Category Archives: Poverty

Vote NO!  We Can Do Better Than Prop 101


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Hello, Everybody!

I’d like to take this opportunity to write about the current ballot measure, Tucson’s Proposition 101.

You might not know that we are currently in an election cycle for propositions, as this one is rather unusual in both its timing and its brevity.

However, there have been may flyers circulating letting everyone know that they should vote “yes” on Tucson’s Prop 101.  If you’re not in Tucson, you may not have noticed.  If you’re in Tucson, you must have been flooded with these “YES” messages, and you may want an unbiased perspective.

I’m not that one.

I would like people to vote “NO” on Prop 101 and I can tell you why to vote “NO” on or before this coming Tuesday, the 16th of May.

What Prop 101 Does

In general, though, I think all sides agree to this:

Prop 101 takes money from everyone who buys anything in the Tucson City Limits, by way of an increase in the sales tax of .5% (the total sales tax will jump from 8.1% to 8.6%) for a minimum of five years.

Also, the excess money which is gathered from the sales tax increase will be applied to purchasing more hardware for the city police, and then fire departments, and then the remainder will be used to resurface a few roadways.

Everyone agrees that any monies gathered will not be used to fund higher salaries for TPD officers or fire personnel, nor will it go to fund pensions, nor raises in salaries of those who are currently on the TPD and fire forces.  It will not go to hiring more community police “beat walking” officers, and no money will be allocated to having better TPD training for new and existing officers.

The money will go to more militarization, think war toys, for TPD, primarily.  Tucson should not be taxing the poor to be at war with its citizens.

This means that this piece of legislation is bad for people, bad for police and fire, pad for the poor and middle classes, and bad for tourists and travelers.

Claims Being Made

The backers of Prop 101 claim that this city-authored ballot proposition is primarily for roads: for their repair and resurfacing, although this is in no way true or correct.

What is actually written in the bill is that only 40% of the taxes collected will be used for roads: 24% of the total taxes for major arterials and 16% for residential streets.

What is worse is that there basically *is* no residential plan.  What passes for a plan to resurface residential streets is far to broad and overreaching, not at all specific, and far too ambitious.

Moreover, the RTA is already doing residential resurfacing through the end of the year, which will improve the conditions in the neighborhoods which most need the repairs.

Furthermore, Prop 101 backers continually cite a citizens oversight committee, which they say will dictate where repairs are being made, but this committee is never established in the actual text of the law.  That’s right, there is no provision to create an oversight committee, and City Council will have to meet and establish one, or perhaps not, in which case, no such committee would ever exist.

Given that this tax could be permanent, but would certainly last for five or more years, it is my guess that the City of Tucson is just raising taxes under the guise of street improvements, but may just be using this method to line its own coffers.

Police Militarization

The bulk of the money collected with this new additional tax on all city residents and visitors will actually be used for police.  That’s right, TPD would get the lion’s share of this money, and it is not being used for purposes which would benefit the city as a whole.  Some of this 60% also would presumably go for Tucson Fire, although the numbers are not even close to those given to TPD.

I do not agree that it is just honky-dory to give 60% of this new tax to further more Police Militarization of TPD.

There will be absolutely no money for the officers themselves.  This means that hard-working officers would get zero pay raises, no more money for pensions, and Tucson would have no more foot patrols, or any more money for community policing, which we so desperately need.

This is all just a classic “throw money at it” move without any positive effect to speak of.

In addition, Ward 4 would get most of the new sales tax money allocated for TPD.

Now I, Michael Oatman, am running for City Council in Ward 6, but Ward 6 gets absolutely nothing for TPD, and only gets $700K for one fire station.  This is along side all other wards, which get at least $24 million; WTF?!?!

This Proposition is just straight up BAD for Ward 6, and in no way could I vote other than NO on Prop 101.

You can view the full text of the proposed amendments to the law at the City’s website (https://www.tucsonaz.gov/files/clerks/2017_CIY_-_Special_Election_5-16-17.pdf).

Put An End To Regressive Taxes

This Proposition would raise money by the implementation of an additional one percent sales tax.  Now in general, and in this case specifically, a sales tax is a flat tax, which applies to everyone who purchases any taxable thing within the Tucson City Limits.

There are taxes which are progressive, like the federal income tax (unless el Trumpo changes that), which do not adversely affect those with lower and no or fixed incomes, and disproportionately tax the rich, who can already afford it.

There are also taxes which are regressive, like sales taxes, which tax everyone at the same rate.  This is inherently worse for middle and low income folks since the amount of tax charged to people who cannot afford it removes money from those people who need all the money they can get just to survive.

This is why a flat, or sales, tax is unfair.  Suppose you taxed someone with two million dollars a 50% tax rate (we wish, right?).  They’d still be a millionaire.  But if you taxed someone with only one dollar a 50% tax rate, that person would no longer even be able to take the SunTran bus.

People need a Universal Base Income in order not just to survive, but to thrive.  It is simply cruel to tax that.

For this reason, regressive taxes like a sales tax are inherently unfair to poor and middle income people, unless of course the law is written so that part of the money collected under the unfair sales tax goes to support those people with low and middle incomes.

This proposition includes no such provision.  With this sales tax increase, Tucson City is telling everyone that they do not give a crap about poor people or the middle class, which is pretty much everybody in Tucson.  What a great idea, NOT!

By passing this proposition, Tucson is making poor people pay for ever-increasing TPD militarization, which should not be happening in the first place!

An Election So Soon?

Now actually, I am a fan of short voting cycles, say, when it comes to electing the President: I think we do not need to drag it out for two or more years.  But the election cycle has to be *at least* a month at the very minimum for it *not* to be some sort of “sneaky election”.  In reality, this election cycle spans all of just three weeks!  This is a total sham which is being rammed through in no time, because if people had more time to vote, they would, and they would certainly vote NO! on Prop 101.

As a matter of fact, this election cycle was so sudden and brief, that in the election pamphlet itself, sent to voters by mail, there was simply no time for anyone to write an article supporting a “NO” vote or position on Prop 101.  Talk about sneaky.

The Democrats who support this chicanery are out of touch, and for that matter, so is the Tucson Weekly, as is obviously the Arizona Daily Star, who all somehow support a yes vote, despite the detriment to their consituents.

It is my conviction that the people of Tucson in general, and particularly those residing in Ward VI, can do far better for ourselves than by what is proposed in Tucson Proposition 101.  Please always vote, and certainly Vote NO! on Tuesday, May 16th!

SO PLEASE GO VOTE!  And Please Vote NO on Prop 101!

Thank you for all that you do,
Michael Oatman

 

Green Party of Pima County
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2017
The Green Party of Pima County joins a growing coalition to call for a “NO VOTE” on Proposition 101.
“The City of Tucson is asking voters to consider a half-cent sales tax increase over the next five years. The funds collected over the five-year period would be split with $100 million being used to restore, repair, and resurface City streets, and $150 million would be spent on vehicles, equipment, and facilities for the Tucson Police Department and Tucson Fire Department.”

 

The Green Party of Pima County, the Tucson Bus Riders Union, LUPE Tucson, Tucson SURJ, Black Lives Matter Tucson, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance unite in calling for a “NO” vote on Proposition 101.
This growing coalition of organizations agree that we need city funding to go towards a sustainable future and a community that is socially just to all.
Unfortunately, Proposition 101 is neither.  Instead of clean, affordable mass transit, Prop 101 will focus on supporting the decaying fossil fuel economy that is contributing to pollution, disease, and the global climate crisis.
In addition, instead of providing funding to make Tucson more secure for its people by providing a municipal I.D., local health services, schools, parks, youth jobs, recreational activities, and affordable public transportation, Prop 101 focuses on increased funding for a police department that repeatedly violates people’s constitutional rights. Prop 101 would fund a 27 million dollar new Southside police sub station and 4.6 million dollar new Southeast annex, yet this information is notably absent from most of the promotional materials for this proposition.

 

“Using a sales tax to increase funding for the police is an unfair burden on poor people and communities of color to pay for something that targets and surveils them. More policing means higher incarceration rates for poor people and communities of color, contributing to things like the school to prison pipeline”, says Edward Cott from LUPE Tucson.
Tucson requires bold and visionary solutions if we are to leave a livable world to the next generation and beyond and Prop 101 falls short by a long shot.

#  #  #

CONTACTS :  
Eduardo Quintana
eduardohqf@gmail.com  520-360-8710
 
Lena Rothman

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Filed under City Council, City Council, Classism, Debt & Defecit, Election, Government Intrusion, Green Party, Local Government, Poverty, really, Reform, Sales Tax, Tax Code, Tucson, Tucson Weekly

Some Of Michael’s Presidential Campaign Platform

Here are some concepts which I am proud to make part of my 2016 Presidential Campaign Platform. I will be expanding these and other topics as the Campaign progresses, so please check back often for updates. So please sit back, read and enjoy, and imagine the bright shining beacon on the hill that our great nation could be when we actually accomplish all of these things.

End Gerrymandering – US House and State Assemblies’ districts should be independently redrawn to follow County or Municipal boundaries where possible, and otherwise be as square as possible while retaining equal numbers of eligible voters per district, following every US decadal census. We may need a US Constitutional Amendment to withstand a SCOTUS challenge, but federal legislation should suffice.

Build Out Green Infrastructure – Similar to the WPA and other 1930s agencies, we need to nationally create Sustainable Green Jobs by: rebuilding the electric grid to smart grid standards with built-in load balancing and storage, and incorporating all three national grid systems; rebuilding the federal and state highway systems to 20-year and bridges to 100-year lifetimes; replacing all nuclear plants with LFTR / Molten Salt Core Reactors; retrofitting commercial buildings with solar and light- and water-saving measures; using all coal stack outputs to create algal oil, and otherwise sequestering all major industrial carbon outputs; using the land in the Nellis / DOE Site to provide a massive area for solar panels whose energy would be added to the grid; developing wind, tidal and wave energy sources wherever possible; providing home solar and battery power for all residential owners interested; building out Gigabit Ethernet in all metropolitan areas, and incentivizing the broadband and telecom industries to provide the same service for all rural residents and businesses nationwide; plugging or eliminating methane leaks in fracking and other oil wells, and working to eliminate coal burning, mining, fracking and oil drilling altogether; recycling to an extent that we can nationally “close the loop” on all waste streams; and performing any other projects in the public interest as they should arise.

Return To Fair Trade – End NAFTA / CAFTA / WTO / GATT / TPP and all other free trade agreements and replace them with tariffs and Fair Trade policies which actually help workers in the US, and in developing countries; strengthen Unions in the US and internationally, while ending corruption in trade organizations; increase Primary and Secondary Public School Teacher Pay to three times the poverty level at lowest; and enforce commodity pricing structures to end price gouging for energy commodities like gasoline, heating oil and electric service.

Restrict Globalist Corporations – Require that all businesses engaging in sales to any US citizen from the US: be based in the US and pay taxes commensurate to the earnings of that business for its practices in the US; hire its final production workers from the pool of workers in the US; and where US hiring is unfeasible, pay a living wage to international workers and ensure Union standard working conditions in all international supply facilities.

Legalize And Tax Marijuana – Remove Cannabis, Hemp and all related plants and products from the DEA Drug Schedules (not on Schedule I nor II nor III nor IV nor V); promote the growth of Hemp and the manufacture, sale and export of Hemp-based products; create and enforce a federal taxation system for the growth, trade, manufacture and sale of cannabis and cannabis-based products; require the FDA to oversee safety of all inhalable and edible cannabis and cannabis-based products; and promote the use of cannabis and cannabis-based products over products based on either nicotine or alcohol.

End Homelessness – Require all homes which are on the market for more than one year be federally purchased at assessed value for use by those who are chronically homeless, at a zero starting rent to the new resident(s); encourage the building of housing to accommodate all resident groupings in the US; fit the homes as best as possible to match the needs of those who are in need (match homeless families to homes with an appropriate number of bedrooms and a yard; match homeless urban singles to apartments in city centers, etc.); allow for mental health counseling and evaluation for those in need or in want; seek to fit mentally and physically capable residents with appropriate Green Infrastructure Jobs; charge no more than 25% of residents’ incomes per unit as rent; allow lease terms for as long as the residents’ needs be present or until resident chooses to relocate; and assist in relocation where possible.

Reduce The Military Industrial Complex – Reduce the number of Aircraft Carrier Fleets from 11 to six; reduce dependence on private military contractors; require stringent standards relating to performance, carbon footprint, efficiency and ROI/cost for all private military contractors; and require that all branches of the US Armed Forces be carbon-neutral by 2020.

The following are portions of Bernie Sanders’ campaign platform with which I fully agree:

Income and wealth inequality: In the United States today we have the most unequal wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth — worse than at any time since the 1920s. This is an economy that must be changed in fundamental ways.

Jobs and income: In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.

Campaign finance reform: As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, American democracy is being undermined by the ability of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families. These wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice. We need to overturn Citizens United and move toward public funding of elections so that all candidates can run for office without being beholden to the wealthy and powerful.

Climate change: Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

College affordability: Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.

Health care: Shamefully, the United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. Health care is a right, not a privilege.

Poverty: The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.

Tax reform: We need real tax reform which makes the rich and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands.

Thank you all for your support!
Michael Oatman
2016 Presidential Candidate
http://MichaelOatman.info/
2016@MichaelOatman.info

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Filed under Banking, Bernie Sanders, Corporate, Debt & Defecit, Education, Election, Energy, Energy & Jobs, Environment, Jobs, Legalization, National Election, Poverty, Tax Code

Liars, Liars Everywhere, And Not A Brain To Think!

Romney’s VP Ryan seems to have a similar memory affliction to Romney and Reagan, or perhaps they all just lie an awful much

Michael Oatman (G) Endorses Gary Johnson (L) for President!

You know, I was going to do all that research and fact-checking by myself, but thankfully, some people beat me to it.

There are many, many of these posts on the internet, so you could Google them or just try these:

Actually, what came up on my Google search of "paul ryan convention speech lies and more lies abound" was even more informative.

Well, that’s it for now.

Have fun not voting for Romney / Ryan, oh and don’t worry…  Next week, I will be equally as hard on Obama — it’s just that the angry sore losers, bigots and racists went first this year.

Gary Johnson (L) For President in 2012!
If you listened to my most recent TV Show on the 17th of August this year, you would know that I am endorsing Gary Johnson (L) who was the Governor of New Mexico a few years back.  I’ll be doing an election special on Illegal Knowledge TV in two months for more information about why I support him.

Please vote for him, since you will be literally throwing your vote away if you vote for either Romney or Obama.

This is also not to mention that you are voting against your self-interests if you vote for anyone except Gary Johnson (L) or Jill Stein (G).  The reason here is that it has been obvious that Obama is simply continuing Bush’s policies on building a fascist federal government which stealthily removes your liberties in no one’s name, and to think that Romney will not exhibit the same cronyism from the Cheney/Bush era is to simply bury your head in the sand.

If the Global Elites can give you a false choice between two equally destructive candidates and shut everyone else out, they will get their way, which is to force all but the top 0.0001% into global slavery by utilizing their global tyranny for which you voted.  We need two new parties and the Libertarians and Greens (not to mention The Truth Party) seem to be pretty fine candidates!  Again, do not throw you vote away!

See you soon!  Vote Gary Johnson (L) in 2012!  I’ll be running again in 2016!

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Filed under Bailouts, Banking, Bullying, Classism, Conventions 2012, Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Debt & Defecit, Election, Endorsment, Gary Johnson, GOP, Government Intrusion, Homophobia, Jobs, National Election, Poverty, Reagan, Romney

Truth, Transparency & Trust: We Need It, And In the FDA

Genetic Hybridization has been a long standing pillar of those who use farming, herding and ranching to supply their means to make a living.  Unfortunately, it is no longer the “mom and pop” farms which manufacture the bulk of this nation’s produce.

Since the development of global agribusiness, which has been steadily encroaching upon the local output of the total production base of livestock, fruits and vegetables since the 1980s, the one agency which has been slated to regulate the quality of these consumer items, the Federal Drug Administration (as well as the USDA), has been rendered wholly toothless as a result of the incessant putsch for deregulation, perpetrated by those who stand to gain the most in the business.

Now, and particularly within the last 10 years, GMO foods (GMO is Genetically Modified Organisms) have penetrated our supermarkets, and GMOs are present in pretty much all non-organic preprocessed foods.

We are now exposed to more GMOs in our foods and produce than ever before, with little to no oversight of what actually comprises them.  We know that right now, most corn (corn and canola oil), alfalfa, soybeans (soy, soy lectin), sugar beets (sugar other than pure cane sugar), papayas, cotton (cotton seed oil), yellow squash, and some kinds of non-organic Golden Rice are either wholly or partially composed of GMOs (see the list).  All meat products produced in the US, since they are all fed 100% GMO feed stocks, are essentially 100% GM meats.  I think it’s time to go vegan.  Organic Vegan, that is.

We also know that somewhere in the neighborhood of 93% of Americans support the labeling of GM products.  Europe (the EU) already requires labeling of GM foods, and since the mid 2000s, the EU has banned most types of GMOs from being grown or produced within its boundaries.

So why does this matter?  Let’s go back into history a little bit.

In 1901, Monsanto was founded.  It started off making an artificial sweetener called Saccharin, which it marketed to Coca-Cola.  In the 1920s, Monsanto started producing vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin, and basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and rubber processing chemicals.

Odd that a company which makes food additives would also be making sulfuric acid (which will eat through your skin) and rubber processing chemicals (which can kill you), isn’t it?

Since the 1940s, Monsanto become a leading manufacturer of plastics, including polystyrene, synthetic fibers, the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, Agent Orange, the artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet), bovine somatotropin (bovine growth hormone or BST), PCBs, LEDs, 2,4-D, BT-Toxin, and most profitably, Round-Up and Round-Up resistant GM seeds.

Obviously, DDT (an “insecticide”) and Agent Orange (a “defoliant”) are no longer being produced, but 2,4-D is a very close cousin to Agent Orange, and what the BT-Toxin does to insects makes DDT look humane.  BT-Toxin is a GM toxin which alters the DNA of insects so that their internal organs turn to gel and explode.  Somebody at Monsanto really has it in for bugs, huh?  They put this stuff in Round-Up, and the GM seeds which are constructed to be Round-Up resistant have this same GM BT-Toxin in them.  It has been shown that when GM plants grown with these BT-Toxin-infused genes are consumed by some animals, the bacteria in those animals’ stomachs get their DNA altered so that they become miniature BT-Toxin factories.  Yes, that’s pretty gross, right?

So it is conceivable that if you eat enough, say, GM corn chips, your stomach bacteria will start producing BT-Toxin, causing your stomach to explode, just like the insects.  This will cause a very painful, and very certain death.  Maybe somebody at Monsanto really has it in for everyone who eats their GM seeds, actually.  Just as an aside, there were several Monsanto scientists who, having learned from their research the effects of BT-Toxin in the feeds which were then fed to cows, stopped buying non-organic beef and milk altogether, and one even went so far as to buy his own milk cow.

Now, it should be noted that they did have some help, from the inside.

From Wikipedia:

  • Justice Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto in the 1970s.  Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the 2001 Supreme Court decision J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. which found that “newly developed plant breeds are patentable under the general utility patent laws of the United States.”  This case benefited all companies which profit from genetically modified crops, of which Monsanto is the largest.
  • Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner before he left to work for a law firm on gaining FDA approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone in the 1980s.  Taylor then became deputy commissioner of the FDA from 1991 to 1994.  After he went back to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy, Taylor was later re-appointed to the FDA in August 2009 by President Barack Obama.
  • Dr. Michael A. Friedman was a deputy commissioner of the FDA before he was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto.
  • Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before she was a vice president at Monsanto from 1995 to 2000.  In 2001, Fisher became the deputy administrator of the EPA.
  • Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co., which Monsanto purchased in 1985.  Rumsfeld personally made at least $12 million USD from the transaction.

One would wonder why the Republicans wanted to get rid of the EPA under Dubya, when their corporate cronies were actually running it, at least from afar, and mostly from the inside.

Not only this, but Michael Taylor is currently heading the FDA and has been appointed Food Czar by none other than Obama.  With Taylor leading the FDA, giving the FDA more money will not help unless all vestiges of Monsanto are removed from government.  Taylor will undoubtedly just continue to green light all Monsanto foods, without regard to the health and safety of the people who are eating the food.

And as for the poor who live on USDA subsidies?  Well, just talk about shoving it down their throats….

To achieve the Truth, Transparency & Trust which are required of the FDA, Taylor must go, along with Obama, and we must replace the void with real leadership who have actual respect, and not this apparent disdain, for We The People.

But all is not yet lost.

There is also a California Initiative to require labeling of all GM foods.  The theory is that food producers would rather not admit to the US public that they have GMOs in the foods they make, and rather than label them, the food producers would rather remove the GM ingredients from all their foods than admit they were there in the first place, and Monsanto will simply go out of business or something.

Now you would think that passing this initiative would be a no-brainer, but lobbying and false advertising by Monsanto have defeated a similar initiative in Oregon not but a few years ago.  Monsanto has and will claim that the companies who produce the food will have to charge, look out, way more money to print new labels, and therefore the food will become, oh, so much more expensive.  Pity then for the poor consumer, no, no.

The opposite is actually true. Not to mention that food producers change their labels all the time with no increase in consumer cost, the labels will not change (since the food producers will not want those labels on their foods), and the food producers will actually save money by not having to pay Monsanto extra money to put their GM foods in the food producers’ products in the first place.  Labeling is a win-win for everyone but Monsanto.  That must be why they at Monsanto really have it in for us.

Then there is SB 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.  This act will require little oversight by the FDA of GMOs, will encourage GMOs to be added to foods, will require organic farmers to submit to a litany of overburdensome regulations regarding the supposed “safety” of their foods which have been perfectly safe for millennia, and will actually outright prohibit anyone from growing their own food in their own garden.  If you grow food, you go to jail.

No, unfortunately, I am absolutely serious.  I wish I was kidding.

So obviously, SB 510 needs to be stopped in its tracks, and we need to get its sponsors and supporters out of office.  Immediately.  You really have to wonder if this is yet another Bilderberg ploy to cull more of the population.  Getting death into our foods would easily enable them to take out all but one of fourteen.

In the meantime, please protect yourself by making sure that you never buy GMO foods.  Please check out:

for more information, and remember, as always:

With Knowledge and Love, We Can All Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

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Filed under Corporate, Corporate Corruption, Education, Environment, Foods, General, Government Intrusion, Poverty, Reform

On HSBC, Federal Reserve, CIA, Drugs, Leaders and Future Wars

It is truly about time someone put this all together.  Fortunately, I stand on the shoulders of giants.  Mr. Corsi is one.

Sources:  Jerome R. Corsi (in 3 articles: 1, 2, 3) and Coast To Coast AM interview with Corsi

I had a dream the other day, well, night, that I was attempting to extract snakes from the proverbial grass.  This imagery may have been brought on by the many recent news reports of an abundance of pythons within the everglades, or perhaps you could think of the serpent in E.DIN.

Someone was standing a few yards away from me (and was helping me get at these snakes) and would pull the head of their snake from their side, but then mine would retreat simultaneously from my grasp on the head end which I was handling, and conversely, when I would pull, their snake would retreat.

Somehow, a machete materialized in my hand and I began to hack away at the grass and weeds in which the snake was hiding, as did my compatriot.  Eventually we managed to hack away at the grass to a large enough extent that we could spot other snakes hiding in the weeds as well.

As we continued to pull and hack away, it became apparent that both of the ends of our snakes were somehow tied together, so that we were actually pulling on the same two headed snake.  As we cleared more brush it became even more apparent that all of the snakes which were present in the weeds were actually part of the same animal.

Then the ground shook, the brushy area in front of us bulged upward, and out of the soil arose a stone granite Medusa-head, atop of which all the snakes were joined.  I was taken aback, but that was where the dream ended as I woke up.  I mulled it over, and went back to sleep to a different, slightly less weird dream.

The next night, Jerome Corsi was on Coast.

For any of you who still have not heard (of) Coast to Coast AM (formerly with Art Bell, now with George Noory), I strongly suggest that you wiki it or just go visit the website.  In the first two hours of the show, Corsi was on, and he spoke of receiving about a thousand pages of documents from a HSBC Banking employee turned whistleblower named John Cruz.

As Corsi told it, Cruz started out life being poor, his mother having died and his father having left the family.  Living with his grandparents, he got through school and then worked his way up through positions in various banks until he got a break working to expand the client base and clients’ services for HSBC in 2008.  He was finally paid rather well at HSBC.

Cruz worked at the NYC branch of HSBC and was given business client account information for which he was to use to contact clients and attempt to have those clients purchase more services from HSBC.  He was basically a mid-level marketing guy with access to business accounts.

In the course of performing these duties, Cruz discovered that about 90% of the accounts he received were either fraudulent or suspicious.  That is, when he would attempt to contact any of these clients, say, at their businesses, he would find the business did not exist (think barren weeded warehouses), or that there would be no obvious activity happening (no office furniture, no workers, you get the picture).  When he contacted individuals, those people were unaware that their names were being used in conjunction with a business, and those people were either past HSBC customers or victims of identity fraud through credit cards.

Since numerous laws including the PATRIOT ACT required Cruz to notify at least one of his superiors of these many breaches in practice and law, if not other regulatory agencies as well, he went ahead and did so, lest he be seen as the one breaking the law.  After all, he liked his job at that point.

Well, this is what got Cruz fired not but two years after landing the job, for “poor performance”.  One wonders how one could perform well with only 10% of a client base with which to work.

When he brought these cases up to management, he was told that there was no problem and that he was imagining it, and when he went to HSBC security, they told Cruz they were “prevented by executive senior management of the bank from doing anything about accounts like this”.

Cruz noted that these accounts were being used to transfer via telephone (never with checks) large sums of money — in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars — to and from accounts which were not on record with the bank.  This, Cruz guessed, would total something easily into the billions or even low trillions of dollars of money laundering.  Cruz further guessed, probably correctly, that HSBC senior management knew of and was participating in and likely profiting from the scheme.  “From what I saw, I came to suspect HSBC had become the Mexican drug cartels’ bank of choice,” he said.

So at this point, I’m thinking, “maybe I should check out my local HSBC Bank branch to see whether there is an account worth millions in my name.”  I’m thinking we all should check on this, just to be certain, and withdraw all funds if there is.

Cruz started wearing a wire, on his own, and copied about a thousand pages of documentation of the suspected laundering activity.  After recording conversations with management, he took his case to Jeremy Scileppi, bureau chief of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office on Long Island.

“Scileppi was no more interested in hearing what I had to say than was the HSBC senior bank management,” Cruz said.  “I got stonewalled.  That’s when I decided to write a book.”

Titled “World Banking World Fraud: Using Your Identity,” Cruz’s book was published on 7 October 2011.  Cruz then took his book and documents to Corsi, who talked about them on the Coast show on 6 February 2012.

That’s where it all gets interesting.

Corsi used to be in banking, before becoming an investigative journalist, and Corsi loves whistleblowers.

Corsi, on Coast, mentioned that there would be no way that such millions would be able to be transferred with such regularity to or from any bank, much less the London-based HSBC, without attracting the attention of the US-based Federal Reserve Banking System.

Now the Federal Reserve is not a government agency, but is a collection of private banks organized in a system with tight, and basically illegal, control over the United States currency supply.  So I agreed with Corsi; the Fed must have known about this, and if so, then they were obviously just as well involved in the money laundering and illegal profiteering.  After all, no sane person would let that many billions or trillions slide without at least taking a cut, unless they were being blackmailed or something.

So now to recap; we have the drug cartels laundering the drug money from the drug users in the United States through HSBC (and perhaps other institutions like PayPal and AmEx — see Corsi’s third article), while HSBC and the Fed take a cut and let the process go unhindered.  How many snakes is that?

So how does Corsi or Cruz for that matter know it was drug money?  Well, maybe it’s not, but who else makes that much money in that short of a period of time (I know, Big Pharma and Big Oil) and still needs to launder it through ficticious accounts?  (Right, drug cartels.)

And all the HSBC high level executives know about this?  Undoubtedly.  Will it be investigated?  Well, hopefully; let’s find out.  This should be one of the biggest news stories of 2012.  But will it be?  Again….

Now, you may ask, does Fed Chair Ben Bernanke know about this?  Quite possibly.  Do the individual twelve Fed Bank Chiefs know?  Almost certainly.  Does US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner know?  Maybe.  How about Dubya or Obama?  Hmmmm….  I wonder.

But I know who absolutely has to know, since it is their job to know these things, and that is the CIA.  And if the CIA knows, you can bet the FBI is out of the loop.  Corsi agrees with me using other logic.

Corsi figures that at least $2T (that’s two trillion dollars) annually goes to the US black market in drug use.  That might seem high, considering spreading that total out over the US population of 400M people gives you $5000 spent annually per person.  But then I thought about all those Wall Street Bankster and Hollywood Insider parties Featuring Charlie Sheen, and Corsi might be about right.  I’m going to leave Corsi in the dust for the rest of this article, though.

The CIA has a number of “Black Ops” (programs or operations which are to be kept secret from the public, like the Bin Laden raid) that need to be funded every year.  The problem with funding black ops is that by publicly funding them, even by just stating the actual total of the funding, you make the black ops a little less black.  So what does the CIA do to counter this problem?  They “earn” the money needed to fund their black ops.  Blackly.

We’re not talking about bake sales here.

The LA Times did an article about ten years back detailing how the crack cocaine epidemic was started in LA because the drug was created by the CIA (just add baking soda?) to fund a CIA black op in Nicaragua, giving arms and other support (like mining Contra ports) to the Sandinista government to keep the fight going between the US-publicly-backed Contras and the Sandinistas, so that more US taxpayer money could be thrown at the Nicaraguan civil war.  War costs more if you do it longer.  This is also good for banks.  The CIA also helped to intensify the US War on Drugs using this same operation (thereby providing even more money for various LEOs).  This is a great dual example of the use of the Hegelian Dialectic.  You can wiki any and all of this.

At any rate, the CIA was actively involved in selling drugs.  It still is (why are we in Afghanistan?  Opium!).  It has found that line of business quite profitable historically and quite useful when it comes to funding their black ops, and keeping that funding black.

And those are just two examples.  The CIA created the Mujahadeen (precursors of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda), and therefore the “war on terrorism”.  The CIA was deeply involved in the coup d’etat which in 1953 overthrew the popularly elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh so that they could install the Shah into absolute power, which immediately benefited Big Oil, setting the stage for the 1979 Iranian revolution which brought the Ayatollah and his Shiite successors to power, to now threaten Israel with nukes.  The CIA even created an asset (a person who will carry out tasks for the CIA when asked), internally known as Tim O’Brien, although most of us knew him as Osama Bin Laden (the CIA trained him in Egypt).

So you see, as it turns out, the CIA has quite a good track record (or bad, depending on who you ask) of getting the “correct” leaders in power using drugs and drug money directly, or indirectly through funding their operations.  In this case, correct means that those leaders will willfully do your bidding, or, in this case, the bidding of the CIA and the Bilderberg Group.

If you do not know what the Bilderberg Group is and who composes it, I again very strongly suggest that you read up on that, right nowI’ll save your place, just close the new tab or window after you’re done.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay, you’re back.  So now I take it that you have figured out that the Bilderbergers are an insanely wealthy group of oligarchs intent on world domination and a return to feudalism and serfdom for the rest of us who are not to be simply killed off, while they pursue life extension technologies and get to fly to other planets on our cool black triangular shaped AGV craft, right?  What, didn’t you read the part about the Georgia Guidestones?  Okay, I’ll wait; read the ten inscriptions, please.

All right then, let’s recap again.  Let’s see if I can get this right.

So the Bilderbergers who want to control everything, and who do control politicians of all parties in most countries, along with the CIA, and by extension most militias, wars, conflicts, and whatnot, do so all for the benefit of the banks, the owners of which mostly comprise the members in the Bilderberg Group.  The CIA uses the drug money which is laundered through these same banks (which create economic crises to make those already rich even richer) to accomplish the goals of the Bilderbergers, of which Ben Bernanke is a member, and all of whom directly benefit in both power and money from these processes.  I’ll bet anyone ten grand (even Romney) that there are about 3,600 snakes on that Medusa head.

So now we are all talking about a war between Israel and Iran.  I heard the other day that someone in the US government suggested that it was actually Iran that flew the airplanes into the WTC towers.  I guess Iran must have flown that invisible plane into 7 WTC.  No, silly, it was Pakistan’s ISI (their CIA) and Israel’s Mossad (their CIA) who organized the whole thing.  Aside from the fact that at least 13 of the 19 supposed terrorists turned up alive since 9/11 (yes, true, again, look it up), most of those suspected terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, and the others from Pakistan, with one from Afghanistan.  That, of course, is why we had to invade Afghanistan, and then Iraq.  What now, Iran?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt made sure that our aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor and that the radar was down for repair on the morning of 7 December 1941 because his New Deal policies were not pulling the US out of depression, and he figured that a full-scale war with Germany, Italy and Japan could recreate the manufacturing base required to reinvigorate the US economy.  It turned out that he was right about the economy, but it did not prevent him from committing Treason that day.

The trouble making that 2012 analogy is that war between Iran and Israel would undoubtedly involve Russia and then China, and barring a new wave of isolationism within the US, it would involve our nation as well, and would very likely go nuclear, since Israel has built up quite a stockpile of nukes over the last 26 years since Mordechai Vannanu started reporting on it.

If we legalized drugs, regulated and taxed them, we would have plenty of money to give to Iran to stop them from developing nukes, not to mention for jobs, education, green energy development, ending poverty, social security and really whatever, but where would the CIA get all the black money for their black ops?  Into what new nefarious ventures might they delve, hurting everyone in the process?  Not that I’m arguing against legalization, because I’m not, but perhaps the CIA and all the Banksters are just too expensive to keep around.  I will need a body double before I travel to Dealey Plaza.

If the CIA wants to do something which is actually useful, it should get the Iranian Green Revolution which started in February 2010 into power, since most Iranians, by a landslide, do not want war with Israel.  No one who I know here wants war with Iran.  But then again, no one I know is a Bilderberger.  They want a situation where every 13 out of 14 people living now will be dead.  You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”  Well do ya, punk?

We cannot begin another Great Game, this time with Persia as the prize.

The problem is that we are making a repeat performance of the events leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq in late 2002 and 2003, and while I suspect that Iran is actually enriching uranium and to a lesser degree plutonium to produce weapons-grade materiel, I think it would be wisest in this case to offer to lift all sanctions and restore diplomatic relations with Iran only if they would turn over all nuclear production to Russia and/or the IAEA, so that it could be used only for peaceful power generation.  In fact, I think it would be even more wise to convince Iran to drop the nuclear program altogether and pursue wind, wave, solar and tidal energies exclusively, just like we should do, and just like Germany is doing already.

The nightmare would be the prescribed culling of the population to 500 million via a nuclear WWIII, but that would be letting the snakes win, and I still have a machete.

I actually do quite often have prognosticative dreams which turn out to be metaphorical, and occasionally literal.  More often, they have happier endings, but there is no reason this one cannot have an ending where the figurative Medusa head is obliterated.

That kind of stuff/people absolutely hate(s) it when you shine the Light of Truth on it/them.

With the Light of Truth and Love, We All Will Take The Power Back!

Vote Green!!!  Vote Oatman!!!

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Filed under Banking, Corporate Corruption, Education, Energy, General, Government Intrusion, International, Iran Crisis, Jobs, Legalization, Poverty, Reform

At Last, GOP Admits They Want Slavery

Source:  Huffington Post

I’m not quite sure who at Huff Post didn’t manage to catch this the first time around.

From the above cited article:

The politicians pushing drug testing disagree. In South Carolina, where the unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, well above the national average of 8.5 percent, Republicans want the nation’s toughest requirements: blanket drug testing of every applicant for unemployment benefits and compulsory volunteer work for the long-term jobless.

Now, I don’t know if I need to give you the definition of the word “volunteer”, but I’ll give you the link.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/volunteer

Of course, the issue here is that Republicans want to mandate “compulsory volunteer work” for those on unemployment insurance.  Well, if, to volunteer, you must be actively willing to do whatever it is, then how exactly is the oxymoronic phrase “compulsory volunteer work”, presumably where, since the work would be compulsory (so you would not actually be volunteering, but would be mandated to work, and to work at no pay at that), how is it not an exact description of slavery?

With slavery, it is mandated that people perform work without pay, and with “compulsory volunteer work”, it would be mandated that people perform work without pay.  Ergo, “compulsory volunteer work” is just a euphemism for slavery.

Finally, the Republicans admit what everyone has been thinking.

The GOP wants to go back to the “good ole days”, um, where slavery was legal?  Really?  But there it is, in black and white, for all to see.  The GOP wants us all to be slaves.  I knew it.

Wait one minute.  If the GOP wants to go back and make us all “volunteer” slaves, could they perhaps get a few non-profits together that had people picking cotton and tobacco, and maybe even vegetables in the fields?  That way, the GOP could kill the DREAM Act, have their border fences, and not have to pay for any housecleaning and gardening labor.  They could still prevent any economic recovery, since all of us who were out of work would have to volunteer for the already rich, who, after all could pay for these jobs, but if they have slaves, then why bother?

This all has to do with the notion that the GOP thinks that anyone who is poor is on drugs, and that those people receiving any form of public assistance must be poor, and therefore on drugs.  I don’t know, but if I were to work for those assholes, I would need to be on drugs.

First of all, those people who get unemployment insurance (UI) are able to do so because they were just recently employed, and through no fault of their own, they were laid off, downsized, outsourced, or what have you, generally by an already rich Republican.  The money which pays for UI does not come from the individual taxpayer in the first place.  It comes from a tax on corporations which would never be given back to the corporation if left unpaid to the UI recipient, and generally comes out of the allocated employee salary funds from that former employer, so it really is the UI recipient’s money to begin with.

I know for a fact that there are quite a few Republicans who are employed and who use drugs (Rush Limbaugh to name one).  If there are individuals who are employed and who use drugs with the money they earn, it is their business (beyond the scope of not getting busted with the drugs, should they be illegal).  So if someone on UI wants to spend a portion of that retained earned income on drugs, it should be no one else’s business but the UI recipient’s.

The GOP nationwide in the states’ legislatures and in US Congress has been pushing for enactment of legislation which would remove welfare, TANF, SNAP, and UI recipients from having the ability to receive their checks unless they are able to pass a mandated random drug test.  Oh, and by the way, the recipient has to pay for the test.  I thought the GOP was against individual mandates, or perhaps that is just when it suits them.  One law in Florida mandating these measures was struck down because it clearly violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.

This all caught my eye because there is some pushback from the Democrats who are essentially saying that if you are going to test people who get public money (still not sure why they include UI), then we ought to be testing everyone who gets public money, including state and federal representatives.  Maybe not oddly, but at least effectively, this move made some of the GOP sponsors of the bills withdraw them, in what seems to be a direct admission of hypocrisy by the GOP.

Yes, once the Democrats pushed back by amending the bills so that the GOP bill sponsors would also have to get tested, those Republicans decided that the measure was not such a good idea after all.

I think that if we were going to institute this policy, it would be a good idea to make sure that ALL public money, like corporate banking bailouts for instance, will only go to people who have tested negative for illegal drug use, particularly cocaine, MDMA, and maybe ketamine in their case.  Oh, and how about all those oil subsidies?  No drugs for them.  No more partying with the regulators for you, Big Oil!  Imagine how much money this would save.  Do you really think the oil and banking barons would give up their drugs for public money?  I doubt it.

And the next time you see some sort of whacked-out SOPA/PIPA/NDAA/EEA type of legislation come out of Congress, well, test them too.

Vote Legalization!  Vote Green!  Vote Oatman!

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Filed under Bailouts, Banking, Corporate, Government Intrusion, Green Party, Jobs, Mandatory Drug Testing, Poverty, Reform, Unemployment Insurance