Obama 'Most Liberal, Most Incompetent' President Since Carter

Jindal: Obama 'Most Liberal, Most Incompetent' President Since Carter

June 8, 2012

National Journal - Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose star as a potential running mate for Mitt Romney has been rising in recent weeks, delivered a scathing critique of President Obama at the Chicago Conservative Political Action Conference here on Friday, saying the private sector is like a foreign country to Obama.

"I suspect that many in the Obama administration really don't believe in private enterprise. At best, they see business as something to be endured so that that it can provide tax money for government programs," said Jindal.

Responding to Obama’s statement that the private sector was "doing fine," he added:

"Mr. President, I've got a message for you: The private sector is not doing well when 23 million Americans are unemployed and underemployed in this great country. This president — the private sector is so foreign to him, he might need a passport to actually go visit, and he might need a translator to help him talk to folks in the private sector."

Jindal, who has not yet campaigned with Romney, grabbed his chance on Friday to try his hand at the attack-dog role traditionally given to running mates. He called Obama "the most liberal, most incompetent president in the White House since Jimmy Carter," and accused him of staying out of the Wisconsin recall election this week out of cowardice.

"Did he not go to Wisconsin because he was afraid of hurting himself by backing a loser?" Jindal wondered aloud. "He shrunk from this challenge. He elected to stay away from Wisconsin for fear of losing. That's not what leaders do."

Neither Obama nor Romney went to Wisconsin to campaign in this week’s bitter recall election pitting GOP Gov. Scott Walker against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Asked about Romney’s absence, Jindal replied,

"Obviously, Mitt had his own nomination campaign to run, but he was very clear that he stood with Scott, very clear that Scott needed to be reelected, that what Scott was doing was good for the state of Wisconsin."

Jindal gave a boilerplate expression of disinterest when asked about his name coming up as a possible vice president.

“I’ve got the job that I want,” he told reporters after his speech. “I’m not going to speculate on what Governor Romney is going to do. I’m not going to comment on his process the same way four years ago I didn’t comment on any of the speculation back then. All I’m going to say is that I look forward to supporting whoever Governor Romney selects to be on his ticket.”

Israeli, Palestinian Negotiators Quietly Meet

Israeli, Palestinian Negotiators Quietly Meet

June 10, 2012

AP - Israeli and Palestinian officials say their negotiators have been meeting quietly in recent weeks in hopes of ending a three-year standstill in peace efforts.

Palestinian officials said Sunday that chief envoy Saeb Erekat has been holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative, Yitzhak Molcho. They say the men are trying to set up a meeting between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Negotiations collapsed in December 2008 and remain frozen. The Palestinians want Israel to halt settlement construction on occupied lands. Netanyahu wants talks to start without any preconditions.

An Israeli official confirmed "ongoing contacts" between the sides, and said Israel is ready to consider goodwill gestures to bring Abbas to the negotiating table.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing sensitive diplomatic contacts.

Palestinian-Israeli negotiators Meet

April 4, 2012

AFP - Palestinian and Israeli top negotiators met yesterday in an attempt to break a freeze in the talks held over the past few months under Jordanian sponsorship.

Sources confirmed to The Jordan Times the meeting took place, bringing together Palestinian top negotiator Saeb Erekat and his Israeli counterpart Yitzhak Molcho.

The meeting is the fruit of efforts by Jordan to get the two parties together, the sources said.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sabah Rafie said Jordan did not “host nor attend” the meeting as reported earlier.

Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh late Wednesday told Jordan Television that Amman has succeeded in “breaking the stalemate” between the Palestinians and Israelis, citing “communication currently under way” between the two sides. He stopped short of mentioning the Erekat-Molcho Wednesday meeting. He said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to send a letter to Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to reply.

Agence France-Presse reported yesterday from Jerusalem that Netanyahu is to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the coming weeks, quoting Israeli and Palestinian officials as saying on Wednesday.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu will meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad,” Israeli premier’s spokesperson Ofir Gendelman said in a statement posted on his official Twitter feed.

He initially said the meeting would take place next week, but later clarified that it would occur after the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday and ends on April 13.

Palestinian officials confirmed the meeting and that Fayyad would hand Netanyahu a letter from Abbas about the stalled peace process.

“A Palestinian delegation will take a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Nimr Hammad, an adviser to Abbas told AFP on Wednesday.

He said Fayyad would be joined by senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo and negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Visiting US envoy David Hale was meeting Fayyad early on Wednesday evening and was scheduled to see Abbas later, Palestinian officials said. Hale met with Judeh on Tuesday over developments in the peace process. Netanyahu’s office did not say if Hale would also meet the Israeli side during his current trip. Gendelman said that Netanyahu would send his own letter to Abbas after the talks.

“Prime minister’s envoy Molcho will deliver a letter from the prime minister to President Abbas following the meeting,” he wrote.

Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been on hold since September 2010, but Jordan and the peacemaking Quartet sponsored several rounds of meetings between envoys from each sides in January. Those talks, held in Amman, were intended to pave the way back to direct negotiations, but ended without agreement on how they might resume.

With the process stalled, Abbas has reportedly prepared a letter restating Palestinian terms for returning to negotiations and warning that the status quo risks rendering the Palestinian Authority useless.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday that the letter would not include any threats by Abbas to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, as had previously been reported. But on Monday, the Palestinian leader said his message would contain a warning for the Israeli leader.

“You have made the Palestinian Authority a non-authority. You have taken from it all its specialisations and commitments,” he said in Cairo, quoting from the letter.

Israel says it wants to return to the talks without preconditions, but the Palestinians want clear parameters for discussions and an Israeli settlement freeze before they resume negotiations, AFP said.

Jobless and Forced to Take Social Security Early

Note that government employees at the local, state and federal level can retire after 30 years regardless of age (law enforcement officers and firefighters can retire after 20 years)

Forced to Early Social Security, Unemployed Pay a Steep Price

June 9, 2012

New York Times - This retirement oasis in the desert has long beckoned those who want to spin out their golden years playing golf and sitting by the pool in the arid sunshine.

But for Clare Keany, who turned 62 last fall and cannot find work, it feels more like a prison. Just a few miles from the gated estates of corporate chieftains and Hollywood stars, Ms. Keany lives in a tiny mobile home, barely getting by on little more than $1,082 a month from Social Security.

“I would rather be functioning and having a job somewhere,” said Ms. Keany, whose pixie haircut, trim build and crinkling smile suggest someone much younger than her years. “I really don’t enjoy living like this. I’ve got too much to do still.”

Even as most Americans are delaying retirement to bolster their savings accounts, the recession and its protracted aftermath have forced many older people who are out of work to draw Social Security much earlier than they had planned.

According to an analysis by Steve Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, about 200,000 more people filed initial claims in 2009 and 2010 than the agency had predicted before the recession and he said the trend most likely continued in 2011 and 2012, though that is harder to quantify. The most likely reason is joblessness.

Ms. Keany had always expected to work into her 70s and add to her retirement cushion. But after losing her job as an executive assistant at an advertising agency in 2008, she searched fruitlessly for full-time work and exhausted her unemployment benefits. For a while, she strung together odd jobs and lived off her 401(k) retirement and profit-sharing accounts. Then, this year, with her savings depleted and no job offers in sight, she reluctantly applied for Social Security.

Gazing out the window where the Santa Rosa mountains rise behind the mobile home park, she said,

“It just seems a waste of a life, to be honest.”

Drawing Social Security early has repercussions that will be hard to overcome even if the economy — and her work prospects — improve. By collecting four years shy of her full retirement age, Ms. Keany will receive a reduced monthly benefit for the rest of her life. Those who collect early get 20 to 30 percent less a month than they would get if they waited until full retirement age, which varies by year of birth. People in Ms. Keany’s age bracket are expected to live an average of close to 23 more years.

“The most potent lever that individuals can pull in trying to get themselves a secure retirement income is to postpone claiming” Social Security, said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

As recently as a decade ago, half of those eligible claimed Social Security at 62. But that share has been falling because people are living longer and still want to work as well as shore up retirement funds. That makes it even more galling for those who are forced to claim early because of unemployment. Several people interviewed mentioned blows to their self-esteem along with abandoned dreams of a more comfortable old age.

According to an analysis by Richard W. Johnson, director of the retirement policy program at the Urban Institute, 37 percent of older workers who lost their jobs between 2008 and 2011 and did not return to work ended up claiming Social Security as soon as they turned 62.

Ms. Keany, who was born in Britain, was making $64,000 a year as an administrative manager for a boutique advertising agency in Santa Monica when the firm lost two of its biggest clients in one week. She has nearly three decades of experience in the United States. She has managed offices, arranged visits by foreign dignitaries, composed employee handbooks and finessed demanding bosses. She said she had also run errands for movie producers, organized home offices and coordinated the administrative details of a drug study.

Those years of experience now work against her, she thinks.

“I’m overly qualified, overly skilled,” she said.

Her age is also most likely an impediment. After they lose a job, older workers tend to have a much harder time finding another than younger workers.

A Government Accountability Office report found that just under a third of those 55 to 64 who lost their jobs from 2007 through 2009 had found full-time work by January 2010, compared with 41 percent of people 25 to 54. The median duration of unemployment for those 55 and older was 34.1 weeks in May, according to the Labor Department, in contrast to 22 weeks for all jobless people over 16.

Ms. Keany, who is single and has no children, tried a change of geography. Because the economy in California was so weak, she moved in with friends in Charlotte, N.C., three years ago in hopes of having better luck there. She signed up with employment offices and volunteered, but did not find paying work.

Another friend invited her to stay on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where Ms. Keany eventually began work at a women’s recovery house in exchange for room and utilities. Then Hurricane Irene hit last August and damaged the house. Ms. Keany could not afford to stay.

In a panic, she used the last of her savings to move to Palm Springs last October and buy a $19,000 one-bedroom mobile home in the same park where friends lived two doors down.

“I was so frantic at that point and I was at my wit’s end,” said Ms. Keany, saying she still planned to find a job. “I thought at least with Palm Springs it’s a retirement resort community and I know there’s a lot of business here as well.”

She scoured Craigslist for affluent residents seeking personal assistants. She took a one-month job in Los Angeles, chauffeuring the principal actor on a movie. She applied for a job as a concierge at a Marriott Hotel, but withdrew after hearing it offered only eight hours a week.

Finally, in January, she gave in and filed for Social Security. Her monthly check covers the $336 mobile home park fee plus utilities, her cellphone bill, insurance and a satellite dish. She is also paying $100 a month in credit card debt. To save money, she has canceled the data plan on her BlackBerry and cut back on fresh fruits and vegetables.

After a wind storm blew out a window, she covered it with a tarp because she could not afford to replace the glass.

Ms. Keany is still hoping to find work. Social Security recipients younger than full retirement age can earn up to $14,640 a year without sacrificing any of their monthly benefit. At Ms. Keany’s age, for every $2 earned over that amount, Social Security deducts $1 in benefits.

This month, she flew back to the Outer Banks to stay with friends and work part time in two gift shops over the summer. If she cannot find permanent work in North Carolina, she plans to return to Palm Springs in the fall.

She is discouraged by what she sees as youth-obsessed employers.

“We’re already has-beens, which is so sad,” Ms. Keany said. “Some of us are still pretty productive.”

Poll Finds That Voters in Battleground States are Skeptical of Romney's Arguments About Private Equity

Obama’s Bain Capital Attacks May Be Working with Battleground State Voters

June 8, 2012

The Ticket - President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has come under fire for its attacks on Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital—with several Democrats, including Bill Clinton and Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, suggesting Obama's focus on private equity companies could backfire.

But if a new poll of voters in key swing states is any judge, the Obama campaign is unlikely to drop its Bain strategy anytime soon.

A new Purple Strategies poll found that a plurality of voters in 12 key battleground states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin—are skeptical of Romney's argument that private equity companies create jobs. Among those polled, 47 percent say "private equity hurts workers," compared to 38 percent who say it "helps" the economy.

In Ohio, the numbers were starkest: 49 percent of those surveyed said private equity companies put profits over workers, compared to 33 percent who said private equity "helps" the economy. Eighteen percent said they were "not sure."

In Florida, the gap wasn't as big, but it still favored Obama: 47 percent of those polled said private equity hurts workers, compared to 40 percent who said it helps the economy.

Meanwhile, voters in two other key swing states—Colorado and Virginia—were evenly split on their views of private equity. In Colorado, 44 percent said it hurts workers, compared to 43 percent who said it helps the economy. In Virginia, 44 percent said it helps the economy, compared to 42 percent who said it hurts workers.

(Results for other key states were not disclosed. The poll has a plus or minus 2.2 percent margin of error.)

The poll isn't a great sign for Romney, who has cited his work at Bain Capital as proof that he's helped to create jobs around the country.

In their analysis of the findings, the pollsters note that Obama's Bain strategy is a "classic wedge issue," consolidating Democrats and winning over a plurality of independent voters, 48 percent of whom say private equity hurts, compared to 38 percent who say it helps.

"While the overall results on this argument appear to bode well for the president, the electoral map dynamics may argue for a more subtle state-by-state strategy," the pollsters write.

Approval of the Supreme Court Plummets

Only 44 Percent of Americans Approve of the Supreme Court

June 8, 2012

The Lookout - A protester in front of the Supreme Court on the second day of the health care law's oral arguments. (Jacquelyn …

The American public's opinion of the Supreme Court has taken a dramatic turn for the worse over the past 25 years, according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll. Only 44 percent of Americans approve of the court's performance, compared to more than 60 percent of Americans in the late 1980s. Meanwhile, 75 percent of the poll's respondents say the judges' personal politics influence their legal decisions and 60 percent say the justices should not be appointed for life.

Over the past quarter century, Americans' general faith in public institutions has fallen, but the Supreme Court has especially lost favor. No one knows for sure what is driving the growing suspicion, but a recent spate of 5-4 decisions--where the liberal and conservative wings of the court split without compromise--may give the impression that the justices are unduly influenced by their politics and not just their fidelity to the constitution. The 2010 Citizens United decision, which struck down a campaign finance law that limited election spending, was also unpopular with the American public. (President Obama went so far as to rebuke the justices to their faces during his State of the Union speech over the decision.) Some of the conservative judges then boycotted his next speech, prompting criticism that they were trying to "pay back" the president for his scolding.

This month, the judges will hand down decisions in two politically-charged cases: President Obama's signature health care reform law, and Arizona's state law cracking down on illegal immigrants, which the Obama administration sought to block. Nearly 70 percent of Americans want the Supreme Court to strike down some or all of the health care law, according to the NYT/CBS poll.

Scott Walker Survives Recall Election Backed by Unions

Turnout among Wisconsin voters was unexpectedly high – the Wisconsin Board of Elections estimates up to 2.8 million voters, or 65 percent of the state’s electorate, turned out to cast their votes in this special election. That is slightly lower than the 2008 presidential election, but higher than the 49 percent that turned out in 2010. In 2010, Walker defeated Barrett with 52 to 46 percent of the vote. Walker outperformed his 2010 election totals in many parts of the state, despite much higher turnout than the 2010 midterm elections. [Source]

Romney: Wisconsin Victory ‘Will Echo Beyond’ State Borders

June 5, 2012

The Ticket - Mitt Romney hailed Republican Gov. Scott Walker's victory over Democratic challenger Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee in Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election, and said the vote has national implications.

"Tonight's results will echo beyond the borders of Wisconsin," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said in a statement released on his campaign website.

Walker's win shows that "citizens and taxpayers can fight back — and prevail — against the runaway government costs imposed by labor bosses," Romney said. "Tonight voters said 'no' to the tired, liberal ideas of yesterday, and 'yes' to fiscal responsibility and a new direction."

The Obama campaign, meanwhile, tried to find some positives in Tuesday's vote.

State campaign director Tripp Wellde said, "

While tonight's outcome was not what we had hoped for — no one can dispute the strong message sent to Governor Walker."

Wellde also highlighted exit polls showing Obama beating Romney 52 percent to 43 percent in Wisconsin, which he said demonstrated the "very steep pathway for Mitt Romney to recover in the state."

But, as The Hill newspaper pointed out, "the same exit polls showed a dead heat between Walker and Barrett."

Scott Walker Beats Recall, Wins in WI

June 5, 2012

The Daily Beast - Scott Walker narrowly held on to his job as Wisconsin’s governor on Tuesday, surviving a labor-backed recall drive loudly trumpeted as a national showdown over public-employee unions.

But for all the attention lavished on the Republican governor’s contest with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the only flaw in the storyline was that unions were never the campaign’s focus.

NBC projected Walker the winner just 50 minutes after the polls closed, followed closely by Fox News and CNN.

Despite the media’s inherent and sometimes inane tendency to overanalyze special elections, the Wisconsin battle may well have implications for the presidential campaign.

For one thing, the exit polls provided a snapshot, with President Obama leading Mitt Romney 53 to 42 percent—with more voters saying Obama would do a better job of handling the economy. Of course, the electorate in November may differ in size and ideological makeup.

With more than $63 million pouring into the race, voters on both sides became more energized—and more polarized. This could move the needle in a state that has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1984.

At the same time, it will be hard to hang Barrett’s loss around Obama’s neck, since his effort for the campaign was largely composed of a single tweet. The Obama brain trust decided not to risk a presidential appearance in Wisconsin. And given the lack of contribution limits in a recall, Walker was able to outspend the mayor by 10 to 1—which will hardly be the case in November.

Further muddying the waters is the fact that this is only the third recall of a governor in American history (the last being California’s Gray Davis in 2003). Some voters may have backed Walker on grounds that, with no allegations of corruption, it’s unfair to eject a sitting governor over policy differences. In fact, six in 10 of those questioned in early CBS exit polls said recalls should be reserved for official misconduct.

Still, Walker’s victory is an undeniable setback for organized labor, which spearheaded the campaign by helping to gather some of the more than 1 million signatures on recall petitions. And the June election was also a test of get-out-the-vote strength, with Barrett’s allies spending twice as much as the governor’s side to mobilize voters.

Walker infuriated the opposition when, months after taking office last year, he pushed through legislation that effectively ended collective-bargaining rights for most state workers, triggering massive street protests. Walker defended the move in the campaign’s final debate, saying “we drew a line in the sand” and that public employees needed to pay more for their benefits.

Walker’s victory is an undeniable setback for organized labor, which spearheaded the campaign by helping to gather some of the more than 1 million signatures on recall petitions.

Barrett framed the issue as one of punishing political enemies, saying in the debate that Walker was trying to turn Wisconsin into the “Tea Party capital of this country.”

But in yet another affirmation that all politics is local, some of Barrett’s ads dealt with a criminal probe that could implicate Walker aides from his tenure as a county executive, while Walker’s ads highlighted flawed crime reports by the Milwaukee police.

With several cable-news anchors reporting from Milwaukee, such distinctions are likely to be lost in the torrent of punditry over the recall.

World Government Advocate Attends Bilderberg

“Anti-Democratic” World Government Advocate Attends Bilderberg

FT writer Rachman outlined plan for global UN dictatorship

June 4, 2012

Infowars.com - Financial Times writer Gideon Rachman was in attendance at this year’s 2012 Bilderberg Group conference, no doubt to further the agenda he advanced in a December 2008 FT article in which he argued that “everything is in place” for a dictatorial world government to be imposed by a technocratic elite.

Rachman was spotted entering the conference in Chantilly Virginia by London Guardian journalist Charlie Skelton.

In his 2008 article And now for a world government, Rachman admitted that the elite’s plan for a global government was inherently undemocratic in nature.

“International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic,” he wrote, citing the continual rejection of EU expansion when the question is put to a vote. “In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters,” added Rachman.

Rachman’s world government would function like the European Union.

“It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force,” he wrote.

In addition, the authoritarian global government would impose “A legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force,” according to Rachman.

Rachman also notes that such an agenda would have to be established through euphemistic language to avoid “people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland”.

The FT writer explained how the imposition of world government was now “plausible” because it could be more easily justified by the financial crisis, “global warming” and the “global war on terror.”

Rachman’s 2008 call for authoritarian technocrats to be put in charge of the global economy in preparation for the official birth of global government is now well on its way to completion, with the economies of France, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Greece, along with the IMF and the European Central Bank, all under Goldman Sachs banker occupation.

I have challenged Rachman to a debate on his view that “everything is in place” for an authoritarian world government to be imposed by his Bilderberg chums. Read the email below.

Gideon,

I’m guessing your war criminal friend Henry Kissinger was receptive to the ideas outlined in your “and now for a world government” piece?

Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that over 100 of the world’s power brokers jet half way across the world for three days just for a nice dinner and a game of golf.

So when’s your report on Bilderberg 2012 going to appear in the FT?

I know I know, Wolfie (Martin Wolf – FT editor and Bilderberg member) would never allow such heresy.

Were you one of the snobs labeling us all cockroaches?

Come on, Gideon, there’s still time for you to turn away from the dark side.

I challenge you to a debate on the Alex Jones Show – do you have the balls?

What Would Happen If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupts?

What If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupts?

June 4, 2012

LiveScience.com - A rough estimate based on geologic records indicates there's a 1-in-10,000 chance of a "supereruption" at Yellowstone during our lifetimes. However, given the erratic nature of volcanoes, that number doesn't mean much. The bulging pocket of magma swishing around beneath Old Faithful might never blow its lid again. Or, it might put on a surprise fireworks show next Independence Day. Scientists just don't know.

But if or when it blows, what will actually happen? Will it be the end of us all, or just a big knock to the tourism industry in Wyoming?

Each of the three past supereruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot spewed more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of magma into the environment — the benchmark of a "supervolcano." According to Jacob Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, that's a large enough eruption to cover much of North America in an ash blanket of varying thickness.

"The ash is thick (more than about 30 centimeters of ash) near the eruption source and a small fraction of a millimeter once you move 2,000 miles away. It's fair to say that a trace of ash would be found over most of the United States, though it would only be thick enough to collapse roofs in the states closest to Yellowstone," Lowenstern told Life's Little Mysteries.

With enough warning, the states near Yellowstone could be evacuated, which would largely avoid a tremendous loss of life caused by the downpour of ash, the scientists said. But that's just in the short term; the aftermath would be the rub. For several days, ash would hang in the air, making it difficult to breathe. And that blanket of ash covering the country would smother vegetation and pollute the water supply, quickly leading to a nationwide food crisis.

"A lot of people would perish," said Stephen Self, director of the Volcano Dynamics Group at the Open University in the U.K.

He envisions American refugees lining up at the Mexican border.

Perhaps foreign governments would come to our aid and embark on a major ash cleanup operation, but without such an effort, inhospitable conditions would persist in the midwestern U.S. for about a decade.

"The records show that [new] vegetation starts to take hold about 10 years after supereruptions. It depends on how much rainfall the area receives, as rainfall is the main way you clear ash off the land," Self said.

As for the rest of the world, it would face a few years of mild climate change caused by the supereruption's ash cloud, which would wrap around the globe, casting Earth in shadow for several days and altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere for a decade or so. However, recent research shows the global impacts of supervolcanoes are less severe than scientists once thought, and a Yellowstone supereruption might be especially unimposing because its magma contains minimal sulfur. Sulfur gas produces particles called aerosols, which can cool the climate by blocking sunlight.

"The huge volume of magma means there would still be some sulfur injected into the atmosphere, but work has shown that you reach a sort of limit in the amount of aerosols you can produce with sulfur gas. It means that our earlier suggestions that there would be a severe temperature change is not right," Self said.

Based on the new models, the scientists now think the vast majority of Earth's species would weather a Yellowstone supereruption just fine (except, of course, for those knocked out due to proximity of the initial blast). They don't see any evidence in the geologic record of mass extinctions coinciding with supereruptions, and they don't predict extinctions to result from such geologic events in the future.

"The last time Yellowstone erupted, no extinctions took place," said Michael Rampino, a biologist and geologist at New York University. "Supereruptions are not extinction-level events," he said, but added that they can obviously cause problems for civilization.

These are scientists' best guesses, but they probably won't be around to check their answers. Yellowstone's last full-scale outburst occurred 640,000 years ago, and the ones before that occurred 1.3 million and 2.1 million years ago — but each of these events was a tad smaller than the one before it. This geologic hotspot could be growing cold. Or it might have one last hurrah.

Feet of Sand Leave Farms Wasteland After Flooding

Feet of Sand Leave Farms Wasteland After Flooding

June 4, 2012

AP - Mason Hansen guns his pickup and cranks the steering wheel to spin through sand up to 4 feet high, but this is no day at the beach.

Hansen once grew corn and soybeans in the sandy wasteland in western Iowa, and his frustration is clear. Despite months spent hauling away tons of sand dropped when the flooded Missouri River engulfed his farm last summer, parts of the property still look like a desert.

Hundreds of farmers are still struggling to remove sand and fill holes gouged by the Missouri River, which swelled with rain and snowmelt, overflowed its banks and damaged thousands of acres along its 2,341-mile route from Montana through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. The worst damage and the largest sand deposits were in Iowa and Nebraska.

"We'll be working on this for years," Hansen said. "It'll never be right. Ever. People don't have any idea how big of a mess this is."

Hansen has spent the past nine months pushing sand off the land he has farmed since 2000 near Missouri Valley, about 25 miles north of Omaha, Neb. Throughout the mild winter, he worked with his neighbor and two farm employees to clear 140 acres, but about 160 acres are still buried under sand.

The work is tedious. As the men scrape away the sand with bulldozers, they must stop repeatedly to pull out equipment that has become stuck in the still soggy fields.

As they work, catfish swim in a 30-foot-deep hole scoured out by the river, and a faint sandy haze clouds the air. On days when the wind picks up, sandstorms sweep through the fields, blinding workers as they dig into the ground.

"We have the means and the ability to fix it," Hansen said. "... But when you have to come out here and deal with it all the time, it gets old."

Shawn Shouse, an Iowa State University engineer and agribusiness expert, said most farmers can repair their land, but for some it will take another year or two of work. The first chore is removing the sand.

"The sand doesn't hold nutrients and water the way soil does, so it's not suitable for growing crops," he said. "If the deposits are thin, they can stir them into the soil and probably get along well. But when the deposits are several feet thick, they really have to move that sand somewhere else. That can be really expensive — and you have to figure out what to do with it."

Shouse said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prohibits farmers from dumping sand back into the river without a federal permit, so most of it gets piled along the fields and used to fill giant holes left by the water.

That's what Hansen has done. But even when the sand is cleared, farmers' problems aren't over.

The sand and months underwater killed crucial microbes in the soil that help crops grow. Restoring those microbes, which develop naturally on plant roots, could take several years. Farmers plant corn, knowing it will grow inefficiently until enough microbes get back into the soil.

In Iowa, the flood inundated nearly 256,000 acres of cropland in six western counties, while in Nebraska, it swamped about 119,000 acres. Dan Steinkruger, the Farm Service Agency's Nebraska state executive director, said Iowa has more low-lying fields along the banks than his state.

Farmers in Nebraska and western Iowa lost a combined $300 million or more in crop sales and other economic activity to the flooding, according to the two states' Farm Bureaus.

Neither the Farm Service Agency nor other federal and state agencies have kept tabs on how much land has been cleared so far. But in speaking with farmers, it appears there is a long way to go.

Scott Olson has managed to restore about 140 of his 500 acres near Tekamah, Neb., that were submerged in last year's flood. In one regard, he was lucky; most of his 3,000-acre farm was spared. But in the section that did flood, the water cut new holes and channels, creating drainage problems Olson expects will last for years. When the river receded, it left up to 15 feet of sand in some areas. Up to 5 feet remain.

The 55-year-old said he has spent more than $200,000 on bulldozers, land scrapers and workers thus far. He's confident most of the cost eventually will be covered by disaster aid, but he's still waiting for that money to come through. Hansen said he also will qualify for disaster aid, but he expects the payments will cover only about half of what he's spent.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved more than $20 million in disaster aid for Iowa and Nebraska, which will help farmers with the cost of moving sand, grading land and filling holes.

"It's just totally, totally devastating," Olson said. "The dollar amount for what it takes to put it all back together again is going to be tremendous. And it's going to cost you, the taxpayer, in case you haven't already figured that out."

Obama's Joyce Foundation is Funding Gun Control at the Local Level

Taxpayer- and foundation-funded 'gun violence prevention coordinator' in local governments held city-sponsored meetings to recruit anti-gun constituencies to undermine Second Amendment rights.

Taxpayer-funded Gun Control Gets Huge Foundation Boost

June 1, 2012

Ron Arnold, ConservativeActionAlerts.com - Gun rights advocates recently discovered that the gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns has burrowed its “gun violence prevention coordinators” (read “anti-gun lobbyists”) into city payrolls from Augusta, Maine to Seattle, Washington, at taxpayer expense.

MAIG is the brainchild of New York City’s zealous anti-gun billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who formed the group at a 2006 gun control summit held in Gracie Mansion and co-hosted by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. MAIG touts an agenda of “commonsense reforms” that gun rights advocates see as being somewhere on the far side of repealing the Second Amendment.

With a membership that started at 15 and now approaches 600 mayors, MAIG’s agenda has expanded from tracking “illegal” guns used in crimes to promoting outright gun bans in Congress. But the tactic of slipping anti-gun operatives into municipal governments looks like something new.

Florida blogger Sean Caranna stumbled upon these gun control termites about a month ago while researching another project. The Orlando city council’s website showed a contract renewal notice for a city employee with the job title, “Mayors Against Illegal Guns regional coordinator.”

Caranna was stunned by the job description: to “play an integral role in the coordination and planning of gun crime prevention and illegal gun-related initiatives, events and media opportunities in the city and in the region.” In the real world, that meant holding city-sponsored meetings to recruit anti-gun constituencies to undermine Second Amendment rights. Their slogans blared “gun crime” and “gun violence,” misdirecting attention away from the real problem of gang violence.

Orlando taxpayers footed $24,000 of the job’s $60,000 annual salary, prompting Caranna to look further. He turned up about a dozen other cities with a similar position and a similar burden on the city’s general fund — including Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Seattle.

Caranna called blogger Dave Workman in Seattle, who jumped on the story and found himself wondering about Orlando’s $24,000 payment toward the salary’s $60K total — where did the other $36,000 come from?

He contacted Thomas L. Taylor with the City of Seattle’s budget office, who confirmed that a now-discontinued position for a ‘gun violence prevention coordinator’ in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations had been “largely funded” by MAIG.

Workman found two grants for the position totaling $75,000, but the money was actually funneled through something called the United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund. Its president in 2010, when the grants were disbursed, was John Feinblatt, a close adviser to Mayor Bloomberg.

Where did UAIGSF get its money? The Foundation Center’s huge grant database showed that it got $2.4 million in foundation money from 2008 to 2010, with $1.3 million coming from Chicago’s rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation, where Barack Obama was once a board member.

Workman continued to shed light on the funding of MAIG, which was originally supported by Bloomberg ($3 million), insurance mogul Eli Broad ($750,000), and the Joyce Foundation ($1.1 million). When the Support Fund opened shop in 2008, Broad’s private foundation and the Joyce Foundation continued as anti-gun donors.

Joyce incubated the idea of joint government and foundation funding for gun control activists in 2008 with a grant of $375,000 “To support four diverse ‘mayors against illegal guns’ coalition members in hiring city coordinators to act as regional point persons for the coalition.”

Workman’s database-surfing found $32.2 million in tax-exempt money pouring into various gun control pockets during the past decade. George Soros’ Open Society Institute, for example, gave $600,000 to the Tides Foundation in 2002, “To support the donor advised fund for the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention.”

Workman said,

“Gun control has its donor advised funds and funders’ collaboratives and city-funded parasites, but I rarely see such coordination among gun rights donors.”

Perhaps conservative donors need to regroup their constitutional priorities.

Tell Congress & Obama: No Small Arms Treaty. The United Nations wants to make all weapons come under the CONTROL of international law – and Obama is eager to give away our gun rights to them.

Ron Arnold is an author and columnist who is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and author of Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future. Follow Ron at @Ron_Arnold

The U.S. Continues to Flirt with the Idea of a ‘Human Barcode,’ an Electronic ID Chip Assigned to Every Person at Birth

‘Human Barcode’ Could Make Society More Organized, But Invades Privacy, Civil Liberties

As tech companies work to develop ID chips, how long until we're no longer anonymous?

June 1, 2012

NY Daily News - A built-in identification chip for humans could invade privacy, civil liberties, opponents say.

Would you barcode your baby?

Microchip implants have become standard practice for our pets, but have been a tougher sell when it comes to the idea of putting them in people.

Science fiction author Elizabeth Moon last week rekindled the debate on whether it's a good idea to "barcode" infants at birth in an interview on a BBC radio program.

“I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached — a barcode if you will — an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals,” she said on The Forum, a weekly show that features "a global thinking" discussing a "radical, inspiring or controversial idea" for 60 seconds .

Moon believes the tools most commonly used for surveillance and identification — like video cameras and DNA testing — are slow, costly and often ineffective.

In her opinion, human barcoding would save a lot of time and money.

The proposal isn’t too far-fetched - it is already technically possible to "barcode" a human - but does it violate our rights to privacy?

Opponents argue that giving up anonymity would cultivate an “Orwellian” society where all citizens can be tracked.

“To have a record of everywhere you go and everything you do would be a frightening thing,” Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

He warned of a “check-point society” where everyone carries an internal passport and has to show their papers at every turn, he said.

“Once we let the government and businesses go down the road of nosing around in our lives...we’re going to quickly lose all our privacy,” said Stanley.

There are already, and increasingly, ways to electronically track people. Since 2006, new U.S. passports include radio frequency identification tags (RFID) that store all the information in the passport, plus a digital picture of the owner.

In 2002, an implantable ID chip called VeriChip was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The chip could be implanted in a person's arm, and when scanned, could pull up a 16 digit ID number containing information about the user.

It was discontinued in 2010 amid concerns about privacy and safety. [Editor's Note: Verichip was renamed PositiveID and is still in existence today.]

Still scientists and engineers have not given up on the idea.

A handful of enterprising companies have stepped into the void left by VeriChip, and are developing ways to integrate technology and man.

Biotech company MicroCHIPS has developed an implantable chip to deliver medicine to people on schedule and without injection. And technology company BIOPTid has patented a noninvasive method of identification called the “human barcode.”

Advocates say electronic verification could help parents or caregivers keep track of children and the elderly. Chips could be used to easily access medical information, and would make going through security points more convenient, reports say.

But there are also concerns about security breaches by hackers. If computers and social networks are already vulnerable to hacking and identify theft, imagine if someone could get access to your personal ID chip?

Stanley cautioned against throwing the baby out with the bathwater each time someone invents a new gadget.

“We can have security, we can have convenience, and we can have privacy,” he said. “We can have our cake and eat it too.”

Ventura County Regulating Small Businesses Out of Existence

Local Government Tries to Regulate Businesses Out of Existence So They Won’t Have to Compensate the Owners

May 30, 2012

The Blaze - The practice by local governments of using the power of eminent domain has a long and storied history in America. Indeed, it’s written into the constitution that governments can seize private property, provided they use it for a public good and pay the owners “just compensation.”

The first of these requirements has been eroded down to nothingness since the case of Kelo v. City of New London. However, the second one has remained in force, and been an effective deterrent against governments taking away property willy nilly, since all the costs would add up in theory.

Unfortunately, Ventura County in California has found a way around this limit by using zoning regulations to make it so prohibitively difficult for businesses to exist that the owners just pack up and leave of their own volition. This video from Reason Magazine explains the extremely sleazy approach involved:

The video centers on two local businesses – one of which, the Pine Mountain Inn, has been around since the 1930s, and hosted the likes of the Hell’s Angels.

The inn was forced to close down in 2002 when the owner, Tom Wolf, had a heart attack. Yet now it’s being stopped from reopening because, according to the county, this building has numerous zoning violations, including an unauthorized chicken coop.

A deadly threat to public health in the wrong hands

There’s just one problem – not only is the idea of an unauthorized chicken coop natively ridiculous, but according to the business’s owner, there is no chicken coop on the premises at all. That’s right, the authorities have resorted to accusing the Inn of violations for buildings that don’t exist on the property.

Why? According to the video, because the local government doesn’t like the fact that there are human beings living out in the rural parts of Ventura County and spoiling it for the wildlife.

“They wanted a complete open space with nothing but deer and frogs and no people,” says Tom Wolf, the owner of the Pine Mountain Inn.

And no, this isn’t just the railing of a bitter business owner. There is an actual policy on the books in Ventura County that prevents any economic development of the rural areas in Ventura County. Fair enough, but what about the businesses that already exist in those areas? Apparently, the county’s proposed solution is to basically force all the rural residents into the urban center so as to get rid of all these messy, environmentally unfriendly humans.

And this, too, they could probably do, if they just used eminent domain to take over the land that the Pine Mountain Inn is on, and paid Wolf for his property. But Ventura County is too cheap to do that, and so they’re trying to use bureaucratic red tape to force Wolf to close his business rather than just seize it and pay him up front.

Wolf sued Ventura County back in 2010 over this behavior, and it’s unclear whether there has been any movement on the case since the suit was filed. Unfortunately, he‘s not the only one who’s been targeted using this underhanded, sleazy approach to land management. Another restuarant that has suffered similar treatment is a Bed and Breakfast called “The Wheel,” whose owners say they’ve been hit with every conceivable safety violation under the sun in an effort to get them to close down.

Fortunately, there is a group that is trying to help – namely, the Ventura County Coalition of Labor and Business, whose executive director has a very good question about these kinds of cases, according to Reason’s article on the same subject:

“If there isn’t someone complaining, and there isn’t really a serious public health and safety issue, why do they spend so much of their time pursuing these kinds of cases?”

Why, indeed?

Greek Power Regulator Warns of Energy Meltdown

Greek Power Regulator Calls Emergency Meeting to Avert Collapse of Power Grid and Natural Gas System

June 3, 2012

SHTFPlan.com - When the political and economic systems of entire nations collapse the consequences are devastating.

Earlier this year pharmacies and hospitals in Greece were unable to provide life saving medicines due to a shortages caused by a freeze in the flow of credit from manufacturers to distributors to patients. A collapse in the country’s economy has forced many Greeks to turn to black market barter economies and has left millions financially devastated, with no hope of finding an income stream for the foreseeable future.

The credit system of the entire country is in shambles. So much so that reports are emerging about food shortages and hunger within the Greek prison system, suggesting that serious problems in the food delivery chain have begun to materialize.

As Nigel Farage warned recently, we are beginning to see the rise of extreme political parties as a consequence of the total and utter desperation of the populace.

Today the news gets even worse. Greece’s Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) announced an emergency meeting to deal with what can only be construed as a tell-tale sign that this crisis is very rapidly reaching critical mass and may spiral out of control in the very near future:

Greece’s power regulator RAE told Reuters on Friday it was calling an emergency meeting next week to avert a collapse of the debt-stricken country’s electricity and natural gas system.

“RAE is taking crisis initiatives throughout next week to avert the collapse of the natural gas and electricity system,” the regulator’s chief Nikos Vasilakos told Reuters.

RAE took the decision after receiving a letter from Greece’s natural gas company DEPA, which threatened to cut supplies to electricity producers if they failed to settle their arrears with the company.

Source: Reuters

You may have thought the financial collapse of 2008 was bad.

That was just a warm up. The main event is staring us in the face, and the whole of Europe has front row seats.

We’ve repeatedly warned about what author James Rawles portrays in his fictional yet prescient account of the effects an economic collapse has on a society. In his book Patriots (and his follow up Survivors) Rawles details the loss of confidence in a nation’s currency and credit, a collapse of basic services, the emergence of bartering, the collapse of power grids and supply infrastructure due to lack of money and labor, the rise of political extremes, and even the civil unrest and war that follows.

Do you still think this can only happen in fiction novels?

We are now seeing the first signs of this happening inside of the European Union – the largest economic zone in the world.

If there’s is one thing we can surmise based on the last four years, it’s that the contagion is spreading and it cannot be contained.

Today it’s Greece. Tomorrow it could be your hometown.

Offshoring of Jobs and the Decline of Middle-income Earners May Reduce the Value of College

Decline of Middle-wage Jobs May Reduce Value of College

March 7, 2011

The Lookout - We've written before about the job market's incredible shrinking middle. Thanks to mechanization and offshoring, a growing number of new jobs are either high-wage, high-skills, or, especially, low-wage, low-skill. But middle-wage, middle-skills jobs--both white-collar, like clerical work, or blue-collar, like craftwork--are fast disappearing.

When we last wrote about this trend, we noted that the shift makes a college degree more important than ever. But the truth may actually be closer to the reverse.

Columnist Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes today that many of the jobs now lost to computers and foreign workers involve things like legal research or software design--meaning that in the U.S. job market, a college education is no longer any guarantee of steady employment.

Indeed, Krugman points to research sugggesting that "high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more 'offshorable' than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers."

The point, Krugman argues, that investing in education--a central policy objective of the Obama administration--will not, by itself, solve the country's job woes.

Graduate's $142,000 Debt Nightmare

"Listen, guys. I'm working two jobs. I'm working here, and I got another job at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Okay? I'm doing that just to put a kid through NYU so he can explore his bisexuality and become a deejay." [Police Captain Gene Mauch, The Other Guys]

This Bright-Eyed Young Man Was Utterly Demolished by Student Loans

May 30, 2012

Business Insider - Even as total outstanding student debt rises to $1 trillion, lawmakers have yet to allow loans to be discharged in bankruptcy.

Without an escape clause, these loans can strangle a person.

Take 36-year-old Nick Keith, who remains $142,000 in debt eight years after graduating from culinary school. He's featured in a new film, "Default: The Student Loan Documentary," in which several college graduates expose the pitfalls of the private student loan industry.

"I want to educate the public about the facts," Keith said. "My life has become a daily swim in a tar pit with very little hope of ever getting out."

Without family support, Keith turned to culinary school

Keith's father only agreed to co-sign a student loan if he stuck with an engineering degree at Iowa State University, but even with decent grades, he knew it wasn't a right fit. He dropped out sophomore year and later turned to the California Culinary Academy–without his dad as a safety net–hoping to put his love for healthy eating to use.

"The culinary academy commercials were on the Food Network every 15 minutes," he said, and only required 12 months of study with a three month externship.

He fell for their sales pitch, hook line and sinker

"I should have seen all the signs. [The campus tour guide] had a used car salesman answer for everything," Keith recalls.

The magic number was always 99 percent–whether Keith asked how many enrolled students graduated or how many graduates scored jobs afterward.

Feeling confident, Keith took out $46,000 in private loans

He then took out another $14,000 in federal loans to cover his rent, since the school's fees didn't include room and board.

But "I was lied to about the terms of the private student loan," Keith says. "And after completing the program, my first job in the culinary field (working on a meal assembly line) paid $10 per hour."

He wasn't the first one to be duped

In September, the California Culinary Academy agreed to pay $40 million back to thousands of students in a class action suit claiming they were misled about the program.

The school allegedly boasted a "48 percent to 100 percent" success rate for graduates looking for work, but students claimed the calculation included jobs that didn't require a culinary education at all.

With just a part-time job, it took three months to make the first loan payment of $1,300

He was also paying a 19% variable interest rate – nearly triple the capped interest rate on federal unsubsidized loans.

"I spoke to (private loan issuer) Sallie Mae. I wrote to Sallie Mae. But Sallie Mae would not refinance my debt with a reasonable interest rate or reasonable payments," he says.

"I could not afford to make a student loan payment because my choice each month was to either pay my rent or make a student loan payment."

Sallie Mae's best offer? A $50 to $100 reduction in his monthly payments.

Bankruptcy wasn't an option

No matter how deep borrowers find themselves buried in student loan debt, federal law prevents them from discharging it in bankruptcy court–unless they can prove "undue hardship."

"Most bankruptcy attorneys do not pursue a discharge of student loans because the undue hardship restriction is such a harsh standard," according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org.

With no hope of meeting his monthly payments, Keith threw his hands up and basically let the debt collectors have at him.

"They call every day, a couple times a day," he says. "I send their numbers straight to voicemail."

Eventually he stopped making loan payments altogether

Keith sought advice from a bankruptcy attorney as well as a couple of CPAs on how to handle his loans. Both gave him the same advice: Stop paying.

They reasoned that with so many students in Keith's position, Congress would eventually revamp its personal bankruptcy laws to allow loans to be forgiven.

Nearly a decade since he took out the original loan, his balance has ballooned to $142,000 with a 17% interest rate–and the law hasn't budged.

And the blows just kept coming

"Just as I was getting close to getting my financial house in order, I was injured at work and became permanently disabled," Keith says.

Six years later, Keith's only source of income is a $1,200 monthly disability check, going so far as to collect cans and bottles for extra pocket money.

"I get groceries at the local food bank," he said. "I have sold or lost 99 percent of everything I ever owned."

The outlook remains pretty grim

Keith's expecting about $16,000 from the $40 million CCA settlement in July, but that's only if the school doesn't file another appeal.

In the meantime, his credit score has fallen below 550, he's had trouble securing even auto insurance, and finding work is a struggle–not to mention the fact that none of his CCA credits will transfer if he decides to go back to school.

"Any employer that checks my credit history will surely have to raise questions as to why my credit shows only defaulted or charged-off accounts," he says. "All of my good credit that showed I paid everything in full and on time is now past seven years old and has fallen off my credit report."

For the time being, he's living out of his van

Keith camped out in his dad's heated garage for the better part of 2011, hoping he'd be able to either find a job or sell enough of his belongings to afford to move back West for work.

When we caught up with him in late May, Keith said things with his father turned sour and he used the $2,500 or so he raised on hotel stays instead. As of last week, with the rest of his savings dried up, Keith officially joined the ranks of the homeless.

He's living out of an aged minivan, taking advantage of Salvation Army for meals and groceries. At night, he crashes at highway truck stops, where he says he's rarely bothered.

"All that I, and the rest of the folks in this mess, are asking for is that Congress simply return the "Truth in Lending" policies and procedures to all student loans (both federal and private)," he said. "As well as return the ability to discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy."

Bilderberg Puts Finishing Touches to Carbon Tax Agenda

Bilderberg is furious that Paul is working to stop the full ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which as we documented yesterday (see article below) is being discussed at this year’s conference. The treaty would hand the United Nations control over all U.S. oceans and force ships to pay a tariff directly to the global body.

Bilderberg Puts Finishing Touches to Carbon Tax Agenda

World Bank planned to be collection agency for CO2 tax

May 31, 2012

Prison Planet.com - The Bilderberg Group plans to put the finishing touches to a global carbon tax agenda that is already in full swing, according to our inside sources, with the threat of endangered species set to replace man-made global warming as the main vehicle through which the elite’s post-industrial revolution is accomplished.

Alex Jones’ source inside Bilderberg has told him that the secretive cabal still plans to use the World Bank as the collection agency for a global CO2 tax. World Bank head Robert Zoellick is in attendance at this year’s confab in Chantilly, Virginia according to the official attendee list.

Numerous representatives of the environmental movement are attending Bilderberg this year to help push this agenda through, including Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that generates revenue in the name of fighting climate change and yet is tied at the hip with some of the biggest corporations on the planet, including McDonald’s and FedEx.

Echoing UN reports which call for a similar shift, the widely discredited man-made climate mantra will largely be dispensed in favor of centralizing power through other means, particularly by using the pretext of endangered species and overpopulation.

The onset of a global carbon tax is already underway in numerous countries. In Australia, businesses are being threatened with fines of up to $1.1 million dollars if they even dare to criticize the carbon tax set to be implemented on July 1st.

Meanwhile, a carbon tax in Europe imposed since the start of the year charges airlines emissions fees for all flights that cross the continent, costs that are inevitably set to be passed on to consumers.

As we reported earlier this week, Agenda 21 is set to be a centerpiece of Bilderberg discussion, with the attendance of Alberta Premier and global warming alarmist Alison Redford at this year’s confab to discuss “ecological issues.”

The United Nations’ Agenda 21 project demands that member nations adopt “sustainable development” policies that are little more than a disguise for the reintroduction of neo-feudalism and only serve to reduce living standards and quality of life.

As part of this takeover, our source informs us that Bilderberg are keen on fully enforcing the United Nations’ Law of the Sea treaty, which would hand the global body control over all U.S. oceans and force ships to pay a tariff directly to the UN.

The true motivation behind the post-industrial society being pushed by Bilderberg was recently unveiled at the‘Planet Under Pressure’ conference in London, during which climate change alarmists presented their blueprint for humans to be packed into denser cities so that the rest of the planet can be surrendered to mother nature.

This process is already well underway in California where laws passed to mitigate car use and carbon dioxide emissions have led to policies that mandate up to 30 homes be built on a single acre of land.

It’s a similar idea to the nightmare ‘Planned-Opolis’ proposal put out by the Forum for the Future organization last year, in which human activity will be tightly regulated by a dictatorial technocracy in the name of saving the planet, with cars for personal use banned and only accessible to members of the elite.

Video Shows Activists Arrested At Bilderberg

Video Shows Activists Arrested At Bilderberg

Protesters cuffed for taking close-up photos of Bilderberg members

June 1, 2012

Infowars.com - Video from We Are Change shows two activists being arrested by Fairfax police for taking close-up photos of Bilderberg members arriving in Chantilly, Virginia, another example of how the security crackdown surrounding this year’s conference is more intense than ever before.

One of the activists arrested is a veteran.

This represents a new level of crackdown in terms of Bilderberg security. At the meeting last year in St. Moritz, Switzerland, photographers were able to get just as close as is shown in this video and police took no action.

Indeed, in Switzerland protesters would pull the stunt of slowly crossing the road as limousines approached in order to slow down the cars so photographers could get better pictures.

The fact that the police have been ordered to arrest people who get close enough to take good pictures shows how afraid Bilderberg is to have its members identified and the photos published, despite the fact that a list of attendees has already been released.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that its photographer was told by police “any attempt to get close to the building would result in arrest.”

However, the activists in the clip didn’t get anywhere near the building and didn’t block traffic, they merely stepped off the pavement to get a closer shot.

As we documented on Wednesday, security for the 2012 Bilderberg conference is unprecedented, with talk of “machine gun nests” and other intimidating tactics designed to keep protesters and media away from the site of the meeting.

See Infowars ongoing reporting of Bilderberg Conference: http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg2012/

Big Banks Embrace Bike Share Programs Using Tap & Go Payment System

The Citi Bikes, with the company’s logo across the frame and the top of the back wheel, can be used for up to 45 minutes without an additional charge — provided a rider has signed up for a $95 annual membership. For daily use, with an expected base price of $9.95, or weekly use, expected to cost $25, riders can travel for 30 minutes without an added fee. [Source]

Big Money Embraces New York Bike Share

May 7, 2012

Velo Mondial - Citigroup Inc. (C) agreed to pay $41 million to sponsor New York City’s bicycle-rental program, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg said will be the largest such system in the U.S. when it begins in July.

The “Citi Bike” program, presented by the mayor and Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit at City Hall today, will offer 10,000 bikes branded with the New York-based bank’s logo at 600 docking stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens.

New York will share any profits from the bike rentals with Portland, Oregon-based Alta Bicycle Share, chosen as its operator in September.

The bike-share program, first advocated by the city Transportation Department in 2009, would provide a low-cost transit alternative in a city where almost half the workforce lives within five miles (eight kilometers) of its place of work, the department said in a planning document.

MasterCard Inc. (MA) CEO Ajay Banga, also at City Hall, said his company would pay $6.5 million to provide bike-share stations with “PayPass Tap & Go” payment points and traditional magnetic-stripe terminals as part of its “Priceless New York” promotion of events and attractions for residents and tourists. Similar systems exist in Paris, with 20,600 bicycles; Barcelona, which has 6,000; Hangzhou, China, which offers as many as 60,600, and Washington’s 1,500-bike system. Read also NYC

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Is a New Way of Life Emerging in the USA?

May 7, 2012

Velo Mondial - “Unfortunately for car companies,” Jordan Weissmann noted in TheAtlantic.com a couple weeks back, “today's teens and twenty-somethings don't seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They're not even particularly keen on driving.”

Now a major new report from Benjamin Davis and Tony Dutzik at the Frontier Group and Phineas Baxandall, at the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, documents this unprecedented trend across a wide variety of indicators. Their two big findings about young people and driving:

- The average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) in the U.S. decreased by 23 percent between 2001 and 2009, falling from 10,300 miles per capita to just 7,900 miles per capita in 2009.

- The share of 14 to 34-year-olds without a driver’s license increased by 5 percentage points, rising from 21 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2010, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Young people are also making more use of transit, bikes, and foot power to get around. In 2009, 16 to 34-year-olds took 24 percent more bike trips than they took in 2001. They walked to their destinations 16 percent more often, while their passenger miles on transit jumped by 40 percent. Part of the reason for this shift is financial, but also a new way of life emerges. Read on here.