Hollywood (Entertainment Industry) is Owned (Shareholders) by the Same Corporations and Financial Institutions That Own the Energy, Health and Food Industry

Institutions like Fidelity Investments, the Vanguard group and the State Street Corporation. They own Disney and the major corporations that govern Hollywood, they also own Big Oil, Big Food and Big Pharma!

Actress Roseanne Barr: 'MK Ultra Rules in Hollywood'

November 13, 2016

Humans Are Free - For those of you that don’t know, Roseanne Barr is a well known actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. She has won several awards which include Emmy awards, Golden Globe awards, People’s Choice awards and more.

She has been in the industry for over twenty years and has gained much respect from many of her Hollywood colleagues who she is now speaking on behalf of.

I just want to make it clear how long she has been inside the industry, and the connections she has to others within it.

Industry insiders are feeling the need to share inspirational words and food for thought to the millions of people that pay attention to them as of late.

We saw this recently with Ashton Kutcher. Celebrities have a voice that can reach a large sum of people, they can be a threat to corporate interests and the controlling elite and as Roseanne states, many celebrities bite their tongue and live in a culture of fear.

Not long ago, Roseanne made some shocking statements, alluding that Hollywood and the entertainment industry is dominated by MK Ultra. MK Ultra was the name for a previously classified research program through the CIA’s scientific intelligence division.

It was the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification and perception manipulation of human beings (1).

It was previously known as Operation Paperclip (2). Roseanne is suggesting that Hollywood is a tool used in the manipulation of human consciousness, used as a tool for behavior modification and perception control  in human beings.

"Hollywood is the one that keeps all of this power structure. They perpetuate the culture of racism, sexism, classism, genderism and keep it all in place.

"They continue to feed it, and they make a lot of money doing it. They do it at the behest of their masters, who run everything.

"I speak on behalf of Hollywood. I go to parties, Oscar parties and things like that and big stars pull me aside, take my arm and whisper: “I just want to thank you for the things you say.” And it blows my mind, but that’s the culture, it’s a culture of fear.

"It’s a big culture of mind control, MK Ultra rules in Hollywood."

It’s funny that ancient Druid ‘wizards’ and ‘magicians’ used to make their wands specific for casting spells from the Holly Wood tree.

Maybe “Hollywood” is used to cast spells on the masses, because at the very least it can sure seem that way. Everything we do is so systematic, so robotic in nature.

We go to school, get a job, have a family and chase materialistic gains only to find out that it is not what our soul truly desires. We are told what to wear, what’s popular, what to buy, what truth is and how life is through television.

It keeps us occupied, ignorant and blind to what is really happening on our planet.

Roseanne’s public remark that the CIA’s MK Ultra program rules in Hollywood is an educated statement, and not just an opinion.

Put an End to the Privatization of Public Resources and Declare Public Sector Labor Unions Illegal

Rauner turns to privatization push during second year in office

April 30, 2016

Chicago Tribune - Stymied at the statehouse by ruling Democrats, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is spending year two trying to shift government functions to the private sector.

Since January, he's formed a private not-for-profit corporation to handle the state's business recruitment efforts; announced a plan to allow private companies to build and manage new toll lanes along a congested stretch of the Stevenson Expressway; and called for private donors to step in to help the financially struggling state museums and fairgrounds.

And the first-term chief executive continues to insist the state should be allowed to expand its ability to outsource work to private contractors, one of the key stumbling blocks that has stalled negotiations on a new contract for unionized state workers.

The privatization push comes as state government remains stuck in a historic budget impasse centered on a fight between Rauner and Democratic leaders over his business-friendly, union-weakening legislative agenda. It's a way for Rauner to show he's working to fix the state's financial mess even as the stalemate drives Illinois deeper into debt. Tapping private-sector resources can relieve costly burdens on taxpayers and help government be more efficient, Rauner says.

By Including Them in the Federal Budget Deal, Congress Snuck into Law Deeply Unpopular Things They Could Never Justify Introducing or Voting for on Their Own

5 Horrible Things Congress Just Snuck Into Law

December 19, 2015

Huffington Post - Congress has officially approved the latest omnibus budget deal, which now heads to President Obama's desk. The bill is essentially guaranteed to be signed into law, because anything less means the government would shut down. Again.

In what's become something of a sick annual tradition, members of Congress attached a multitude of riders to this must-pass piece of legislation in an attempt to sneak through deeply unpopular things they could never justify introducing or voting for on their own.

The text of the 2,000 page bill was quietly made available to the public in the middle of the night on Tuesday -- just a few days before it was passed by both houses of Congress. So, what was Congress trying to hide? Here are five of the most egregious things we found.

THE PART COPY-PASTED FROM CISA -- A HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE BILL

Civil libertarians and privacy advocates received a nasty shock when it was discovered that the full text of Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was added 1,729 pages into the budget deal. Pushed as a "cybersecurity" measure, CISA actively encourages companies to quietly share data they've accumulated on consumers with numerous government agencies.

While the bill has been lambasted by privacy advocates and major tech companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, it does have the blessing of numerous industries that spend big to buy political influence -- The Telecommunications Industry Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and Retail Industry Leaders Association have all applauded its passage.

THE PART THAT ALLOWS FOR MORE SECRET (AND POSSIBLY FOREIGN) POLITICAL MONEY

A provision buried on page 472 added the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from taking any action to reign in the political activity of 501(c)4 organizations. These organizations, which enjoy significant tax exemptions as nonprofits, weren't originally supposed to engage in political activity at all. In recent years, however, they've become a favorite of anyone who wants to buy political influence without attracting attention.

Everyone from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS to the Harry Reid-aligned Patriot Majority USA has taken advantage of the lax rules governing 501(c)4s. Since there's no legal requirement that 501(c)4 organizations disclose their donors, anyone can use them as a vehicle to pour unlimited money into our political system. And we mean anyone. As former Republican Federal Election Commissioner Trevor Potter has pointed out, even foreign nationals and governments could use 501(c)4s to quietly influence U.S. policy.

Let that sink in folks: Rather than allow the IRS to prevent the abuse of tax-exempt nonprofit status for purely political purposes by both parties, Congress has specifically banned the agency from taking any kind of action -- even at the risk of allowing secret foreign money to poison our elections.

World War Three Would Be Fought Between Eastern Communism and Western Internationalists: Both Intend to Bring into Effect a Totalitarian Dictatorship

Harry Browne's 2004 or 2005 interview of Richard Maybury, author and publisher of "The Thousand Year War" and the Early Warning Report. They discuss mostly foreign policy and middle east history. At the 23:40 mark, a caller proposes a valid solution to the perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Excerpted from Chapter 18, "The Present Dangers" of the Book "Pawns in the Game"

By William Guy Carr (1895-1959)
First Published in 1954

World War Three if started by the Eastern Communist dictators will begin without any preliminary warning:

1. An international general strike will be called in all capitalistic countries. This action is calculated to produce the paralysis previously referred to. 
2. The Communist planes will bomb all industrial centres to knock out the war potential of the United States and Canada and kill as many of the population as possible in order to bring about speedy surrender and subjugation. Britain will likely get the same treatment. 
3. Nerve Gas may be used on industrial areas the enemy do not wish to destroy. 
4. Soviet forces will occupy the mining districts of northern Canada from coast to coast. The occupied areas will be used as bases of operation against the southern objectives. 
5. The international general strike will tie up shipping in every port in the world making it impossible for supplies to reach the people of Great Britain. A blockade of the British Isles by Soviet submarines will stop any leaks. The people of Britain will be starved into submission four weeks after the outbreak of hostilities. 
6. The members of the Communist underground in all cities in the western world will evacuate target areas immediately before the attacks. The underground armies will return and take over the devastated areas as soon as the “All-Clear” has been given. 
7. The Communist 5th Column will round up and liquidate all people whose names are on the black list. Thus will the directors of the Western internationalists be gotten rid of in much quicker time than they got rid of their Nazi opponents by means of the Nuremberg Trials.

On the other hand, if the Western internationalists become convinced that an attack is to be made upon them by the Communist dictators, then they will force the western democracies into another World War in order that they may get in the first blow:

1. As a prelude to their attack, the public will be made aware of the dangers of international Communism. 
2. The danger to Christian democracy will be emphasized. The atheistic-materialists, who have the western world in economic bondage, will call for a Christian Crusade. 
3. They will justify their atomic attacks upon Russia and China as Churchill justified his attack on Germany. They will say it was necessary to save our civilization. 

But don’t lets fool ourselves. Regardless of how the case may be presented to the public, the fact will remain that if World War Three is allowed to take place it will be fought to decide whether Eastern Communism takes over the entire world or whether the Western capitalists will continue to rule the international roost.

If World War Three is permitted to take place, the devastation will be so extensive that internationalists will continue to justify their contentions that ONLY a world government, backed up by an international police force, can solve the various national and international problems without resorting to further wars. This argument will appear very logical to many people who overlook the fact that both the Eastern Communist leaders, and the Western capitalist leaders, intend to ultimately bring into effect THEIR ideas for an atheistic-totalitarian dictatorship.

Multinational Corporations Run by the Ruling Elite Avoid U.S. Taxes on $2.3 Trillion in Profits by Stashing It Overseas

Enticed by highway money, U.S. Congress revisits corporate tax break

July 29, 2015

Reuters - The U.S. Congress is setting the stage for months of debate on a tax break for overseas corporate profits, a perennial proposal made over by being linked to another issue, funding for highway construction.

The tax-break-for-road-funding package has backers but also many critics in Washington. By the end of 2015, it could provide a short-term highway funding solution and have a long-lasting impact on corporate tax policy.

Or it could founder on the rocks of fiscal stalemate that for years have wrecked other proposals for overhauling the loophole-riddled U.S. tax code. Either way, the debate will underscore the power of combining two politically appealing ideas, even when they have little in common.

In legislation introduced in 2013, Democratic Representative John Delaney created a combination that he called good policy and "good politics," offering something to both political parties.

"In the case of the Democrats, it's infrastructure. In the case of the Republicans, it's figuring out a way to get that money back from overseas," he said, referring to the estimated $2.3 trillion in profits stashed overseas by multinationals.

Criticized as "Delaney's Delusion" by a tax watchdog group when he unveiled it, the idea of giving overseas profits a tax cut to help fund U.S. highways is opposed by many, including influential business interests.

But differing versions of it have won support from the likes of Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Representative Paul Ryan. Congressional minds have now been concentrated by the financial state of the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for half of U.S. highway and transit projects and is projected to go broke on Friday.

FUNDING HIGHWAYS

Republican leaders on Tuesday were prepared to pass a three-month highway funding extension to temporarily fund road and transit construction, while seeking a longer-term solution.

Lawmakers do not want to raise the gasoline tax, which has not gone up since 1993, so they are looking for other revenues.

Like some others, Delaney foresaw this problem when he first ran for a seat in Congress in 2012.

"It was pretty clear to me that infrastructure should be our top domestic economic priority. But trying to find a way to pay for it was the challenge," Delaney said in an interview.

As a businessman, he said, he was also aware of a tax code loophole, known as the deferral rule, that lets companies avoid the 35-percent income tax on active profits generated abroad as long as they are not brought into the country, or repatriated.

Many companies would like to bring those profits home. In 2004, promising a boost to the economy, multinationals won a tax break on repatriated profits. More than 800 firms repatriated $362 billion at just 5.25 percent in tax.

But studies showed the repatriated profits went largely for dividends and stock buybacks. This soured Congress on future tax holidays, while multinationals began stashing away more profits overseas, hoping another would follow.

What U.S. "Interests" in the Middle East are the U.S. Military Protecting?

A good question about American interests in the Middle East but what is the answer?

October 13, 2012

Alan Hart - In an article for TomDispatch, Peter Van Buren (a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for many years) posed what he described as Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won’t Be Raised in Presidential Debates. Question three was under the headline – What do we want from the Middle East?

The preamble to the specific question was this:

“Is it all about oil? Israel? Old-fashioned hegemony and containment? What is our goal in fighting an intensifying proxy war with Iran, newly expanded into cyberspace? Are we worried about a nuclear Iran, or just worried about a new nuclear club member in general? Will we continue the nineteenth century game of supporting thug dictators who support our policies in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya (until overwhelmed by events on the ground), and opposing the same actions by other thugs who disagree with us like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad? That kind of policy thinking did not work out too well in the long run in Central and South America, and history suggests that we should make up our mind on what America’s goals in the Middle East might actually be. No cheating now – having no policy is a policy of its own.”

Then the specific question:

“Candidates, can you define America’s predominant interest in the Middle East and sketch out a series of at least semi-sensical actions in support of it?”

In my view, the honest answer (which won’t come from the lips of President Obama or Mitt Romney) is something like the following.

The U.S. has always had two predominant interests in the Middle East.

The first was guaranteeing the flow of oil at the lowest possible price even when that meant supporting corrupt and repressive Arab regimes which would do America’s bidding. (Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, in my view, the first and the last truly great Arab leader of modern times, was assassinated because he was no longer willing to be an American puppet, a fact he demonstrated by, among other things, defying Henry Kissinger with his support for Arafat and the PLO.)

The second was to do with the fact that the Military Industrial Complex, in all of its manifestations, is the biggest single creator of jobs and wealth in America. It not only needed wars to guarantee the flow of tax dollars into its coffers, it also needed very wealthy Arab client states to buy its products. (In 2011, U.S. weapons sales reached a record high of $66 billion. America's largest customer was Saudi Arabia, which purchased more than $33 billion worth of weapons from the U.S., including dozens of F-15 fighter jets and missiles. The Obama administration proudly said that this deal alone would be a major stimulus to the U.S. economy and generate 75,000 new jobs. The United Arab Emirates and Oman also spent billions on buying American weapons.)

In the last decade or two of the 20^th century the U.S. has had a third predominant interest in the Middle East — It was having in power Arab regimes which were prepared to spend big amounts of the wealth of their countries on keeping the American economy going, and quite possibly preventing it from collapsing, by buying American debt. This purchase of U.S. debt instruments (paper promises) enabled Americans to go on living beyond their means and helped to create a national debt which is now approaching $17 trillion. (The other two major purchasers of American debt were Japan and China.)

Forty-three Percent of Germans Don't Trust the U.S. Government

In a 2014 poll, 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, and 17% of Americans believe that big business can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time. We should swap those two groups for the 43% of Germans who know the truth that the U.S. government is corrupt and is in collusion with big business and high finance, and then maybe we can vote out the politicians who kowtow to the statists and elitists who run America.

Thousands in Germany protest against Europe-U.S. trade deal

April 18, 2015

Reuters - Thousands of people marched in Berlin, Munich and other German cities on Saturday in protest against a planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States that they fear will erode food, labor and environmental standards.

Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is particularly high in Germany, in part due to rising anti-American sentiment linked to revelations of U.S. spying and fears of digital domination by firms like Google.

A recent YouGov poll showed that 43 percent of Germans believe TTIP would be bad for the country, compared to 26 percent who see it as positive.

The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and German industry by surprise, and they are now scrambling to reverse the tide and save a deal which proponents say could add $100 billion in annual economic output on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Berlin, a crowd estimated by police at 1,500 formed a human chain winding from the Potsdamer Platz square, past the U.S. embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate to offices of the European Commission.

In Munich, police put the crowd at 3,000, while organizers Attac estimated it at 15,000. Hundreds also marched in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and other European cities on what Attac hailed as a "global day of action" against free trade, though the protests appeared to be largest in Germany.

"I think this deal will open the door to genetically-modified foods here," said Jennifer Ruffatto, 28, who works with handicapped people and was pushing her baby in a stroller. "Companies will gain from this at the expense of people."

Helmut Edelhauesser, a 52-year-old from Brandenburg, said he would prefer a free trade deal with Russia.

"The U.S. push for world domination is unacceptable," he told Reuters. "Obama sends out drones to kill people and wins the Nobel peace prize. This has to stop."

Marchers held up posters reading "People have a right to food not profits" and "Beware the TTIP trap - companies win, people lose!"

Only Government, Government Contractors, Wall Street, International Mega Corporations, Military Industrial Complex, Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, and Virtual Business Monopolies Like Google, Microsoft and Amazon Can Pay Workers Wages Unrelated to the Value of Their Work

Restaurants in Seattle Going Dark as $15 an Hour Minimum Wage Looms

Inferior food at higher prices delivered by over-worked servers during restricted hours: recipe for failure. 

March 14, 2015

PJ Media - I like this simple, elegant explanation from Reason’s Ronald Bailey about the value of labor and the minimum wage:

If all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less people will demand it. That’s the law of demand, a fundamental idea in economics. And yet there is no shortage of politicians, pundits, policy wonks, and members of the public who insist that raising the price of labor will not have the effect of lessening the demand for workers. In his 2014 State of the Union Address, for example, President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. He argued that increasing the minimum wage would “grow the economy for everyone” by giving “businesses customers with more spending money.”

A January 2015 working paper by two economists, Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, claims that raising the minimum wage of fast food workers to $15 per hour over a four-year transition period would not necessarily result in “shedding jobs.” The two acknowledge that the “raising the price of anything will reduce demand for that thing, all else equal.” But they believe they’ve found a way to “relax” the all-else-being-equal part, at least as far as the wages of fast food workers go. Pollin and Wicks-Lim argue that “the fast-food industry could fully absorb these wage bill increases through a combination of turnover reductions; trend increases in sales growth; and modest annual price increases over the four-year period.” They further claim that a $15/hour minimum wage would not result in lower profits or the reallocation of funds away from other operations, such as marketing. Amazing.

Seattle is going to put that theory to a real world test. Starting April 1, businesses in the city will be forced to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour, reaching $15 an hour by 2017 for large businesses and 2019 for smaller companies. There are allowances if a business offers health insurance benefits, but all businesses will be paying employees $15 an hour in salary, tips, or benefits by 2021.

Sheldon Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and America’s Dark Money Conspiracy

Netanyahu Speaks, Money Talks: “We are hostage to his fortune”

The gambling tycoon is funneling loads of cash into GOP PACs. He's also controlling Israel's propaganda machine

March 7, 2015

BillMoyers.com - Everything you need to know about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Tuesday was the presence in the visitor’s gallery of one man – Sheldon Adelson.

The gambling tycoon is the Godfather of the Republican Right. The party’s presidential hopefuls line up to kiss his assets, scraping and bowing for his blessing, which when granted is bestowed with his signed checks. Data from both the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity show that in the 2012 election cycle, Adelson and his wife Miriam (whose purse achieved metaphoric glory Tuesday when it fell from the gallery and hit a Democratic congressman) contributed $150 million to the GOP and its friends, including $93 million to such plutocracy-friendly super PACs as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund, Winning Our Future (the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC) and Restore Our Future (the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC).

Yet there’s no knowing for sure about all of the “dark money” contributed by the Adelsons – so called because it doesn’t have to be reported. Like those high-rise, multi-million dollar apartments in New York City purchased by oligarchs whose identity is hidden within perfectly legal shell organizations, dark money lets our politicians conveniently erase fingerprints left by their ink-stained (from signing all those checks) billionaire benefactors.

But Sheldon Adelson was not only sitting in the House gallery on Tuesday because of the strings he pulls here in the United States. He is also the Daddy Warbucks of Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu is yet another of his beneficiaries – not to mention an ideological soulmate. Although campaign finance reform laws are much more strict in Israel than here in the United States, Adelson’s wealth has bought him what the historian and journalist Gershom Gorenberg calls “uniquely pernicious” influence.

Ireland Privatizes Its Municipal Water Systems

The Irish Government is slavering at the mouth at the prospect of a nice juicy fire sale of public assets. Under the NewERA plan, on September 29, 2011, the government announced details of "a new fund that will use the National Pension Reserve Fund to spur investment." According to the report: "In addition to the money transferred from the pension reserve fund into the new strategic fund, the Government will also look for matching commercial funding from private industry. A strategic bank is expected to follow, but not immediately."

Obama to Seek New Taxes on Trillions of Dollars in Profits Accumulated Overseas by U.S. Companies But If He Were Serious About Closing Loopholes, He Would Have Targeted Reform When Democrats Controlled the House And Senate

31,385 People Gave 28 Percent of All Individual Contributions to the 2012 U.S. Election: This Elite Group of Donors are the Collective Gatekeepers of Public Office

International Corporations and Bankers Run the World - They Own the Politicians, Big Media, Judges, State Houses, City Halls (Excerpt)

The U.S. now has a campaign finance system where a tiny slice of individuals – 31,385 people, not even enough to fill half of a professional football stadium – collectively account for more than a quarter of all individual contributions (that we can trace), even though they represent just one in ten thousand Americans. Every single member of Congress elected in 2012 received a contribution from this group of individuals, and the vast majority of those elected (84 percent) received more money from the "1% of the 1%" than they did from all small donations (under $200).

A tiny sliver of Americans who can afford to give tens of thousands of dollars in a single election cycle have become the gatekeepers of public office in America. Through the growing congressional dependence on their contributions, they increasingly set the boundaries and limits of American political discourse – who can run for office, what their priorities should be and even what can be said in public. And in an era of unlimited campaign contributions, the power of the 1% of the 1% only stands to grow with each passing year.

Meet the 1% of the 1%

Who are the 31,385 individuals who contributed 28.1 percent of the traceable money in the 2012 election?

A few of them are well-known. Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam contributed a combined $97 million. Harold Simmons, who built a business empire around buying Superfund sites, contributed $25 million. Bob Perry, the late Texas real estate mogul, contributed $23.5 million. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the seventh largest donor, at $10.6 million. Many of the other names atop the list will be familiar to readers of our “Stealthy Wealthy” series.

But our analysis is not focused on specific individuals, many of whose campaign largesse and motivations already have been well-scrutinized. Rather, our interest is in examining the role of this elite group of donors as the collective gatekeepers of public office.

Mostly, these donors tend to come from top corporate positions, most commonly in the worlds of finance and law. They most frequently hail from New York and Washington. Of donors for whom we know the gender, 71.8 percent are male.

For a list of all 31,385 donors in the 2012 one percent of the one percent, click here.

Top Professions

While the most common occupation listed among these donors is “Retired” (13.1%), the plurality with identifiable professions hail from top corporate jobs: 8.8 percent identify themselves as “president,” 8.7 percent as “attorney” or “lawyer” and 8.5 percent as “CEO.” While there is some overlap among the corporate jobs (for example, various individuals list themselves as “CEO and Chairman,” or “President/CEO,” etc.), a total of 5,639 top donors (17.0 percent) list themselves as at least one of the following: “CEO," "President," "Chairman,” “Executive” or “Owner."

Looking purely at the monetary contributions, CEOs and chairmen (frequently the same person) account for the largest raw percentage of donations, which tells us that they contribute, on average, a bit more than the average member of the 1% of the 1%. By contrast, retirees give a little less on average, accounting for only 10.8 percent of the contributions as compared to 13.2 percent of donors.

It’s also worth highlighting that 7.7 percent of the 1% of the 1% list their occupation as “homemaker.” Since homemakers are rarely compensated for their work, we are left to assume that their ability to contribute tens of thousands of dollars is due to spousal or inherited wealth. “Homemaker” is the listed occupation for 27.4 percent of the female 1% of the 1% donors, while “Retired” is the listed occupation of 17.5 percent of the female 1% of the 1% donors. (As a basis of comparison, 11.5 percent of the male 1% of the 1% donors list their occupation as “retired.”)

Most common professions among the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 2012

Occupation	Donors	Share of 1% of the 1% donors	Total donations	Share of 1% of the 1% donations
Retired	4131	13.2%	$181,663,338	10.8%
President	2764	8.8%	$137,886,277	8.2%
Attorney	2738	8.7%	$104,658,811	6.2%
CEO	2671	8.5%	$230,678,958	13.7%
Homemaker	2432	7.7%	$117,901,507	7.0%
Chairman	2428	7.7%	$223,832,610	13.3%
Executive	1886	6.0%	$101,835,685	6.1%
Investor	1638	5.2%	$106,385,270	6.3%
Owner	1015	3.2%	$42,177,945	2.5%

Top Employers

While thousands of different employers are represented among the 1% of the 1%, certain names pop up more frequently than others. At the top of the list (by far), is Goldman Sachs, with 85 employees contributing $4.67 million between them. Blackstone, the private equity firm, is next with 49 employees, and the major law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, is third on the list with 40 employees. Financial and legal/lobbying firms dominate the top 20.

Besides Goldman and Blackstone, financial firms Morgan Stanley (38 donors), Elliot Management (24), Citigroup (23), Credit Suisse (23), Fidelity (23) and Bain Capital (21) also make the top 20 list. That adds up to 248 major donors from top financial firms. Elliot donors contributed on average $184,830, the highest of any of the top employers. Bain Capital came in second, at $131,634.

The top legal and lobbying firms, after Kirkland and Ellis, are Akin Gump (36), Podesta Group (30), Skadden Arps (29), DLA Piper (21) and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (20). That adds up to 176 major donors from top law and lobbying firms.

Rounding out the list of organizations with the most employees in the 1% of the 1%: Harvard University at 33, Google at 33, Microsoft at 31 and Comcast at 26. One name that may not be familiar to Washington insiders is the Rothman Institute, a Philadelphia-area orthopedic group with 23 employees in 1% of the 1%. It is the only healthcare organization on this list. Its 1% of the 1% donors also gave the least on average: $25,668.

Most common employers among the 1% of the 1% percent, 2012

Employer	1% of the 1% Donors	Total donations	Average donations
Goldman Sachs	85	$4,670,207	$54,944
Blackstone	49	$2,236,050	$45,634
Kirkland and Ellis	40	$1,526,949	$38,174
Morgan Stanley	38	$1,241,241	$32,664
Comcast	37	$1,222,705	$33,046
Akin Gump	36	$1,643,941	$45,665
Google	33	$1,352,312	$40,979
Harvard	33	$1,236,391	$37,466
Microsoft	31	$1,049,667	$33,860
Podesta Group	30	$1,052,179	$35,073
Skadden Arps	29	$1,239,387	$42,737
Patton Boggs	26	$925,528	$35,597
Elliot Management	24	$4,435,923	$184,830
Credit Suisse	23	$705,788	$30,686
Rothman Institute	23	$590,366	$25,668
Citigroup	23	$746,650	$32,463
Fidelity	23	$726,414	$31,583
DLA Piper	21	$864,496	$41,166
Bain Capital	21	$2,764,306	$131,634
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck	20	$627,016	$31,351

Congressional dependence

Every single member of Congress elected in 2012 received at least some money from the 1% of the 1%. Only Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., ($4,750 from eight 1% of the 1% donors) and Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., ($7,000 from six 1% of the 1% donors) received less than $10,000 total. Both represent safe seats in poor, urban districts, and both get roughly 75 percent of their campaign money from PACs.



Of the 435 House members elected in last year, 372 (86 percent) received more from the 1% of the 1% than they did from every single small donor combined. And almost half (202, or 46.4 percent) received more than three times as much money from these large donors than they did from all small donors combined.

The 33 senators elected in 2012 were only slightly less dependent on the 1% of the 1%. The majority (20, 61 percent) got more money from the top donors than from all small donors combined. And one third (11) got three times as much money.

Members of Congress with the highest share of donations from the 1% of the 1%, 2012

Candidate	State	Chamber	Share from the 1% of the 1%	Share from small donors	Total raised
Nancy Pelosi (D)	CA	H	40.4%	4.8%	$2,298,844
Roger Williams (R)	TX	H	38.7%	1.5%	$2,736,485
Sheldon Whitehouse (D)	RI	S	36.5%	6.4%	$3,280,685
Nita M. Lowey (D)	NY	H	34.2%	3.9%	$2,125,851
Eric Cantor (R)	VA	H	34.2%	4.9%	$7,619,202
Jeff Flake (R)	AZ	S	33.3%	13.9%	$8,967,955
Joe Kennedy III (D)	MA	H	32.6%	0.0%	$4,193,094
Bill Foster (D)	IL	H	32.3%	11.8%	$2,956,287
John Sarbanes (D)	MD	H	31.8%	5.4%	$1,010,367
John Boehner (R)	OH	H	31.0%	26.7%	$21,981,789
Jon Tester (D)	MT	S	29.7%	13.1%	$11,881,646
Ron DeSantis (R)	FL	H	29.1%	6.1%	$1,145,859
Ted Cruz (R)	TX	S	28.8%	17.2%	$13,627,317
Jerrold Nadler (D)	NY	H	28.4%	2.4%	$1,114,468
Orrin G. Hatch (R)	UT	S	28.3%	0.6%	$8,829,902
John A. Barrasso (R)	WY	S	28.3%	4.5%	$4,007,574
Tim Kaine (D)	VA	S	28.2%	17.0%	$18,008,380
Ted Deutch (D)	FL	H	27.9%	2.6%	$1,263,534
Kirsten Gillibrand (D)	NY	S	27.6%	8.5%	$15,577,940
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D)	FL	H	27.6%	21.0%	$3,610,339

For complete data on all members elected in 2012, click here.

Related: 

• 'Think Tanks' of the Elite Guiding U.S. Policy 
• A Tiny Elite Owns 80% of the World's Wealth

Pension Funds are Money Pots for the Biggest Risk-takers on Wall Street

The Real Risk of Pension Plans: They Give Retirees False Security

December 22, 2014

Business Week - Retirement security is ending the year at an all-time low. The $1.1 trillion last-minute spending bill will allow trustees to cut benefits in multiemployer defined benefit pension plans. And while it affects a relatively small population, 10 million people at most, it opens the door for other employers to make similar cuts. Maybe that’s a long way off; maybe not. But the provision is a rude awakening: We may romanticize guaranteed retirement benefits and lament our 401(k) world, but pensions aren’t safe these days either.

Until recently, a pension benefit seemed as good as money in the bank. Companies or governments set aside money for employees’ retirements; the sponsors were on the hook for funding the promised benefits appropriately. In recent years, it has become clear that most pension plans are falling short, but accrued benefits normally aren’t cut unless the plan, or employer, is on the verge of bankruptcy—high-profile examples include airline and steel companies. Public pension benefits appear even safer, because they are guaranteed by state constitutions.

By comparison, 401(k) and other defined contribution plans seem much less reliable. They require employees to decide, individually, to set aside money for retirement and to invest it appropriately over the course of 30 or so years. Research suggests that people are remarkably bad at both: About 20 percent of eligible employees don’t participate in their 401(k) plan. Those who do save too little, and many choose investments that underperform the market, charge high investment fees, or both.

It turns out that pension plan sponsors, and the politicians who oversee them, are just as fallible as workaday employees. We all prefer to spend more today and deal with the future when it comes. Pension plans have done this for years by promising generous benefits without a clear plan to pay for them. When pressed, they may simply raise their performance expectations or choose more risky investments in search of higher returns. Neither is a legitimate solution. In theory, regulators should keep pension plan sponsors in check. In practice, the rules regulators must enforce tend to indulge, or even encourage, risky behavior.

Because pension plans seem so dependable, workers do in fact depend on them and save less outside their plans. According to the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, people between ages 55 and 65 with pensions have, on average, $60,000 in financial assets. Households with other kinds of retirement savings accounts have $160,000. It’s true that defined benefit pensions are worth more than the difference, but not if the benefit is cut.

As the new legislation makes clear, pension plans can kick the can down the road for only so long. Defined contribution plans have their problems, but a tremendous effort has been made to educate workers about the importance of participating. (Even if the education campaign has been the product of asset managers who make money when more people participate, it’s still valuable.) Almost half of 401(k) plans now automatically enroll employees, which has increased participation and encouraged investment in low-cost index funds. And now it looks like a generous 401(k) plan with sensible, low-cost investment options may turn out to be less risky than a poorly managed pension plan, not least of all because workers know exactly what the risks are.

Prudential Piles on the Corporate Pensions

December 18, 2014

Business Week - Big U.S. companies have found a way to escape the burden of ballooning pension obligations: pay an insurance company to take them over. Since 2012 corporations have transferred $41.4 billion of U.S. pensions to insurers, according to Limra, an insurance industry trade association. Prudential (PRU) has dominated the dealmaking, agreeing to acquire more than $35 billion in pension obligations from companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), General Motors (GM), Motorola Solutions (MSI), and Verizon (VZ)—meaning the nation’s second-biggest life insurer now has the responsibility of making pension payments to almost 200,000 of those companies’ retirees.

For corporate executives, the transfers offer peace of mind. They no longer need worry about how stock market crashes or low bond yields will affect the company’s pension burdens. And they don’t need to estimate how long each of their retirees will live. For insurers, pensions are familiar territory: They already sell annuities and are in the business of managing pools of money to meet long-term obligations. Corporations have “no strategic rationale for wanting to hold on to these liabilities,” says Jonathan Novak, who oversees American International Group’s (AIG) institutional life business. “It’s a far more natural fit for the skill set of the life insurers.”

Prudential’s pension acquisitions: $25b in assets for 110,000 GM retirees

For workers, the benefits of the deals are less clear. Pensions lose federal government protection when they’re transferred to insurers, according to Karen Friedman, policy director at the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer organization. “The verdict is not in on how safe these transactions are,” she says. “They happen very quickly. We still think the government regulators need to act.”

Story: Congress Says It Has to Cut Pensions to Save Them

Companies typically transfer plans covering employees who are retired or near retirement and are no longer accruing additional benefits. At some companies, retirees outnumber employees. Motorola Solutions, which employs 15,000 people, had 95,000 participants in its pension plans before striking a deal with Prudential in September to take over payments for 30,000 of them. The agreements have increased in popularity in recent years as a recovering stock market helped bring pension assets back in line with liabilities, making the transfers less costly for companies. In a typical transaction, the insurer gets about $1.09 in assets for every dollar of pension promises it takes on, according to consulting firm Mercer (MMC). 

$3.2b in liabilities for 30,000 Motorola Solutions beneficiaries

The market is growing fast. About $100 billion to $150 billion in transactions could take place in the next five years, says Mercer. MetLife (MET) took on about $279 million of obligations in the first nine months of the year, while AIG has acquired $65.6 million, according to Limra. Prudential was No. 1 with $604.8 million (the figures include only completed deals). The latest: On Dec. 16, MetLife said it agreed to take over pension benefits for about 7,000 people from TRW Automotive (TRW) in a $440 million deal.

Ultimately, AIG estimates, at least $1 trillion in U.S. pensions could go to insurers. To ensure a deal is profitable, insurers have to make complicated calculations about mortality, interest rates, and investment returns over periods of 20 years or more. Small variations from a forecast could have a large impact on results. “The competitive landscape for large closeouts leaves little margin for error,” MetLife Chief Executive Officer Steven Kandarian warned in October. “A negative surprise relative to assumptions could impact returns for decades.”

Story: The 401(k) Killed Off Pensions 

$7.5b in liabilities for 41,000 Verizon beneficiaries

Prudential’s success in winning the biggest deals could mean its pricing is too low. Moody’s Investors Service (MCO) tried to figure out what would happen if death rates fell at about 2 percent a year faster than Prudential’s expectations. That’s the equivalent of the average 70-year-old living 1.7 years longer than expected. That sort of shock, while highly unlikely, could lead to big losses for the insurer, especially if it takes on many more pensions, Moody’s analysts warned. “Once you write a block of business, you’ve assumed that risk for decades,” says Scott Robinson, a senior vice president at Moody’s. “If you write a big deal, you don’t get a second chance.”

Aegon (AEG), the Dutch owner of Transamerica, says insurers need to take a lot of credit risk to earn enough to meet the obligations they’re taking on and generate a profit. “We’ve looked at that market, and we cannot make that pricing work,” says Chief Financial Officer Darryl Button. “I don’t think that product in that market is rationally priced in the U.S.”

Story: What Does Your Retirement Plan Really Cost?

The Hidden Risk in the World’s Best Pension System

October 17, 2014 

Business Week - In the pension-nerd community (of which I am a card-carrying member), the Dutch are renowned for their creativity and prudence. According to the New York Times, Dutch corporate pensions are the gold standard. They’re well funded, cover 90 percent of Dutch workers, and replace 70 percent of income.

Compared with defined-benefit plans in the U.S.—rare, underfunded, and governed by accounting standards derided by almost every economist—the Dutch pension system looks even better. It does have a weakness, though, one that’s often overlooked, even though it may be the only aspect of the Dutch system that’s likely to be adopted here: In the Netherlands, annual cost-of-living increases depend (PDF) on the health of the pension’s balance sheet. If returns fall, benefits don’t increase. If the fund performs badly enough, pensioners may even suffer benefit cuts.

This kind of risk-sharing has been catching on in America. Public pension benefits are often secured by state constitutions, but it’s not clear whether those guarantees extend to inflation-linked adjustments. Eager to contain costs, some states have eliminated cost-of-living increases entirely. The state of Wisconsin adopted a variant of the Dutch model in which retirees in the Wisconsin Retirement System get a cost-of-living adjustment only when pension assets return at least 5 percent. Previous inflation adjustments can be clawed back; monthly checks were 10 percent smaller in 2013 as a result of the financial crisis. Although, unlike in the Dutch plans, retirement income can never fall below its nominal level at retirement.

Story: Russia Set Aside $83 Billion for Pensioners. Putin Is Using It to Aid Russia Inc.

Such risk-sharing seems to solve one of the U.S. pension system’s biggest problems: Most pensions are horribly underfunded, because guaranteeing income for thousands of people no matter what is more expensive than most state governments can even admit to themselves. Letting benefits fluctuate with the pension funds’ assets puts some boundaries around the guarantee that make it more affordable. Stanford economist Josh Rauh and University of Rochester’s Robert Novy-Marx estimate that if other states followed Wisconsin’s lead, unfunded pension liabilities would fall 25 percent. If they went with the full Dutch-style model, and could cut benefits, unfunded liabilities would fall 50 percent.

But to call it risk-sharing makes it sound more benign than it really is, particularly because retirees can’t tolerate as much risk as working people can. Post-retirement, most people live on a fixed income. In general, it’s too late to save more or get another job. Many state employees don’t have other sources of inflation-linked income like Social Security. If “fairness” means everyone has to bear risk equally, then the Dutch system makes sense. But if it’s more “fair” to treat people differently according to their means, then it would be better to share the risk with current workers instead.

Inflation risk may not seem like a big deal now. But the future is uncertain, which is why the guarantees are so valuable. Until the financial crisis, Dutch pensioners took it for granted they’d get their cost-of-living adjustment each year. Gambling on future inflation may be preferable to an underfunded pension—or no pension at all—but it’s no free lunch.

Public Pensions Cannot Stop Chasing Performance

August 08, 2014

Business Week - At the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest public pension in the U.S., 1.6 percent of the assets were invested in hedge funds

Two basic principles of investing hold up remarkably well: Past results really don’t predict future performance, and high fees eat away at your returns. Smart investors don’t chase performance (as much as they can help themselves) and keep costs to a minimum. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the experts who run public pension funds aren’t following these rules. What’s more, they have little incentive to start.

First, the good news: Public pensions in California, Ohio, and New Jersey have been reducing their investments in hedge funds, noting high fees and poor performance, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Los Angeles Fire and Police fund invested $500 million in a hedge fund that returned less than 2 percent over the last seven years; the fund had comprised just 4 percent of Fire & Police’s portfolio but 17 percent of investment fees paid.

The pension plans reconsidering these high-fee, low-performance investments include those with allocations to hedge funds ranging from 1.6 percent to 15 percent of assets, according to the Journal. What they share, though, is dismal returns: The average hedge fund return for public pensions was 3.6 percent for the three years ended March 31, a period when returns from stocks were up more than 10 percent.

Story: Pension Funds and Catastrophe Bonds: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But for all the griping about hedge funds’ high costs and lousy performance, it doesn’t appear pension funds have learned their lesson: They are maintaining their investment in private equity, in some cases, even expanding it. Private equity funds invest in non-publically traded assets; like hedge funds, they also promise higher returns—in exchange for high fees and often more risk. And historically, private equity has been a bust for pensions, too. Research by economists Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, and Wan Wong found public pensions underperformed in private equity relative to other institutional investors such as endowments, private pensions, and insurance companies. In the period they looked at (funds raised from 1991 to 2001), the pension funds’ private equity investments didn’t do much better than an equity index fund.

So why the preference for private equity? It sure looks like performance chasing. According to the Journal, private equity investments returned more than 10 percent to large pension funds in the last three years. Accordingly, pension funds have dived in.

Just 0.6 percent of Ohio’s state pension assets were invested in private equity in 2002. By 2013 it took up more than 9 percent. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) increased its investment from less than 1 percent to more than 12.4 percent of its assets between 2001 and 2013.

Story: An Unpalatable Plan to Rescue Failing Pensions

In 2013, Ohio celebrated its move: The five-year return on private equity was almost 12 percent—one of its best-performing asset classes. That means either pension fund managers have been luckier since 2001, more skilled, or private equity is having its day. Private equity is risky, and you’d expect high returns some of the time. The question is, can they keep it up?

Fund managers have every reason to be bullish. After all, they’re tacitly rewarded for chasing investments that promise higher returns. The funds use their expected return on their assets to figure out what they expect to owe pensioners in the future. The higher the expected return, the smaller their future liabilities appear. The only way to jack up the expected return is to pay for it, either by paying for access to more exclusive markets (like private equity) or by taking on more risk, or both. If pension funds invested only in low-cost index funds, it would be harder to justify the 7 percent to 8 percent return states currently forecast. This leaves pension fund managers with an incentive to constantly chase the latest, greatest, and most expensive assets.

Democrats Tax-and-Spend, Republicans Borrow-and-Spend: Both Parties are Staunch Supporters of Massive Federal Spending, and Both Parties Support Fighting Perennial Foreign Wars Abroad and Supporting the Creation of a Police State at Home

"The Beat Goes On"

December 11, 2014

Chuck Baldwin Live - The hit song by Sonny and Cher is an apt description of what happens in Washington, D.C. I’m referring to their Top 10 hit song, “The Beat Goes On.” No matter which party controls Congress, the beat goes on. No matter which party’s candidate is elected President, the beat goes on. Rhetoric and campaign promises notwithstanding, the beat goes on.

Here is how the “Potomac Shuffle” is played: Democrats openly and boldly promote Big Government. Oh, it’s masked under the rubric of “compassion,” of course. But there is little doubt that the modern Democrat Party is known far and wide as the party of Big Government. And when they are elected, they keep their word and implement big-government policies.

At some point, the American people awaken to the draconian nature of the big-government policies implemented by Democrats and demand a return to smaller government. The Republican Party is there to answer the bell. They postulate “conservative” ideals and loudly proclaim themselves to be the champions of smaller government and individual liberty. The message of smaller government resonates with voters and Republicans are swept to large victories in national elections. However, instead of reversing the big-government policies that had been passed by Democrats, the newly-ensconced GOP leadership actually SOLIDIFIES those policies. And, as they say, the beat goes on.

The basic difference between the two major parties in Washington, D.C., is that the Democrats tell the truth about promoting Big Government, while Republicans lie about promoting smaller government and then turn around and join Democrats in promoting Big Government. Both parties in Washington, D.C., are the parties of Big Government. 

Another distinction between the two parties is that Democrats want to tax-and-spend, while Republicans want to borrow-and-spend. But both parties are staunch supporters of massive federal spending.

Both major parties are also twin sisters when it comes to fighting perennial foreign wars abroad and supporting the creation of a Police State at home. Oh, the Democrats love to whine about police abuse any time an apparent (whether real or fabricated) injustice is committed within the black community by a white police officer (never the other way around). But, in truth, Democrats are as eager to impose more and more limitations on individual liberties (including those within the black community) as are Republicans.

And Republicans will get on their soap boxes and talk loquaciously about more freedom and smaller government. They will send out a barrage of fund-raising letters to the constituents back home about reining in “big-government Democrats.” Their leadership might even allow an occasional vote to be held where Republican lawmakers can make a symbolic—albeit meaningless—vote against a specific big-government policy, all the while knowing that such a bill is destined to fail in the other chamber or be completely diluted of its original language in subsequent conference committees. And, once again, the beat goes on.

We are witnessing this redundant fraud take place once again. The American people, fed up with the big-government machinations of Barack Obama, swept Republicans into the majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress. In fact, Obama now holds the unenviable distinction of having lost more of his own party’s congressional seats in a mid-term election than any President in history.

And there is no question that the reason voters put Republicans in charge of Congress was due to their outrage against two of Obama’s pet policies: Obamacare and amnesty. And of the two, amnesty was the straw that broke the back of the Democrats’ dominance in D.C. As for Obamacare, forget it! It’s settled. Republicans will spend no capital trying to reverse it. And most Americans (even Republicans) know this is the case. However, amnesty is another issue altogether.

The American people are fed up with what the deluge of illegal immigration is doing to their country—as well as their communities. And they sent Republicans to Capitol Hill to do something about it. But instead of doing anything to reverse Obama’s executive amnesty, House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow elitists in the GOP are going to SOLIDIFY an amnesty deal. And the beat goes on.

Let me provide readers with just a few samples of how pro-amnesty Republicans like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are betraying their constituents in working to solidify amnesty for illegal aliens.

*The recent vote by House Republicans that was sold to House members as a vote that would block Obama’s amnesty was actually a vote that STRENGTHENED the amnesty order. In other words, House Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Majority Whip Steve Scalise deliberately TRICKED their fellow Republicans. The bill they passed will significantly strengthen Obama’s amnesty order.

See the report here:

Exclusive: House GOP Leaders Trick 216 House Republicans Into Accidentally Supporting Obama’s Executive Amnesty

*The GOP 2015 “omnibus” spending bill includes nearly $1 billion in funding for illegals that are being granted amnesty.

According to a published report, “The GOP’s draft 2015 ‘omnibus’ spending bill reportedly includes $948 million to help poor and unskilled Central American migrants establish themselves in the United States, but includes no effective restrictions on President Barack Obama’s plan to provide work permits and tax payments to millions of resident illegal immigrants.”

The report continued, saying, “Much of the $948 million may also be used to care for the next wave of illegals who could flood across the border during the summer. The influx in the summer of 2015 is expected to be large, because Obama is offering work permits and social security numbers to at least five million illegals already in the country.

“The $948 million fund is part of the one-year, $1 trillion 2015 spending plan described in a late-night report from The New York Times.”

Also see this report:

Pride Goeth: Boehner Begs Hoyer For Dem Votes To Fund Obama Amnesty

*GOP Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) revealed that the Republican leadership intends to push an amnesty bill in next year’s congressional session that would subject only the “most dangerous illegal immigrant criminals” to deportation.

According to Breitbart.com, “One of the top House Republican leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), revealed this week that GOP leaders intend to push an amnesty bill in the next Congress that would subject only the most dangerous illegal immigrant criminals to deportation so that ‘not one person’ who is in the country illegally and has not committed a violent crime is ‘thrown out.’”

The report continued, “Sessions said, ‘We intend to push a bill that would operate under the activity of trying to do under rule of law... But that, even in our wildest dream, would not be to remove any person that might be here unless they were dangerous to this country and committed a crime...that was never even in a plan that I thought about.’”

Sessions went on to condemn Obama’s executive amnesty (just like Boehner does), but not because he, or the GOP leadership, is opposed to amnesty, but because they (GOP leaders) want to enact LEGISLATIVE amnesty.

See the report here:

Congressman Reveals GOP Leaders To Push Amnesty For All But Violent Criminals

The preoccupation and fascination with the two major parties is killing America. Neither party in Washington, D.C., has the liberties and well being of the American people in mind. NOT THE LEAST LITTLE BIT! At the leadership level, both parties are controlled by the same establishment elitists who are working to enrich themselves on the backs of the American people and the Bill of Rights.

Republican toadies love to talk about “compromise.” But it’s not compromise; it’s CONSPIRACY. For the most part, the leadership of both parties is nothing more than the worst kind of sycophants.

As long as the American electorate is stuck in this Republican vs. Democrat, “liberal” vs. “conservative,” and “right” vs. “left” illusion, nothing will change in this country. The American people are being played by D.C.’s “game makers” the way Katniss and Peeta are played by the Capital’s “game makers” in “The Hunger Games” movies.

After two years of capitulation, Republicans will pout, “We couldn’t get anything done, because we didn’t have the White House. Elect a Republican President in 2016, and we will get things done.” It’s the old “Potomac Shuffle,” folks. And the beat goes on.

Wall Street Controllers Sold Out the U.S. to China, Which is Loaded with $1.3 Trillion in US Treasury Bonds

The quintessential points in time to guarantee the national failure are the creation of the US Federal Reserve in 1913, the abrogation of the Bretton Woods Gold Standard in 1971, the removal of the Glass-Steagall Law in 1999, and the granting of Most Favored Nation status to China in 1999. The destruction with its clear steps appears to have been motivated and intentional. The United States has been on a destructive course since the elimination of President Kennedy, which cleared the path for the hidden fascists. As Kurt Richebacher told me in August 2003 from his patio as we sipped iced tea, "The Americans are the last fascists. The British have always been fascists, bound by the sea and lacking in resources." - Jim_Willie_CB

Central Banker Liars, New Currency, Fatal Errors, Psycho War (Excerpt)

Legitimate income from industry was exported out of the United States, and reliance upon asset bubbles was the result, and eating home equity. The Wall Street executives are locked and loaded with huge gold accounts, hidden in off-shore accounts and even in Carlyle Group accounts. Pressure is building for the United States to lose its own currency. For three decades the US has exported inflation, but next it will rapidly import inflation. This is the key which when turned will open the door to the Third World. The US nation has already been de-industrialized. The process began in the 1980 decade with the outsourcing to the Pacific Rim. It culminated in the Chinese Renaissance after bargaining for the Most Favored Nation status. When the New Scheiss Dollar is launched, expect sudden price inflation to surge, expect sudden supply shortages to appear, and expect sudden violence to break out. The result will be acute shortages in food at supermarkets, acute shortages in fuel at service stations, and acute shortage in cash at ATM machines. The US population will not finally suffer a rude awakening until the vast broad painful shortages arrive and meet them face to face. If a 30% devaluation comes as part of the initial currency launch, then the (10/7) factor dictates a ripe 43% price inflation hit from the import channels. For reference to an actual model, see Venezuela for a peek into the US future of disorder, chaos, violence, and severe disruption. They struggle with 100% annual price inflation and deep shortage of staples, amidst almost daily demonstrations. - Jim_Willie_CB, June 3, 2014)

April 9, 2014 
 
Jim_Willie_CB - The fatal errors in US banking and economic policy could fill a book.

The Jackass has harped on the concept for other eight years on a regular and frequent basis, pointing out the merger of state with big corporations (led by banks), pointing out the permitted financial fraud and banker welfare, even General Motors welfare, pointing out the economic effect, pointing out the war levers used to guarantee supply, and pointing out the systemic failure it has caused.

Not 10% of Americans comprehend what fascism is, but 30% of the nation would qualify easily to serve as Nazi Youth Group leaders, possibly without realization of the group functions. Witness the honor guards and flag ceremonies at sporting events, including an occasional fighter jet flyover. This is not healthy, but rather a slippery path to a dark place. The bigger question is whether the US nation will recognize the Third World when it approaches with all its nasty trappings.

The fatal errors are many. They cannot be fully detailed. The seminal original sin was breaking off the Gold Standard by Nixon. In my book, the move was probably the second half of the arrangement to have Kennedy removed, followed by a clever deft move to install Kissinger. He created the Petro-Dollar mechanisms, by pushing for a quadruple in the crude oil price, then instituting the Petro Surplus Recycle plan, having the Saudis run OPEC, forcing nations to accumulate USTreasurys in their banking system.

The Petro-Dollar defacto standard replaced the formal Gold Standard. The kicker benefit was that Arab nations and Iran were able to fill their coffers, buy fancy yachts, build casinos in the desert, erect oversized palaces to stroke their egos, arrange $million allowances for royal kids, and kick back profits to the USMilitary industrial complex, the monster to be fed.

The Petro-Dollar has permitted the USEconomy to live off a credit card, without direct consequence to abused debt. The Petro-Dollar has permitted the USMilitary to seek out and conquer, to effect the hearts and minds, and to plunder.  

The creditor nations of the world realize their role as the victims who finance the field operations and covert operations. That all changed with the narcotics industry born in the Cambodia Triangle, advanced in the Kosovo depot, and accelerated in the Afghan poppy fields. The USGovt security agencies have had independent income for over three decades. Witness the first Langley coup of a foreign state in Ukraine. The untold story is the conflict between the USMilitary and the Langley Mercenaries. Look later to find the Odessa Ltd split, just like in the 1950 birth for the old Nazi Germany war machine enterprise.

Many are the errors.

The US corporate titans responded to both environmental strictures and labor union demands, by relocating many operations in the Pacific Rim. The US domestic income source was displaced. The Americans sought to rely upon asset bubbles for income. They spent home equity on consumerism objectives, but in fairness often for necessities.

The Greenspan Fed contributed significantly to the wrecked state. They moved away from valid monetary policy whereby money supply increase was to match economic growth. Instead, following the Rubin directive, the Mr Magoo cutout ordered the monetary aggregate to follow the Consumer Price Inflation index in the most egregious central bank error in modern history to that date. The falsified CPI enabled unchecked increases in money released within the system. Debt growth also exploded to create a USEconomy that resembled a cross between a hedge fund and a Ponzi scheme. The Irrational Exuberance speech was his disclaimer, a weak statement easily seen through by the Jackass and many others.

The promoted strategy of easy money being stimulus is patently false. The low interest rates actually act like a wet blanket, reducing income to savers, but keeping interest payments down. Unfortunately twice as much volume exists in accounts due interest income payouts, versus loan portfolios due interest from monthly service payments.

To the contrary, easy money is a debt bomb and capital acid. The climax error was likely more a grand betrayal, granting China the Most Favored Nation status. The purpose stayed hidden for many years, to lease their gold by Wall Street firms. The result has been a loss of US legitimate income, during a period of profound capital investment in China by Western firms. The Western Govts idiotically complained about Chinese trade surpluses, when two thirds of their surpluses came from subsidiaries of Western firms with heavy blessed foreign direct investment. The result has been debt writedowns that take capital equipment and other fixed assets into the mothballs, while hyper inflation has killed capital directly. The result is systemic failure for the US nation, which can no longer finance its debt.

The mindset of the nation has been that to promote recovery, the people must be given money to put in their pockets for spending purposes. Wrong again, since what the people need is jobs, removal of heavy corporate taxation, and clearing of malodorous federal regulatory obstacles.

The US nation has lost its way on what capitalism is. It embraces socialism, with all its ravages. It endorses austerity, which is nothing more than poison pills. It permits war machine aggression as foreign policy for both infrastructure alteration and currency defense.

The nation can rebound if the capital structures are renovated and permitted to grow from seed, namely capital formation. This has become a foreign concept in the nation once considered the cradle of capitalism. The former communist nations have become the capitalism adopters, while the former capitalist nation leader has adopted national socialism (aka nazi). The United States will undergo re-industrialization again, but by the Chinese carpet baggers. They are loaded with $1.3 trillion in USTreasury Bonds.

Look at the new businesses that have been hatched in the last decade, as they litter the Wall Street landscape. They are truly pathetic. See NetFlix and FaceBook and Groupon and LinkeIn, even Twitter and Monster. The list is long and unimpressive. These are disk drive racks and elaborate living room couches and kitchen boxes. These are not corporations with deep capital investment and useful products flowing, intellectual capital exploited, value added from talented work forces, and enduring contributions to both economy and society.

Look at the new national initiatives.

There was the Green Revolution sponsored by Obama, but it proved to be a sham. See Solyndra and its fraudulent loans, the favorite personal Obama portfolio investment. There should have been a freight firm IPO to reward Obama ventures on gun running to Mexico. It could have become a good movement, for solar, for wind, for waves. Instead a fraudulent field, just like the mortgage weeded field.

The new national initiative is the shale oil and fracking gas strategy, which is both short-lived and destructive. The shale oil revolution is a fleeting flash in the pan, requiring a Ponzi growth in new wells to compensate for extremely rapid wellhead depletion. The fracking gas movement punctures the natural tables, and thus contaminates the water supply, catering to the Halliburton monopoly on fracking chemicals. Not even witnessing evidence of tens of thousands of water pools on fire can stop this administration, hellbent on destruction.

Even the Obamacare national health insurance plan has hidden malignant tumor-like motives. See the slush funds to cronies, where money vanished. See the triple cost versus touted by officials. See the required financial statements that enable tracking other assets wished to remain in shadows. See the eventual ID chip implanted on the upper left arm. Feel the part-time nightmare response to the labor market.

The disasters of the Obama Admin will be the stuff of history books. What Bush Jr Admin did to wreck the USEconomy from aggressive war costs, the Obama Admin complemented with wreckage of the USEconomy from internal caustic seeds.

The US nation is filled with households that cover the spectrum. Many are very unhappy about the current path taken by the nation. Many are suddenly insecure with the popular inflation hedge in the home equity having vanished. Many are suddenly insecure also from the poor labor market, and the plethora of substandard jobs. Gone are the engineering jobs and foremen posts that used to pay well, or even bond issuer posts. They are replaced by fast food marts, cashier posts, retail sales, customer service, freight movers, secretaries, night watchmen, janitors, and cleaning staff.

The nation has a new disease uncovered in many households, if the scattered reports from Hat Trick Letter clients reflects the masses. The Jackass refers to it as Arrogant Ignorance, which separates the ordinary bright educated masses from the Intellectuals. Take an intelligent person, remove the scientific method of working with verifiable evidence, add on assumptions embedded in defiance, sprinkle with some righteous indignation, add some old fashioned anger and insult, and you arrive at Arrogant Ignorance.

This disease is rampant, and divides families. The Contempt Before Investigation, with harsh dismissal of actively thinking people, is a horrendous mental rotten apple all too often seen on the table. Both factors are ripe in the Jackass own original family, although the new adopted Latina families are far more open minded and promising. Let it be known that my father, although not in agreement with many perceptions and beliefs, has supported the newsletter, in particular with 2004 seed capital to accompany the intellectual sweat equity and shoestring needs. If professional workers used these weak mental methods in the work place, the would fail on a widespread basis, lose and look bad. The national condition is not being examined rationally, but rather emotionally and against weird psychological frameworks built in flimsy defense.

In the last three years, a few colleagues and the Jackass have investigated reasons why people do not investigate or show interest in the decayed financial structures and depleted economy. We examine why they choose to remain uninformed and in the dark. This is a new intriguing aspect of human psychology to me, and as fascinating as disturbing. Here are some conclusions after a couple of years: 

a) We conclude that some people have over-arching belief systems for their lives that are sacrosanct and not challenged.
b) We conclude that some people are so frightened by certain threats, that they wish to ignore them.
c) We conclude that some people wish to believe the leaders, laws, and system protect them, another sacred belief.
d) We conclude that some people are successful in their work, and deeply invested in the current system, that they do not wish to alter the system in which they succeed. 

These justifications and phenomena are not comprehensive or exhaustive. They are a work in progress, which go together with the Stockholm Syndrome and the Warsaw Effect. These two address the emotional integration between victim and assailant, and the denial of threat while trapped within walls. However, integrate the four described items and something more perverse emerges. What appears is defense mechanisms for a failed nation and delusional defeated masses. Too many people have succumbed to the pressures, and remain hidden in their little anal caves.

Hats off to Gonzalo Lira for his book "A Secret History of the American Crash" which is a docu-drama work in the year 2020 set in Los Angeles. It provides a real life look on the streets and offices at where the broken Untied States is heading, based upon systemic failure, economic ruin, and society impact. From Lira's blog:

What are the scary parts of this novel? Or let me rephrase: What events described in this novel would scare the crap out of a reader in 2014? Well, there’s the issue of blatant, open anti-Semitism among the characters in the year 2020, and how Jewish people are openly persecuted under the guise of “networker targetting”. There’s the issue of women in the year 2020 being practically chattel, and how “plural marriages” are used to simultaneously keep women down and maintain social control. There’s the issue of total surveillance, up to and including all citizens having their DNA, picture and fingerprints taken, and every computer and electronic device being “tethered” to an owner—so that the government can quickly find out who is not “in compliance”. Then there are the concentration camps—excuse me, the “Detention and Processing Facilities”—where Americans who are “non-compliant” and have therefore lost their “American Privileges” are held, without recourse to the law or the courts because they haven’t been properly arrested—they have received “Administrative Detention”, and thus cannot contact a lawyer or a judge.

Gotta make it clear how in the year 2020, there’s no revolution or protest against the injustices and outrages of the government because (a) the fight has been literally bred out of people, and (b) people’s source of food depends on being “in compliance” with the government, so they are exceedingly wary of pissing off the G-Man.

In 2020, all drugs are legal, and their use is encouraged by the government, especially weed. Parts of the classified laws of the Domestic Pacification and Normalization Program (DOPA-Norm) of 2017 explicitly state that “the Federal Government should encourage the use of cannabis as a social lubircant and soporific. Don’t forget to include that somewhere. (Should weed be encouraged in the Detainee Camps as well? Think about it.)

How to describe people’s acquiescence? A lot of it has to do with the Capitol Bombing, and the rise of the so-called “insider threat”. The authorities are crazy about “insider threats”, gotta make that clear. But people’s acquiescence—their allowing the authorities to do bad things—has to do with having been slowly conditioned over the years. Think all those lock-down drills in schools.

Related: 

World War III, the Islamic State, and the New World Order into Which We Entered After 9/11/2001 (Richard Maybury)

Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from May 7, 2014):

Saudi Arabia is critical, and it will flip eastward. It already has. The nation has a notable recent history in serving as the linchpin of the Petro-Dollar itself, leading the ragtag OPEC nations. The British created the nation from a bedouin desert into a kingdom, with a stroke of a pen. The big lie maintained for ten years is the excess capacity of Saudi oil output. There is no excess capacity, as the nation is heavily depleted. The Chinese have entered the tent. Huge projects are well along like the vast petro-chemical facility in the west by the Red Sea. More huge projects are  planned. The recent Chinese missile deal, complete with parade, should serve as clear indicator of the next chapter. The Chinese will operate the new protectorate role, thus to expect more Chinese naval vessels in the criss-crossed waters. The Chinese have already captured the commercial fronts, not so much with big energy projects, but with instead the archipelago of retail centers and distribution points. With the UAE and Saudi, the Gulf region was conquered years ago.

Enter Iran, often mentioned by the Jackass in the context of the Paradigm Shift eastward. The OPEC oil cartel under Saudi guidance will be replaced by the NatGas Coop under Russian guidance. The network of Iran gas pipelines will be strategically important. The Saudis are suddenly expendable. The USDollar has an insolvent foundation and the Saudi gold has been dislodged from its London moorings. The Iranians have two big allies in Russia and China, kept under their wings during the entire painful sanctions period. Suddenly the Saudis are expendable. Watch with amazement how the Western press will vilify the Saudis, while painting a picture of Iran having been reformed and cleaned up. The Chinese are making great strides as the new global diplomat. The Beijing leaders have dictated that the Iran conflict with the US/UK be brought to an end. Find a way, those are the marching orders. Lastly, notice the new Saudi Royal succession announced.

The announcement made by Russia, China, and the Saudis to settle oil and gas trade in Yuan and Ruble currency will blow the doors off the global financial system. The pact will center upon energy trade payment system as core, but will serve a general purpose for trade. The resulting effect might trigger a US-based derivative meltdown, possibly even a Japanese meltdown. The BRICS nations will start central bank function, converting USTBonds to gold. The number of BRICS Associate nations will approach one hundred nations, such minor players like Vietnam, Bolivia, and Indonesia taking part, along with the stalwart Iran. The BRICS Development Fund will offer continued cover as a crisis reserve fund to rescue financial arenas in the Emerging Markets, and offer some aid in deficit coverage. Apart from infrastructure project fund, look for hidden gold conversion of toxic paper. The best part is, all the events would indicate a return to Gold Standard, without the standard announced. The Jackass is just thinking outside the box.

Since 2008 and the Lehman failure (including Fannie Mae adoption and AIG assumption), this has been a financial war with a monetary battle front. The motive toward solution has been nowhere, since liquidation of big broken banks has never been an option.

Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from June 3, 2014):

The tipping point was the Lehman kill in Sept 2008, following the subprime mortgage collapse. (Forecasted in advance by the Hat Trick Letter). It was a death event for the US banking structure, which should have forced liquidation of all Wall Street firms. Then came the Financial Accounting Standards Board relaxation of rules in April 2009, which still permits the big US banks to declare their assets at any value they wish. They hide grotesque insolvency. Their liquidation would not happen, instead zombies walked.

The next tipping point was the Federal Reserve announcing a move toward the Zero Percent Interest Rate (ZIRP) in early 2009. (Forecasted in advance by the Hat Trick Letter). The next tipping point was the Federal Reserve announcing the bond monetization initiative (QE) in early 2012. (Forecasted in advance by the HTLetter). The next tipping point was Taper Talk removed in September 2013, an obvious declaration of QE to Infinity. (Forecasted in advance by the HTLetter). The most recent tipping points are the Syria War and the Ukraine War to obstruct the Russian Energy Monopoly in the European energy market. Further signals abound, but are more effectively hidden. Cyprus, Syria, and Ukraine all have Gazprom obstruction in common. The defense of the USDollar has taken historically unprecedented turns.

The USDollar support has been military for a long time, but implicitly so. In recent months, the military support has been more overt and obvious. It will be full of intrigue to see if Putin can keep the battles on the financial front, while freezing the military front in a standoff, even if a messy standoff. The military battles can happen, as long as they are isolated. There will be many confrontations like on the Black Sea in the last couple weeks. The Russia Air Force offered a demonstration to the USNavy of their advance radar jamming equipment. The USNaval battlefield was left blind and without targeting systems. The USDollar Regime loses the global battle on the financial front, since it has no legs.

The role played by the Saudis has become clear. They recently had a parade to show off their new Chinese missiles, a bold step. This follows an economic conference in March held in Beijing between the two nations, to settle on large scale projects, cross border investments, political alignment of the minds, and some charity offerings. To be clear, as forecasted in the last few months, the Saudis have divorced the United States. The Saudis will next crawl under the Chinese wing. In vengeance, the Saudis will be treated with some terrorism, while the London bankers continue to steal their gold. The Riyadh thwarted terrorist incident is just the beginning. It bore a Langley signature.

The Jackass forecast is that the USDollar is not going to tank, not going to suffer a rapid decline. The financial structure is very complicated. Failed financial structures across the Western world will require a large pile of USDollars to settle broken derivative contracts. The USGovt will be forced to launch a domestic Dollar, which deserves the name Scheiss Dollar. It will be seriously devaluated in a sequence of steps. Expect severe problems inside the USEconomy. Refer to price inflation (imported after 30 years), supply chain disruption (uncertainty on short-term currency issues), and violence (at gasoline stations, food markets, and ATM cash centers).

Expect to see the mass of paper currencies suffer severe problems from direct dependence upon central bank inflation machinery and special bond patches. Expect to see a table full of new gold-backed currencies arrive like in a parade.

Refer to new Yuan, new Ruble, new Gulf Dinar, new Nordic Euro, and possibly new Norway Krone. The new US Republic Dollar will be the joker in the deck, the toilet paper item on the elite counter top. The new currencies will all be gold-backed and form a global critical mass, which might include about 60% to 65% of global trade. They will slowly bury all the present day paper currencies. In order to comprehend the next chapter, the observer and the analyst and the student must think in terms of the new currencies. Russia and China each in possession of over 20,000 tons of gold, ready to back new currencies. The United States has an empty vault and a sprawling military which no longer can boast Full Spectrum Dominance.


Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from June 3, 2014):

Nowhere has the betrayal of the US nation been more stark and ugly as with the granting of Most Favored Nation status to China in 1999. The story told is shallow and insipid, if not deceptive and loaded with treason. Reducing the cost of import items is a very shallow empty argument, with no long-term benefit, since legitimate income from industry was exported out of the United States. Reliance upon asset bubbles was the result, and eating home equity. It took time to come to light, but the MFN grant was done with a hidden backend lease of a sizeable portion of the Mao Era gold horde. Follow the collateral trails. My guess is it involved about 2000 metric tons.

The Chinese demanded collateral, like any prudent organization would. They received it in two forms, in the Jackass best estimation, as a result of the sequence of events which have followed. First, the Wall Street and Federal Reserve hive pledged the JPMorgan Chase headquarter complex as collateral, maybe other buildings as well. But the big enchilada was how the Chinese were given by Wall Street a securitized sovereign bond (like a mortgage bond) on the IRS income tax stream. Such derivatives are regular menu items for the Exchange Stabilization Fund managed by the USDept Treasury, with big arm assists by JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office.

Such derivatives hold together the USTreasury Bond complex, which China has been actively involved with. They were the primary beneficiary to Operation Twist in 2012, and probably designed it, then force fed it down the USFed throats. When the USEconomy suffered consecutive 3% and 4% recessions every year in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, the brutal impact was a default on the income tax bond derivative. Chronic recessions do that. The officially stated 1% or 2% GDP growth must be reduced by the inflation lie. For several years, the true CPI has been 7% to 9%. Inflation is called growth, according to Reich Finance. Subtract a chunk off every officially stated GDP, as the USEconomy is mired in a deep recession if not depression.

The visible part of the default is seen in the distressed sale (more like asset seizure) of the JPMorgan HQ for the paltry price of $725 million to a state-owned Chinese property conglomerate. The stated value at the time was $1.9 billion, but informed sources indicate the entire multi-purpose property complex to be worth easily $3 or $4 billion. They grabbed the gold vault too, and the conference center. The vault is connected to the USFed gold vaults underground via tunnels. The Chinese could have just as easily demanded the HQ of other Wall Street banks. Instead, they were given the JPMorgan HQ as collateral, since it is the operating arm of the USFed itself.

With very high likelihood, conclude that China has taken control of the Federal Reserve, taken control of One Chase Plaza. Either the Federal Reserve has been shut down or purchased. Its lease expired in 2013, amidst much speculation. No story ensued on the contract continuation or other disposition. The Jackass believes China took the Fed by default force. Further evidence was seen at the Dallas Fed, where the US and Chinese flags were jointly flown until public complaints recently. The Chinese always prefer a low profile, especially when colonizing the United States. Next come industrial parks and vast commercial property purchase. Later comes the re-industrialization of the nation.

The biggest betrayal in modern history of any sovereign nation and its populace might have taken place last year. The USGovt defaulted apparently on the IRS tax stream bond held by China as collateral for the massive gold lease. The JPM HQ seizure is simply the visible portion on the asset seizure. The renege on returning leased Gold caused a trade war to commence back in 2007. Then the default on the IRS mortgage came last year, due to the powerful USEconomic recession.

The Wall Street controllers to the USGovt sold out the nation, effectively handing over sovereign control to China in a lost gold poker bet. That is precisely what appears to be the case. In the meantime, the Obama Admin seems particularly pre-occupied with amending the laws for treason as much and for gay marriage. He has vested interest in both, along with Clinton and Bush the Lesser. The clowns who decry terrorism the most are the architects and purveyors of treason. But hey! The Jackass is delusional and crackpot. No American leaders would steal Fort Knox for the national treasury (see Rubin, Bush, Clinton), and then hand over foreign direct investment to China with a gold lease (see same clan) secured by a pledge of income tax revenue on collateral. To do so would be a coordinated betrayal using the US corporate sector in an abandonment of the American workers. Methinks the Paradigm Shift eastward has had some significant lubrication in the moving hind parts.