might help re-election, and there would be no consequences – at least none in the near-term, and the future would take care of itself. Epoch-forming levels of debt were created in the comforting expectation that The Fed would take care of ‘managing’ just the appropriate maximum. It might even administer the creation of an infinite amount of dollars since, apparently, there would be no cost, no downside. We were in a new era. We <i>are</i> in a new era.</span>
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">A decision made in fear and in panic changed the consciousness of Washington. The new paradigm of increased spending and debt by trillions of dollars, would have no consequence. At least not to the current Washington. This shift, however, will see the next President step into an Oval Office presiding over an America encumbered with an<span style="color: #3366ff;"> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/12/25/president-obamas-legacy-20-trillion-in-deficits-for-2016-victor/">estimated debt North of $20 trillion</a></span>. Whatever the amount, <b>there is no will on Capitol Hill to change the narrative, and to the long-term detriment of a misled Nation, there is a deeply entrenched addiction which refuses to be curbed</b>. As for the value of the dollar in four years? You will know by the real cost of living to which you will have been subjected.</span>
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<span style="color: #002e3f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">The constitutionally mandated separation of powers between the Administration and all of Congress with which the Framers so presciently endowed an eagerly awaiting Nation, has been trampled by effectively maneuvered, yet elected, debt junkies. IMHO, America has been bowed by, and has capitulated to, egocentric forces which do not hold its best interests to heart.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-75239769803526911782013-01-10T21:19:00.001-05:002013-01-10T21:22:58.725-05:00The Fed and Indentured CitizensIn 1913 Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibility over currency on behalf of the people when it created the monster called The Federal Reserve System. In creating a private joint stock entity, Congress not only surrendered jurisdiction over the dollar, it also relinquished control, oversight, and authority over the institution intended to manage the citizens’ currency. Decisions hastily made in environments of illiteracy, panic, and fear, and driven by energies with ulterior motives, rarely turn out well for those who succumb.<br />
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Section 2A of The Fed’s Monetary Policy Objectives states, “The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” This ill-defined and loose agglomeration of feel-good nonsense might have tasted better if someone had appended “and preserve motherhood and apple pie,” but such addition would not have improved it. When we consider such additional elements as the fact that, as originally established, the notes issued by The Fed were obligations of the U.S. Treasury (read taxpayer) rather than that of the member banks, well, what could go wrong? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The Fed’s ‘objectives’ reads as if it was written by The Fed so that no repercussions could possibly result from its own failures. Well beyond the bounds of sanity and far from purview of effective diligence, an isolated institution was formed and exists to command and supervise the currency of the most powerful Nation on Earth. This authority reports to no one. It plays footsies with Congress and with the Administration, but it acts in its own best self interest, as all human endeavors are wont to do. As some of us strongly suspected just prior to the last Presidential election, and as we can now with hindsight confirm, Bernanke and The Fed used their capacity to print dollars in an undisguised effort to support the re-election of pro-Bernanke-pro-Fed-pro-free-money Barack Obama. There is no question that the most powerful financial institution on Earth has strayed well beyond any of the intentions which created it, regardless how unenlightened they might have been. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> If America was a company and you were its CEO, would the above noted Section 2A provide sufficiently focused objectives for your currency? Not if you were capable of simultaneously walking and chewing gum it wouldn’t. Monetary policy should have One objective – Stability. Simple, clear, unambiguous, stability. And inflation? 0%. Not 1.0% or 4.5%, but zero. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Who should be in control? The people. Who represents the people? Congress. Who is in control? A small group of individuals running a small group of too-big-to-screw-up international banks. No-one could possibly mount an intellectual or intuitive argument supporting the assumption that such individuals, their desires and the desires of the institutions under their charge, hold dear the altruistic benevolence of their “fellow human beings.” I cannot say “their fellow Americans” since some of the “owners” of The Fed are not American institutions. Go figure.
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<span class="fullpost">Still, is this any way to run a railroad? Not if we look at the state we are in. Not if we critically assess the reality which has been created over a long process of fiscal mismanagement. Not if we understand that unprincipled individuals have too long politicized the dollar, which was easily done once it was unhooked from the hard commodity, gold. Not if we critically appraise the devastation which The Fed has rendered on a Nation with the complicit approval of self-servers in Washington. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Politicians of the Congressional and White House variety have evidently been more than enthusiastic in allowing inflation and devaluation of the dollar to proceed apace since the de-coupling of the dollar. The banks behind The Fed controlled the game and were only too eager to comply (as in, OK fine, we’ll go along with it but it’s your idea). There were hundreds of billions to be made through debt guaranteed by taxpayers. There were new illiterate and willing generations to be converted to serfdom with the help of standard wavers such as the New York Times. A bigger chicken in every pot and a larger roof over every head, all acquired through debt. The bigger the debt, the greater The Fed’s profits. And what of the savers? . . . Completely destroyed and pushed toward risky investments. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The dollar has not been stable and in fact has moved in direct opposition to the best interests of all Americans. It has steadily lost value over the long term. For example, when we are provided obfuscating rationales for the high price of oil (up 400% in a decade), we are being lied to. The truth along the vector of veracity is much closer to the reality that the dollar is dropping in value, however such realization might instill doubt of our long term trends toward prosperity. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">It has been in the best interest of the banks which own The Fed and all member banks, to manipulate interest rates to their advantage. The trends of the dollar (read: your earning power) through the past half century against hard assets such as gold or oil tell a tale of unrelenting plundering and evidences the failure of misguided interventionism. Nevertheless, the worst consequence has been an acceptance of indebtedness. Indebtedness has contaminated all human enterprise. From personal debt, to corporate debt, to State debt, to National debt, the burden overwhelms current and future intents to repay. Total debt floats somewhere well North of $100 trillion. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">In a country where the term “Freedom” has resonated profoundly from its very inception, and throughout its history, the citizens of The United States of America now find themselves subservient to a foreign entity they have no control over. Without economic freedom, freedom is simply an ephemeral concept promoted and repeated as a feel-good mantra mesmerizing the population. Awaking to overwhelming indebtedness is tantamount to waking up to enslavement. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">As we wait for the moment when it becomes widely evident that The Fed has become completely ineffective and we are forced to confront the unavoidable crisis of debt yields rising significantly, some alternatives should and must be considered. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The ubiquitous nature of today’s technologies, software, computers, phones, and networks, present us with possibilities which brilliant economic minds of the past could not dream of, and too many current ones refuse to. We should no longer regard the current monetary system as the sacred and hallowed domain of a few bankers. Congress should immediately mount a full frontal attack on The Fed and retrieve the control it long ago held. Once Congress has recuperated full jurisdiction and authority over the Nation’s currency, it should then enact laws allowing for the formation of competing bank notes including digital currency to be issued by private entities in an open and fee market. But first, let’s get back mastery over that most critical instrument so pervasive in all human activity – our currency. America should not be the only developed country in the world without sovereignty over its currency.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-5334650098965634012013-01-10T19:03:00.002-05:002013-01-10T21:04:38.183-05:00Statist Wistful Admiration Of China’s Communist Party<br />
China’s ascendance in our consciousness has been growing steadily for a generation, and we wonder what more impact it will have than has already been felt by our economy and our society. We cannot accurately predict China’s future or its actions going forward, but as it flexes its newfound powers to reshape global conventions, we should remain vigilant that our own perceptions not be warped by ideologically, or otherwise tainted assertions.<br />
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Our enthusiastic media collectively extol the moral legitimacy of China’s communist model of political rule which controls 1.3 billion people, and predicts that China’s surpass of the U.S. economy is just over the horizon – scarcely visible as that may be through the toxic haze. Should untarnished freedom be a fundamental human right nurtured within a true democracy, then such adoration of China by our leaders, scholars, pundits and so many others, challenges the core tenets at the heart of the Constitution. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Defenders of the ethos imposed through coercion within China, rationalize that stomping all over individual rights is a necessity which protects the needs of the collective. Somehow when such justification is vaunted by our own self-anointed intelligentsia, with the always present caveat that, “after all, how else can you rule over 1.3 billion people?” . . . . we capitulate. All the while, our internal turbulence leaves us in visceral disarray. The virtuosos of the PR machines make it all right that we send (through spending), trillions of our dollars to enrich a regime which recent history (1950s and 1960s) has evidenced as the most ruthless in human history. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">As China today shuffles its leadership, we are provoked into accepting that the shifting of nameplates is founded on meritocracy, and not on handpicked automatons perpetuating dictatorship. The reality that much of the current Chinese leadership is formed by the natural laws of heredity and that the sons of well-known revolutionaries today take up the mantel, does not appear to trouble our cognoscenti in the West. Xi Jinping, who will be shortly confirmed as China’s leader is one such “princeling.” We should remember that in China, the Communist Party controls the army, and one only touches the levers of power after having held very senior military posts (read: demonstrated ruthlessness). </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Should we accept the propaganda (East and West) that virtue rises to the top, and that China’s leadership is genetically virtuous and molecularly superior? How affected are we when our media refers to China’s “Communist era,” as if it was some unfortunate ephemeral occurrence of the past, or simply a fading authoritarian dragon which lost its repressive teeth? Just because the Communist Party has carefully allowed some private sector to coexist with state controlled enterprises, it has not relinquished any authority over business, over media, over education, and it is on guard against any de-politicization of the country’s vast military machine. The secretive Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee controls ‘assignments’ in government and industry. </span><br />
<span class="fullpost">The boot is firmly on the neck. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Recent leaks which the Central Propaganda Department missed, suggest that the high level of corruption within the Communist Party is pervasive. The submissive population cannot react since it knows the potential of the beast camouflaged behind smiles. It knows the despotic force which controls its nation. This is the virtuosity that is so confident that it siphons its billions off-shore, acquiring hard assets like real estate in safe havens like San Francisco, Sidney and Vancouver. The pretence of stability provided by the virtuous Communist Party may not be so well founded given that it cannot explain why so many of its wealthiest have ensured themselves foreign ‘pieds-a-terre?’ It is incapable of explaining why so many of the wealthy have moved their families offshore while they continue to amass personal wealth within China. One acquaintance close to such events reminded me that it is very expensive to move money offshore from China because there are so many hands which have to be taken care of on the way out. Is this virtuosity so prevalent that millions of people, both rich and not as rich, leave the country for foreign shores as soon as they possibly can? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Before we look at what some of our statist virtuosos of the ‘beau monde’ are selling us about China’s version of communism, we should remind ourselves that any government’s legitimate function is to protect the individual’s rights. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">In 2009 Thomas Friedman, the writer for the oracle of all that is socialistically holy, wrote, ”One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.” This self-asserted sophistication upholding the concept of the benevolent dictator surely must know something which lesser minds cannot comprehend. Or is it more likely an uninformed observation from a philosopher-king wannabe, lost in ideological nonsense attempting political correctness? Whatever its motivation, this claim evidences a complete lack of insight into human nature’s tendencies and desires for self-actualization. Such ignorant percepts miss the fact that stifling people and frustrating their desire for fulfillment of their potentialities deprives them immeasurably. The result is emotional disturbance and psychological pathology. Long term, the consequence is broad based despondency. This socio-economic transport of a Nation into the elitist controlled utopia is the ultimate pinnacle of arrogance. Is this the ‘down river’ that our media is attempting to sell us? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Confucius once informed, “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Let’s take a look at a rather ideal example of someone who would do well to read Confucius – President Obama’s Chairman of Jobs and Competitiveness, Jeffrey Immelt, who moralized on the Charlie Rose Show this past week, . . . . </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Immelt: “State-run Communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.” </span><br />
<span class="fullpost">Charlie Rose: “They get things done.” </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Well, three cheers for state-run communism. Right? When you instill fear in people to perform your will, you “get things done.” Right Charlie? Charlie may be a herring mindlessly drawn by the statist current which enriches him, but Immelt is not. He is head of a global corporation doing $146 billion and employing a little under a third of a million employees. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Immelt is self-serving and rationalizing his shift of some General Electric manufacturing facilities to China, knowing full well that the Communist Party makes the decisions on who ‘gets in.’ For now we won’t argue with him whether he could have managed increases in productivity in America instead of moving, but does he really believe what he is saying? Any of it? Does he understand what he is selling? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The mind behind the visage of Obama’s Job Council seems not to grasp the seriousness of his message, nor its impact. Or perhaps he doesn’t care – there’s a personal empire to build, who cares about the country? Notice that in this interview, as in others, he has no idea what to do about jobs? None. He is evidently only interested in his own. Where is the wisdom? He certainly seems to know how to get taxpayer dollars, warming the Oval Office into the purchase of unproductive and unprofitable windmill farms. He can buy influence and taxpayer cash, with taxpayer cash. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">We cannot forget the enforcement of the population’s conversion to Immelt’s green-technology-made-in-China CFL light bulbs. Don’t ask him what you should do with the toxic mercury in those bulbs once they burn out well before their due date, just take them to the dump. We do not need to question why Immelt’s statist views are supported by GE’s tentacles in NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Sports, Universal Film Studios. We know why. We also will not bother inquiring into GE’s relationship with the U.S. tax system, since we already know it manages to sidestep that annoying tax thingie. Immelt knows how to ride the East-West fence, and statists applaud him as he promotes the socialist message. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The Immelts and Friedmans advocate that we too could find success if only we had top down power of overreaching government following the Chinese model as the symbol of perfection. It is unfortunate there are some already in power here who dream of holding reigns of omnipotent influence over the masses. It is doubly unfortunate that these same individuals influence our media. Do they really long for a Chinese version of governance? They and their mouthpieces are certainly selling us hard on it, lying about the realities that lie hidden under the propaganda. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Individuals like Immelt should be promoting America, encouraging its freedom, and the beauty of its Constitution. They should be praising and protecting the country which provided them their opportunities and their wealth. Sadly they represent a broad element across the Nation, too ready to do away with protection of fundamental individual rights. After all, it works over there, doesn’t it?
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-75866037475035914162012-12-03T14:30:00.000-05:002012-12-03T17:33:06.357-05:00Truth On Fiscal Cliff Negotiations<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We apprehensively advance through this nail biting moment in history as a great Nation floats, uncertain, caught in a holding pattern, hoping its leadership will find wisdom enough to avert the so called Fiscal Cliff, even if most of us don’t fully comprehend what such a cliff entails, or even if such a thing exists. We’re too busy struggling, hanging on to whatever we have, hoping for stability, and hoping that tomorrow brings some relief to our stress.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So let’s look for a little insight into what astute and gifted minds are really doing deep in the core of the negotiations apparently so critical to the very future of the Nation. Let’s dig for a sign of prescient coherence determining the very nature of our future.</span></div>
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<span class="fullpost"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmHby9qO508" target="_blank">Here is a discussion/interview</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> which John Mauldin recently conducted with <b>Rob Lehman</b> and <b>David Krone</b>, the chiefs of staff for Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), and of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), respectively. Lehman and Krone are two very key individuals in the current budget negotiations. Mauldin, who writes on economics and investments, usually refrains from using an ideologically tempered pen. Late in the somewhat non-descript forty minute discussion, a head snapper gets dropped by Lehman, who works on the Republican side of the negotiating table.</span></span></div>
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<span class="fullpost"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At minute 37:00 of the linked video Lehman (R) makes a statement about spending. <b><i>“We’re talking about reductions in the growth of spending.”</i></b> He confirms that <b>there will be no reduction in spending</b>. Krone (D), sitting next to him, is drooling out of camera shot. Washington does not spend less year-to-year. Ever. Is that clear? Negotiators are <b>only</b> negotiating <b>amounts of spending increases and areas of such increases in spending.</b> That’s it. Don’t believe anyone standing at a podium performing waffling prevarications in Washington while making claims of imminent <i>spending cuts</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh, but wait, you say, what about that the $16.2 trillion in debt which we cannot ignore? When you spend $3.6 trillion, but receive $2.3 trillion, you have to cut over a trillion from your annual expenditures somewhere along the line if you harbor any hope of getting ahead of the backlog of debt and the corresponding overwhelming interest. What about that looming additional commitment in entitlements which will more than quadruple that debt? Hmm. Well, forget about it. Ignore it. Have a good Christmas, and Happy New Year. You’ll never be able to endure that burden, so why worry? We’ll just crank up the presses. Isn’t that how you pay back what you owe? Just print money?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Obama continues down the seemingly never-ending campaign trail, arrogantly pretending that he is providing tax cuts to the middle class and further pretending to demand a “balanced approach.” He has repeated his limited talking points at every recent use of the teleprompter. Someone might explain to him that retaining the Bush tax cuts which are due to automatically expire at the end of December, does not mean reducing the middle class tax rates. He either has no grasp of what he is claiming, or is knowingly lying to the taxpayers.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are no tax cuts on the horizon and there are no expenditure reductions coming. Spending is out of control, and the truth is that tax increases are coming for all levels of society.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Everyone knows that the mantra “tax the rich” is just demagoguery, . . . well everyone except those with a paucity of common sense. Tax increases for the so-called rich will not put a dent in the deficit. And Obama’s claims of the approximately $10 billion in revenues anticipated from the rich is annoying. He still won’t acknowledge that such supposed anticipated amount is over 10 years. Please, someone tell him. The very rich probably don’t much care, since the increases will simply mean less real redistribution of wealth, but the increase will not impact their lifestyles.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Obama professes that only agreeing to his demands would avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’, and doing otherwise, “<i>would be bad for the economy, it would be bad for those families </i>(supposedly the whole middle class), <i>in fact it would be bad for the world economy</i>.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He’s getting ahead of Republicans on the “message,” so that no matter what happens, Boehner and the Republican controlled House of Representatives will eat the negative fall-out. And the fall-out is coming, but what is not coming is <b>spending reductions</b>.</span></div>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-42497065451381342732012-11-14T18:25:00.002-05:002012-11-14T19:34:47.046-05:00• The Great Mainstream Media Lie<br />
We work hard, or we strive to find work while counted amongst 86 million “invisible” unemployed, or we stress as one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics 14.6% unemployed, and when rare tranches of time allow, during our otherwise consumed days, we sporadically tune into the mainstream media. The Gallup organization recently informed us that 60% of us do not trust the news media. And yet, . . . it still influences our determinations as it wishes.<br />
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Whether for news or entertainment, roughly 85% of our media is at minimum liberal minded and more often than not, very extreme in its socialist leanings. For a century our media has equated the progressive mindset and itself with higher intellectual discourse. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> We collectively have come to accept the fact that media bias is present and predominant. Are we not all subjective beings after all? Is subjectivity not a fundamental, though limiting, ‘truth?’ So, subjective it is. But what of our media? What of our 4th estate, so called because it is purportedly one of the pillars buttressing our rotunda of freedom? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Is our media providing Truth? Does it deconstruct official pronouncements digging for Facts? Does it deliver Insight for a little stimulus to our contemplations? Does it contribute Wisdom to our general social fabric? Does it add to our knowledge as we make our way through the good, the bad, and the ugly of our political and economic realities? It can’t, but that is not its greatest disservice to the listening and viewing public. The great lie is that it pretends independence and fictionalizes its neutrality of thought. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The mainstream media fakes objectivity. It feigns to be telling us truths while doing anything but. It professes to be delivering informative facts. While its most visible representatives contribute to Democratic Party coffers, they make misrepresentations which affect public consciousness. The great lie is the pretense. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> The vast majority of the 4th estate is perpetuating the fraud and deceit of its objectivity. All such objectivity has long ago been perniciously vaporized. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Most of its audience does not have the time to dig for broad based clarity and truth. Most of its audience simply accepts. It accepts as facts, the myriad lies. The masquerade is cleverly delivered in elegant prose, sprinkled with shrewd convolutions which are in effect unhealthy, destructive and uneducated contentions, seeking to destroy all disapproving voices. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The Founding Fathers held fervent respect for ‘the Press’ and its participation in the democratic process, providing it protection in the Bill of Rights. They had anticipated a continuation of objective reporting on all government affairs by ‘the Press.’ Lady Liberty today sheds tears for the disintegration of the 4th estate, and the disappearance of an essential column expected to responsibly nourish our society. That broad, consequential element described in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle as being more important than all other pillars of good governance, no longer exists.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-51368579717088057992012-09-25T01:43:00.003-04:002012-11-14T18:23:28.645-05:00• Buying Re-election With QE InfinityThe preponderance of misrepresentations and fiction floated by most of the MSM in these frenetic final weeks of the Presidential election, may in the long term cause much harm to an already overburdened Nation. Making decisions with bad information never works out well.<br />
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Near the top of our influence food chain we have Ben Bernanke fuelling inflation of risky assets through a continuation of the quantitative easing strategy. The markets have siphoned money from “savings” accounts where interest rates are at near zero. How great is that? The stock markets are booming, while anyone holding interest-bearing assets continues to get decimated. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Feckless ignorance and economic illiteracy, praises this bull-run as ‘success’ and a sign of a stable economy returning to health, rather than address what it really is, . . . artificial, and transient gains. The markets have become a bubble, and when this bubble bursts, there will be a dearth of ‘shorts,’ to provide support with a bottom, as occurred during the last crash. Real ‘shorts’ were driven out by regulation and fear of helicopter Ben. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Bernanke admonished Congress for not reaching agreement on spending and taxes, in an effort to cover his backside. He should instead drop in on the President, interrupt a dinner with a star-of-the-hour, or interject himself into a golf game, and admonish him for the same thing, and he should point to the fiscal cliff much more forcefully. But we know this will not transpire, and given the timing of his Infinite Quantitative Easing, Ben won’t even bother to educate Obama. The President’s lack of knowledge is to Bernanke’s advantage, and to the advantage of his friends in the inner sanctums of the most senior banking establishments. Bernanke ordering Obama to back-off his anti-business vitriol and his destructive actions, would have more positive impact on jobs than QE3 will ever have. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> So let’s look for some clarity at why with all the cash apparently floating in the streets, the banks are not putting all these free dollars to work toward the rebuilding of the country, and there is no reduction in the numbers of unemployed Americans. Is there something not quite right which we are not fully aware of? </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">The following is a rare but useful piece of critical information most of us can appreciate from the WSJ, “In 2010, the number of Federal Register pages devoted to proposed new rules broke its previous all-time record for the second consecutive year. It's up by 25% compared to 2008. These regulations alone will impose large costs and create heightened uncertainty for business and especially small business.” Yah? So, who cares? If you are unemployed, or if you are a budding entrepreneur, it is not over-reaching to understand that this is not helpful to your cause. Additional administrative burden on small and medium sized businesses will not improve their balance sheets. It will not create new jobs. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> The galloping expansion of government bureaucracy is an insidious characteristic of its political leadership which the Nation must reverse. I recently outlined how the current Administration ‘used’ the auto industry and abused bankruptcy laws to enrich its friends, and further its progressive agenda, while the MSM ignored or covered up the misdeeds. We once again discern the sound of crickets from the MSM as Ben Bernanke, just before the Presidential election, announces QE3, which is in reality QE Infinity since he is embarking on an open-ended policy of feeding banks. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> The Fed will expand its holdings of long-term securities by buying up an additional $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities for an indefinite period. Who can fathom the depth of the toxic asset well? Not the banks. Not Ben. Not the taxpayers. Infinity is a long time, so Bernanke is jumping into the well, with no flashlight, and with no clue as to its depth. What could go wrong? Since this wasn’t enough, Bernanke also announced an extension of “Operation Twist” in which The Fed sells its short-term bonds for longer-term bonds in the hope that this might drive down mortgage rates. Oh good, more artificial manipulation of some critical economic elements in the country’s foundation. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">QE1 and QE2 have worked so well. Didn’t they? Well sure, the banks receive ‘free’ money, and the stock markets, which really have little to do with the health of the economy, keep rising. The Administration and the MSM have something to brag about. Something which will provide the appearance of economic encouragement. The repressed truth will be disheartening. The unemployed remain so, and the trillions which corporations are sitting on, remain ‘out of the game’ and uninvested. Why? Explicit uncertainty is one reason. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> The following is an insight on one of the numerous rationales for this pronounced uncertainty. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher addressing the Harvard Club of New York actually said these daunting and worrisome words, “We are blessed at the Fed with sophisticated econometric models and superb analysts. We can easily conjure up plausible theories as to what we will do when it comes to our next tack or eventually reversing course. The truth, however, is that nobody on the committee, nor on our staffs at the Board of Governors and the 12 Banks, really knows what is holding back the economy. Nobody really knows what will work to get the economy back on course. And nobody—in fact, no central bank anywhere on the planet—has the experience of successfully navigating a return home from the place in which we now find ourselves. No central bank—not, at least, the Federal Reserve—has ever been on this cruise before.” </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost">Such insight required some audacity from Fisher. Admitting that Bernanke and The Fed have no idea what to do is more than just a bold move. It sends shudders through the spines of every taxpayer in the Nation. These tremors will turn into back-breakers when The Fed decides sometime in the future to dispose of its accumulations. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Bernanke has no confidence in America, in its companies, in its ingenuity, in its creativity, or in its entrepreneurialism. Nevertheless, he evidently must keep the White House resident in the house. No one will ever know how many dollars Ben creates in his infinite wisdom to accomplish his objective. Launching his ‘Hail Mary’ just before the election is nothing more than political ingress by a body which should remain out of the game and on the sidelines. Furthermore, The Fed should not attempt to ‘manipulate’ the economy as it has been doing. That has never been The Fed’s intended purpose. </span><br />
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<span class="fullpost"> The sound of crickets from the MSM on the realities of The Fed and its actions is impairing voter determination.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-75180822316988466082012-09-05T19:35:00.001-04:002012-09-05T22:33:52.484-04:00• A Collapsed Foreign Policy<!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> With the focus of the coming election appropriately directed at the economy and the creation of jobs, some of the media is desperately attempting a redirection of attention toward foreign policy. More precisely, the MSM is fabricating a four year history of its protagonist’s foreign policy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <span style="line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">Other than having given the go-ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, the President’s foreign policy from the beginning of his term has been abysmal and has confused America’s allies as well as its taxpayers. The MSM is doing it best prop-up the primarily missing-in-action-unengaged leadership with incomprehensible accolades such as </span><span style="color: blue; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/brooks-where-obama-shines.html"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Where Obama Shines</span></a></span><span style="line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> and </span><span style="color: blue; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/08/30/how-obamas-foreign-policy-success-will-win-him-re-election-2"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">How Obama’s Foreign Policy Success Will Win Him Re-election</span></a></span><span style="line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">. Such is the nature of the progressive mindset. These I-think-I’m-smarter-than-most self-believing-self-annointed mental aristocrats continue to project their perceptions onto the blank slate of a Presidency only too willing to be so consecrated.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> To anyone who has been paying attention since the last Presidential election, such articles are void of insight and far removed from the world’s realities. The MSM assumes no one will have paid attention for four years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> This is the President who sold-out Poland and the Czech Republic by the sudden abandonment of the missile-defense security arrangement without extracting a single quid pro quo from Putin. If he had a better idea, could he still not have found acuity enough to “negotiate”? Apparently not. Today, Russia ostentatiously gloats in defiance as it ‘trades’ with, and supports, both Iran and Syria, as slaughter continues unabated by two of the worse current abusers of humanity on the planet. Putin says, “back off.” Where is the President?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> In May, earlier this year, we could not blame the President with his attempt at political correctness (refraining from insulting Germans by using the “Nazi” word), as he mentioned Jan Karski witnessing a “Polish death camp” during a posthumous presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Karski, a Polish WWII hero. Is it that Obama has way too much on his mind? Or is it possible that he is uninterested and his handlers/writers are not terribly capable? Has he read a book lately, or even watched TV? Any chance he’s not familiar with Poland and its history as Europe’s tromping ground?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> We can only surmise what Obama might have meant when he whispered to Medvedev, </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">“this is my last election. After my election I’ll have more flexibility”</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">, however, his track record does not allow for much positive speculation. Could he have meant, “flexibility” to leave the decisions to NATO? Backdoor compromises with thugs never work out, regardless what lipstick the pandering MSM has placed on this bizarre ineptitude.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> Yesterday the White House denied an Israeli newspaper’s </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">(<span style="color: #262626;">Yedioth Ahronoth)</span></i><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">,</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/03/white-house-denies-us-iran-reports?newsfeed=true"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">accusation</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> that it had secretly negotiated with Teheran to keep it out of the Israeli-Iran conflict. Whether true or not matters less than the fact that under this President’s watch, the story presents itself as a plausible scenario, and one hoisted unsuccessfully in the White House press room.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> On the other side of the world, just as the Democratic Convention gets underway, the Nation’s Secretary of State is busying herself with non-presence. Unfortunately for Obama, as his handlers and writers scramble to prepare his speech, the Chinese have delivered an untimely, polite, but emphatic slam to Hillary, instructing her boss and his administration to stay out of </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">their business in the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/04/us-china-usa-clinton-idUSBRE8820CI20120904"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">South China Sea</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">. China is stepping up its military control over the Macclesfield Bank, the Scarborough Shoals, and the Reed bank, against the Philippines, as well as the Paracel and Spratly Islands which are claimed by both the Philippines and Vietnam. Fishing rights are in play, but the bigger fight, and potential war, is over the extensive and proven oil and gas reserves which sit under the hundreds of islands forming the South China Sea archipelago.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> Wagging fingers at dictators is a foreign policy maneuver which has not worked so well in the past. At least not given all evidence. Alexander The Great had a history of being really pissed-off at those who wagged their fingers at him. So much so that he annihilated their cities. Finger wagging measures will not bring satisfaction with China any more than they are succeeding with Putin or with ayatollah Khamenei in Teheran.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> There would be little point in asking about the intelligence which led the strategic reasoning to support the forcefully ousted Honduran President Zelayan. The MSM doesn’t much care about Honduras but it does care about Obama’s image. When Zelayan attempted to change his nation’s constitution in order to anoint himself dictator-for-life, he was simply duplicating what worked so well for his friend Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez, plus he had support from Nicaragua's Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The MSM passed on that one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> Both Obama and Hillary Clinton supported the Zelayan venture to abuse his country’s constitution. Of course if we had access to the insight which shepherded the Obama encouragement of Zelayan, we might enhance our comprehension into the more global intent of this Administration. Surely it cannot be as simplistic as the difficult to swallow explanations recited by the media that “open dialogue” with Latin American dictators is the road to positive futures for the populations of Latin America.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> The soaring rhetoric and promises of Obama’s entry into the Oval Office four years ago that he would “reset” relations with Russia; that he would “refurbish” America’s image in the Middle East; that he would “out-reach” to Iran; that he would obtain Chinese cooperation; and of course the foundation of his election, that he would end engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, (</span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">let’s ignore Guantanamo</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">), have proven to be little more than bombastic hay-feed for the ideologically inclined.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-indent: 24px;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; text-indent: 24px;"> When I wrote shortly before Obama’s inauguration, </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 24px;">“<a href="http://pacificgatepost.com/2008/11/obama-first-tell.html"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Ronald Reagan prevailed, undaunted, in the shaping of his audacious foreign policy. He backed the Soviet bear into a corner,</span></a>”</span><span style="color: #042230; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 24px;"><span style="font-size: small;"> it was anticipated, and is now obvious, that we would find ourselves very far from a Reagan foreign policy. With more dictators in power around the world now than ever before, an Administration wagging a finger, or asking for dialogue, only serves to delay the inevitable such as we are witnessing in Iran. This Administration is kicking the can down the road, </span>. . . another can.</span><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-42734834116076742632012-08-22T20:26:00.005-04:002012-08-22T23:34:44.042-04:00• The Obama General Motors Duplicity <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>48</o:Words> <o:Characters>248</o:Characters> <o:Company>N.A.</o:Company> <o:Lines>5</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>340</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"></div><!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> For three years our consciousness has been bombarded with assertions from Obama, his handlers, and his justifiers, that he is pro-business, understands the private sector, and is a leader -- after all did he not singlehandedly “save” General Motors and America’s auto industry? </span><b style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>Enough with the lies already!</i></b><br />
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Now that there is an actual businessman running against him for the Oval Office rather than a pol, the President’s machine has been turning up the volume on Obama’s GM escapade. We too easily recall his preening three years ago as the media declared him the new CEO of General Motors. Today Obama claims that without him, there would be no auto industry in America and he further claims that GM is a roaring success.</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With admiration from the vast majority of the media, Obama is spiking the football on his prime example of crony-capitalism. This is not just any version of capitalism. This three year saga of GM has been a White House mandated, directed, orchestrated, manipulated, sleaze filled, top-down, “I-know-better,” abuse of laws and industry with taxpayer money to achieve egoistic and self-serving purposes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This Administration persevered in abusing its power to ignore laws and common sense, in order to pull-off the biggest heist in US government history. And it did so in broad daylight. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The fourth estate’s fear, adulation, and mostly uncomplicated ignorance, allowed this larceny to occur. Law makers allowed it to materialize without backlash. Taxpayers watched, confused. Some, not so confused, but unable to act. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Geithner orchestrated the redirection of TARP funds for the bailout - yes, that very same slush fund specifically established to bailout financial institutions, NOT corporations. While we may never fully know the total cost to taxpayers, and we will never know the full extent of the damage done to individuals harmed by the process, we can accept as a base amount the initial $80+ billion dollars from TARP and the government stock purchase of 60% ownership. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">Why is this a “base” amount?</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 120%; text-indent: 0.25in;">On behalf of the Nation’s taxpayers, and circumventing the country’s bankruptcy/tax laws, the orchestrators of the GM scheme ALSO sacrificed taxpayer treasure in the form of a $45 billion gift of business-loss tax credit.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/382">Section 382 of the tax code,</a> limits net operating loss carry-forwards in ‘loss corporations.’ Did this restrict Obama, Jarrett, Axelrod and Geithner in any way? Not when they were buying the permanent financial backing of a powerful union. The same union which this year committed one half <i>billion</i> dollars to Obama’s re-election campaign<i>. Did the rank and file have ANY say in what their leaders did with their union dues?</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To circumvent laws limiting transfers of Net Operating Losses” (NOL), Geithner, <i>(that infamous tax expert of tax cheating notoriety)</i>, issued “Notices” claiming the laws would not apply to the Treasury’s machinations as it converted TARP loans to GM for shares, and then sold those shares.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">By law, accumulated tax write-offs evaporate in bankruptcy for ALL corporations, unless they are enjoying the process of <i>Obama-commanded-bankruptcy</i>. Do we really wonder how other auto manufacturers such as Ford, or any other corporations for that matter, felt about this serious breech of the Nation’s laws and assault on the capitalist system? This is politics at its worst. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Taxpayers were not provided an opportunity to opine on this $125 billion being used by an out-of-control Administration to <i>purchase</i> the eternal support of the AWU/UAW leadership. Keep in mind that the UAW was an <b><i>unsecured</i></b> creditor, <b><i>unlike</i></b> most of the creditors pillaged by this Administration. The union was gifted a 17% share position in GM in trade for some health and pension commitments and the UAW sold a third of this position for $3.5 billion when GM made a public share offering in 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;">When you consider how team Obama handed control of GM to its union cronies while on the other hand it obliterated 100% of the original broadly held common shares; gave pennies on the dollar worth of <i>shares</i> to bond holders composed of families, retirees, middle class average Americans and pension funds; wiped out the debt held by GM supplier Delphi; gifted $1 billion to Delphi UAW retirees, but <b><i>nothing</i></b> to Delphi’s non-union and non-UAW retirees; stiffed the bond holders; terminated the existence of thousands of long-time dealerships who were not Obama funders; unceremoniously fired the GM CEO Rick Wagoner, replacing him with car czar Steve Rattmer who in turn placed crony Ed Whitacre as titular CEO while czar Rattner made all critical decisions <i>(against all common sense, and corporate law and governance)</i>; politicized the restructure and politicized the eventual actualization of action plans for GM; wiped out non-union salaried employee pensions; </span><span style="color: #16100b; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enabled GM to pay for ads in China promoting the “The Birth of a Party” – a <b>party</b> for the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), . . . .</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"> you begin to understand the full meaning of crony-capitalism as it is practiced in Beijing and Moscow.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ask the retirees who depended on those bonds or the Pension, Mutual and Hedge funds which Obama so cavalierly demeaned as “speculators,” how they feel about the Obama version of “redistribution.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The vast majority of individuals who were scammed weren’t aware of all the minutia of the complex deal. Many are very likely still in the dark about Obama’s redistribution of taxpayer cash, NOT to the needy, but to this Administration’s UAW friends, and in turn to himself. This is redistribution for Obama’s personal gain, and the personal gain of his crew. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Is it any wonder the top of the UAW’s food-chain has permanent passes to the White House?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Did the media admonish the President or Treasury Secretary for failing to carry out their fiduciary responsibilities? Did the media support the free enterprise system which the country’s economic health depends on? Not at all. The media still yawns as laws are trampled, and rights are assaulted.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When you have access to a camouflaged, almost limitless mountain of cash to purchase ‘friends,’ your dreams of world-grand-mastership might just take on a veneer of reality, particularly when over 85% of your nation’s MSM is championing your cause, though it doesn’t understand what your cause really is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;">The lying and nauseating demagoguery continued unabated at a recent </span><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=101706"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Colorado pep rally,</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"> <i>“. . . we created 4½ million new jobs. We saved an auto industry on the brink of collapse. . . . . what we did with the auto industry, we can do it in manufacturing across America. . . . ,” </i>bragged Obama.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;">Would it educate the President to point out the fact that before the bailout, 75% of GM cars were built in the U.S., while today 2/3 of GM employees are overseas and 75% of its automobiles are made outside the country with most of the manufacturing occurring in China? Such questions might trouble his evidently limited capacities and confuse his mind about his claims that Romney </span><span style="color: blue;"><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/obama-romney-outsourced-jobs-bain">“Led the outsourcing of American jobs to India and China.”</a></span></i></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="color: blue;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This restructuring of a failing company by dictatorial decree was nothing more than theft from the highest power in government. If and when the details of this heist become clearer in the minds of all taxpayers, we may yet see legal recourse taken on behalf of those whose lives were damaged irreparably by the abusive and despotic actions of this Administration.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><span class="fullpost"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The return of America toward sustainable healthy economic growth, and away from 15% real unemployment, will only occur with leadership which comprehends and respects business and the entrepreneurial spirit, and not from a leader who has done nothing but live off the largesse of others and government.</span></span><!--EndFragment--></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-658005950706265601.post-82245187477987703572012-07-31T14:27:00.000-04:002012-07-31T14:27:26.199-04:00• Geithner's Waterloo?When Tim Geithner became Treasury Secretary he was appointed even though he had skipped on taxes and paid $42,702 to make up his omission. He pretended at the time that this failure to pay taxes owed for a number of years had simply been an oversight. Anyone really paying attention at the time, and applying reasonable judgment, was astonished. The Former head of the New York Fed was being placed into the control seat of the Nation’s Treasury. <br />
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<span class="fullpost"> Not a single taxpayer in the Nation who trudges through the annual process of filing income taxes believed Geithner’s excuses on this egregious wrong doing. The MSM however slobbered all over itself protecting Obama’s nominee, pretending that when someone so busy and so smart is working so selflessly for his country, he can forget to pay his taxes. That was a lie. Average wage earners, millionaires and billionaires do not forget to pay their taxes - minimize them as much as they can, but <b>they don’t forget</b>.<br />
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From your very first job you knew, we all knew, to pay income taxes owed. We are all intimately familiar with that annual date with destiny - tax time. Still, Geithner was given a pass. We don’t need to get into the details here of the additional distaste his judgment left us with when we discovered he had hired of an undocumented housekeeper.<br />
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Was this a telltale? Yes it was - <b>look to what someone did yesterday, and you’ll know what he or she will do tomorrow</b>. It’s called listening. It’s called paying attention. It’s called basic human common sense. We find ourselves with an MSM void such competence, and too broad a sector of the electorate willing to forego such proficiency.<br />
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We skip forward to this week’s Congressional hearings, and witness our same Tax avoiding Treasury Secretary, the very same person who pushed for the bailout of AIG, slipping on a pair of Gretzky skates, racing circles around the rink, and slapping pucks at the foreheads of the questioning House Financial Services Committee. Gretzky would have been envious. How dare a bunch of Representatives ask impudent questions of Geithner about something so complex as Libor?<br />
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So we were entertained. Geithner admitted knowing that the Libor rate was vulnerable to exploitation - this was at least six years ago. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/07/25/business/libor-and-the-financial-crisis.html" target="_blank">He knew it was being manipulated</a> and did some speed-skating. <i>"That was the best alternative available at the time, and you can't say now with confidence that that choice in any way disadvantaged the American taxpayer,"</i> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-geithner-hearing-20120727,0,5509675.story" target="_blank">Geithner said</a>. It gives you a genuinely balmy feeling, doesn’t it, knowing the astute mind of Geithner is looking after your interests? No? How about this then,<i> “I think it's quite unlikely, but we're going to take a careful look at that."</i> When? After November? After all, Geithner was only head of the New York Fed when he discovered this monstrosity.<br />
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If that is not enough to summon your favour, it gets better,<i> “and we felt, and I still believe this, that it was really going to be on the UK to take responsibility.”</i> Geithner basically said, “it wasn’t my job.” Keep in mind that JP Morgan, Citigroup, and B of A, participate in the daily Libor interest rate setting. Oh, and the first two are supervised by the New York Fed. But, hey, “it’s not my job.”<br />
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The Representative asking if Geithner was aware of wrongdoing, was met with a, <i>"We don't know that. But I think that is a question you need torefer to the enforcement agencies."</i> Again, when? When will this fraud be taken seriously and be arduously investigated? When another Attorney General replaces Holder?<br />
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Should taxpayers care?Aside from the fact that almost everything you spend money on is affected inone way or another by the Libor rate, it also happens that the Libor rate was used for the $182 billion bailout of AIG and the trillion dollar emergency <a href="http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/talf.html" target="_blank">Term-AssetBacked Securities Loan Facility</a> program. Geithner said it <i>"was the best alternative available at the time."</i> He knew the Libor interest rate was being manipulated, but this genius now claims there was nothing better. Why? Because he was winking and nodding? In response, a committee member used the phrase, <i>“someone dropped the ball,”</i> so as to not offend Geithner's ego and sensitivities. Dropped the ball?<br />
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Dropping the ball is forgetting the sandwiches on your picnic. Dropping the ball cannot and should not refer to defrauding the taxpayers of billions of dollars through interest rate “fixing.” Dropping the ball cannot and should not refer to defrauding the borrowers around the world of billions of dollars through conspiring on the fixing of interest rates. Because he knows no one will really investigate the Too Big To Analyze theft, Geithner sanctimoniously hides behind the shield, <i>"We don't know at this point what impact that behaviour had [in moving] the rate up or down for investors or borrowers.”</i> Well, that settles it then. No one will do any due diligence, and no one will renegotiate interest rates on any of the billions used inbailouts and backed by the Nation’s taxpayers.<br />
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There remains the remote possibility that the man who fought against the notion of breaking up the largest banks, today thinks the bankers looked after the best interests of taxpayers. Well, that is until we recall that we already knew what he was. We learned that before he was officially appointed, and it was before that that he knew of the Libor dishonesty.<br />
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We can be confident that Geithner is watching attentively as Paul Tucker, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, gets grilled in the UK by the Treasury Select Committee overthe Libor rate scandal. Tucker will inevitably invoke “market confidence” as being the overwhelming concern at the time, but if he’s asked of his discussions with the likes of Geithner, he may have to slip on some Gretzkys.<br />
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Truth emanating from mouths of those who initiate fabrications with such ease will be hard to come by. How about not placing individuals in positions of power who in the past have had such difficulty with truth? <b>We already know what they will do</b>.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com