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JLC- How many times does Thom (and various others) have to keep repeating this: A country is not a household! Therefore you can't manage a national budget llike a household budget! DUH. - Alice I.W.
There should be HELL TO PAY! for even the slightest hint of subverting the best interest of the public! tin tuc
There is a disturbance in the force. Laughing and giggling to myself about the state of affairs, especially the economy the worst since the depression yet the stock market is flying high corporate profits better than ever, though some of us feel like we are falling in economic free fall. Foreclosures are not as bad, though bankers walk away with billion dollar bonus plans while the little guys’ credit is shot to hell because or layoffs that Congress needs to make to fix their screw up.
The war in Afghanistan winding down after ten years with elections now they hate America and want Americans to leave after we blow a trillion dollars in reconstruction by Black Water Halliburton Bush war profiteering, unemployment creeping up slightly but the sequester cuts off benefits. Congress blames it all on President Obama yet they the Congress are responsible to legislate appropriation. In Photo ops for the news people Baynor keeps saying the president is supposed to do it. Here news people fail to educate the public that the president does not appropriate those issues the Congress does. It is the media they brought America to where we are at now.
MSNBC Maddow telecast suggesting that the Iraq war was hoax, now that’s news you can use. Don’t forget about every hour or so a military person commits suicide because of post-traumatic stress, should be called post hoax stress. Or, maybe that’s why young military man dumping secrets to wiki in the internet. Or another pops up to shout Islam Allah is great while he shoots a dozen solders. Remember while watching a pharmaceutical commercial most Americans are in real time stress that warns you about their prescription drugs might cause you to commit suicide. The Looney tune of twenty four hour news CNN FOX MSNBC.
America is in a truth deficit.
It was just his recent trial to tag me "nieve" that challenged my irony for a moment. ; tin tuc
ey should be prosecuted!!! There should be HELL TO PAY! for even the slightest hint of subverting the best interest of the public! Power Inverter
Sounds like just the opposite, somehow. It would be good to know who supported what. Power Inverter
linton and Obama have been able to keep control of the whitehouse for more than 4 years. How can we get people more informed and involved?. Power Inverter
Thom Hartmann is always encouraging us to "get involved"..and it looks like Craig Bush is doing just that... Power Inverter
they might muliply and after all become a severe pest.... Power Inverter
ing than any other. I am a staunch environmentalist and support the tertiary solution. If you are interested in local California politics read bushforsccouncil. deer antler velvet
Lately, there is a photo going around the media of Barak Obama with a look of extreme exasperation on his face in reference to "the sequester". Every time I see that photo, I hear John Boehner's voice in the background, "Checkmate".
It was just his recent trial to tag me "nieve" that challenged my irony for a moment deer-antlervelvet.com
And sorry, if they feel too comfortable here, they might muliply and after all become a severe pest... weddings
ter, Kennedy and all of the other crucified dems. that try to do right for ALL OF US.! .( to all of you who actually know what i mean.) weddings
ncil. Good luck, Craig! And Thom Hartmann...please have Craig on your show! weddings
Causing these drones to crash would not necessarily be a good idea in populated areas...people could get hurt. In the case of the one known case of shooting down a drone....A pro-bird organization was using the drones to get evidence against a group of people who were releasing cages of pigeons for target practice. The drone flew above shotgun range but the shooters switched over to a high powered rifle and blasted the drone out of the sky. I suspect it was not in a populated area. What!? A left-wing organization was using drones? What is this world coming to?
They even sell a $300 toy drone that could be used to spy on neighbors. But that birder drone cost something like $8,000. Some communities have actually banned drones and police departments had to cancel their orders. Awwww too bad!
The reason drones are so popular...when used in battle in other countries..is because they can kill without risking the lives of the soldiers. Many Americans don't really give a hoot whether they are murdering civilians as long as they are 'over there'.
Another reason is because the drones are way less expensive than the piloted vehicles and even the pilot training is way more expensive than many drones. The military industrial complex that make these drones are drooling at the mouth at the prospects of a massive production of an entire Air Force of remote controlled drones. We'll be able to commit war crimes and kill millions of civilians in so many more countries now.
It won't be long till they have armies of robots and drone mice and insects that are being controlled telepathically from human operators. Yes, that sounds pretty ridiculous! I agree. But read this article and you might stop laughing. I was like ROTFLMAO (Rolling on the floor...laughed my @$$ off).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23221-first-mindreading-implant-gi...
DAnneMarc: That link I gave from Cryptome.org was allegedly a rather long and braggadocio message from a hacking group called Parastoo possibly named after a famous Iranian actress. Parastoo is Farsi for Swallow (no jokes now! it's like the little bird Swallow). English was obviously not his/her/their first language.
They hacked into some servers, several of which hosted databases from IHS in Colorado. IHS Inc is global information and analytics provider which includes Janes, a publisher of security and defense info. They provide very sensitive material to the Pentagon and other Pentagon related companies. IHS admits to breaches of their servers over a 6 month period but they claim that no real security sensitive info was breached...yeah, right!
Reading Parastoo's message shows some of the things they managed to get including something like 1.2 Terabytes of information some of which included aerial photos of nuke sites, drone bases, credit card numbers and other sensitive personal data on hundreds of thousands of past customers including hundreds of thousands of people connected with the military...the Pentagon...and the companies that do business with the pentagon. They also hacked IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).
Parastoo also indicated that they have the ability to interfere with the flight capabilities of drones and I'm sure that the drone that they captured in Iran gave them a lot of information through reverse engineering as well. Although, I've also learned that many groups that are considered 'the enemy' by our Pentagon War Criminals have been, for quite a long time, watching the video feeds through satellite signal captures, from these drones as they flew over. The idiot War Mongers never even encrypted the signals...something to do with signal latency and ability to react in sufficient time to do a successful kill. Encryption would have complicated that..so they didn't use it.
I have also been reading that lots of Americans are really hot under the collar about the use of drones in the US. Some have shot them out of the sky. But a more clandestine way would be to jam their control frequencies causing them to crash. When they start using them to spy on us...and worse..to assassinate us...and they WILL one day...then we would be really stupid to welcome these things in our skies.
They always start off with "oh, they aren't armed"! "They won't be used except under the most dire consequences!"
But they've already used them to go after suspected cattle thieves and in capturing Dorner. They may not have sent a Hellfire missile into that shack but they sure did use a military grade incendiary to roast him alive.
But if you read some of the gobbledygook legalese that these masters of deceit use you pick up on the very non-specific terms they use that may very well one day justify assassinating anyone who bad-mouths the government. When they murder civilians and call them Viet Cong or even, now, Al Qaida...they'll get around to justifying murdering citizens in the US who are, in their eyes, aiding and abetting 'the enemy' just by objecting to their murderous war crimes. They have already, many times now, baited people into acting in a manner that the authorities could then call "acts of terrorism" and use it to justify their worthless jobs.
http://www.ehackingnews.com/2012/11/parastoo-hackers-breached-iaea.html
http://freebeacon.com/anti-israel-hacking-collective-strikes-again/
Mathboy has stated: " This would be a good time to get rid of unnecessary restrictions in airport security: 3 ounces of liquid, taking off your shoes, government-mandated nudity etc."
I've had many occasions to disagree with Mathboy, but this isn't one of them. So Ken, please be specific. What exactly in his comment do you find objectionable enough to dismiss as "idiotic"? I have to concur with DAnneMarc here; like him, I see plenty of merit in Mathboy's remark.
At this point I'd go out of my way to find an alternative to the ordeal that air travel has become. Prior to 9-11, flying was fun. Not anymore. What makes airport "security" especially intolerable is that it protects no one. As Thom has stated, it amounts to nothing more than security theater. It is simply bogus. There's no justification for subjecting the public to this demeaning charade. - Aliceinwonderland
"jwhitmill" says " I voted twice for Obama....I want to like him, I DID like him; but I think he's either never been up to the job, or he's simply as corrupt as the next guy."
I'm with ya, comrade. I feel your pain. - Alice I.W.
P.S. Check out <www.votesmart.org> It's a great organization.
Ken Ware says: "The President and the Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans when it comes right down to who is to blame for our present situation."
I agree with most of your comments in this entry, Ken, but not the above quote. I have a problem with absolutist statements of this sort, because they are too simplistic, coming from frustration and emotional agitation while falling short on accuracy. I'll acknowledge that many Democrats have been essentially worthless as legislators; however I wouldn't go so far as to claim both parties are exactly the same. One need only examine detailed voting records of each member of Congress to see significant differences between the two parties.
This is not to suggest that I am satisfied with our two-party system. Absolutely not.
To obtain congressional voting records, I recommend you (or anyone interested) join an organization called Project Vote Smart, whose volunteers do the research and gather the data; a daunting task and not for the faint of heart. Every few years, these folks release a little booklet titled "Voter's Self Defense Manual". This isn't just for progressives; it's for ANYONE of ANY political leaning who wishes to make informed choices.
I appreciate your interest in my response, Ken. You've pissed me off many times with your comments; yet I still can say that overall, I agree with you more often than not, on many of the topics discussed on this blog.
Peace. - Aliceinwonderland
And I believe quite a financial forensics investigator..maybe not professionally but seems very passionate about it. Forex Trading
Correct as far as you went, however the study of Economics deals with much more than the flow of money.
David Williams, "No one is forcing him [employee] to work for that company...you have freedom of choice...no one is forcing people to work at these companies.... " (10:20 minutes)
Corporations armed with new legal and political power though deregulation laws changed the character of corporate governance. CEO began to pay themselves massive salaries, bonuses, “rollover” payments of current salaries for years after a CEOs departs, and benefits packages using accounting tricks such as back dated stock options. Corporate CEOs created new elaborate schemes to hide legally required financial disclosure information used to evaluate general corporate health. A new parallel financial accounting services industry of corporate auditing and rating services appeared to assist in concealing CEO looting of corporate resources from shareholders. Monks highlights a few outrageous examples of recent executive compensation packages costing shareholders.
· Pfizer CEO Henry McKinnell and former head of the BRT received a $198 million dollar payout ( to get rid of him as CEO) and a $5.9 million dollars pension per year and even more if he remarried even though Pfizer’s stock price dropped 40% during his leadership. He benefited from $6,240,414 in exercised stock options in 2005.
· Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli paid $150 million, then in January 2007 an additional $210 million severance package. His pension was an additional $2,250,000 per year, plus $18 million in other “entitlements.” Home Depot’s stock also declined while Nardelli was at the corporate helm.
· CSX rail system CEO John Snow from 1996-2001 received a $27 million loan against his stock options but its value dropped to $17 million. His options deal was cancelled saving him $10 million and was awarded an extra $4.3 million. The three-year CEO of CSX rail system was instantly credited with 19 years of service using a tool called Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan (SERP) after which Snow cashed out his unearned pension for $33 million.
· NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso was paid $188 million plus a $10 million bonus for re-opening the NYSE after the 9/11 attack.
· ESL Investments Corp. CEO Eddie Lampert whose company privatized Kmart, Sears and other retail businesses received $1 billion in the one year of 2005, and James Simon received $1.7 billion for 2006 alone.
Robert Monks reports in his book, Corpocracy: How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World's Greatest Wealth Machine- And How to Get It Back (2007),that “...in 1970, two years before The Business Roundtable lobbying group came into existence, the average CEO earned less than 30 times the average wage of all production workers. Today, that gap has grown 10-fold, to 300 times the average worker's pay, more than double the gap in the 13 other richest nations. Between 1990 and 2005, the 10 highest paid U.S. CEOs brought home an aggregate $11.7 billion in total compensation-salary, bonuses, restricted stock awards, payouts on long-term incentives, and the value of options exercised over the 15-year time frame. From 1996 to 2001, as the high-tech-driven stock market first bubbled, then burst, the richest 1 percent of Americans garnered over 20 percent of all gains in national income.” (Robert A. G. Monks. Corpocracy: How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World's Greatest Wealth Machine -- And How to Get It Back (pp. 62-63). Kindle Edition.).
Simultaneously, from the 1990s to early 2000s high corporate officials transferred from shareholders to themselves about $1 trillion, or 10%, of the total stock market value. During 1995 the ratio of withholding payroll taxes compared to corporate taxes was three to one; however, by 2002 the ratio was five to one.
Another massive transfer of wealth from ordinary persons to corporate leaders involved reformed pension programs that replaced defined-benefit pension programs that pay pensioners a set annual sum to defined-contribution pension programs, which is a fancy name for a savings account with some tremendous disadvantages. Defined-contribution pensions are forced saving accounts that the company matches “vested” employee contribution by 25 -- 50 percent to a maximum amount of $5,000 -- $10,000. Often the employer determines which kind of investment instrument funds employees contribute. Employees cannot exit such fund groups, like 401K plans, without paying heavy penalties so Wall Street traps their retirement money. And most of all, the risk for pension fund management is transferred to the employee who now needs a personal fee charging financial manager. So much for the “sovereign consumer” who is now subordinate to the truly sovereign fund manager.
Meanwhile, employers with contractual defined-benefit pension plans were dumping unpaid pensions on the government’s Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) designed to protected employees from deadbeat employers and failed pensions. PBGC now has about $23 billion in abandoned pensions obligations with $108 billion more expected for working taxpayers. Yet, any one-year CEO could through the magic of SERP be instantaneously declared a 20-year employee with full retirement benefits to be paid in a lump sum. Instead of pensions being a burden on corporations, they can now record instant profit of greater earning, greater market stock value, including lower taxed stock options which corporate officers pay themselves.
There already exists a model create by Congress for stopping corporate abuses, but it has been nullified by deregulation policies in recent years. Monks explains this legal model for corporate regulation:
In the last thirty years we have seen corporations subvert the legal model designed by Congress to prevent abuse of power in corporate governance: shareholder elections rigged, boards of directors stacked with CEO appointees, corporate bylaws rewritten to allow unearned benefits for CEO and other officers. This corruption of corporate power has been very successful. And we see the same proven strategies used by corporations to defeat shareholders exported to corrupt the American political system at large: use of voter suppression, election fraud, bankrolling congressional, senatorial and executive candidates with massive injection of corporate money, lobbying of lawmakers, direct re-writing of laws by corporate legal teams that favor corporate monopolies and massive tax loopholes. These same boardroom forces that exploit shareholders is now taking aim at all American citizens with the same purpose of shifting wealth to the Corpocracy.
Palindromedary ~ Thanks for the link to the qaida-drones article. It was most enlightening. It almost looked like an intelligence report from the ally forces in WWII. They are obviously intelligent, committed and resolved. I hate being a citizen of the bad guys. I guess in the end it will make each and every one of us and our future Generations more well-rounded people.