Although Tennessee’s controversial voter ID law faces yet another legal challenge, it remains
intact — at least for now.
Attorneys representing two Memphis residents whose votes were not counted in the August primary because
they lacked a government-issued photo ID asked a three-judge Appeals Court panel on Thursday to throw out the state’s
voter ID law. They claim the law is unconstitutional and suppresses turnout among certain segments of the population.
Janet Kleinfelter of the attorney general’s office pointed to a lower court’s recent decision
upholding the Republican-backed voter ID law on the basis that the constitution allows legislators to enact laws that “secure
the freedom of elections” and “the purity of the ballot box.”
A decision is expected in the coming weeks. Early voting for the general election started on Wednesday.
Civil rights attorney George Barrett has been challenging the new law in the courthouse for months.
Both state and federal judges in Nashville have rejected Barrett’s attempt to appeal the law.
If his latest challenge fails, he said, he likely will take the matter to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Mark Goins, state elections coordinator, said reversing the law in the midst of an election would confuse
voters and complicate matters for poll officials.
Barrett has been battling state officials for months over the state’s voter ID law, which took
effect this year. He argues the law is unconstitutional and impedes the right to vote.
Thursday’s oral arguments questioning the law could spell uncertainty for its future. But state
election officials are proceeding as if it will be upheld.
A slate of states passed photo ID laws ahead of the November election. Yet courts in Texas, Wisconsin,
South Carolina and Pennsylvania have shot down the new requirements or are delaying their implementation.
Tennessee’s requirement has been upheld, though a federal judge in August questioned but did
not rule on the law’s merits.
Douglas Johnston, Barrett’s co-counsel, has said the legislature passed the ID law to suppress
minority participation in the November election, especially among groups that came out in droves to support Barack Obama in
2008.
As many as 390,000 registered voters in Tennessee lack a picture ID card, Barrett’s lawsuit asserted.
Of them, roughly 105,000 are 60 or older, the suits say.
The law’s backers counter that the requirement prevents voter fraud.
Data from the secretary of state show that few Tennesseans have requested provisional ballots because
of a lack of photo ID.
President Obama attacked right-to-work states Monday in a speech to the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades
Department Legislative Conference, saying the measures are political and “not about economics.”
“I believe when folks try and take collective bargaining rights away by passing so-called ‘right to work’
laws that might also be called ‘right to work for less’ laws, that’s not about economics,” Obama said.
“That’s about politics.”
The Democratic Party has also run into difficulties in North Carolina, the least unionized state in the country and the
site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. A number of local businesses have claimed they were denied work because of their non-union status; the convention mandated union-labor be maximized with respect to convention work.
45 Signs That America Will Soon Be A Nation With A Very Tiny Elite And The Rest Of Us Will
Be Poor
The middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States today. America is a nation with a
very tiny elite that is rapidly becoming increasingly wealthy while everyone else is becoming poorer.
So why is this happening? Well, it is actually very simple. Our institutions are designed to concentrate wealth in the
hands of a very limited number of people. Throughout human history, almost all societies that have had a big centralized government
have also had a very high concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite. Throughout human history, almost all societies
that have allowed big business or big corporations to dominate the economy have also had a very high concentration of wealth
in the hands of the elite. Well, the United States has allowed both big government and big corporations to grow wildly out
of control. Those were huge mistakes. Our founding fathers attempted to establish a nation where the federal government would
be greatly limited and where corporations would be greatly restricted. Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on those principles
and now we are paying the price.
When you have great concentrations of wealth and power, the economic rewards of a society tend to go to just a few.
In the United States today, big businesses and wealthy individuals fund the campaigns of our politicians, and in turn our
politicians pass laws which rig the game in their favor. It is a symbiotic relationship which is very bad for America.
Sadly, most conservatives tend to cheer on the big corporations, but this is not how our founding fathers
envisioned our capitalist system working. Our founding fathers envisioned large numbers of similar companies competing against
one another for customers. They did not envision a very small number of giant corporations buying up all of their competitors
or smashing them into oblivion with their giant piles of money.
True conservatives should want to see more competition instead of less competition. Competition helped make America great,
and we need to get back to that.
Instead of an economic landscape dominated by monolithic predator corporations, we need an economic environment where millions
of small businesses can thrive and compete directly with one another.
Our founding fathers never intended for us to have the kind of system that we have today. As I have discussed in previous articles, our founding fathers greatly restricted the size and scope of corporations in early America. The following is how author
Stephen D. Foster Jr. described the attitude toward corporations in the early years of the United States….
The East India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade angered the colonists so much,
that they dumped the tea products it had on a ship into Boston Harbor which today is universally known as the Boston Tea Party.
At the time, in Britain, large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by nearly everyone in parliament.
The founding fathers did not think much of these corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And
that is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was organized under the Constitution.
After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today. Unlike today,
however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock
in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps
the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any
political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.
A giant central government that spends more than 20 percent of our GDP is a collectivist institution.
Enormous predator corporations that are constantly sucking up even more money and power are collectivist institutions.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Our founding fathers did not intend for our society to be dominated by collectivist institutions.
Very large institutions tend to reward the people that own and run them at the expense of everyone else.
And you know what?
A lot of these giant corporations have figured out that they don’t even need American workers anymore.
Instead, many of them are shipping our jobs to the other side of the world where it it legal to pay slave labor wages.
That means bigger profits for them but less jobs for the rest of us.
In America today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and big government and big corporations
are the mechanisms by which this is happening.
Posted below are 45 signs that America will soon be a nation with a very tiny elite and the rest of us will be poor….
#1 Increasingly, gains in income are becoming very highly concentrated at the top of the food chain in
America. The following is how income gains in the United States were distributed during 2010….
-37 percent of all income gains went to the top 0.01 percent of all income earners
-56 percent of all income gains went to the rest of the top 1 percent
-7 percent of all income gains went to the bottom 99 percent
#2 Back in the 70s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. Today, they earn about 21 percent of all income.
#3 The wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.
#4 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans
combined.
#5 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#6 Median household income in the United States is down 7.8 percent since December 2007 after adjusting for inflation.
#7 The top 0.01% of all Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.
#8 According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 1979 and 2007 income growth for the top 1 percent
of all U.S. income earners was an astounding 390 percent. For the bottom 90 percent, income growth was only 5 percent over that same time period.
#9 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages
of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#10 In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
#11 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.
#12 According to Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, about 53 percent of all income went to the middle class back in the 1970s, but today only about 46 percent of all income does.
#13 When you look at the ratio of employee compensation to GDP, it is now the lowest that is has been
in about 50 years.
#14 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”. By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.
#15 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
#16 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.
#17 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 6.7% of all Americans are living in “extreme poverty”, and that is the highest level that has ever been recorded before.
#18 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
#20 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#21 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people. Only about 140 million of them are actually working.
#22 Back in 2001, the ratio of wages to GDP was sitting at approximately 49 percent. Today, it has fallen all the way down to about 44 percent.
#23 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#24 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#25 In 2010, 19.7% of all U.S. working adults had jobs that would not have been enough to push a family of four over the poverty line even if
they had worked full-time hours for the entire year.
#26 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#27 The average American household spent a staggering $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
#28 If inflation was measured the exact same way that it was measured back in 1980, the rate of inflation
in the United States would be well over 10 percent.
#29 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.
#30 Total student loan debt in America has now passed the 1 trillion dollar mark, and about 270 billion dollars of those loans are at least 30 days delinquent. These debts are absolutely crushing young middle class families.
#31 Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#32 According to the Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#33 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy
rose by a staggering 178 percent.
#35 The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.
#36 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#37 In November 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.
#39 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
#40 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.
#41 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#42 Medicare spending increased by 138 percent between 1999 and 2010.
#43 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.
#44 Federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
#45 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
As the middle class is systematically destroyed, families are looking for ways to survive any way that they can.
Why do you think that dollar stores are absolutely thriving these days?
It is because that is the only place many families can afford to shop.
So what is the solution?
Well, many liberals claim that the solution is to tax the wealthy and redistribute their money to the poor.
But that is definitely not the answer.
That would give the wealthy more of an incentive to take their wealth and their businesses out of the United States, and
it would give the poor more of an incentive to sit around and not work.
When I was younger, if I could have gotten the government to pay my bills I probably never would have worked at all. I
was quite lazy and I probably would have been more than happy to sit at home and collect government checks.
It is only human nature not to work hard when you have someone else willing to take care of you. For example, Vice-President
Joe Biden recently revealed that he stayed in the U.S. Senate for so long because he didn’t want “a real job“. There is a part of all of us that would like to avoid hard work.
So redistributing wealth is not going to be good for society as a whole. It penalizes being productive and it rewards being
lazy.
And our tax system is already way too oppressive for those that honestly pay their taxes.
Did you know that the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay their taxes?
That is before a single penny is earned for anything else.
That is absolutely obscene!
This year, the average American will spend approximately 29 percent of what they make on federal, state and local taxes.
No, the truth is that our current tax system is horrific and it needs to be thrown out.
But that is a topic for another article.
Getting back to the dying middle class, the real answer is to break up big government and to break up the big corporations
and promote competition in our economy once again.
We need wealth and power to be spread out into millions and millions of hands.
We need a system that tremendously encourages small businesses instead of absolutely crushing them.
We need dozens of competitors in most industries instead of just a handful.
We need to empower average Americans to be their own bosses instead of being dependent on big government and big corporations.
We need a system that gives “the little guy” a fighting chance.
It could be done if the American people were willing to reign in big government and the big corporations.
If you believe in the U.S. Constitution, you should believe in limiting the power of the federal government and limiting
the power of the big corporations.
Those are principles that our founding fathers believed in, and those are principles that we need to return to.
A massive explosion has destroyed Saudi Oil pipelines sending an uncontrolled source of fuel on fire and crude oil prices
soaring.
Among the many factors responsible for the jump in WTI to just shy of $109 over the past hour, and Brent to new records
in various currencies, is the following news reported so far only by Iranian PressTV:
“An explosion has hit oil pipelines in the flashpoint Saudi Arabian city of Awamiyah in the kingdom’s
oil-rich Eastern Province.”
Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Revolution hits the oil sector: pipeline under fire
For the first time in decades, the Eastern Saudi Arabian volatile situation has reached the vital oil sector. A pipeline
between Awamiya and Safwa has been reportedly targeted, and is under fire. Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, mostly residing
in the oil rich east, has been protesting for years against State sponsored discrimination. They are treated as second class
citizens, denied public sector jobs, and vital development for their oil rich areas. Saudi Arabia’s powerful Wahhabi
religious establishment considers Shiites heretics, and constantly incites against them.
Security forces have killed two protesters in Awamiya, Eastern Saudi Arabia. They are launching a series of arrests and
raids on houses, schools and mosques. This is Awamiya this evening, protesters have blocked the Police road after arrests
in the town.
And now back to your regularly scheduled deflation.
And another update this time a video showing Awamiya, Eastern Saudi Arabia, where the oil fields can be
seen from minute three onward.
A new photo of the pipeline under fire, from our Qatif correspondent:
The Eastern region is where most of the oil fields are based. The events, if they continue, might force Saudi Arabia to
lower its production expectations this year, thus affecting world supplies, and possible the world economy.
A quick review of the proximal refinery courtesy of Saudi Aramco
Ras Tanura Refinery
The most complex Saudi Aramco refinery is on the Arabian Gulf at Ras Tanura with a crude distillation capacity of 550,000
barrels per day (BPD). Ras Tanura Refinery also has a 305,000 BPD NGL processing facility, a 960,000 BPD crude stabilization
facility, 145/158 MW (summer/winter) of combined steam and gas turbine electrical power generation plants, a combined 150
lb and 600 lb steam capacity of 6,217 Mlb/hr, and 75 crude oil and products storage tanks with a combined capacity of 5.8
million barrels.
Ras Tanura Refinery’s major refining facilities include a 325,000 BPD Crude Distillation Unit, a 225,000 BPD Gas
Condensate Distillation Unit, 50,000 BPD hydrocracker and a total of 107,000 BPD capacity of catalytic reforming. Ras Tanura
Refinery is the only Saudi Aramco refinery that contains a Visbreaker (60,000 BPD). This refinery also produces 17,000 BPD
of asphalt, more than any other refinery in the Kingdom. Crude is normally transferred to Ras Tanura through a pipeline and
can also be supplied by ship. Most of Ras Tanura’s production is for domestic use and transferred to the Dhahran bulk
plant, while some products are exported.
They are 30 million consumers, representing a quarter of U.S. households, who
earn a collective $1.3 trillion a year. But banks don’t want to serve them, because they lose money. And the nonfinancial
institutions who do serve them may not be offering them much value in the long term.
Welcome to the world of the unbanked and underbanked, who in a weird twist may have fewer banking
options after Congress passed legislation aimed at protecting them from high bank fees. So who will serve these consumers,
who either use no mainstream financial services or have a checking or savings account but also utilize nonbank financial services
such as check cashers, payday lenders, and pawnbrokers? A huge opportunity awaits someone.
In the good old days, banks would have stepped in. They received substantial
revenue from interchange and overdraft fees, which essentially subsidized checking and savings accounts. But financial reform
passed by Congress in 2010 brought the so-called Durbin amendment, which slashed banks’ profits on debit card transactions,
and Regulation E, which severely limited the overdraft fees that banks could charge.
In response, many banks have instigated high fees that effectively discourage
low-income customers from opening (or keeping) accounts. It’s not by accident. To get a sense of why banks aren’t
terribly interested in serving low-income customers, take a look at the following example. Imagine it’s 2007, pre-crisis
and pre-regulation.
Let’s assume each deposit account costs the bank $250 a year to maintain
regardless of the balance of the account. Adam deposits $10,000 into his bank account, while Brenda deposits $100. The bank
loans out that money at 7 percent interest, making $700 off Adam and $7 off Brenda. They pay each customer an interest rate
of 1 percent, meaning that Adam earns $100 in interest, and Brenda earns $1. But since each account costs the bank $250 to
maintain, the bank makes $350 off Adam and loses $244 on Brenda.
RELATED LINKS
Current DateTime: 05:44:58 14 Jan 2012 LinksList Documentid: 45899412
Although Brenda’s deposit earns less in interest than it costs to maintain,
the bank also makes money every time she swipes her debit card and every time she incurs an overdraft fee. The latter was
particularly lucrative for banks, particularly because low-income customers, who tend to have lower balances, are disproportionately
more likely to incur overdraft fees. Ten such charges a year would cover the cost of her checking account, even without revenue
from debit card transactions.
Today, that equation looks much different: The bank now lends at 5 percent interest,
and pays out 0.1 percent on deposits. Adam’s account earns the bank $500, while he only receives $10 in interest; Brenda’s
garners only $5, and she earns 10 cents in interest. On balance, Adam’s account is still profitable for the bank: it
nets $245. The bank now loses $245.10 on Brenda’s account, and can no longer count on swipe or overdraft fees to make
up the difference. There’s no incentive to hold onto a large number of low-income accountholders. Quite the opposite.
Big Retailers Fill the Void
By contrast, some big retailers are offering financial services that actively
court low-income people. Stores like Walmart[WMT59.540.04(+0.07%)] and Best Buy [BBY24.29-0.47(-1.9%)]can take advantage of economies of scale, as well as boost in-store sales if they offer financial
services to shoppers. Beyond this, Walmart doesn’t offer deposit accounts, so it doesn’t have to worry about the
cost of maintaining them, or about paying interest to accountholders. Instead, Walmart makes a profit by charging fees to
cash checks or buy prepaid debit cards.
While these onetime fees are more appealing to some people than the ongoing
and often hidden fees associated with many big banks, it’s questionable whether financial services offered at retailers
are actually a bargain. Wal-Mart, for example, charges $3 to cash a check between $300 and $1,000, and levies a host of fees
on the prepaid Walmart MoneyCard. Compared with the average 2 percent to 4 percent charged at most street-corner check cashers,
Walmart is generally cheaper. But if you cashed two $500 checks, used an automated teller machine (ATM) twice, and reloaded
your prepaid card once, you’d incur $16 in fees — far more than mainstream checking accounts.
Even more worrying, however, is the indirect harm of remaining unbanked: Those
without access to mainstream financial services are far less likely to save for retirement, college, or emergencies. Bank
accounts are more secure than relying on cash. Directly depositing part of your paycheck into a savings account helps you
adhere to your budget. The unbanked, however, do not receive these incentives or safeguards.
What about Credit Unions?
Unlike either banks or retailers, credit unions are not-for-profit. They’re
member-owned, and pay their “shareholders” in the form of lower interest rates and higher yields. In addition,
most credit unions have less than $10 billion in assets, and so are exempt from the Durbin amendment. Oddly enough, checking
account costs can be 50 percent lower for small institutions. Larger banks face high overhead costs from bank branches, ATMs,
and so on, while credit unions and community banks can outsource call centers, payment processing, and ATM networks.
But while credit unions aren’t put off by low-income members, they may
not be as highly motivated to recruit this population as chain retailers that stand to make a profit. This may in part explain
the low profile that credit unions tend to have as compared with their for-profit counterparts.
MORE FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR
Current DateTime: 05:35:07 14 Jan 2012 LinksList Documentid: 45899411
Given the low fees of credit unions, why do so many people seem to prefer less
conventional options to fulfill their financial needs, and why are they content to live without checking or savings accounts?
There are several possible explanations. For one thing, the term credit union is still only vaguely familiar to many people.
People may not be clear about what services credit unions offer, and they’re often unaware that credit unions are not-for-profit
institutions, where profits are funneled back to members in the form of lower fees and better interest rates.
In addition, so many people have had bad experiences with unexpected fees at
banks that some feel they are better off avoiding financial institutions altogether. Paying a fee at Walmart to cash a check
is a one-time deal: You know exactly how much you’ll have to pay, and there won’t be any surprise fees down the
road.
Serving the Underserved
This “‘underserved’ market is considered one of the fastest
growing segments in the United States and represents significant potential for banks willing to develop new products and services,”
a 2011 study by the consulting firm KPMG concluded. Altogether, the unbanked and underbanked have around $1.3 trillion in
income, and spend $5 billion each year paying off predatory loans. A 2009 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. found
that some 9 billion households were unbanked and another 21 million were underbanked. Nearly a third of African-American households
and a quarter of Hispanic households were underbanked.
The KPMG study highlights a number of services that may be important for banks
to offer as the number of unbanked and underbanked people rises. For instance, check cashing and bill-pay for noncustomers,
as well as international money transfers, are services in demand among these groups. The study found that the number of unbanked
and underbanked people is growing as a result of falling credit scores caused by “negative events” in their personal
lives that are often linked to the downturn in the economy. Sudden unemployment
, for example, can cause a previously banked individual to be forced to leave his or her financial institution.
As the ranks of unbanked and underbanked Americans continue to swell and big
banks avoid serving them, big retailers stand to make a profit by finding cost-effective ways to offer financial services
to the underserved. In an ironic twist, stores like Walmart have an advantage in many consumers’ eyes because they aren’t
affiliated with a mainstream financial institution. In the end, the task will continue to fall to credit unions, big banks,
and big retailers to make their case to the unbanked and underbanked and provide services that truly meet the needs and financial
limitations of these groups.
Mark Faber: "I Am Convinced The Whole Derivatives Market Will Cease To Exist And Will Go To Zero"
Anyone seeking joyous holiday greetings and cheerful forecasts for the new year is advised to avoid the
following most recent Mark Faber interview, in which in addition to his predictions for 2012 (led with "more printing" by
the dodecatupling down central planners, and far less prosperity), we get the following: "I am convinced the whole derivatives
market will cease to exit. Will become zero. And when it happens I don't know: you can postpone the problems
with monetary measures for a long time but you can't solve them... Greece should have defaulted - it would have sent a message
that not all derivatives are equal because it depends on the counterparty." And on the long-term future:
"I am ultra bearish. I think most people will be lucky if they still have 50% of their money in 5 years time. You have to
have diversification - some real estate in the countryside, some gold and some equities because if you think it through, say
Germany 1900 to today, we had WWI, we had hyperinflation, WWII, cash holders and bondholders they lost everything 3 times,
but if you owned equities you'd be ok. In equities in general you will not lose it all, it may not be a good investment, unless
you put it all in one company and it goes bankrupt." As for gold: "I am worried that one day the government will take it away."
As for the one thing he hates the most? No surprise here -government bonds.
WASHINGTON — Laws that require voters
to show photo identification at the polls reduce election fraud, supporters of Tennessee’s new voter ID law told Senate
lawmakers Thursday.
Opponents of such laws countered that they target low-income, minority and student voters,
who are more likely to vote for Democrats and might lack government-issued IDs such as driver’s licenses and passports.
Democrats and voting-rights advocates told members of the Senate subcommittee on civil
rights that rural and elderly voters also could be disproportionately affected because they might have trouble traveling to
get an ID.
In Tennessee, voters older than 60 aren’t required to have a photo on their driver’s
licenses.
“I am deeply concerned by this coordinated, well-funded effort to pass laws that
would compromise the right to vote,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the civil rights subcommittee, said at Thursday’s
hearing.
Explanation sought
He said the incidence of voter fraud is “minimal” and doesn’t justify
such measures.
Durbin wrote to Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Thursday, asking him to explain the steps
his administration is taking to “ensure that Tennesseans without the forms of photo identification now required by the
law can obtain it — efficiently and free of charge — before the next election.”
Rep. Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican and former Indiana secretary of state, said
the state’s 2006 voter ID law hasn’t affected turnout but has guarded against voter fraud.
Such fraud, he said, is hard to prosecute, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist.”
Haslam signed Tennessee’s photo ID measure into law at the end of May.
Republican-controlled legislatures in five other states — Kansas, Wisconsin, Alabama,
South Carolina and Texas — and Rhode Island’s Democratic legislature have enacted similar legislation this year,
bringing the total number of states with photo ID laws to 14, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Others require ID
An additional 16 states require voters to show identification but don’t require
a photo. Previously, Tennessee voters could show a voter registration card, Social Security card or other non-photo ID at
the polls.
Voters in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Kansas will have to show photo ID starting in 2012.
The new laws in Alabama, South Carolina and Texas won’t take effect until they are reviewed by the Justice Department.
Only three states without a voter ID law — Oregon, Vermont and Wyoming —
haven’t considered one in 2011, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Our country has not seen such widespread attempts to disenfranchise voters as
we have seen this year in over a century,” Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, told lawmakers.
“Despite the myth that everyone has ID, many voters do not.”
Eleven percent of eligible voters lack a government-issued photo ID, according to Wendy
Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school. That’s true of 15 percent of low-income
Americans, 18 percent of senior citizens and 25 percent of blacks, she said.
Are fees a poll tax?
Opponents of voter ID laws say fees for getting IDs or documents needed to prove citizenship,
such as birth certificates, resemble the poll taxes that were used mostly in the South to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites.
But Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told lawmakers
that photo ID laws may actually increase voter turnout by raising confidence in the fairness of the process. He said more
people voted in Georgia and Indiana after photo ID policies took effect, although critics have attributed the increase to
other factors, such as
WASHINGTON — Laws that require voters
to show photo identification at the polls reduce election fraud, supporters of Tennessee’s new voter ID law told Senate
lawmakers Thursday.
Opponents of such laws countered that they target low-income, minority and student voters,
who are more likely to vote for Democrats and might lack government-issued IDs such as driver’s licenses and passports.
Democrats and voting-rights advocates told members of the Senate subcommittee on civil
rights that rural and elderly voters also could be disproportionately affected because they might have trouble traveling to
get an ID.
In Tennessee, voters older than 60 aren’t required to have a photo on their driver’s
licenses.
“I am deeply concerned by this coordinated, well-funded effort to pass laws that
would compromise the right to vote,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the civil rights subcommittee, said at Thursday’s
hearing.
Explanation sought
He said the incidence of voter fraud is “minimal” and doesn’t justify
such measures.
Durbin wrote to Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Thursday, asking him to explain the steps
his administration is taking to “ensure that Tennesseans without the forms of photo identification now required by the
law can obtain it — efficiently and free of charge — before the next election.”
Rep. Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican and former Indiana secretary of state, said
the state’s 2006 voter ID law hasn’t affected turnout but has guarded against voter fraud.
Such fraud, he said, is hard to prosecute, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist.”
Haslam signed Tennessee’s photo ID measure into law at the end of May.
Republican-controlled legislatures in five other states — Kansas, Wisconsin, Alabama,
South Carolina and Texas — and Rhode Island’s Democratic legislature have enacted similar legislation this year,
bringing the total number of states with photo ID laws to 14, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Others require ID
An additional 16 states require voters to show identification but don’t require
a photo. Previously, Tennessee voters could show a voter registration card, Social Security card or other non-photo ID at
the polls.
Voters in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Kansas will have to show photo ID starting in 2012.
The new laws in Alabama, South Carolina and Texas won’t take effect until they are reviewed by the Justice Department.
Only three states without a voter ID law — Oregon, Vermont and Wyoming —
haven’t considered one in 2011, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Our country has not seen such widespread attempts to disenfranchise voters as
we have seen this year in over a century,” Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, told lawmakers.
“Despite the myth that everyone has ID, many voters do not.”
Eleven percent of eligible voters lack a government-issued photo ID, according to Wendy
Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school. That’s true of 15 percent of low-income
Americans, 18 percent of senior citizens and 25 percent of blacks, she said.
Are fees a poll tax?
Opponents of voter ID laws say fees for getting IDs or documents needed to prove citizenship,
such as birth certificates, resemble the poll taxes that were used mostly in the South to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites.
But Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told lawmakers
that photo ID laws may actually increase voter turnout by raising confidence in the fairness of the process. He said more
people voted in Georgia and Indiana after photo ID policies took effect, although critics have attributed the increase to
other factors, such as President Barack Obama’s candidacy.
In Tennessee, election officials say a state voter education campaign and exemptions
for absentee and indigent voters will lessen the law’s impact. While college IDs and those issued by counties will not
be accepted, state driver’s license offices are issuing free identification cards and adding photos to the IDs of people
over 60.
President Barack Obama’s candidacy.
In Tennessee, election officials say a state voter education campaign and exemptions
for absentee and indigent voters will lessen the law’s impact. While college IDs and those issued by counties will not
be accepted, state driver’s license offices are issuing free identification cards and adding photos to the IDs of people
over 60.
Privacy fears as police in the US set to use hand held facial recognition technology for crime fighting
It is known as MORIS, short for Mobile Offender Recognition
and Information System and has previously been used in Afghanistan by soldiers to ensure they are not giving out aid to insurgents.
The deployment has sparked concerns amongst civil liberties
campaigners who say that there is no precedent for forcing suspects to submit to a retina scan.
In theory police could even be forced to produce a warrant
to get them to do so.
Police officers however have been very enthusiastic and
see MORIS as a key tool in the fight against crime.
‘We are living in an age where a lot of people try to live under
the radar and in the shadows and avoid law enforcement,’ said Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Ariz, who has bought
75 units.
The gadget lets a policeman take a picture from up to 5ft and scan an iris from
six inches. It then links up with millions of pictures via 3G or wireless technology
William Conlon, chief of police in Brockton, Mass, told
the Wall St Journal: ‘It is just a picture. If you are out in public, I can
take a picture of anybody.
‘Most people will say, 'I don't have anything to
hide, go ahead.'
The deployment of the MORIS units comes after Facebook
launched its own facial recognition software to help users identify its friends.
The Wall St Journal also reported that Google rejected
a programme which would let people take a photo then use it to search the web for a match.
B12 told the paper that it does not sell on the data collected
using its devices but that it hopes to integrate the search with the FBI’s registry of fingerprints.
‘Sheriffs and law enforcement should not use this on anybody
but suspected criminals,’ said the firm’s chief executive Sean Mullin.
On June 9, 2011, President Obama issued a sweeping executive order for a White House Rural Council that purports to exert
broad municipal powers over the food, fiber, and energy production of rural America. Where’s the Line, America to how
much power the president can amass by executive order? Notice the talking head that keeps bashing “conspiracy theorists”
who don’t want federal control over local lands.
GLOBALISTS CALL FOR ’BIG WAR’
By James P. Tucker Jr.
ST. MORITZ, Switzerland—The secret globalist group “Bilderberg” called for a
big war by expanding the turmoil in Libya into a full-scale conflict involving the entire Middle East except for Israel. This
is a grim and bloody outlook, because, historically, every time Bilderberg orders war, the guns begin to shoot. In 1991, President
George H.W. Bush followed orders and attacked Iraq in Persian Gulf War I. He lost to peace candidate Bill Clinton, who followed
orders and invaded Yugoslavia.
The list is endless: Every war dating back to and including World War II has been ordered
by Bilderberg. Although they did not start calling themselves Bilderberg until 1954, Rockefeller and Rothschild cronies had
the ear of President Franklin Roosevelt when the White House baited the Japanese into conducting a surprise attack on Pearl
Harbor on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.
Similarly, President Harry Truman was pressured into going to war in Korea, and then
Lyndon Johnson involved the U.S. in Vietnam.
Johnson seemed to enjoy cruelty. The same draft law used in World War
II had been revived in 1946, making all able-bodied men aged 18-38 eligible for combat. A college student could finish his
degree but must then report for duty. As a matter of policy, LBJ said students could finish their entire education, including
postgraduate work, before reporting. And no one older than 27 would be drafted. The result: Dick Cheney and others avoided
service by remaining in college until the age of 27. So the body bags were mostly filled by young boys with no more than a
high school education.
“It will have to be a big war involving several countries to advance our goals of a global
economy,” said Keith Alexander, director of the U.S. National Security Agency. “But the pressure to end the war
in Libya is non-stop, mostly because of that damn Kucinich.” He was referring to Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), whose
bill to end the invasion of Libya was defeated just before Congress adjourned for a week on June 3.
“But look at all the votes [148] he got,” Alexander said. “This is dangerous.
Congress may cut or even eliminate war funding, and our soldiers are not even fighting.”
Bilderberg’s goal
of expanding the turmoil surrounding the invasion of Libya into a huge bloodletting in the Mideast will be helped, they say,
by their plan to maintain the global recession through 2012.
“The recession may keep coverage [of Bilderberg]
down,” said John Kerr, a member of the British House of Lords and deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. “Europe
has many independent papers, but they go low-budget. We have made calls to Rupert Murdoch, still our good friend,” he
said of the world’s largest owner of newspapers.
Kerr and the others were to be bitterly disappointed when confronted
by angry crowds as their helicopters landed at the resort on Thursday, June 9. Most had planned to arrive Wednesday afternoon,
after leaving their “cover meeting” of NATO countries in Brussels, Belgium. But frequent, heavy rains kept the
copters grounded. Bilderberg traditionally has a “cover meeting” so, for example, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert
Gates can attend a NATO session and slip, unnoticed, into the Bilderberg meeting. Gates addressed Bilderberg on Friday, June
10.
Gates had said the same things to the NATO crowd he later said at Bilderberg, calling for more aerial combat actions
by allies even as the United States confines itself to a backup role. Gates called for more effort by the Netherlands, Spain
and Turkey and urged Germany and Poland to join the war.
Gates’s hour-long speech at Bilderberg was mentioned
by The Financial Times. His audience, however, was described only as a “gathering of dignitaries.” He said the
European NATO members face “the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance” as a superpower unless
they contribute more money and troops.
Washington has frequently requested, “with exasperation,” that European
NATO countries meet the alliance’s benchmarks for defense spending, Gates said and called the situation in the current
campaign in Libya “unacceptable.” He said “the blunt reality is there will be dwindling appetite and patience
in the U.S. Congress—and in the American body politic—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations
that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources to make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners
in their own defense.”
NATO has degenerated into a “two-tiered” alliance with the United States and
a small group of European allies doing the tough jobs while others benefit from NATO’s protection without bearing a
fair share of costs and risks, Gates said. “This is no longer a hypothetical worry,” Gates said in one of the
harshest speeches ever delivered at Bilderberg.
When Bill Clinton, a Bilderberg attendee, was president, NATO became
the UN’s standing army, operating anywhere in the world on the orders of the Security Council. Under the UN, NATO invaded
Yugoslavia. Under its charter, NATO is a defensive army only. But the first weapon fired in anger was an offensive war under
direction of the UN.
Bilderberg has forgiven Barack Obama for hesitancy about what is now “his war.” They
understand the political delicacy in Washington but, as one said, “he’s a good soldier and he’ll follow
orders.”
Obama was praised for doing Bilderberg errands on his visit to a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum in Hawaii. A major Bilderberg goal of establishing a world government is to create an Asian-Pacific Union
following an American Union, both patterned after the European Union superstate. Even as Bilderberg gathered, OPEC nations
were following orders to keep oil prices pumped up to assist the goal of raising U.S. prices to $7 a gallon. While making
clucking sounds about holding down prices, OPEC allowed a slight, momentary dip as a public relations gesture.
But
Saudi Arabia maintains 3 million barrels a day of spare capacity. This did not fool Frank Verrastro, director of the energy
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is traditionally a Bilderberg collaborator.
“I
think there’s going to be a lot of theatrics, but beyond that I don’t think it affects the outcome,” Verrastro
said. “If OPEC becomes less cohesive, that means each country goes its own way on production.”
“All
these countries need money,” said Fadel Ghett, oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. “They will produce as much
as they can get away with without destroying demand.”
The French agreed in principle to subscribe to new issues
of Greek sovereign debt to replace maturing bonds if all creditors do the same. The move could provide a way forward for involving
private creditors in a Greek rescue program. But it falls short of a German demand for them to agree voluntarily on an extension
of bond maturities. The French proposal echoes the thinking of the European Central Bank, which claims that a rollover of
Greek debt, rather than a “reprofiling” with extended maturities, would be a good way for private creditors to
be involved in a new deal. French banks are among Greece’s largest creditors.
But the German government reaffirmed
its determination to persuade bondholders to contribute more to a rescue. They called for a seven-year voluntary extension
of maturities.
Jean-Claude Trichit, president of the European Central Bank, told fellow Bilderbergers that Europe needs
a “Eurozone treasury secretary” with independent authority over all EU banks to avoid further crises like those
of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. There is no time, when a crisis erupts, for the nations to come to a voluntary agreement,
he said, because such a treasury department would have to act swiftly and with authority to impose bailout actions.
There
was modest attention to China and Japan, relative newcomers to Bilderberg. In response to the explosions in Japan’s
nuclear power plants, there was talk of imposing global rules on safety inspections. On China, there was talk of enjoying
huge profits by bringing materials from slave-wage countries in Africa to be made into finished products by Chinese labor
(itself relatively cheap).The finished product would be sold in the United States, where unemployment rates unofficially exceed
15 percent.
Craig Mundi, a Microsoft executive, complained about China establishing rules that favor building electronic
gadgets at home and selling them without foreign competition. Another who Bilderberg tried to hide by keeping his name off
its “official list” was Bill Gates, a self-made billionaire computer nerd who founded Microsoft.
The faith-based economics of deficit reduction
Deficit cutting has become the common 'wisdom' of economic policy
wonks in DC. But it can't muster one rational argument
Prey to the deficit hawks: US Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner taking his seat to testify before a House committee on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, in January 2009. Photograph:
EPA/Michael Reynolds
Sometimes, it can be fun to get inside a crazy worldview to ask how it deals with contradictory evidence.
For example, how do creationists reconcile their view that all plants and animals were created in their current form around
10,000 years ago, with fossil evidence of life forms dating back hundreds of millions of years?
In this vein, it's worth asking how the proponents of deficit reduction think that lower deficits will
lead to increased growth and job creation in an economy mired in a severe slump? There is not an easy answer.
There is a standard "econ 101" story about how reducing deficits can boost the economy. The theory
goes that if the government reduces its deficit, and therefore borrows less, it will reduce interest rates. Lower interest
rates will, in turn, give firms incentive to invest more.
Lower interest rates should also cause the dollar to decline, since it will make US government bonds
and other dollar assets less attractive to foreign investors. If the dollar falls in value, then our goods will be more competitive
on world markets. This will cause us to import less and export more, thereby creating jobs.
However, is this what the deficit hawks believe will happen now? The interest rate on 10-year Treasury
bonds is already down to 3.0%. Assuming a 2% inflation rate, this translates into a real rate of about 1%. How much lower
do the deficit hawks think interest rates will fall if we were to sharply cut the deficit? Furthermore, how much more investment
do they think we can induce even if we got a large reduction (for example, 0.5 percentage point) in real interest rates?
Do they think that this sort of decline in interest rates will send the dollar tumbling and thereby
improve our trade balance? Against which currencies will a lower interest rate cause the dollar to fall sharply?
Neither of these stories really passes the laugh test. At best, we may hope to see modestly lower interest
rates if cutting the budget deficit slows growth further. But there is no reason to expect any future decline to have any
more impact than the recent decline in the 10-year Treasury rate from 3.6% in the winter to near 3.0% present this month.
There is another story that the deficit hawks occasionally push. This one says that if we lay off workers
in the public sector, that will increase employment in the private sector. The story here is, presumably, that mass layoffs
of public sector workers will depress the wages of workers further, thereby making it more profitable for employers to hire
them. There's a simple problem in this picture. In order for wages to actually fall, the additional employment in the private
sector must not be as large as the job loss in the public sector.
In other words, if we lay off 500,000 public sector workers, then the private sector must increase
employment by less than 500,000 workers; otherwise, wages would rise, not fall, and businesses would then not have any incentive
to hire more workers. This means that this route of economic stimulus through government cutbacks can, at best, get us close
to where we were before the layoffs. It is not a way to add jobs to the economy. And even in a best case scenario,
it would take a considerable period of time to get close to that situation, since wages do not fall quickly.
Neither of these channels sounds very promising, as almost any serious person would have to acknowledge.
This leaves the mystery channel of bad feelings. This story goes that businesses feel bad about the deficit. They are worried
that they might pay higher taxes in the future, there could be inflation, or the government could collapse. For these reasons,
businesses that would otherwise be investing their hefty profits are, instead, sitting on them.
There are two problems with the bad feelings story. First, businesses actually are investing at a pretty
healthy rate. There was huge overbuilding of structures in the real estate boom, but investment in equipment and software
as a share of GDP is almost back to its pre-recession level. Given the excess capacity in this sector, we really should be
asking why investment is so high, not why it is low.
The second problem with this story is that the fear of higher taxes in the
future is a good reason for businesses to try to invest and earn profits now. When the congressional budget office used various models to examine the impact of Bush-type tax cuts, the ones that showed the most positive effects were ones that assumed the tax cuts would be temporary.
This effectively pulled investment and work effort forward into the low tax period. The point is that if people really believed
they would pay much higher taxes in the future, then they should be working hard and investing today – the opposite
of the deficit hawk story.
So, finally, we don't have a coherent story as to how reducing the budget
deficit will boost growth – just as the creationists don't have a coherent explanation for what we know about the plant
and animal kingdoms. The big difference is that the deficit hawks are determining economic policy.
Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields
are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.
“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible
for money,” he said. “They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities
or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.
“We need to find real yield and real returns on these assets. You see bad data, you see Treasurys rally, you see
all bonds and all fixed-income rally and then the people who are betting against the U.S. economy start getting bearish on
stocks. That’s a huge mistake.”
(RNS) A Jesuit will be sworn in as the 60th chaplain of the House of Representatives on May 25, when he will become the
first member of his order and second consecutive Catholic priest to serve the House.
As chaplain, the Rev. Patrick Conroy will be in charge of opening House sessions with prayer, coordinating guest chaplains,
counseling members of the House community and arranging memorial services, weddings and funerals.
"One does not aspire to become the chaplain to a chamber of Congress," Conroy, 60, said in a statement released on Friday
(May 6).
"I am also humbled by the confidence my Jesuit superiors are demonstrating in making me available to answer this call to
serve the People's House," he added.
Conroy was selected by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who consulted with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Both
are Catholics.
"We are honored that Father Conroy has agreed to serve as House chaplain," Boehner said in a statement. "His dedication
to God's work, commitment to serving others and experience working with people of faith from all traditions will make him
an asset to the House community."
Conroy has master's degrees in philosophy, divinity and sacred theology, and a law degree from St. Louis University in
Missouri.
In the 1980s, he was pastor of several Washington missions and parishes, and later was chaplain at Georgetown University
in Washington, for nearly a decade. He will celebrate his 28th year as a Jesuit on June 11.
(Nancy Haught writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.)
Obama Remains Bilderberg Pawn In Global Petroleum Chess Match
By James P. Tucker Jr.
President Obama, acting as the Bilderberg group’s lackey, is lying when he says he wants
to punish oil companies and develop new resources. In reality, Obama will, as Bilderberg has ordered, work to keep the costs
of gasoline high and maintain if not increase America’s phoney dependency on imported oil.
Bilderberg participants
“are a pack of liars, and they will continue to lie through and beyond St. Moritz,” said an insider, referring
to the annual Bilderberg group meeting scheduled in Switzerland June 9-12. “You must get the truth out and keep them
backing up.”
Increasing public awareness of the evil of Bilderberg has proven a huge barrier to their goals,
the insider said.
“These tax giveaways aren’t right,” Obama said in his weekly radio address, referring
to the annual $4 billion in tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. He knows this will not pass because Big Oil owns too
many congressmen from both parties. But saying so is good politics.
“An investment in clean energy today is an
investment in a better tomorrow,” Obama said. “And I think that’s an investment worth making.”
But
Obama knows this means a tax increase, which Congress will reject.
Obama calls for developing domestic resources but refuses to allow this to happen, so the Bilderberg
plan to keep America dependent on imports, drive gasoline to $7 a gallon and keep the recession alive through the year 2012
can continue to thrive.
Obama and various well-funded environmental groups object to exploiting the huge oil reserves
in the Arctic on grounds of ecology. Oil reserves in the Arctic alone are enough to supply America’s needs for as much
as two centuries, experts have said.
New technology allows oil to be drilled with little impact on the environment.
One approach drills down deeply, then horizontally, to reach oil. All that remains is a single capped well head. But this
fails to appease environmentalists. There is a long history of this kind of hysteria.
Shortages of key drugs endanger patients
By Rob Stein, Published: May 1
Doctors, hospitals and federal regulators are struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in drug shortages in the United
States that is endangering cancer patients, heart attack victims, accident survivors and a host of other ill people.
A record 211 medications became scarce in 2010 — triple the number in 2006 — and at least 89 new shortages
have been recorded through the end of March, putting the nation on track for far more scarcities.
The paucities are forcing some medical centers to ration drugs — including one urgently needed
by leukemia patients — postpone surgeries and other care, and scramble for substitutes, often resorting to alternatives
that may be less effective, have more side effects and boost the risk for overdoses and other sometimes-fatal errors.
The causes vary from drug to drug, but experts cite a confluence of factors: Consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry
has left only a few manufacturers for many older, less profitable products, meaning that when raw material runs short, equipment
breaks down or government regulators crack down, the snags can quickly spiral into shortages.
“It seems like there were a lot of things happening with consolidations and quality issues and more things coming
from overseas,” said Allen J. Vaida, executive director of the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices, a nonprofit group that helped organize a conference last fall to examine the issue. “It just reached a point where
the number of shortages was slowly going up and up, and now we have a national crisis with this huge shortage of critical
medications.”
While the dearth that has garnered the most public attention is — ironically — for a barbiturate that is hindering prisons trying to execute inmates, the scarcities are having a much broader impact on keeping people alive, especially in emergency rooms, oncology wards and
intensive care units.
No one is systematically tracking the toll of the shortages, but reports are emerging of delayed treatments, anxious searches
for desperately needed drugs, devastating injuries from mistakes and less-adequate drugs, and even possible deaths.
Federal regulators have been rushing to alleviate the shortages, sometimes helping firms resume production more quickly
or approving emergency imports of supplies from overseas.
The Food and Drug Administration eased a shortage of the anesthetic propofol last year by allowing foreign importation,
for example, and this year approved bringing in several other medications, including two cancer drugs.
“The types of products we’re seeing shortages of are really concerning,” said Valerie Jensen, who heads
the FDA’s Drug Shortages Program. “This is affecting oncology drugs, critical-care drugs, emergency medicine drugs. We’re doing everything
we can under our current authority to try to deal with this situation.”
FEMA Detention Site Plans Exposed
By Mark Anderson
If, God forbid, Americans are ever rounded up in large numbers during a natural or manmade disaster,
where could they be detained? Well, perhaps look no further than the school building next door, the office building around
the corner or the stadium downtown. And besides existing military installations, state fair grounds, horse stables, airports
“and maybe even a hotel” also could be used as detention centers.
That’s according to Restore the
Republic’s Gary Franchi at Freedom Law School’s recent Health & Freedom Conference. Franchi was one of several
speakers who gathered at the Airport Hilton in Ontario, Calif., March 12-15 to talk about cutting-edge developments in health
and politics.
Many vigilant Americans have become aware of some apparently underutilized military facilities and other
installations around the nation that seem designed to detain large numbers of people but are largely empty.
Unsubstantiated
rumors and urban legends have been circulated, and Franchi was careful not to overstate this issue. But he said there is cause
for considerable concern in these post-9-11 days when the normal patriotic impulses of Americans are being relabeled as radical
or even on par with terrorism by federal agencies.
Franchi told the conference audience that on April 1, 1979, under
Executive Order 12127, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created but it unfortunately was “no joke”
for April Fools Day. Just as FEMA was absorbed nearly 25 years later by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FEMA at
its birth absorbed the Department of Defense civil-preparedness functions that designated schools, office buildings and other
structures as atom bomb “fallout shelters” starting in the 1950s during the Cold War days with the Soviet Union.
DHS,
created on the direct recommendation of the 9-11 Commission, that purported to deeply study what happened on Sept. 11, 2001,
says, under its “Goals and Objectives” statement (Part VI), that its mission is to “protect our nation from
dangerous people.”
Now under the DHS umbrella, FEMA’s three basic objectives, according to its own policy,
are: national emergency recovery, continuity of government and “to combat perceived threats to the social and political
order,” Franchi emphasized.
He showed an aerial picture of “FEMA City,” the drab barracks set up
in Florida after Hurricane Charlie. These cookie-cutter mobile homes were “free housing with nosebleeds,” Franchi
said, referring to the effects of chemical fumes emitted from the shoddy building materials.
The area, courtesy of
FEMA, became a crime haven. Any genuine public benefit was marginal at best.
Fast-forward to Highland Mall in Austin,
Texas, claimed by FEMA in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a place to put Louisiana refugees entering Texas. The New
Orleans Superdome itself was “another private building used to house refugees,” Franchi added.
Given
the ongoing “war on terror” and the threat to the people’s liberties that can arise from “anti-terror”
measures, combined with steep economic decline and the procedures and policies that FEMA and DHS have developed or are still
developing, Franchi says the situation looks grim unless Americans protest now and show they are informed of, and actively
opposed to, potential plans to imprison large numbers of people, lest Americans bite the dust the way the USSR people did
when they were sent to brutal labor camps amid political turmoil and the demonizing of “unlawful” political beliefs.
Pointing
to the World War II detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans, Franchi said the detaining of Americans has already happened.
Recall that during Woodrow Wilson’s days, many notable war dissenters were imprisoned in a nation supposedly dedicated
to free speech. So it’s only a question of circumstance, as Franchi sees it.
The FBI’s Project Megiddo
in 1999, the Missouri Information Analysis Center “militia” report from February 2009 and the April 2009 DHS report
Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, are
among the reports that have tried to tie Americans’ concerns and beliefs to supposed violent tendencies, so these linkages
can be transformed into the “truth” and used to arrest political dissidents, just like what happened in the early
20th century, said Franchi.
He added that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tried to influence law enforcement
and legislation, has issued yet another report that follows a similar tack. His research is in the documentary Camp FEMA.
“We cannot let these people . . . intimidate us; we are sovereign U.S. citizens, and nothing is going to stop us from
[resisting] this tyranny,” Franchi said, noting that public television stations may help. ——
![[cnbc explains]](http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_News/_CNBC_EXPLAINS/_IMAGES/CNBC_explains_icon1.gif){kind=small}
Prey to the deficit hawks: US Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner taking his seat to testify before a House committee on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, in January 2009. Photograph:
EPA/Michael Reynolds
