Fire Walk With Me
Fire Walk With Me's JournalForbes: 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National Conversation
Kimberly Boldt ?@FederalistNo2
Forbes: 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National Conversation
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/ … #policestate
The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America.
Add to this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September:
[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”
These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”
(More at the link. Remember that this "homeland security" scam has a $1 trillion budget and some are becoming very, very rich from it, while simultaneously installing a firewall against protest and uprising.)
There are two important factors regarding the DHS/TSA which are rarely taken into consideration:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022486390
Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office
BREAKING: 26 arrested at Transcanada office occupation outside Boston
http://climate-connections.org/2013/03/11/breaking-26-arrested-at-transcanada-office-occupation-outside-boston/
Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters are risking arrest for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.
Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” the protesters held flowers and sang an elegy as they marched in procession. Massachusetts Methodist clergy members and a group of mothers holding photographs of their children joined the youth in protest.
The action marked a sharp escalation of the protests in New England against the Keystone XL pipeline. In January, eight students locked and glued themselves at the same TransCanada office. Nationwide, the pipeline has already prompted civil disobedience outside the White House, direct blockades of construction, and the largest climate rally in US history. Todays action kicks off a week of solidarity actions being called for by our allies at the Tar Sands Blockade. During the Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action, March 16th-24th protestors from across the country will target the offices of TransCanada and its investors.
The protesters staged the funeral a week after the US State Department released a widely criticized Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline. While admitting that rejecting the pipeline would have little effect on jobs, the document minimizes claims about the pipeline’s impact on climate change and on communities who would be at risk for devastating pipeline spills like the 2010 Kalamazoo spill, from which the affected communities are still recovering. The impact assessment also makes the assumption that the Alberta tar sands will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward—an assumption not shared by today’s protesters and refuted by indigenous communities whose treaties the Canadian government is violating by allowing development of the tar sands.
(More at the link. Cross-posted from Occupy Underground.)
Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office
BREAKING: 26 arrested at Transcanada office occupation outside Boston
http://climate-connections.org/2013/03/11/breaking-26-arrested-at-transcanada-office-occupation-outside-boston/
Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters are risking arrest for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.
Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” the protesters held flowers and sang an elegy as they marched in procession. Massachusetts Methodist clergy members and a group of mothers holding photographs of their children joined the youth in protest.
The action marked a sharp escalation of the protests in New England against the Keystone XL pipeline. In January, eight students locked and glued themselves at the same TransCanada office. Nationwide, the pipeline has already prompted civil disobedience outside the White House, direct blockades of construction, and the largest climate rally in US history. Todays action kicks off a week of solidarity actions being called for by our allies at the Tar Sands Blockade. During the Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action, March 16th-24th protestors from across the country will target the offices of TransCanada and its investors.
The protesters staged the funeral a week after the US State Department released a widely criticized Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline. While admitting that rejecting the pipeline would have little effect on jobs, the document minimizes claims about the pipeline’s impact on climate change and on communities who would be at risk for devastating pipeline spills like the 2010 Kalamazoo spill, from which the affected communities are still recovering. The impact assessment also makes the assumption that the Alberta tar sands will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward—an assumption not shared by today’s protesters and refuted by indigenous communities whose treaties the Canadian government is violating by allowing development of the tar sands.
(More at the link.)
In the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor
Zuccotti Park Press ?@zuccottipress
Taxing the Poor http://nyti.ms/ZAd5xM
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/in-the-south-and-west-a-tax-on-being-poor/?smid=tw-share
That social compact shifted into high gear during the Nixon administration, which tried to incentivize work by rewarding low-income households with a tax break that became the nation’s most successful antipoverty tool ever: the earned-income tax credit. Politicians of both parties have embraced the credit, making it more progressive three times since it was enacted in 1975.
While the federal government has largely stuck by the principle of progressive taxation, the states have gone their own ways: tax policy is particularly regressive in the South and West, and more progressive in the Northeast and Midwest. When it comes to state and local taxation, we are not one nation under God. In 2008, the difference between a working mother in Mississippi and one in Vermont — each with two dependent children, poverty-level wages and identical spending patterns — was $2,300.
These regional disparities go back to Reconstruction, when Southern Republicans increased property taxes on defeated white landowners and former slaveholders to pay for the first public services — education, hospitals, roads — ever provided to black citizens. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, conservative Democrats — popularly labeled “the Redeemers” — rolled taxes back to their prewar levels and inserted supermajority clauses into state constitutions to ensure it could never happen again. Property taxes were frozen; income taxes were held down; corporate taxes were almost nonexistent.
Practically the only tax that could rise was the one that hurt the poor the most: the sales tax. And rise it did, throughout the Deep South in the late 19th century, then spreading into the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and the rest of the region in the 1960s and 1970s. Even liberal politicians weren’t able to buck the tide — just ask Bill Clinton, who as governor of Arkansas urgently sought new revenue to improve his state’s ailing schools and found the sales tax was the only politically viable option.
(More at the link.)
Fed Injects Record $100 Billion Cash Into Foreign Banks Operating In The US In Past Week
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-09/fed-injects-record-100-billion-reserves-foreign-banks-operating-us-past-weekThose who have been following our exclusive series of the Fed's direct bailout of European banks (here, here, here and here), and, indirectly of Europe, will not be surprised at all to learn that in the week ended February 27, or the week in which Europe went into a however brief tailspin following the shocking defeat of Bersani in the Italian elections, and an even more shocking victory by Berlusconi and Grillo, leading to a political vacuum and a hung parliament, the Fed injected a record $99 billion of excess reserves into foreign banks. As the most recent H.8 statement makes very clear, soared from $836 billion to a near-record $936 billion, or a $99.3 billion reserve "reallocation" in the form of cash - very, very fungible cash - into foreign (read European) banks in one week.
Furthermore, as we first showed, virtually all the "reserves" created by the Fed end up allocated as cash at commercial banks operating in the US: both domestically-chartered (small and large), but more importantly, foreign. And of the $1.884 trillion in very fungible cash parked in various domestic and international US banks, just half of it, or $949 billion is actually allocated to US banks. The other half, or $936 billion, is parked within, again, very fungible cash accounts of foreign (read European) banks operating in the US. This is shown in the chart below (green area is cash of foreign banks), and what is also shown is the total change in the Fed's excess reserves, which proves, once more, that the Fed continues to fund European banks with hundreds of billions in cash on a week by week basis. And what is perhaps most important, is that of the $250 billion in new reserves created under QEternity, all of it has gone to foreign (read European) banks.
It may anger American to learn that by the time the Fed is done with QEternity (if ever), all of the newly created cash will have gone to mostly European banks. Because with every passing week, whatever new reserves are created by the Fed in exchange for monetizing the US deficit, end up as cash solely at European banks: a sad reality we have seen non-stop since the advent of QE2 when US bank cash balances remained relatively flat in the ~$800 billion range, and every incremental dollar went straight to Europe.
As a reminder, we don't know how, via assorted shadow banking and other repo pathways, these banks manage to use said cash in other fungible activities. Recall that as we said, "So whether European banks will continue buying the EURUSD, or redirect their Fed-cash into purchasing the ES outright, or invest in other even riskier assets, remains unknown." It is also unknown is the Fed's reserves, reappearing as cash, and then siphoned over to European bank HoldCo via payables, is then used by, say, Italian and Spanish banks to purchase BTPs and Bonos, and give the impression that all is well. Because unlike before, keeping the EURUSD high is not as critical any more. But what is critical is to give the impression that Italian and Spanish sovereign risk is contained. And after all, let's not forget that as of January, Italian bank holdings of Italy state bonds just hit a record of EUR200 billion.
(Charts and more text at the link. Via Vermin Supreme.)
The Government Still Doesn't Want You to Know What Caused the Financial Crisis
Occupy Wall Street ?@OccupyWallStNYC
Shhhh.. RT @MotherJones: The US government still doesn't want you to know what caused the financial crisis: http://ow.ly/iDGPw
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/financial-crisis-inquiry-commission-lawsuit-documents-cause-action
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown, the US government launched a vast investigation, but it still doesn't want you to know the details of what it found.
In January 2011, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) created by Congress put out its final report. But it only released a portion of all the source documents it scoured, so last year the government accountability group Cause of Action filed a lawsuit seeking the release of those documents, including emails, memoranda, and draft reports. Last week, the DC district court announced it was dismissing the case. But it's not over yet: COA vowed on Tuesday that it will appeal the decision. In a statement, the group said the judge's ruling that the documents were not subject to the Freedom of Information Act was "a misapplication of the law," and said that "COA will continue to fight to shed light on the workings of our government."
The FCIC was created in 2009 and given an $8 million budget and a lot of power to subpoena witnesses and documents, and give whistleblower protections to those who would come forward with information. The commission was also plagued by partisan division. Its final report in 2011 faulted failures in financial regulation, excessive borrowing, a lack of transparency, and risky investments, among other causes—but Republicans on the committee put out their own conflicting report. Meanwhile, the commission said it could not release all related documents but vowed that they "will eventually be made public through the National Archives and Records Administration." (Which has yet to happen.)
snip
The [final] report, as I understand it, says [the financial crisis] was a preventable thing and preventable by lots of different measures. The Republican dissent is that this was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's one of those disputes where it's not just two interpretations of common facts diverging from one another. Those are two different narratives coming out of the same commission, which lead in two different policy directions and really tell two different stories.
(More at the link.)
Liberty Lockdown: Raid on Zuccotti [LEAKED TARU FOOTAGE]
5 Ways Privatization Is Poisoning America
http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-privatization-poisoning-america1. The Taking of Public Land
Attempts to privatize federal land were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states.
The assault on our common areas continues with even greater ferocity today, as the euphemistic Path to Prosperity has proposed to sell millions of acres of "unneeded federal land," and libertarian groups like the Cato Institute demand that our property be "allocated to the highest-value use." Mitt Romney admitted that he didn't know "what the purpose is" of public lands.
Examples of the takeaway are shocking. Peabody Coal is strip-mining public lands in Wyoming and Montana and making a 10,000% profit on the meager amounts they pay for the privilege. Sealaska is snatching up timberland in Alaska. The Central Rockies Land Exchange would allow Bill Koch to pick up choice Colorado properties from the Bureau of Land Management, while neighboring Utah Governor Gary Herbert sees land privatization as a way to reduce the deficit. Representative Cliff Stearns recommended that we "sell off some of our national parks." One gold mining company even invoked an 1872 law to grab mineral-rich Nevada land for which it stands to make a million-percent profit.
The National Resources Defense Council just reported that oil and gas companies hold drilling and fracking rights on U.S. land equivalent to the size of California and Florida combined. Much of this land is "split estate," which means the company can drill under an American citizen's property without consent. Unrestrained by government regulations, TransCanada was able to use eminent domain in Texas to lay its pipeline on private property and then have the owner arrested for trespassing on her own land, and Chesapeake Energy Corporation overturned a 93-year-old law to frack a Texas residence without paying a penny to the homeowners. Most recently, the oil frenzy in North Dakota has cheated Native Americans out of a billion dollars worth of revenue from drilling leases.
(More at the link.)
Oakland, March 13: A Feast To the Global Resistance!
Political Fail Blog
Oakland March 13: A Feast To the Global Resistance! Food, rally, march, video clips and speak with comrades from around the globe via Skype.
https://www.facebook.com/events/491728237558697/
Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis
Derek Gendvil ?@dgendvil
Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis - Economic Intelligence (http://usnews.com ) http://t.usnews.com/bC3B0 via @usnews
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis
In fact, the financial crisis might not have happened at all but for the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking for seven decades. If there is any hope of avoiding another meltdown, it's critical to understand why Glass-Steagall repeal helped to cause the crisis. Without a return to something like Glass-Steagall, another greater catastrophe is just a matter of time.
History is a good place to begin. After the Depression of 1920-21, the United States embarked on a period of economic prosperity known as the Roaring Twenties. It was a time of innovation, especially in consumer goods such as automobiles, radio, and refrigeration. Along with these goods came new forms of consumer credit and bank expansion. National City Bank (forerunner of today's Citibank) and Chase Bank opened offices to sell securities side-by-side with traditional banking products like deposits and loans.
As the decade progressed, the stock market boomed and eventually reached bubble territory. Along with the bubble came market manipulation in the form of organized pools that would ramp up the price of stocks and dump them on unsuspecting suckers just before the stock collapsed. Banks joined in by offering stocks of holding companies that were leveraged pyramid schemes and other securities backed by dubious assets.
In 1929, the music stopped, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. It took eight years from the start of the boom to the bust. Subsequent investigations revealed the extent of the fraud that preceded the crash. In 1933, Congress passed Glass-Steagall in response to the abuses. Banks would be allowed to take deposits and make loans. Brokers would be allowed to underwrite and sell securities. But no firm could do both due to conflicts of interest and risks to insured deposits. From 1933 to 1999, there were very few large bank failures and no financial panics comparable to the Panic of 2008. The law worked exactly as intended.
(More at the link.)
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