Rules Of The Road: Judge Says Bishops Can’t Drive Government Trafficking Policy

March 28, 2012 by Rob Boston in Wall of Separation

If you’re not willing to do what the job requires, you’re not likely to get it. End of story.



In November, I wrote a blog post about the Catholic bishops and their complaints after the church was denied a federal contract to assist victims of human trafficking. Today I’d like to report on an interesting sequel to that controversy.

In a nutshell, the story breaks down like this: In 2000, Congress passed a law designed to crack down on those who engage in the sex trafficking of people; the law also contained provisions providing services to victims of this crime.

The federal government searched for private contractors to help people who had been forced into this modern version of slavery. Because victims of trafficking are often raped or forced into prostitution, the government wanted to make sure that a full range of medical services was provided to them.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops received a large contract to assist trafficking victims, even though the church made it clear that it would provide no contraceptives or abortion referrals. Furthermore, the church was adamant that it would tell the more than 100 subcontractors it worked with (many of which were not Catholic groups) that they could not provide these services or referrals, either.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued in 2009, arguing that allowing a religious agency to run public policy according to its dogma violated the separation of church and state. As the case advanced in the courts, the Obama administration decided not to renew the church’s contract, asserting that tax money would only go to organizations willing to offer the comprehensive medical services.

The decision made a lot of sense. Victims of trafficking have already been traumatized and refusing to give them the full gamut of necessary medical services to ensure their health and well-being seemed like another form of assault.

The government’s decision sparked a howl of outrage from the bishops. They made the rather remarkable argument that the government’s failure to renew the contract was somehow a form of religious bigotry. In fact, the church lost the contract because it wasn’t willing to meet contract requirements. If you’re not willing to do what the job requires, you’re not likely to get it. End of story. (Nevertheless, Republicans in the House of Representatives held a hearing on the matter to play the “bias against Catholics” card.)

I’m pleased to say that a federal judge has rejected the church’s argument. New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal notes on his “Loyal Opposition” blog that last week U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled for the ACLU in the case.

“To insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single out any creed for official favor at the expense of all others,” observed Stearns in the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts v. Sebelius ruling.

Elsewhere, Stearns wrote that the federal government violated separation of church and state “insofar as they delegated authority to a religious organization to impose religiously based restrictions on the expenditure of taxpayer funds, and there impliedly endorsed the religious beliefs of the USCCB and the Catholic Church.”

This ruling could have broad implications for a host of governmental matters, including the role of religiously affiliated employers in the health care reform.

At a minimum, it’s a welcome reminder that public policy must never be twisted to meet the dogma of any religious group.

Why is Rick Santorum Pining for the Pilgrim/Theocrat days?

American history regarding Church and State.



This is a great show by Thom Hartmann.

Here is Rick Santorum on CNN regarding his prior statements about gays:

Please note that he makes the claim that religious sins or moral rules should not be in public policy, then he states that because the Catholic Church states that homosexuality and gay marriage is immoral and a sin, that public policy should prohibit them from marring. Complete contradiction in statements. So which is the truth?
 

Here is Rick Santorum attacking Ron Paul about Paul's idea that each state should determine what marriage is, even though he believe that marriage is between a single man and a single woman.



Rick Santorum attacks scientists as immoral people:
Stop federal funding of scientific research that may save lives or gain new knowledge about the universe and the world we live in. It's OK if there is private funding, but not tax money because some people find it objectionable....



This guy is completely nuts and wants to live in a period 400 years ago.

The Christianist Infiltration of America's Public Schools

THIS IS A MUST VIEW VIDEO.



WE HAVE SEVERAL CULTURE WARS IN AMERICA. THIS IS ONE MAJOR ISSUE.

This is absolutely frightening. As you listen to these speakers, you will start to relate to events at your local schools, laws being passed by conservative legislators and governors, school boards, and what your children are saying about these groups.

As one stated, I think in New York, the court issued a ruling that schools can be used by religious organizations as houses of worship, without paying rent or taxes. I feel that tax payers have been subsidizing religious institutions far too long.

They pay no income tax, sales tax, property tax, franchise tax, or any other tax. They use public services paid for by tax payers, such as taking land and buildings out of the tax rolls, consuming public water, using public sewer service, law enforcement services, the courts, both civil and criminal, public roadways for their members to reach their facilities much more.

Religions should support themselves and pay taxes as well, there is no reason that they don't. Especially if they continue to invade the political and public policy arenas.

This movement to Christianize the political process and governance of this nation is very alarming. What we are seeing is the plan that Jerry Farwell's Moral Majority group that merged with Pat Robertson's 700 Club to form the Christian Coalition that hired Ralph Reed to run. They, together with the Koch brothers, the John Birch Society, that is renamed the Tea Party, and using ALEC to educate, train and plant these Christinists in all levels of governance, starting at the lowest committee, to school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislators, governors, and then federal offices. In the nearly 30 years they have been working this program, they are now in a position to capture significant control.

We can see this in the several states that elected Tea Party candidates in 2010, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, who are destroying public education, eliminate labor unions of public employees, and in some cases even private enterprise labor unions, voter restrictions, restrictions on peaceful demonstrations, and in Michigan's case, appointing an emergency manger of a town or school district that can eliminate the power of the elected officials, so being an absolute ruler or emperor.

Has this take over gone so far as to prohibit a peaceful revolt to return the country back to a sectarian, open and free representative democracy?

The Greatest Speech Ever - Originally Made by Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin made this speech in a film "The Great Dictator" that ridiculed Hitler and the Nazi party while impersonating Adolph Hitler.

This video is a recreation with updated visuals of Chaplin giving his speech in "The Great Dictator." It is Charlie Chaplin you are watching from the black & white film and not one word was changed.

I find it very chilling that his words are so relevant in today's America, as they were to Europe in the 1930's.


To change the cycle of repeating destructive history, we the citizens of this nation must flood the streets of this country in civil demonstration in hope that Congress and the Right Wing will get the message that we can't continue on our current path.

--- HERE IS THE WRITTEN TRANSCRIPT OF HIS SPEECH. ---

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white.

We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
 
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:

machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.

Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind.

We think too much and feel too little:

More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:

"The kingdom of God is within man"

Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.

Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
. . .
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

A Very Simple Question, But No Republicans Can Answer It !

This woman's question was very simple and direct. As you saw, he is stumped as to what to say. He tries to change the subject to the stimulus bill and try to go negative, but the crowd would not have it. Then he tries to move on and avoid the question, again the crowd reacts, one man yells, "you don't have an answer."

This has been repeated over and over in town hall meetings across the country. Not one Republican, both in office and those running for office can state any evidence that the Bush tax cuts created jobs and by reducing the taxes on the wealthy and corporation would create more jobs.

If the evidence clearly shows a loss of jobs during the period of time that the Bush tax cuts were in effect, then lowering them further would not result in more jobs. It may however reduce employment even further, given the prior effect during the Bush Administration's loss of 8 million jobs, record profits by corporation, huge increases in net worth and incomes for the wealthiest Americans and stagnant wages for those who still have jobs.

All economists of any credibility all say that demand for goods and services is the only way to increase employment. The only difference between them is the ideology of whether government should use tax dollars to create demand or should the private sector? The problem with the private sector is that no company will increase output without someone able and willing to buy their products or services first.

However, there is one problem with this approach. Lets say demand can be increased by maybe increasing wages for those who are currently working, many of the goods they might purchase are made outside of the USA. So the net effect from the increase in demand for those goods is helping the country that makes those goods as well as the net profit of the corporations, but zero or very little grown in employment in America.

More Americans are working low wage part-time jobs, this artificially keeps the unemployment rate lower than it actually is. Many are having to work two part-time jobs to try to make ends meet. This then fills more job openings, reducing the available positions for those who are looking for work.

This lack of job openings is compounded by the fact that more seniors who would normally retire at age 55 or 60 are having to keep working. Why? Because of the loss of pensions from the company that just went broke and failed to adequately fund their portion of the pension plan or that their investments have declined to the point that they can't live on the earnings. With interest earned in low risk investments below even 1%, most seniors don't have the 10 million dollars in the bank to earn a reasonable income through interest payments. With Social Security not receiving any cost of living increases, they will have less to spend on anything other than the very basic needs of shelter, food, utilities and health care.

So you younger generation that think that it's not your job to fund Social Security and Medicare for the baby boomers, think about all the baby boomers that will continue to work and fill all the jobs you could have had, but don't. If all these baby boomers are willing to work at entry level wages and have a lot of experience, why would a company hire a new graduate with no experience?

What to do:

Raise the minimum wage to a level that is livable; that would be at least $25.00/hr. At the same time, pass a law that would penalize a company if they move any existing job out of country so that they can avoid the increased minimum wage.

Ask more companies to operate more hours, especially retail, so they can hire more workers. It may require reducing some full-time by 8 hours a week and then add the extra Saturday and Sunday hours, still not to exceed a 40 hour work week for any individual worker.

Get public employees back to work. School teachers, police, fire fighters, etc. They are a major part of our consumer economy. Their wages help create demand for goods and services. And hopefully they buy American made products so as to stimulate jobs here in America.

But with all that said, the reality is that we have now a world economy. We are interlinked with all other economies. Thus, there are more people around the world seeking employment than there is ability to employ them. Not everyone can work in some form of industrial production. There is a need for agriculture, but it is back breaking work for little pay.

In most of the industrialized world, even the agri-business has become mechanized to such a degree that it take far fewer laborers to produce the same amount of acreage and thus tonnage of output. Then you have the major droughts around the globe that is killing many agri jobs, thus increasing those who are looking to the major population centers for industrial work.

Compound this with newly emerging countries that are looking to increase or develop industrial output. One of the major causes of the Arab Spring revolts was lack of jobs and jobs that pay a living wage. As a result of these revolts, they are demanding and will work hard to create some form of industrial base. This can only be done by under cutting the wages of industrialized nations, thus further eroding the current wage scales down to equal the newly emerging labor markets. This is what happened with China and India infusing huge numbers of low wage workers to American and European companies. This caused loss of jobs in America and Europe and therefore the reduction or stagnant wages, even as profits have risen ten fold, all on the back of low wage workers.

Add to this that the world economies are built on little actual value. The world currencies are basically worthless and propped up in a house of card by the various "Central Banks" that issue money and regulate the banking industry. Since fractionated banking was introduced as the standard of practice for the past century throughout the world, it has created a false money supply. This was part of the real estate balloon problem, both here in USA and in some of the European countries like Spain and Ireland that also had inflated housing prices and easy credit markets.

When America began deregulating our financial systems starting in the 1980s, we pressured the European countries to follow suit. Unfortunately they did and this has set the stage for a world wide depression as the combination of all these employment factors, false economic currency management and declining natural resources needed for any sustainable economic growth by any country, we are in a very serious situation if not managed correctly.

My suggestion is that all noted and scholarly economist from around the world, of all ideologies, meet and establish working groups to come up with a global economic model that will bring the world out of this mess. They would meet every five years to adjust the model as events dictate.

Every country would adopt this economic model so that everyone is operating on the same playing field. Financial regulations be standardized throughout the world so to create stability in all economies. For the free market to operate efficiently and with fewer "business cycles" there has to be consistent and stable economic policies. When you have uncertainty in the investment market, finance market and consumer confidence, then you have huge volatility in all of them. You end up with what we have today, a roller coaster ride, that if not stabilized soon, could derail the world into a deep depression.

The net effect of this deep depression is the huge loss of life due to starvation and disease. Whenever you have high poverty, you have lack of sanitation and health care service which then results in easy transference of deadly diseases. Much like the plagues of centuries past. Additionally, the effects of global warming, whether human made or natural, will also cause crops to fail and less food available to the 3 billion living on the planet. Starvation will be the result. This will reduce the worlds population to a point that economic recovery will be possible because there will be fewer people looking for work and greater abundance of natural resources per person still living. I'm talking about the loss of over a billion, maybe 1.5 billion people in a short period of time.

The bottom line is choose your elected representative carefully. Anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, or political party loyalty and ideology are not important now. As one can see, it requires careful and considerate understanding of the problems and possible solutions to save the planet and the humans that inhabit it.

AVN - Lawsuit Okayed Against Cops for Wrongful Child Porn Bust

AVN - Lawsuit Okayed Against Cops for Wrongful Child Porn Bust

NINE MILE FALLS, Wash.—Todd and Nicole Chism were spending a quiet evening at home in January, 2007, when Washington State troopers executed a search warrant on the couple's home and offices, looking for evidence that Todd was the webmaster of two child porn sites. Although there was no physical evidence of child porn discovered on the couple's computers, the police nonetheless arrested the firefighter for "[s]ending, bringing into the state depictions of minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and [p]ossession of depictions of [m]inor engaged in sexually explicit conduct" over the internet.
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It took four months for the police to decide that indeed there had been no child porn on the couple's computers, and a year later the Chisms filed suit for official misconduct.

"The most important comment that I think I can start out with is there has been no evidence whatsoever of a download by the Chisms of child pornography," State Patrol Captain Jeff Devere told TV station KXLY.

That fact was brought home last week when a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has stripped the arresting officer and her supervisor of the qualified immunity granted to them by the U.S. District Court in Spokane, allowing the Chisms' lawsuit against the officers, the State Patrol and the State of Washington to proceed to trial.

According to the opinion by Judge Richard Paez, Washington's Missing and Exploited Children Task Force (MECTF) had received a pair of tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in July, 2007, noting that web hosting company Yahoo! had archived a pair of sites containing images of child porn, both of which listed the sites as having been opened by "Mr. Nicole Chism," who, for the first site, listed his residence as Chile, and for the second, Bolivia. The Yahoo! records also listed the billing address for the credit card used to open the accounts, which turned out to be the Chisms' home address, and included their phone number and their credit card number to which Yahoo! had charged hosting fees for the accounts, which could have been as little as $7.45 per month.

However, the police also discovered that the first users who logged into the accounts did so from two different IP addresses, one of which the police traced to a resident of Walla Walla, Washington, but were unable to trace the other one. After a few months, one of the officers noticed that the untraced IP address and the name "Mr. Nicole Chism" were common to both Yahoo! accounts, and Detective Rachel Gardner took that information, along with the credit card number to which the hosting fees had been charged, to the Bank of America, which had issued the credit card.

There, Gardner found that the Chisms had reported that credit card lost in 2006, and the bank had been issued a replacement card, but told Gardner that no fraudulent activity had been reported on the account. Gardner decided that that information was enough to provide the basis for search warrants for the Chisms, and the arrest warrant for Todd.

There's just one problem: Gardner made several false statements in obtaining the warrants, including the claims that Todd Chism had downloaded child porn images to his residence or office computer, and that the Chisms' credit card was "used to purchase the images of child pornography from the website." Unfortunately for Gardner, a search of all of the couples' computers failed to turn up any child porn at all, much less child porn purchased from the websites the cops were investigating—and Gardner knew that no charges beyond the web-hosting fees had been charged to the Chisms' credit card. Gardner also failed to disclose that at least one IP address had led to a person unrelated to the Chisms; that the other IP address had been untraceable; that although Nicole was an authorized user of the credit card in question, it was in Todd's name; and that the identifying information associated with both kiddie porn websites was "nonsensical."

Worse, the Washington State Patrol's training materials regarding child porn investigations specifically state, "Much, if not all, of the cyber-evidence (the E-mail addresses and IP addresses used) will lead you to an innocent person. That’s why simply identifying which account was used to commit a crime does not provide you with probable cause to get a search or arrest warrant for the name and address on that account. You’ll need to do more investigating to determine if there is a link between the account holder (or other members of the household) with the criminal activity that was committed with that account." Gardner failed to do any of that, and her supervisor, John Sager, allowed her to proceed anyway.

The majority of the Ninth Circuit panel found, therefore, that the officers had engaged in "intentional or reckless deception" in obtaining the warrants, and had also made materially false statements and omissions in the process.

"Words cannot describe how much I have suffered and my family has suffered and unfortunately will continue to," Chism remarked upon hearing of the Ninth Circuit's ruling. "I am innocent."

Sadly, the police aren't taking the ruling lying down.

"Both the Attorney General's Office and the Washington State Patrol take the potential exploitation of children through child pornography very seriously," spokeswoman Janelle Guthrie told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website. "We both care deeply about this case, we're disappointed in this ruling and we'll be requesting an en banc review of this decision."


______________________________________________________________________
My Thoughts:

This is why the Child Porn laws are much too broad and is causing more harm than they should to innocent victims. The witch hunt that currently going on is very dangerous to our personal freedoms. There has to be a more reasoned approach to protect against abused children and to actually prosecute the perpetrators of the abuse. Any physical abuse, whether sexual or other physical assault, must be aggressively investigated and those who commit these crimes brought to justice.

With that said, spending the huge sums of money and investigators time going after innocent victims because of lost credit cards, identity theft, and those who might have "Nudist" photos of their family or downloaded from the Internet, is beyond reason and acceptable balance of justice for the actual victim. The hysteria about nudity and a child's perceived innocents has gone way beyond protecting children from predatory sexual abuse.

Much like the war on drugs, the same can be said about the war on sex and nudity, it consumes a huge amount of tax dollars without any real decline in the actual crime. This notion that if you imprison the purchaser of the drugs or photos, then you eliminate the demand. Sorry to say that has not worked in either case. It has only filled our prisons and jails and cost the tax payer a lot of money.

More reasoned heads need to rethink these laws and a more pragmatic approach should be developed to effectively trace and identify the ones who are actually committing the child abuse and imprison them. The visual representation of the act can be argued intellectually should it be a crime in itself or just the recording of the crime, such as any video might capture a crime being committed.

The argument that the victim is re-victimized because there is a visualized record of the assault is problematic. To use that same argument to any other video taped or photographed crime, regardless of the crime, then the images will also cause the victim to be re-victimized, thus those images should be criminal. This would prohibit any news organization from recording or broadcasting any video or photo involving the commitment of any crime in which an individual is a victim.

There have been numerous cases in which police and prosecutors have ruined a family's life by falsely arresting them on child porn charges. Some because of innocent family photos or video of their kids having fun in the bath tub, or romping around nude in the back yard in the sprinklers or in this case a credit card theft. Some are unfortunate to even be convicted and spend years in prison, their kids taken away from them and placed in foster care. All of these could have been avoided and families not destroyed had more reasoned laws and processes have been established from the beginning.

If You're a conservataive who hates taxes, here is the way to avoid them.

If you’re a conservative who hates taxes, please do the following.

1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt, or need the police, or your home is on fire.
6. Do not call the police to stop intruders in your home.
7. Do not summon the fire department to save your burning home.
8. Do not drive on any paved road, highway, and interstate or drive on any bridge.
9. Do not use public restrooms.
10. Do not send your kids to public schools.
11. Do not put your trash out for city garbage collectors.
12. Do not live in areas with clean air.
13. Do not drink clean water.
14. Do not visit National Parks or State Park or City Park.
15. Do not visit public museums, zoos, and monuments.
16. Do not eat or use FDA inspected food and medicines.
17. Do not bring your kids to public playgrounds.
18. Do not walk or run on sidewalks.
19. Do not use public recreational facilities such as basketball, baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and tennis courts.
20. Do not seek shelter facilities or food in soup kitchens when you are homeless and hungry. Even religious charities receive tax dollars to help provide their care.
21. Do not apply for educational or job training assistance when you lose your job.
22. Do not apply for food stamps when you can’t feed your children.
23. Do not use the judiciary system for any reason. You must use private arbitration.
24. Do not ask for a public defender attorney when you are arrested and do not ask for one to be assigned to you by the court.
25. Do not apply for any Pell Grants.
26. Do not use cures that were discovered by labs using federal dollars, NIH.
27. Do not fly on federally regulated airplanes.
28. Do not use any product that can trace its development back to NASA.
29. Do not watch the weather report on TV provided by the National Weather Service.
30. Do not listen to severe weather warnings from the National Weather Service.
31. Do not listen to tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake alert systems.
32. Do not apply for federal housing.
33. Do not use the internet, which was developed by the military.
34. Do not swim in clean rivers.
35. Do not allow your child to eat school lunches or breakfasts.
36. Do not ask for FEMA assistance when everything you own gets wiped out by disaster.
37. Do not ask the military to defend your life and home in the event of a foreign invasion.
38. Do not use your cell phone or home telephone, as the use and RF is regulated by the government so that your phones work in every state and city.
39. Do not buy firearms that wouldn’t have been developed without the support of the US Government and military. That includes most of them.
40. Do not eat USDA inspected produce and meat.
41. Do not apply for government grants to start your own business, NO SBA loans.
42. Do not apply to win a government contract.
43. Do not buy any vehicle that has been inspected by government safety agencies.
44. Do not buy any product that is protected from poisons, toxins, etc…by the Consumer Protection Agency.
45. Do not save your money in a bank that is FDIC insured.
46. Do not use Veterans benefits or military health care.
47. Do not use the G.I. Bill to go to college or buy a home.
48. Do not apply for unemployment benefits.
49. Do not use any electricity from companies regulated by the Department of Energy.
50. Do not live in homes that are built to code.
51. Do not run for public office. Politicians are paid with taxpayer dollars.
52. Do not ask for help from the FBI, S.W.A.T, the bomb squad, Homeland Security, State troopers, etc…
53. Do not apply for any government job whatsoever, as all state and federal employees are paid with tax dollars.
54. Do not use public libraries.
55. Do not use the US Postal Service, government owned.
56. Do not visit the National Archives.
57. Do not visit government building of any kind, i.e. capitals, DMV, City Halls, Police Departments, or Fire Stations.
58. Do not use airports that are secured by the federal government, as well as built and paid for with local and federal tax money.
59. Do not apply for loans from any bank that is FDIC insured or FHA insured.
60. Do not ask the government to help you clean up after a tornado.
61. Do not ask the Department of Agriculture to provide a subsidy to help you run your farm.
62. Do not take walks or camp in National Forests.
63. Do not ask for taxpayer dollars for your oil company.
64. Do not ask the federal government to bail your company out during recessions.
65. Do not seek medical care from places that use federal dollars, that is almost all of them and nearly every doctor.
66. Do not use Medicaid.
67. Do not use WIC.
68. Do not use electricity generated by Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, McNary Dam,John Day Dam,The Dalles Dam,Bonneville Dam,Chief Joseph Dam,and hundred more.
69. Do not use electricity or any service provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
70. Do not ask the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild levees when they break.
71. Do not let the Coast Guard save you from drowning when your boat capsizes at sea.
72. Do not ask the government to help evacuate you when all hell breaks loose in the country you are in.
73. Do not visit historic landmarks.
74. Do not visit fisheries.
75. Do not go looking for animals that are federally protected because of the Endangered Species List.
76. Do not expect plows to clear roads of snow and ice so your kids can go to school and so you can get to work.
77. Do not hunt or camp on federal land.
78. Do not work anywhere that has a safe workplace because of government regulations.
79. Do not use public transportation.
80. Do not drink water from public water fountains.
81. Do not whine when someone copies your work and sells it as their own. Government enforces copyright laws.
82. Do not expect to own your home, car, or boat. Government organizes and keeps all titles. Without them, tiles have no worth.
83. Do not expect convicted felons to remain off the streets. Prisons are built and operated with federal and state taxes.
84. Do not eat in restaurants that are regulated by food quality and safety standards. Local health departments are paid for by tax dollars.
85. Do not seek help from the US Embassy if you need assistance in a foreign nation.
86. Do not apply for a passport to travel outside of the United States.
87. Do not apply for a patent when you invent something.
88. Do not adopt a child through your local, state, or federal governments.
89. Do not use elevators that have been inspected by federal or state safety regulators.
89. Do not use any resource that was discovered by the USGS.
90. Do not ask for energy assistance from the government.
91. Do not move to any other developed nation, because the taxes are much higher.
92. Do not go to a beach that is kept clean by the state.
93. Do not use money printed by the US Treasury.
94. Do not complain when millions more illegal immigrants cross the border because there are no more border patrol agents.
95. Do not attend a state university or college.
96. Do not see any doctor that is licensed through the state.
97. Do not use any water from municipal water systems.
98. Do not complain when diseases and viruses, that were once fought around the globe by the US government and CDC, reach your house.
99. Do not work for any company that is required to pay its workers a livable wage, provide them sick days, vacation days, and benefits.
100. Do not expect to be able to vote on election days. Government provides voting booths, election day officials, and voting machines which are paid for with taxes.
101. Do not ride trains. Most of the railroad was built with government financial assistance and repaired with government assistance.
102. Do not use your GPS navigation in your car, private airplane or on your cell phone or touchpad as the satellites are operated by and paid for by tax money.
103. Do not go on a cruise ship, because they use the government GPS system to navigate and are inspected for safety by the Coast Guard.
104. Do not fly on a commercial airline, as they also use the government GPS system to navigate and inspected for safety by the FAA and NTSB.
105. Do not purchase any item that was transported by commercial ships, as they use the governments GPS system to navigate and government ports to load and unload goods and inspected by the Coast Guard.
106. Do not purchase products shipped on the tax payer - public highways, freeways, and streets on commercial carrier trucks and are inspected by federal and state agencies.
107. Do not go to a convention or symposium held at a public financed convention center.
108. Do not go to a sports event at a stadium that was in total or in part paid for with tax money.
109. Do not get angry if you neighbor starts to run an auto repair business next door and has cars all over the place, in the street and on your lawn, because there is no government to stop them.
110. Do not go to a play or other entertainment at a government supported theater, amphitheater, or stadium.
111. Do not expect to be buried if you are out of work and poor.
112. Do not purchase flood insurance, since it is issued by and guaranteed by tax dollars.
113. Do not use your boat on any reservoir created by tax money or lake on public land.
114. Do not graze your cattle on public land at very little cost.
115. Do not use oil, coal or natural gas obtained from public land.
116. Do not use earthquake fault maps when buying a home or commercial property, since these are created with tax money by the USGS.
117. Do not expect to be warned of the potential of a volcano is ready to explode near your home.
118. Do not expect the communications and TV satellites to remain in position and functional, since they are controlled by multiple government and tax payer agencies.
119. Do not expect to sue someone for any reason, as the courts are tax payer funded.
120. Do not get angry when the high rise building you are in falls down because no one inspected the plans, contractor, and construction quality.

The fact is, we pay for the lifestyle we expect. Without taxes, our lifestyles would be totally different and much harder. America would be a third world country. The less we pay, the less we get in return. Americans pay less taxes today since 1958 and is ranked 32nd out of 34 of the top tax paying countries. Chile and Mexico are 33rd and 34th.

The Republicans are lying when they say that we pay the highest taxes in the world and are only attacking taxes to reward corporations and the wealthy and to weaken our infrastructure and way of life. So next time you object to paying taxes or fight to abolish taxes for corporations and the wealthy, keep this quote in mind…
“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Rich Are Different - and Not In A Good Way!

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,” published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that “upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self….”

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

“I will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: “‘It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,’” she said.

Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a “let them eat cake” vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, “If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?”

According to Gallup, Americans earning more than $90,000 per year continued to increase their consumer spending in July while middle- and lower-income Americans remained stalled, even as the upper classes argue that they can’t pay any more taxes. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us continues to grow wider, with over 80 percent of the nation’s financial wealth controlled by about 20 percent of the people.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

That’s the moral of Capra movies like “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which a plutocrat comes to learn the value of community and family. But Keltner, author of the book “Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life,” doesn’t rely on sentiment to make his case.

He points to his own research and that of others. For example, lower class subjects are better at deciphering the emotions of people in photographs than are rich people.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

In one test, for example, Keltner and other colleagues had 115 people play the “dictator game,” a standard trial of economic behavior. “Dictators” were paired with an unseen partner, given ten “points” that represented money, and told they could share as many or as few of the points with the partner as they desired. Lower-class participants gave more even after controlling for gender, age or ethnicity.

Keltner has also studied vagus nerve activation. The vagus nerve helps the brain record and respond to emotional inputs. When subjects are exposed to pictures of starving children, for example, their vagus nerve typically becomes more active as measured by electrodes on their chests and a sensor band around their waists. In recent tests, yet to be published, Keltner has found that those from lower-class backgrounds have more intense activation.

Other studies from other researchers have not produced the clear-cut results Keltner uses to advance his argument. In surveys of charitable giving, some show that low-income people give more, but other studies show the opposite.

“The research regarding income and helping behaviors has always been little bit mixed,” explained Meredith McGinley, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University.

Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.

As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

Was S&P downgrade an act of revenge?

By Bob Sullivan, The Red Tape Chronicles.

You might think Standard & Poor’s has something against the U.S. government, the way the ratings firm treated the nation's credit rating on Friday.

In fact, it does.

It's hard to view the monumental ratings downgrade in context without understanding the long-running feud between the government and ratings agencies. In April, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., issued a scathing 650-page report contending that malfeasance at ratings bureaus like Standard & Poor’s was as much to blame for the housing bubble as any bank, and included a series of smoking gun e-mails that suggested that the firms knew they were profiting from unethical behavior. A little-known section of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill also hits the rating agencies with new limits destined to undercut their lucrative business; the Securities and Exchange Commission is discussing right now just how to implement the new rules. The public comment period on new rules ended Monday.

Is the timing a coincidence? Or could the ratings downgrade from Standard & Poor’s be viewed as a shot back at a government that's been taking plenty of shots at the ratings industry lately?

To be sure, no one needs Standard & Poor’s to say the U.S. government's coffers are in sorry shape. But this feud over the lucrative and arcane business of granting credit ratings shouldn’t be ignored.

For years, federal agencies and Congress have made attempts to reform the credit ratings business, which on its face is a bit absurd -- part accountancy, part cheerleader, part judge and jury of the financial system. As things stand, firms that want to borrow money from the bond market seek out a seal of approval from companies like S&P, Moody's and Fitch, and pay handsomely for it. The firms say they isolate fee collection from ratings judgment, but the business model is the very definition of a conflict of interest -- and the firms' actions during the height of the housing bubble call into question their ability to keep the ratings business free of profit-driven influence.

"It's like one of the parties in court paying the judge's salary," Levin said recently.

This crazy system hasn’t always been in place. People who really needed accurate ratings – investors – once paid ratings agencies for them, a so-called subscriber model. The 1929 market crash showed the ratings weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, however, and ratings agencies went searching for a different model. By the 1970s, they’d settled on a more stable business model, called “issuer-pays.” The market might go up and down, as does the quality of the ratings advice, but there is an endless stream of firms who want to borrow money and want new bonds rated.

The challenges of such a model are obvious, however, and were laid bare by the housing bubble.

Levin's report includes testimony from an endless stream of former employees who say they felt pressure to grant top ratings to new bond issues, lest they lose deals to competitors. In fact, the housing bubble was very, very good for the ratings agencies -- Standard & Poor’s fees from mortgage-related bond issues quadrupled from $64 million to $265 million between 2002 and 2006, the report found.

Internal e-mails from the various firms show that warning bells were repeatedly ignored. A 2006 email from an S&P employee cited in the report said the rating agencies "have all developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome," held captive by banks. Another e-mail cites an employee openly fretting about the agencies facing their "Nixon moment," when the housing bubble finally burst.

The problem hardly began with the overheated housing market, however.

"The absence of timely downgrades in these cases was a product of an industry that was beset by conflicts of interest and a lack of competition. Ultimately, this compromised the integrity of the market and investors paid the price," a prominent U.S. senator stated nearly a last decade ago. That senator was prominent Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, now one of the most skeptical voices in Congress about the current round of financial reform. Shelby uttered those words after ratings agencies were cited as one of the causes of the Enron debacle in 2001 -- and as Republican President George Bush signed into law the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act in 2006. It was designed to prevent another Enron -- or at least to prevent ratings agencies from causing one.

At the time, lawmakers blamed the virtual duopoly that Moody's and S&P held on the ratings market, and the law made it easier for competitors to join the industry.

That didn't work. Instead, newcomers simply accelerated the "race to the bottom," and made a nefarious strategy called "ratings shopping" even easier. If a bank wanted to issue a mortgage-backed security, it could shop it to various agencies and pick whichever firm offered the highest rating. The temptation for competitive forces to overwhelm good accounting was enormous.

When the day of reckoning came for the housing bubble, the ratings agencies pulled the Band-Aid off the wound with one quick, brutal yank. In July 2007, S&P downgraded 1,100 mortgage related securities, an unprecedented volume. The massive downgrades were immediately preceded by equally massive new issues, however. In the first week of the same month, S&P issued 1,500 new positive residential mortgage-backed securities ratings, and Moody's did much the same, raising the obvious possibility that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing -- or worse.

"(It) raises serious questions about whether S&P and Moody’s quickly pushed these ratings through to avoid losing revenues before the mass downgrades began," the Levin report said.

In response to the report back in April, S&P rejected the assertion that the ratings agency helped cause the bubble burst.

"We regret that, like many others, we did not foresee the speed and extent of the housing downturn, which was the steepest decline since the Great Depression," spokeswoman Catherine Mathis told Bloomberg at the time.

S&P spokesman David Wargin flat-out denied to msnbc.com that the current regulation process had anything to do with the firm's assessment of the U.S. government's debt-worthy-ness.

"There's absolutely no connection between Dodd Frank regulation and any analytical decision we have made," he said.

It might be hard to win over critics who say the ratings agencies have a history of allowing outside factors to influence ratings decisions, however.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill includes a series of measures that once again attempt to curtail the conflict of interest that is pervasive in the ratings world, which would almost certainly cut severely into the easy money the ratings agencies enjoy. For the first time, the SEC can actually decertify a ratings agency for allowing profit motives to influence ratings, a fatal stroke that would cut it off from participating in government-related investments. It also strips the agencies of their long-treasured legal immunity from making mistakes: Before Dodd-Frank, it was essentially impossible for investors to sue over blatant ratings errors, like that ones that were common during the housing bubble. Now, ratings firms can be found liable if an investor proves they were reckless or knew the ratings were inaccurate.

But regulating the credit agencies has proven to be a near-impossible task. Not only are they intertwined in almost every corner of the market, they are intertwined with government agencies, too. Most state pension funds, for example, require that their managers only invest in funds with high ratings, which acts as a de facto endorsement of the agencies' work.

And the agencies have such a strong role in the markets that they can bully regulators into backing off.

In July 2010, with the increased liability provision of Dodd-Frank set to kick in, ratings agencies scored a victory by telling bond issuers they could no longer include the ratings on marketing materials. Because SEC rules require credit ratings to appear, the ratings agencies effectively created a Catch-22, threatening to shut down the entire asset-backed bond market. Regulators, faced with that potential calamity, backed off, and said issuers could temporarily issue bonds without the ratings. In December, the SEC made the change permanent, "effectively exempting companies from part of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Financial Rreform Act," according to a Bloomberg News report at the time.

So did S&P issue a downgrade to send a "back off" message to the U.S. government?

There's no evidence of it, and even ratings agency critic Barbara Roper said she was skeptical of such a quid-pro-quo conspiracy.

“They have used bullying tactics in other areas … but I don’t see how they’ve strengthened their hand by angering the very administration officials who are making those (regulatory) decisions about them,” said Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “They have no friends in Congress.”

On the other hand, it's undeniable that there's a macro-level conflict of interest at work when the very industry Congress is trying to reform unleashes its biggest arrow right at the heart of the financial system.

“It's clearly a problem that (the ratings agencies) have this much influence on the markets, including the power to undermine faith in the government trying to regulate them,” she said.

And whatever the motivation this time, Standard & Poor’s has clearly demonstrated its ability to move markets – and maintains more bullets in its chamber. Another downgrade, which the agency said was possible, would take U.S. debt out of the critical “top 2” tiers of ratings, which would prevent a host of pension funds and money market mutual funds from holding U.S. Treasuries.

“It’s not like they don’t still have a gun to the administration’s head,” Roper said. “They could be saying, ‘How’d you like that? Want to see it again?’“

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My Thoughts:

This story only proves the pure capitalists and especially the anacho-capitalists are wrong in their philosophy that capitalists can do no wrong and government regulation or any government at all is needed, capitalist always have the collective good of the people in mind.

Since Ronald Reagan we have witnessed the collapse of financial institutions and large corporations, one after another. The Savings & Loan industry, Enron, and Lehman Brothers. Most of these collapses have been covered by you and me as tax payers in the massive bailouts we have given them. So far, only a few executives from Enron have paid the price with prison. Now S&P is taking its revenge on all of us by down-grading the nation's credit without regard to the actual numbers and contrary to the proof that we did honor our creditors and not default.

A credit agency should not and can not be involved by virtue of their credit rating power, manipulate the governance of a nation. Yes they have a valid point that our governance is dysfunctional right now and the Tea Party is subjecting the nation to unprecedented obstruction of governance. It is true that the Tea Party wants to eliminate the federal government or at lest any regulatory capacity over S&P or any company. Their comments only supports this movement to defund government to reduce debt.

If the obstructionist is a concern of the market place, then a simple warning statement without the downgrade would be sufficient to make known their worries about the economy and the slow recovery we are in. If the all three rating companies together with some of the major movers and shakers on Wall Street would publicly chastise the Tea Party and Republicans for holding the American and World economies as hostage for their own ideological gains, then we could get some meaningful legislation that would stabilize the markets and improve the economy.

It is very evident that they, with their accomplices, have destroyed our great nation for simple greed. For example they gave Enron a AAA rating just before it collapsed from corruption and manipulation of energy prices.

California is still suffering from that mess when it had to buy power from Enron at over inflated prices when Enron caused a fake emergency with rolling power outages. California paid billions of dollars to get electricity from Enron, because Enron controlled the marketing of power generated by other companies, as well as from the federal government from hydroelectric damns the government built. Enron never owned any power generating plants or power grid system, they were simply a broker.

What is disturbing to me is that the conservatives and Tea Party are proclaiming that this mess is all Obama's fault. His lack of leadership, his failed stimulus, and the billions given to Wall Street by TARP. First, the economic mess started long before Obama took office and is more related to the conservative agenda than anything. Second, I do agree that Obama could have been more forceful in his demands, but he has been attempting to bring the parties together for the general good of the country to the peril of his reelection. Third, TARP was George W's act to save the nation from the mess he and his fellow conservatives created. It is interesting that the conservatives have amnesia about Reagan, Bush I and Bush II economic policies and their own actions in Congress that actually created this mess. They project all this onto Pres. Obama. Their hands are clean, as they do no wrong.

We must return to the New Deal regulatory ideals that limit the power of these financial institutions, separate the services, such as commercial banking, insurance brokerage, and not allow any one company to become too large to fail. Prohibit mergers that would create a company too large to fail and also limit the asset size a company can become within the financial and insurance industries. Until that happens, we will continue to witness economic turmoil at the hands of the greedy and unethical corporations.

We must also stop fractional banking that falsely increases the money supply. The world need to return to a more stable valuation of currency.

I'm wondering if there is a coordinated effort between the executives of S&P and the Koch Brothers, and others who are "Libertarians" and anacho-capitalists to finally kill the beast that they have been for years starving to death by lowering government revenue, mainly from the wealthy and corporations, and over spending on the military and other unfunded mandates such as Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. Driving federal and state budgets into such debt ridden levels and prohibiting any increase in revenue from the wealthy or other sources will in the end destroy our nation.

Are we now witnessing the final solution that has been underway since the Civil War to return to a loose confederacy of sovereign states, as was the case until the Constitution was ratified by the states and several amendments added to it after the Civil War to strengthen the federal power to hold the states together as a single nation, not independent states like the European Union in a loose relationship.

Dodged A Big One, But What's Next?

Congress and the President has dodged the total collapse of the ours and the world's economies by passing the increase in credit and debt reduction bill. But we are not out of the woods or on the road to recovery. Actually we are declining into another recession with the potential of slipping deeper than the previous, if Washington does not get some backbone and clear thinking. The bill that was passed most economists say will make things worse and push us into a second dip recession.

Unfortunately one thing we do not have in Washington is backbone and clear thinking. What we do have are Democrats who are afraid of their own shadow and Republicans that have been commandeered by the Religious Tea Party (RTP). This new RTP has the objective to reduce, if not eliminate, federal government, to a level that one stated, "small enough to put in a bathtub and drown." They have also learned that by holding the entire American economy and people hostage, they can get their way, even though they are a very small minority.

From now on, there will be no diplomacy and negotiations, just stall and hold everyone hostage until the deadline or it's too late. The Democrat then must cave in to their demands or disaster will strike. We have lost any semblance of fair play and acting in the best interest of the country. We have total dysfunctional government and no governance.

The debt reduction deal is bad policy when the recovery has stalled. Why? When you have high unemployment, you have fewer people buying much in the way of goods and services. If there are fewer people buying, then there is lower demand, lower demand requires fewer workers to make the produce or provide the service, so in turn workers are terminated, which then starts the downward cycle all over again.

To rectify this downward spiral you have to have demand. This demand can come from foreign markets like Europe, Asia and maybe a few emerging 3rd world nations. But today all of these potentials are also having their own economic down turn.

China is now into a recession that is requiring laying off of workers, thus reducing demand in that market.

Japan is in bad shape from its almost 20 year recession, then compound this with the earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, all of which is draining their treasury. They are in need of outside money to borrow to recover. This adds to the demand for money from the world bank, which is primarily funded by America and Europe and trades in the US Dollar, which is loosing value.

Europe has been harmed by the housing bust and huge holding of the bad mortgage backed derivatives that American investment companies sold to them. Italy, Spain, and Portugal are teetering on economic collapse that will destroy the fragile Euro.

John Maynard Keynes was a British economist that believed that government could moderate the business cycle through economic policy in order to stabilize the economy and working class wages. He also supported social liberalism; that government was best suited to provide some of the basic needs of the people, for the collective good. This being health care, retirement, and business regulation to protect the people from inherent harm of bad products and greed by capitalists.

His ideas were widely adapted by western capitalist countries in the early 20th century. They were a critical part of FDR's New Deal that established Social Security and his public works projects that even today we enjoy the benefits of that effort. Under Keynes economic model, only the government has the ability to infuse huge capital into the private sector to stimulate job growth. The private sector does not have the structure or incentive to stimulate jobs when business is slow. It is not in their best interest. His ideas were also part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that established Medicare and Medicaid.

But in the 1970's when we entered a recession due to Europe and Asia recovering from their destruction from WWII and was now producing goods at the same level as the US at a lower cost than the US, American companies saw a huge reduction in demand for their goods and services. We started to import a larger portion of goods. During the war recovery period, we exported at a much higher level than we imported. Most of our imports were raw material not found in the US.

The 1970's was also the time the Baby Boomers where entering the work force and our immigration policy allowed huge numbers of people to immigrate into the US. The number of people seeking work was huge compared to the declining job need.

Technology also added to this problem, computers were being introduce into business to perform tasks otherwise done by humans. First accounting, then engineering, then manufacturing. This use of technology increased productivity while using fewer humans in the process.

The combination of these events pushed companies to layoff workers, which slowed demand further and downward we started.

Milton Friedman an economist in Chicago came up with a new economic idea that the free market can correct itself without any interference or support by government. Ronald Reagan adopted this economic policy and started the attempt to eliminate government regulations.

At this same time, conservatives like Berry Goldwater and others created a underground movement to change the progressive movement we were in to a very conservative and more correctly anaco-capitalists form of society. As Reagan stated, "I'm a conservative and that means a libertarian." A libertarian movement is to eliminate all government and allow capitalist to do whatever they want. They feel that capitalist have a natural need to treat the people well, because they are the work force. But we know from history that this is not true and actually just the opposite. They abuse their power and enslave the working class for their own profit.

The first visible sign of this new conservative movement was when Reagan deregulated the Savings and Loan industry. The greed and corruption didn't take long and they quickly imploded. Savings and Loan banks were the major underwriters of home mortgages. They would use the deposits made by ordinary people in their savings accounts, mainly in Certificates of Deposit, and use it to finance new mortgages. Then they would sell these mortgages to Fannie Mae, the private, but publicly guaranteed mortgage finance company set up by the Government in 1938 to help people buy a private home and not live in rented apartments, which was common at that time.

What we now call banks, the retail bankers like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, did not hold home loans. It was not part of their business model to hold 30 year loans. They operated on short term, higher interest loans.

Fannie Mae was a private corporation that first used private capital to buy mortgages from the Saving and Loan banks, so these banks could use their capital for more mortgages. However, the government guaranteed the mortgages bought by Fannie Mae from the S&Ls. This put you and me at risk for these loans, which we paid dearly for when the S&Ls started to fail and all closed up shop. We the tax payers forked over billions to save these mortgages held by Fannie Mae.

Fannie Mae was split in the 1970s in response to the recession and potential foreclosures resulting from it. This split created a private/government company called Freddie Mac. In 1989 after the S&L breakdown, something had to be done to secure mortgages to get the housing market moving again. Reagan expanded the two programs by authorizing them to purchase more mortgages and become the primary holder of nearly every mortgage in America. Now the government, you and me, are on the hook for everyone's mortgages.

Further, Reagan nearly deregulated the mortgage writing industry, so it could sell mortgages by predatory lending practices by issuing mortgages at 100% of home value and on stated income only. No down payment, no real financial check of the borrower, just sign here and buy a home, and not just a home, but a BIG, BIG home, more than you can afford, because the payment is low at first then after 10 years it will jump up. And of course the idea was that your income would jump up accordingly also, therefore, you should have no problem paying the higher payments each month.

Brokerage houses then started to bundle these high risk mortgages with moderate risk and low risk mortgages to sell as investment instruments. AIG issued a default insurance policy that was to cover any loss by the investor, should they buy the policy, should the instrument go bad. But AIG didn't have any funds to backup these default swap policies. Of course Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased these derivatives, as they are called, as well as investors and banks all over the world. They were rated as AA or better, but actually they were mostly junk. This was the cause of the biggest house bubble America has ever seen.

In the 1990s, computers, robotic and the Internet created great demand for computer engineers, but it also started to reduce the demand for labor as these technologies started to perform work that humans did before. Employment was high during the 1990s as the Internet stimulated a lot of job opportunities.

By 2000 the impact of these technologies being applied in the business process started to be felt. The auto industry reduced the number of humans needed to build a car. Even making computers required fewer people as demand for them escalated. The communications revolution was starting, workers didn't need to be located in an office or even in the same country to perform their task. Out migration of workers, out sourcing, to foreign countries accelerated to the speed of light.

By 2000 the dot com bubble of the new expanding internet started to burst because their value was based on the amount of visitors to a site than actual revenue generated by the site. This was not sustainable and people were still reluctant to purchase items online and advertising revenue was small, as companies had not yet embraced the internet as a viable marketing medium. this started a shallow recession.

George W then came along and lowered taxes, mainly on the wealthy and corporations, thus reducing revenue to the country, increased spending on Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit without a way to pay for it, and entered us into two wars without a way to pay for them. The government had to borrow huge amounts of capital from the open market to finance these new expenses, thus draining the capital for business to use.

The loss of local capital pushed companies to move more quickly and the shift their plants and operations to foreign countries, like India, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. This started the huge reduction in employment to the tune of nearly 8 million jobs. With all these people now unemployed, they could not meet their mortgage payments that were programed to increase as scheduled. Defaults and foreclosures tipped the house of card and it all started to come down. Welcome to 2008.

There were provisions in the Bush tax reduction that encouraged corporation to move their business to other countries by giving government guarantees to loans to build factories in designated developing countries. This was part of Bush's foreign policy of winning over these countries loyalty. This zapped jobs in America because some commercial lender would only loan money, if the plant was in one of these countries that the government would guarantee the loan. This has to change, which was in the financial reform bill that the Republicans killed in the Senate.

The housing collapse was a dominoes effect, it caused further unemployment, mainly in the construction industry and real estate industry. When they are down, lumber, appliances, carpeting, furniture, cabinets, lighting, and so on all have lower demand and thus go out of business. The cycle continued until the mediocre stimulus bill passed by the Democrats and Obama in 2009. But it was far to small and was very lean on infrastructure building that would have stimulated a lot more jobs than what he was able to get with the small stimulus package he got passed. Now remember that TARP was under George W and it was a giveaway to Wall Street with no strings attached.

Obama also bailed out GM and Chrysler that saved several million jobs and so far has increased jobs as these companies recover. Much of the money has been paid back with interest. But with the second dip recession, they may fall back and get into trouble again.

Wages of the working class has been flat for nearly 30 years. Their buying power has dwindled, which also causes less demand on goods. American's used credit to keep their standard of living the same. But that added to the credit crunch when the housing market collapsed. Many home owners used the equity in their homes to secure their second mortgage to pay off some of their credit card debt. This placed them in great danger of loosing their home when the recession hit.

We need to go back to Keynes economic model of government infusing huge sums of capital into the private sector through infrastructure building and new technologies to create employment demand and thus an increase in demand for goods.

Under the current Friedman model, business will just wait until there is demand for goods before they start to employ again. They can sit on their money and manipulate it in the money markets to earn revenue. There is no incentive for them to hire and why should they, there is no one to buy their goods if they did hire new employees.

For Friedman's model to work, these companies that are sitting on nearly 3 trillion dollars of cash need to spend it on rebuilding our infrastructure and not wait on government to do it. Besides, they are the ones who benefit the most from a vibrant modern infrastructure such as highways, freeways, high speed rail, broadband fiber optics communications networks, fresh water, waste management and a host of other services they get from these otherwise government provided services. But they won't because that is not their business model or ethic. They hate government when it regulates them, but they love it when it assumes the cost of these services.

Yes, we need to reduce our long term debt. That goes without question, but we must get people back to work to generate income, that then generates taxes, that then can be used to pay down the debt. We also must increase the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy and highly profitable companies. By improving employment and taxing the wealthy, with some reduction in spending, mainly on military, we can eliminate the national debt in 15 to 20 years. If George W had not fucked up things, the Clinton policies would have created enough surplus to have paid of the national debt by now. You can read more about the reason why he did this in some of my other posts about "Starve the Beast."

I fear that we are in a long, very long recession, if not a depression, and with the current narrative being controlled by the Tea Party of reducing government, rather than raising capital to create jobs, there is little hope things will get better. In fact, they are about to get much, much worse.

The Time Has Come, Are We A Nation Of Honor Or Default

We are now one week away from running out of money to pay our national debt. But we are in a state of crisis like we have not been in for decades. The ramifications of not raising the debt ceiling will be so sever that the great depression may look like a mild recession. Does that sound too harsh? Well, here are some of the reasons why it could end up lake that.

First: The US Dollars is the international currency. All goods and energy (oil) is traded in US dollars. Many other countries, mostly small ones, and also China are tied to the US $. Most countries and businesses hold huge reserves of US$. The US is still the largest economy and any fall has a ripple effect in other countries.

Second: Interest rates on everything, homes, cars, credit cards, etc. will increase rather dramatically. Why, will when investors who buy US Treasury bills loose confidence in their investment and see there is a higher risk of getting their money back with interest will raise the interest rate they charge anyone trading in US $ because of the perceived increased risk. The nation's and most all state credit ratings will fall that indicates the bond issuer is not a solid and thus greater risk of default, which drives up the interest rate all government agencies must pay to issue government obligation bonds for school building, roads, bridges, buildings, whatever the the agency might need to borrow money for. That will cost you the tax payer much more for the same item the government builds.

Third: The dollar will fall in value thus creating hyper inflation in everything we buy. That will drive up the cost of living without a corresponding increase in wages. Oil would escalate to $150/barrel. That could push retail prices to near $5.00/gal.

Fourth: With the EU in financial trouble of their own and the risky maneuvering they are doing to save the Euro and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. If the US $ drops and we fail in our obligation to pay them the interest on the US Bonds they hold, then they will collapse from the lack of revenue from the interest on the bonds.

Fifth: China is not as cash rich as we thought. They have invested heavily in infrastructure throughout that large country with new highways, freeways, subways, monorails, high speed trains, fiber optics, dams, power generation, building construction as a level not seen since the post WWII period in Europe. They hold huge sum of US Treasury notes and if they don't get paid their interest, they could fall into a recession at a time that could create political turmoil between the peasant class and the urban manufacturing class. This could also lead to massive layoffs of these workers creating huge unease.

Sixth: Should much of the world fall into a deeper recession or even depression, the Spring Revolts in northern Africa and in the Middle-East to falter. The West would not be able to support their efforts for form democratic forms of governments and could push them into the hands of terrorist organizations. The anger to shift to the West creating greater risk of attack by these terrorists.

Now we have a situation with the hard line of no revenue increase  by theTea Party and Eric Cantor and the dysfunctional management of the Republican caucus by Speaker John Boehner is driving us over the cliff. Their demand for no revenue increase be it from eliminating many tax deductions that the rich and corporations use to reduce or eliminate their tax liability is not the best approach to reduce the national debt. They are also stead fast against allowing the tax rate on the rich to rise back to the Clinton tax rate of 39.5% from the current 35% at the end of 2012 when they expire again. If they would allow them, it would cut nearly in half the debt over 10 years, plus cuts in defense would bring the total national debt down to a manageable 4 trillion dollars. In about 15 to 20 years, the total debt could be paid off.

There only needs to be some adjustments to Social Security, like raising the cap of income for how much you pay in a year and a means test in how much you receive when retired. If you have an income of over $150,000 per year, then you may receive very little or no social security, but as your other income declines, your SS payment would increase to whatever the max benefit might be.

Medicare, like all health care, must work with the providers to see how to control the escalating costs. This is primarily focused on hospital inpatient costs that consume the majority of the funds. Also it must negotiate with drug companies to reduce medicine costs, which were not funded for under the Bush Part D plan.

We have to reverse the 41 cents of every dollar spent by government is borrowed. Some of this is the rise in taxes on the wealthy and some careful spending cuts.

The biggest question for Americans is, what government services are you willing to pay for? If the service is not worth the taxes paid, then eliminate it. Privatizing just to privatize is not necessarily a cost savings. Their fees may be much higher than the taxes you pay for the same service.

The chart below shows how employment in this recession is not like any other. It is deeper and the recovery is very very slow. There needs to be more government infusion of money for infrastructure rebuilding to create private sector construction jobs that have high trickle down benefits to the economy. Without it, we will linger as we have or even decline further. If we can increase employment, there would be more revenue to reduce the debt and pay into social security and medicare, reducing the stress these programs have. 

New York Recognize Equality and Civil Liberty for LBGT Citizens

Another state has now realized that LBGT citizens are equal. They legalized same sex-marriage that became effective July 20th. This is a great day for moving this country forward in its ideal of equality for everyone.

Here is a short clip to see the beauty in marriage:

Has your wages gone up? No! See Why

I've been a bit silent recently, more out of shear frustration regarding the lack of understanding of the obvious by both our politicians and the public at large. I know I ramble on here and there are several concepts I am addressing, but they are interelated.

The graph below I think reveals why there is so much anger and distrust of the people. Unfortunately there are those, like the Tea Party Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists and Ayn Rand die hards that are taking advantage of this situation to promote their own agendas. What is interesting is there is some overlap of agendas by these three groups in some of their philosophy.

This graph clearly shows how the top 1% of our population now controls the majority of the income in this country. It also indicates that they have acquired near total control of our democratic system. This becomes more and more obvious when we see the Supreme Court hand down ruling that favor corporations and not the citizens, when you see the many state governments passing draconian laws that inhibit voting, stripping labor unions, and in some cases stripping elected officials of their power and giving it to an appointed Czar.

These states are lowering taxes on the rich and corporations causing huge budget deficits that they use to justify privatizing public services, such as schools, fire service, emergency services, selling government facilities to private owners and then leasing them back at a higher cost and firing a large number of public servants. Example: Costa Mesa California just fired almost all of the cities employees. They were going to hire the county sheriff and fire to protect the city, but they are now looking at a company like Black Water to provide police and fire service to the city. The deal lowers the cost to the city the first couple of years, but then it climbs to way above current costs with huge penalty for early termination of the contract. Scary. Think about this, should a private corporate police officer get bonuses for making more arrests so that the city jail has more inmates, which mean more money the company can charge the city with little increase in cost because of economy of scale, what do you think will happen?

Back to the graph and wages, one of the interesting lines is Productivity. The majority of this increase is due to technologies that have replaced human labor; computers and robotics are the major factor. Higher productivity with fewer employees. So the ordinary, low to medium skilled worker is relegated to low paying jobs. And with the focus for nearly 30 years of prepping every high school student to go to college, rather than have a second track for highly skilled labor workers needed to operate these robots and computers, we are hearing from some manufacturers that they can't move it back to the US because we don't have the trained labor force and China, India and Germany do. So unemployment will continue at a high rate until we refocus education to include the skills the economy is requiring now.

It is time we the people start to exert our power at the ballot box and if that fails, then in the streets, to get our country focused again on WE THE PEOPLE and the WE THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS.

We are so close to loosing this great nation, it is butting a lot of fear in me and many who see the destruction occurring around us. But we see very little interest by so many to even attempt to understand the situation and then get involved to change things.

If this wages continue as indicated by this graph, then the working class will become surfs and subservient to those who hold the wealth, that 1%. That is not the America that was full of ideals of equality, fair wages for a fair day of work.

The current disparity between the top 1%  percent of the nation and the 99% others today is even greater than during the roaring 20s leading up to the Great Depression. From about 1870 after a short panic in 1871, the economy grew at record rates with the second wave of industrialization. Real wages for workers also radically increased primarily with the development of craft unions in the Northeast starting at the same time. Up until the 1970's there was little hostility between labor unions and management, with a few exceptions. But starting in the 1970's job growth started to flatten, earnings were slowing for companies and hostilities started to emerge between unions and management. Then came the Reagan Revolution that hallmarked eliminating all labor unions. Today that process is nearly complete. That is why you see nearly flat wages since the 1970s.

Part of the problem is that we have too many workers for the number of real jobs available that pay anything close to a livable wage. Even if manufacturing returned to its prior peak, there would still not be enough jobs for all that need one. Again robotics and computers will fill the need of many jobs that use to be done by hand in manufacturing.

Nevertheless, it is important that business pay their workers a better wage and take less of the pie for themselves. They would have a more loyal and productive workforce by meeting their financial need and also stimulating the economy with their added wages which would be used to buy products and services these companies are in business for or put in savings that creates capital for businesses to borrow.

Why there are so many people who do not know these simple economic principles is very troubling. Their ignorance is going to be the downfall of this nation.

Example: the housing bubble started with the deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry by Reagan which then lead to corruption and the collapse of that industry.  Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were established to fill the gap of who was going to finance homes. Commercial retail banks didn't want to, it took too long to get a return and that is not their business model. Then the insurance and retail banking industry was deregulated and mortgage backed securities with default swap insurance issued against them without the reserves to cover the loss, the fraudulently rating of these new derivatives as AAA when they knew they would fail. Also the lack of screening mortgage applicants and not requiring large enough down payment on the loan, so people over purchased for the income they had. It also was under the assumption that wages would increase as they had in the historical past of the 50's and 60's, thus providing higher income to secure their mortgages as the rates would increase over time. But as you can see by the graph, wages did not increase dramatically, so the holders could not pay the higher payments scheduled in their mortgages, so they would naturally fail making payments and foreclosures would ensue. Once that happens, then you get the domino effect of collapsing home prices, turning other mortgages that were being paid on time up side down in value and the holder pulling the mortgage and more foreclosures.

This whole episode was great for the upper 1% because the had insurance backed investments of these and our government put up the trillions of dollars to insure their investment, when it should of been the insurance issuers not the tax payer. But they were too large to fail.

Actually nothing has really changed, mortgage back derivatives are still being created and sold, with the same unsecured default insurance that tax payers will again have to cover. The conservatives shout that they will not next time, but they owe their souls to these companies, so they will with the same excuse, their too big to fail.

Don't you find it telling that they rushed to the financial institutions aid (BTW they don't create outside jobs as does manufacturing), but held firm against loaning money, with interest, to the automotive industry that employs tens of thousands of citizens? Why? Labor is unionized and they wanted the unions eliminated, so by forcing these big players to bankrupt, the unions would fold.

Also labor unions is the last major democratic party donor and get out the vote drives and without unions, the Democratic Party can't compete with the conservatives and their large rich corporate donors. Thus securing as Karl Rove planned, a permanent conservative government.

The Ecomomy in 2 minutes 15 seconds. MUST VIEW.

Who doesn't get it?  The continuation of lowering taxes for the wealthy and reducing government services and safety nets will only make things worse for the middle-class and eventually there will be armed rebellion.

For those of you who are a normal working middle-class Conservative Republicans, you need to consider the pending result of your support for the Starve The Beast policy and the reduction in what you perceive as the evil government. If you think life will improve for you with a reduction in government services, think twice and think again. When you have such a large disparity in the division of income, the tax burden on the poor and what is left of the middle class and the anger erupting between those in the middle and below, you will end up with chaos and revolt. Look around, see the revolts that are occurring here in America and across the world people are tired of being taken advantage of by the very wealthy and powerful.

This is a critical time for America. Will be return to the high standard of living and a strong middle class or to a new feudalism in which the middle class is in economic servitude to the 4% of American that hold all the wealth. Opportunity for an individual to build individual wealth through hard work and ingenuity will be greatly limited. The money and power people will not want to share it with anyone new, unless they get a good chunk of the pie.

Utah Has Outlawed Acting Sexy

In a miss guided attempt to entrap prostitutes, law enforcement asked the Legislature to make Acting Sexy as probable cause to arrest a person for solicitation, even if there is no discussion of the exchange of money.

The vice police complained that they were handicapped in trapping these women because they would ask the officer to disrobe or at least pull out his penis and masturbate. Both are violations of policy and constitutional protection from entrapment. The prostitute would know that the sting was a cop and would leave, avoiding arrest, which is a misdemeanor with a small fine and maybe jail time.

Now one of the problems with this law is the Escort business. Now I know that many of the escorts do prostitute, but some only do sexy dances and slither their bodies over the typically male persons clothed body, some of them actually escort a businessman to events or sight seeing to provide companionship during their stay in a strange town. So if an escort was not prostituting but acted sexy, they could be arrested for solicitation.

There was a nearly identical bill passed in 1988 that was over turned by the court as being too broad and violated other constitutional guarantees. But since most of the courts have become much more religiously conservative, who knows how they will rule in this case. Generally the court does not like to alter previous rulings on the same subject. But the conservative courts have been very active in over turning precedence established by a prior court ruling. Now the conservatives are always calling judges or courts with a center or left of center attitude as activist judges or courts. But the truth is actually the opposite with all the over turning of prior ruling by these conservative judges.

Let's face it, you can never stop the sale of sex, it has been tried and failed on so many levels. During WWII the US military actually established their own brothels for the troops to keep the STD infection rate lower and eliminate physical assault that could occur by the pimps of the street vendors.

When I was in Korea in the military, the post had an officer from the medical unit that would work with the local Korean authorities to oversee the prostitution operation in the village. If the "working girls" of a particular club were infecting too many GIs the club would be closed until either new girls came or they were treated and released to go back to work. The Korean government with financial aid from the military had a special clinic for the working girls to be tested and treated.  It was a very smart system. Each girl had a booklet that was about the size of a passport. It had their photo and in both Korean and English their name, club they are associated with or Mama-sun who essentially owns them. It also contains the date of their last STD tests and what was the result with these special symbols and color of symbol. It can tell you how safe they might be and what their STD history was over the past six months or so. Any RED symbols was stay away, do not use, do not go past go.

Today a similar system could be instituted in a more high tech fashion that could easily be accessed by the purchaser of such service. Also allow brothels in appropriate zones which are licensed and inspected regular. The sales tax alone would greatly help both state and local budgets. After all they tax other SINS, why not sex. Oh they do, strippers are taxed and I think escort agencies are as well starting last year.

Lets get over this insane attitude that government must protect the unsuspecting spouse or significant other. It is not governments job to interfere in the daily lives of it citizens on such matters. It is between the parties to determine if and what action might be appropriate within their relationship.

Yes, obviously infectious disease is a public health issue. But the underground sale of sex is not a model to maintain control of the spread of these diseases. If it were decriminalized or legalized and regulated appropriately, then the health department could have better control and knowledge of what is happen in the community. Today they can only react after the fact when the numbers rise to a point of interest, which is then too late to effectively do something about it as the prostitutes are spread all across the county and are very transient. So the current model is a failure from the beginning.

Plus why are we spending so much money on sting operations to catch escorts or prostitutes that advertise on the internet. We don't have the money and need to spend it on higher priority problems, like education, infrastructure, etc. Most are not the prostitutes you see working the streets. Many on the net are college girls trying to earn some money for the ever increasing tuition fees. Others are single mothers that can't make enough with the low ages of their day time jobs, so they meet gentlemen at night for pay. And some others just like what they do, period. So why not allow them? 

Of course those who work the street are the highest risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other STDS and should not be allowed to sell their trade in such a place. So if we really wanted to deal with STD management, we would find a legal way to pick up those working the street for STD screening and treatment. If they are infected with a non-treatable disease, then they need to be in a public data base, like the sex offenders list, indicating they are infected and dangerous. If they HIV/AIDS, then they would be prosecuted for willfully infecting another person who may die as a result, attempted murder to murder.

We also must deal with drug addition among this group of people. Again putting them in jail for a few days does nothing to deal with their addiction. It must be treated as a medical issue and appropriate intervention would be more desirable using the same money spend to prosecute and jail them with a better potential outcome.  Morality, which is typically religious based, should not be a factor in determining what is best pragmatically for the health and welfare of the populace. Even Brigham Young stated it was a necessary evil. He allowed prostitution to thrive on Regent Street with cribs above the saloons where the working girls would hang out the window to entice the gentlemen strolling the alley below.

When other retail commerce was expanding into Commercial Street, now Regent Street between 1st and 2nd south, the city had a structure built where Gateway Mall is now located called the stockade. It had a wall and gate at each end that was controlled by a constable on duty to ensure minors, boys under 16 at the time, did not enter and to deal with an rowdy or rough customers.

Starting in 1903, calls to purge Commercial Street, of its sordid establishments began, citing that it soiled the main business district and decreased property value. Salt Lake City mayor John Bransford along with the city council adopted a "stockade" policy in 1908, planning to build a sort of compound where the denizens could practice their inevitable trade freely, but discretely. Bransford said, "I propose to take these women from the business section of the city and put them in a district which will be one of the best, if not the very best, regulated districts in the country."

So even Utah and Salt Lake allowed sex for hire and was actually before their time by building the Stockade to control the activity. But what killed it was the temperance movement, so a young 15 year old boy was planted in the stockade, the police rushed in and arrested the madame for servicing an underage boy, thus forcing the closure of the stockade, which was later converted into a warehouse for many years.