Climate Change Deniers, Better Drink the Kool-Aid

 “The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” – Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin

“Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.” – Harry Reid, U.S. Senate majority leader

Although I’ve had a best-selling book at Amazon since October 2012, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1376849311

liberals and conservatives alike have called people like me tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist and “agender” simply because I have done my research and have found ample evidence of the existence of U.N. Agenda 21 Sustainable Development documents
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
and related sites, international bodies, conferences, organizations, initiatives, and local zoning initiatives, changes and restrictions.

I am vindicated since I have been joined by a number of conservative and liberal groups, most notably the number one conservative talk show host in the country. Rush discussed in his August 9, 2013 monologue how the “Regime plans to diversify your neighborhood,” a.k.a. social engineering. It is one of the goals of Agenda 21 to move people downtown into high-rise, mixed use buildings. Diversification may be as good an excuse as any.

Rush describes how “government wants control over the diversity of neighborhoods and they want to define it.” Forcing diversity will be achieved through “regulation, intimidation, denial of services, you name it” via the HUD policy called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” We witnessed in Europe the disastrous effects of forced diversity and multiculturalism.

There is a good reason why this administration is enamored of trains, resents American suburbia sprawl, segregated from the ghettoes downtown, and admires Europeans who use mostly mass transit. Europeans don’t have the “freedom or luxuries that Americans have.” “They are more constrained and they’re more controllable and people are more able to herd them and keep them together.” Rush continued, “They want people congregated in the cities.” The fact that Democrats claim that diversity is going to make humanity more successful is a “crock,” Rush says, “It’s all about control.”

And the inner city residents are not the only people this administration feels that they’ve been wronged. Democrat legislation passed in 2010 will buy back 10 million acres of private land with $2 billion taxpayer dollars to redistribute to 150 Native American tribes. According to Jim Hoft, the buyback is the result of a lawsuit and the private owners are “reluctant sellers.” Forty-five percent of the land will go to just seven tribes.

“We can improve Indian Country if people will go along with this program and sell their interests back to their tribes,” said Kevin Washburn, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. http://thegatewaypundit.com/2013/08/obama-administration-to-buy-back-10-million-acres-to-redistribute-back-to-native-americans/

It is not just giving land back, it is confiscation from private owners who are not necessarily willing sellers and giving it back to the wilderness, according to the Wildlands Map, building those Agenda 21 corridors of allowable human habitation, while at the same time seeking the additional goals of “equity” and “social justice.”

The Wildlands Map is the Simulated Reserve and Corridor system to Protect Biodiversity as mandated by the Convention on Biological Diversity, The Wildlands Project, U.N. and U.S. Man and Biosphere Program, and various U.N., U.S. Heritage Programs, and NAFTA. The green areas are allowed for housing, yellow areas are buffer zone with no homes, red areas are core reserves and corridors off-limits to human access and habitation, black areas are military reservations, and pink areas are Indian Reservations. There is an orange corridor with Mexico, 124 mile wide international zone of cooperation (NAFTA Agreement).

“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope,” said David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth. Judi Bari, principal organizer of Earth First, added, “If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism.” Does anyone remember the air quality and the pollution haze during Olympics in communist China? I recall the heavy pollution we lived under in our Socialist “paradise.”

Agenda 21’s lynchpin is manufactured man-made global warming which is allegedly destroying the planet. Every bureaucrat and global elitist around the planet has jumped on this wealth redistribution and control bandwagon. Secretary of Defense John Kerry’s first major policy speech was about global warming/climate change.

The invented carbon credit programs to swap carbon pollution and the carbon tax are hugely unpopular with businesses but popular with bureaucrats, environmentalists, and traders. At the end of the day, the carbon tax or carbon credit swaps do little to reduce pollution, especially since China pollutes away unencumbered - they line the pockets of those involved in the scheme.

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new prime minister has promised to kill the unpopular carbon tax in effect since July 2012. It has reduced emissions by 6.9 percent in the first year but it cost companies billions of dollars and higher energy prices for the average household. (Tim Devaney, The Washington Times, July 18, 2013)

Dr. James Taylor said in a recent article for Forbes that China alone emits more carbon dioxide than the entire Western Hemisphere. Dr. Taylor commented that “President Obama’s global warming plan will kill hundreds of millions of birds and bats, while doing little if anything to reduce global temperatures.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/07/29/president-obamas-climate-plan-would-kill-hundreds-of-millions-of-birds-and-bats/

Wildlife Society Bulletin confirmed in a study that “turbine blades will kill 14 million birds and bats during the next decade” even if no more wind turbines will be built. Not long ago, bird watchers in Scotland witnessed in horror when a very rare and fast bird which had not been seen in over twenty-two years, was chopped up by the blades of a wind turbine.

Fox News reported that wind farms are not fined for killing eagles and protected species but oil companies have been prosecuted when birds drown in waste pits or if birds are electrocuted by power lines.

President Obama’s plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent (drastic reductions in nuclear, coal, and natural gas generated energy) requires at least 25 times more electricity production from wind turbines. Dr. Taylor believes this would lead to the death of 350 million birds and bats in the U.S. each decade, an “aviary holocaust.”

James Delingpole revealed in the Telegraph that the National Grid in the U.K. has been secretly spending millions on “dirty” Diesel-generated power to keep the lights on during times when the wind was not blowing. Apparently, the more wind turbines were built, the less stable the electric grid became and electricity became more expensive. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/jamesdelingpole/100226302/another-day-another-wind-farm-scandal/

United States is in a terrible hurry to complete the smart grid and the smart meter installations around the country. Smart meters are a great Agenda 21 idea if you own a utility company or are the government. For customers, Smart meters are not just dangerous to overall health, privacy, and ability to have electricity on demand; smart meters are convenient 24/7 spying devices attached to our homes, without our permission, without a warrant, and violating our 4^th Amendment rights.

One Texan, Sheila Hemphill, who owns a wellness shop in Brady, Texas, took on the city council that wanted to install $2.5 million worth of smart meters via the city-owned utility company; she eventually won, after six failed attempts, implementing Texas Local Government Code 9.004, stopping the installation of smart meters.

Is Texas free from the encroachment of Agenda 21 Sustainability and Green Growth? Not really. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funded a $3.7 million Sustainable Communities Planning Grant called CyberCity 3D. Central Texas will be brought into the sustainable development concept of Agenda 21 with “housing diversity that is accessible to transportation, decrease congestion and pollution.”

The initiative is spearheaded by The Capital Area Texas Sustainability (CATS) Consortium, a comprehensive group of public, private, academic and non-profit stakeholders in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos region. (NGOs)

This is how Agenda 21 operates, with initiatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academia, and with generous grants from the federal government who cannot pass up the opportunity of implementing more global government.

Another successful pushback against Agenda 21 was the U.S. Department of the Interior dropping the White River Watershed National Blueway designation. U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo) said, “The Obama Administration’s attempt to establish a new federal designation without the approval of Congress or public input is absolutely unacceptable. The stakeholders and community members deserve more transparency from their government. I’m pleased the Obama Administration has withdrawn this designation.” http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/feds-rescinds-white-rivers-blueway-designation-19573511#.UdYUuW12mVq

Confiscation of land under the claim of eminent domain has also been pushed back by the judge’s decision in the Legacy Trail land. Judge Mary Ellen Coster Williams of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the U.S. government to pay “just compensation” to all property owners whose land had been taken under mandated easements for rail-use decades ago.

Sarasota County developer Hugh Culverhouse was awarded $3.2 million in an eminent domain case ten years after” the Surface Transportation Board seized a sliver of his Palmer Ranch property to build the Legacy Trail on an abandoned rail line. With interest, the judgment could be $5.1 million.” (Josh Salman, Herald Tribune, July 2, 2013)

Legacy Park is a county park developed by Sarasota County for $30 million. “The county commissioners who voted for the plan almost a decade ago say had no idea at the time property owners could sue the federal government for land reimbursements.”

http://heraldtribune.com/article/20130702/ARTICLE/130709899/2107/BUSINESS?p=2&tc=pg

This is one glaring example among thousands around the country where commissioners and boards of supervisors vote to rezone, reshape, carve out, and take away people’s rights to their property and then feign ignorance after the fact. Josh Salman quoted Commissioner Nora Patterson, “This whole thing is very strange. We didn’t know a thing about it.”

Superstorm Sandy helped deepen the hysteria of climate change and push forward the global warming talking points of Agenda 21 environmentalist social engineering. “The real experts know that sea level is rising at only 1 mm per year, and wouldn’t cause this kind of flooding in 1,000 years. This flooding was caused by the confluence of a hurricane storm surge and high tide.”

The report released on August 19, 2013 by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force stated, “Decision makers at all levels must recognize that climate change and the resulting increase in risks from extreme weather have eliminated the option of simply building back to outdated standards and expecting better outcomes after the next extreme event.”

The Chairman of the task force, Secretary of HUD Shaun Donovan, said that we must find novel ways for “piloting innovative strategies that can serve as a model for communities across the nation as they prepare for the impacts of climate change.” The translation is easy. We can’t predict the weather accurately for tomorrow but we can tell you that the sky is about to fall if you don’t follow our directions and our plans.

Climate has changed for reasons other than fossil fuel use or human involvement; solar flares, increased volcanic activity, and the change in oceanic currents come to mind, but only in recent times has climate become such a politically expedient tool used by the global elites to gain financial control and power, affecting with urgency how we live, where we live, how we build, and how much of our land we truly own, farm, or inhabit.

Lord Monckton expressed climate change alarmism rather humorously. “One hundred percent of scientists agree climate change is real. That is why we have weather forecasts. The climate has been changing for 4567 million years since that first Tuesday on which the earliest wisps of the atmosphere formed. But less than a third of published climate scientists say they think global warming is man-made; only 0.3 percent of them think most of the past 50 years’ modest warming is our fault; and so far, no one seems to have asked them whether they think it is potentially catastrophic.”

Researchers from the University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed global warming slowed between 2000 and 2010 due to the gases spewed by volcanoes. (Michael Harper, redOrbit.com)

“Earthquakes may contribute to global warming by releasing greenhouse gas [methane] from the ocean floor.” Dr. David Fischer’s study, published in Nature Geoscience, demonstrated that methane escaped from methane hydrates from the ocean floor of the North Arabian Sea, released by a powerful 8.1 on Richter scale earthquake in 1945. http://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380434/Earthquakes-contribute-global-warming-releasing-greenhouse-gas-ocean-floor.html#ixzz2aXa5xFo5

Climate alarmists link just about anything to faux global warming. Changes in climate are strongly linked to violence around the world, a study by U.S. scientists suggests. There are myriads of other possible variables yet scientists are sure that a rise in violence is linked specifically to climate change. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23538771

The Examiner.com listed on June 29, 2013 the top 15 signs that global warming is a fraud:

-          Alarmists are fanatical and dishonest in opposing cleaner energy such as natural gas

-          Politicians hand-pick “reports” and “evidence”

-          CO2 is reported as record levels although there is no statistical significance

-          Democrats have adopted global warming as a fact, smearing anyone who disagrees

-          EPA still uses data from confessed frauds

-          Global warming is blamed on anything and everything

-          Ice sheets are growing, not shrinking

-          Al Gore’s award winning propaganda film has been banned in Britain due to “outrageous falsehood and wild exaggerations”

-          The Earth is not getting warmer

-          There never was a “consensus” of experts, it is made up

-          Scandals have forced even proponents of the scam of green to reverse course

-          Evidence shows alarmists statements to be “deeply-flawed since the beginning”

-          “It really is the Sun, Stupid.”

-          Top experts “misrepresented pure speculation as hard fact and inventing ridiculous hoaxes at every turn”

-          “enormously influential scientists directing this scam have been caught blatantly doctoring data, vindictively silencing anyone who does not conform and plotting to set up bogus ‘investigations’ to whitewash their corruption out of the picture” http://www.examiner.com/article/update-top-10-signs-global-warming-is-a-fraud

Questioning this climate change “consensus” alarmism is a sure way to kill anybody’s academic career, so much for academic freedom. Ask Professors James Enstrom of UCLA, Richard Lindzen of MIT, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute, Fred Singer, a rocket scientist who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, and Murry Salby of Macquarie University in Sidney, what happened to their careers when they debunked the false “consensus” riddled with scientific dishonesty. http://wnd.com/2013/07/academic-freedom-not-if-you-question-climate-change/#e5MDfZ2p3Ej0tjfZ.99

All decisions involving every facet of our daily lives were influenced and made initially by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and picked up by various federal government agencies such as the EPA and the Department of Energy. Most recently, Interior Department Secretary, Sally Jewell, was quoted as saying, “I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior.” Apparently global warming is settled group-think-consensus-science and dissenters are not allowed free speech in her department.

Sustainable Development represents environmental assaults on our freedoms and property rights, our children’s education, smart growth, green growth, and smart metering, all initiated by ICLEI and visioning committees, supported by government agencies,  executive orders, councils, federal grants, and passed by boards of supervisors around the country without citizen input, knowledge, or agreement. It is a form of global communism perpetrated by the global elites in the name of saving the environment from the manufactured man-made global warming.

To make matters scarier, there is an Agenda 21 environmental constitution of global governance called The Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development (DICED). The word “covenant” makes it sound like a religion; come to think of it, it is the religion of the scam of green. http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/eplp-031-rev3.pdf

The much maligned carbon dioxide is good for plants and for tree growth, it gives them life. Ask Dr. Klaus Kaiser, he will tell you, it is “wood for thought.” http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57327

 

 

Free Cheese in a Socialist Mousetrap

“There is always free cheese in a mousetrap.” – Retired Marine Colonel Martino

Public Citizen.org, self-described as “advocates for a healthier and more equitable world,” sent a fundraising letter to Democrat voters, claiming that “millionaires who run the largest corporations on Earth want to slash the social insurance programs the rest of us rely on.” By slashing, they are referring to the logical proposal to increase eligibility age for Medicare, to correlate Medicare to income, and to modernize/privatize it.

Who are these “mega-corporations” that apparently want to destroy our healthcare? Public Citizen points out that CEOs of AT&T, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Mobil, General Electric, JPMorgan, and Wal-Mart have no idea “what it’s like to worry if you can retire with dignity and security.”

So far, class division and envy rhetoric, blaming the “evil” rich for the world’s problems and social injustice, has worked for progressives because they appeal to the lowest information voters, people who watch “reality” television and take their news information from comedians on the alphabet soup channels, the media machine of the Democrat Party.

It is not the CEOs who have destroyed the middle class and the opportunity to succeed in America, it is the race baiters, politicians, and the community organizers who keep the low information voters misinformed and beholden to their supposed saviors, the very people who control them and benefit from their misfortunes.

Public Citizen, a progressive organization for the “defense of democracy from corporate greed” and for social justice, with specialists in Community Organizing, lobbyists, environmentalism, and attorneys is “fighting not only to preserve Medicare, but to improve and expand it into the universal, single-payer health insurance system our nation needs to make the ideal of health care as a human right the reality for every American.”

Somebody needs to tell low information Democrats that medical care is not a human right, it is a service, provided by medical professionals who expect to be paid for their service, expertise, and the many years they’ve spent in medical school studying diligently for exams, writing papers, dissecting, doing 36-hour rotations at hospitals for free, paying high tuition fees, and buying high-priced specialty books. These medical professionals have loans to repay, families to feed, bills to pay, office overhead costs, malpractice insurance (due to the extremely litigious society that we live in), and employees who must be paid for their work as well.

Somebody should also tell uninformed Democrats that Medicare was not designed as a universal, single-payer health insurance system and that it is President Obama who is stripping Medicare of $719 billion over the next ten years in order to fund his unaffordable Affordable Care Act. Additionally, Americans have not asked for a single-payer, national socialized health care system but they got it, it is the law; even if ACA is defunded completely, all Americans must still pay the tax next year if they do not have proof of insurance.

Public Citizen claims that “an immoral (and ineffective) for-profit health insurance regime” dominates in our country. The medical system has its problems and is in need of tort reform and insurance portability across state lines, but it is the best health care system in the world, everyone who needs serious medical care comes to the United States for surgery. It is not an immoral system, anybody who comes to an emergency room is treated, and nobody is refused care.

On the contrary, millions of illegal immigrants take advantage of our generous health care system and overuse emergency rooms as their private doctors and as their OBGYNs, forcing taxpayers to foot the bills for the delivery of anchor babies and the care of their mothers while Americans buy insurance for their families. Americans, who cannot afford premiums because they fall below the poverty line, receive medical treatment through Medicaid.

“The private, for-profit health insurance establishment” has been able to offer free medical care to all people who could not afford to pay but needed care. Nobody died unnecessarily because they were turned away as the Public Citizen fundraising letter implies.

Unfortunately, with the new Obamacare, rationing will become the norm and people will be turned down for treatment based on their age and utility to society, they will become “units.” There is a 15-member death panel written into Obamacare. We will find out soon enough when the unfortunately-named Affordable Care Act starts enrolling people on October 1, 2013.

Public Citizen is mobilizing the “public and allies in Congress to block any cuts to Medicare.”

Pushing a “national single-payer system,” they are joined by “Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. John Conyers, the congressional champions of single-payer legislation.”

The letter concludes, “We are supporting state efforts to adopt a single-payer system in the framework of the Affordable Care Act.” The truth is that many states are pushing back and do not wish to have a single-payer system because it is unworkable and they lack the funds to do so.

Unions want Obamacare repealed or defunded because their members wish to keep their current Cadillac health insurance plans and their doctors, as promised by the President. Congress, who wrote the bill, does not want Obamacare for themselves and their staffers. They have strategized and manipulated behind closed doors until the President gave them a special status and a 75% subsidy towards the annual premium.   

Giving potential donors misguided statistics on the status of our healthcare, Public Citizen’s President ends his message of gloom and doom with the chilling “onward.” “Onward” is an interesting variant to “forward,” euphemisms recognizable to me as socialist slogans.

Silvio Canto Jr. Blogtalk Radio on taxation, August 16, 2013

Thirty minutes with Silvio Canto of Dallas on brief history of taxation, what would create jobs and improve the economy, Obamacare is still a tax even if it is defunded.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2013/08/16/the-us-tax-code-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

Butler on Business, August 14, 2013, Subprime lending and your savings

Butler on Business,  August 14, 2013. Topic: subprime lending, is your money safe in pensions and savings, I come on at the 43 minute mark. (10 minutes)
http://host1.cyberears.com//20503.mp3

Austerity, Sub-Prime Lending, and the Safety of Savings Accounts

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell

Austerity has not worked well in the EU if you ask Keynesian economists and supporters; they will tell you that austerity does not work, citing the EU experience. Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and the U.K. governments claimed that austerity measures resulted in stratospheric unemployment rates and slow economic growth.

Jeffrey Dorfman, using data from Eurostat, the official statistics agency of the European Union, and calculating government spending in EU countries between 2008-2012, found that only eight of the 30 countries listed have actually reduced government spending (austerity), most prominently Iceland and Ireland. The elected officials responded to rallies, protests, sit-ins and strikes, by spending more money to appease the masses.  Dorfman reported that the average spending increase has been 4.9 percent, with Greece at 8.3 percent, Spain at 13.3 percent, and Portugal at 5.8 percent. In European countries which have reduced government spending, Iceland, Ireland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, their specific austerity measures have worked. Dorfman concluded, “Austerity cannot have failed in countries where it was never tried.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2013/08/01/austerity-in-europe-it-will-work-if-its-ever-tried/

As far as Greece is concerned, President Obama, following his meeting with the Prime Minister Samaras, downplayed austerity measures. “We cannot simply look to austerity as a strategy. It’s important that we have a plan for fiscal consolidation to manage the debt, but it’s also important that growth and jobs are our focus.” Not to be outdone, Samaras blamed Greece’s economic problems on illegal immigration, “I believe that the problems have to do with illegal immigration, internal turbulence in various countries, and even, unfortunately, the problem of terrorism.” According to Craig Bannister, Samaras called for the U.S. and Europe to “liberalize” their economic potential. http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/craig-bannister/ironies-abound-comments-obama-and-greek-prime-minister

The EU countries continue to be prisoners of the Euro, the common currency of 27 countries that gave up their monetary policy making powers to Brussels and no longer have the luxury to print their own money to extricate themselves from over the top government spending.

The Cyprus lawmakers were confiscatorily creative with their citizens’ money deposited with the Bank of Cyprus. Lawmakers agreed to receive a 13 billion euro loan from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, dubbed the Troika, to bail out Cypriot banks that engaged in poor betting on Greek sovereign debt.

According to Robert Romano, the loan represented 20 percent of Cyprus’ 66.8 billion euro in deposits. Depositors were levied (confiscated) 37.5 percent of savings, with another 22.5 percent confiscation at a later date, in exchange for shares in the Bank of Cyprus. Depositors did not want shares in the Bank of Cyprus that acted so irresponsibly in its financial dealings but had no choice but to accept. http://netrightdaily.com/2013/05/cyprus-lawmakers-finally-agree-to-steal-17-1-billion-of-savings-deposits/

John Kemp said, “Bailing-in depositors with banks in Cyprus is a serious policy error that will destabilize the European banking system and threatens to accelerate bank runs in future.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/18/us-column-kemp-cyprus-bailout-idUSBRE92H0CT20130318

Jose Manuel Barosso, current President of the European Commission, Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, and Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Lithuania, unveiled on August 1, 2013, the new EU plan to deal with the possibility of a bank collapse. 

The German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten) reported on August 7, 2013 that, under this plan, if a bank goes bankrupt, small depositors can only get their money out of the bank after 20 working days, withdrawing in the interim only 100-200 euros per day. The limit on daily withdrawals “may last up to three weeks.” Depositors with accounts larger than 100,000 euros can withdraw their money in full in five days. The EU Council President, Herman von Rompuy, had proposed to let savers wait 4 weeks for their money. http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2013/08/07/neue-eu-regel-sparer-muessen-um-guthaben-unter-100-000-euro-bangen/

The article, “Neue EU-Regel: Sparer müssen um Guthaben unter 100.000 Euro bangen” (New EU Rule: Savers must fear credit under 100,000 euros) warned people who were planning on making major purchases, ran a business, the elderly with big medical expenses, or those who liked to have cash available.

The agreement did not address the contribution of banks into the EU deposit insurance. It is easy to see why Europeans who are informed are spooked about this new infringement into their right to keep the money they’ve earned.

According to John Ward, the new banking rules were implemented “to help protect the taxpayer and move the burden of bailing out the banks onto shareholders and junior debt holders.” It is evident that the junior debt holders would be the depositors who saved their money for a rainy day. Ward calls it “global looting.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, President Obama’s Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Working Group (set up last year) is going after “prosecutions of fraudulent underwriting activity by banks that contributed to the financial crisis.” Criminal investigations of ‘too big to fail banks’ include JP Morgan Chase and Co. and Bank of America who allegedly “failed to disclose risks embedded in $850 million in mortgage-backed securities issued in 2008.”

New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, the co-chair of the Working Group, pointed out the “efforts to hold banks accountable for the crash of the housing market and the collapse of the American economy” five years after the fact.  (Greg Farrell, Phil Mattingly, and Karen Gullo, Moneynews, August 9, 2013)

When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required bailouts after the housing market crash, Fannie and Freddie were bought by the Treasury for $188 billion and the FDIC (a private insurance corporation that insures ‘each depositor to at least $250,000 per insured bank’) absorbed the losses of smaller failed banks.  The biggest banks were bailed out by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System.

President Obama’s Mortgage Initiative’s goal is to get banks to use depositor and investor funds to write 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at affordable rates, assuming the risks the government now bears. According to Peter Morici, the President “won’t admit that in today’s economy mortgages are simply too risky for private investors” who are unwilling to lend to people with less than stellar credit. (Peter Morici, The Hidden Agenda Behind Obama’s Mortgage Initiative, August 9, 2013)

This leaves the possibility of retirement accounts confiscation to solve any financial crisis the government may encounter. Experts agree that there are at least $19.5 trillion in retirement accounts. Some argue that Executive Order 13603, National Defense Resources Preparedness, signed on March 16, 2012, provides the opportunity, the authority, and the framework to allocate any resources, if a national emergency is declared. This executive order gives the President power to allocate commodities, all forms of energy, civil transportation, usable water from all sources, health resources, labor such as military conscription, and “federal officials can issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources.” Allocation could include savings as a resource since the definition of national emergency is very vague.

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that presidential candidate Bill Clinton suggested in 1992 to use “private pension funds to ‘invest’ in government priorities, such as affordable housing, to generate long-term, broad-based economic benefits.” Gramm continued that Clinton’s radical proposal eventually led to the sub-prime mortgage disaster. “Seldom has such a radical proposal been so ignored during a campaign only to later lead to such devastation consequence,” the financial crisis of 2008, the result of “a lot of banks making a lot of loans to a lot of people who either could not or would not pay the money back.” There is plenty of additional blame for the greedy and unscrupulous brokers and realtors who knew they were selling homes to people who did not qualify for a loan and to the Americans who sought the loans they knew they could ill-afford. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579000571334113350.html

Could holding money into retirement accounts be deemed “hoarding?” President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933, “forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.

Roosevelt’s order criminalized the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association, or corporation” under the excuse of hard times. Artists, jewelers, owners of rare collections, and dentists were exempt. Violations of the order were punishable by fines up to $10,000. The Executive Order 6102 was revoked and superseded by Executive Orders 6260 and 6261 of August 28 and 29, 1933 but the confiscation had already taken place.

Because the price of gold for international transactions was set by the Treasury at $35 per ounce, everyone who was forced to surrender personal gold incurred an immediate loss. The government profit which resulted from this confiscation of gold funded the Exchange Stabilization Fund under the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.

Woodrow Wilson’s Executive Order 2697 passed on September 7, 1917, gave the Federal Reserve Bank and the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to regulate the exportation of coin, bullion, and currency, and the Federal Reserve Bank to make decisions whether such exportation is “compatible with the public interest.” How is the “public interest” decided and where does it stop?

How safe is your money? Considering the massive redistribution of wealth in the last five years, the loss of value of savings and pension funds due to low interest rates and the deliberate devaluation of the dollar following endless quantitative easings by Bernanke and the Fed, the picture is not very rosy. The Stock Market is doing well (15,000 level); the Fed purchase of $85 billion worth of bonds every month is artificially propping up the stock market and does not reflect the actual economy.

 

Are You Thin Enough or Fashionable Enough for a Boutique?

 

The Jennifer purse by Tom Ford at Neiman Marcus, the $38,100 Swiss is croc leather.

I don’t know exactly what happened to Oprah Winfrey in the Swiss high-end boutique that allegedly refused to let her look at a $38,100 purse because it was expensive and she could not afford it. The saga turned into an accusation of racism from Oprah’s perspective, and a “she said, we said” from the shop owner’s side.

I do know, based on my frequent travels that most Europeans do not engage in acts of racism; they are elitist socialists embracing multiculturalism to the point of self-destruction.

EU has opened its borders to people from 27 different countries and to a massive exodus from North Africa and the Middle East. They have opened the floodgates of socialist welfare and nationalized medicine to anybody who set foot in Europe, no questions asked, allowing them to set up ghettoes of the countries they’ve fled.

Elitist Europeans do consider themselves superior educationally to Americans and see us as tennis shoe wearing loud idiots who do not understand the fashionable refinement of squeezing our feet in shoes that were only meant for torture and of starving ourselves because food is too expensive to consume. Europeans consider fatness a sign of stupidity and laziness.

The French, dressed in their Sunday best, sip wine and smoke at street side cafes, watching sneaker wearing American tourists with contempt, jealous that they cannot afford to be tourists in America as frequently as Americans are tourists in France.

Most boutiques, including high-end ones, allow customers in by appointment only or are buzzed in if they are thin enough and fashionably dressed enough. Anybody size 8 or larger cannot find clothes in their shops anyway and are considered fat.

I saw a shop in northern Italy dedicated to large women called “La Grassa” (The Fat). It was remarkably crass since most northern Italian women were petite, size 0-4, and looked like they’ve been poured into their black pants, walking fast in stilettoes among cobbled stones.

There is a certain look that a customer in an expensive shop must have, gaunt, skeletal, pale, and dressed in the most expensive clothes money can buy or deliberate rags if he/she is a celebrity. Shopkeepers are paid in commission and they know how to profile and pamper a prospective buyer.

Boutiques often do not allow shoppers to try on clothes since they are afraid the items might be soiled by a person’s body odor. Likewise, touching a very expensive purse would be out of the question for most customers, to protect it from damage.  Race does not play a role. Owners know how to appease and please even the most spoiled and demanding among the very rich.

Europeans are very protective of their personal possessions. For example, Germans would be offended and shocked if a person would ask to borrow their clothes or jewelry to wear for a special occasion. That is a cultural faux pas.

Shop owners and their employees are generally not very patient, courteous, and polite as many sales associates are in the U.S. They do not allow customers ample time to choose items for a purchase. They will often walk away if an American takes more than a few minutes to decide if they will buy something or not.

Furthermore, sales people assume Americans do not speak the language of that country, and make unkind judgmental comments about customers, brazenly in front of them, to nearby colleagues. They do it because they think Americans ignorant and monolingual. I have questioned crude remarks before, if I happened to speak that language, to let them know that it was inappropriate to take advantage of someone who may or may not understand.

European mass consumerism has never risen to the level that it has in the U.S. Sales happen only two times a year in a country like Germany and are highly regulated by the government. They do not want shops offering a sale to have an unfair competition over other shops that do not.

I cannot remember how many times my mother and I were profiled in shops in this country in the 80s when there were few foreigners in the town where we lived. We were followed closely as if we were criminals ready to pounce on their merchandise, while natives were actually stealing from them. One small shop owner actually told us to leave because he did not want our business. It was his business, it was his choice, and I never thought him to be racist or discriminatory in any way. There were plenty other places where we could spend our money.

Abercrombie and Fitch profiles, they want their clothes on “skinny people who are sexy.” They don’t make larger sizes because they don’t want their clothes on fat people. It is their choice. http://fox4kc.com/2013/05/10/abercrombie-fitch-fat-ugly-people-shouldnt-buy-our-clothes/

Clubs of all sorts profile. They have the right to choose who they admit to their membership roster. HOAs profile and choose and pick who they allow to purchase an apartment in their co-ops, even among the very rich. There is a certain pedigree required.

To see profiling in action, walk into a high-end department store in this country, and you will experience the same treatment. And it has nothing to do with race. The women are paid salaries and commissions and have learned to profile your body size, the clothes you wear, the purse you carry, the shoes, the hair cut, the makeup, the jewelry, and, based on such profiling, you may find yourself totally ignored, looked at with contempt, or you may be lavished with fawning attention.

Butler on Business, August 7, 2013

Radio commentary with Alan Butler. I come on at the 43 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//20384.mp3