The decline and eventual fall of the USA as world superpower?

[Brian]

...but it is acceptable for the government to use violence or the threat of violence to advance their radical views?

 

 

 

the same harry that has a solar deal for his son with a chinese company for the land...

 

the same harry who praised obama as a "light-skinned" african-american "with no negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

 

the same harry that's been made preposterously rich off insider trading just like almost the entire rest of congress?

 

I'm sure with enough electoral fraud, reid will get "elected" again

 

because, when all else fails, cry 'racist'

Modern "progressive" Tourette syndrome.... Edited April 25, 2014 by Brian

[joeblast]

orwell appears to be a sort of modern day nostradamus

 

then again, I think these systems would really be appropriate in the white house, halls of congress, chambers of the supreme court, every state capitol and legislature, all their offices, etc, etc, etc....because its the people that really need to be protected from the government at this point. then again, when its trying to detect outside the norm behavior, it'd probably trip of the alarms if it saw non aberrant behavior can we set it up to detect when a congressman abuses insider trading laws?

Edited April 25, 2014 by joeblast

[zerostao]

i posted jfk quote earlier in the thread and now i will add one from IKE

i like ike

and i want to consider that jfk and ike as presidents from different parties(giants that they both were imo) could not stop the madness from happening,

the madness that grows and grows and today is still growing

 

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
this is a quote from a republican president IKE

the right has swung so far to madness, another madness will step in to make the correction,

seriously you should shudder at the thought.

i have thought some about what ralis was saying about fascism coming from the right in the style of mussloini,

but i think its worse now that what ralis was saying.

the fascism of mussloini is kiddie fascism to what we are now under,,

benito at least had the corporations serving the state

and not the state serving the corporations at the expense of the rest of us

hypocrisy is the road to power and the left in america is every bit as guilty as the right is

at what point will we stop trying to elect the lesser of the two evils?

we really like living in a land ruled by evil, i reckon

north korea just released a report about u.s. human rights abuses, and many will say consider the source and dismiss it out of hand.. we are so content to sit here with the wool pulled down over our eyes,,

here is a quote by victor hugo , i like victor as much as i like ike " an invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come" bellow is a portrait of an old doctor

[zerostao]

"Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?_r=0

[joeblast]

and here's why

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-05/enron-20-wall-street-manipulates-energy-prices-%E2%80%A6-and-every-other-market

[joeblast]

declined to hear appeal

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-05/%E2%80%9C-us-supreme-court-decision-%E2%80%A6-means-nation-has-entered-post-constitutional-er

[joeblast]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-06/making-400000-hour-best-paid-hedge-fund-manager-2013-was

 

Making $400,000 Per Hour, The Best Paid Hedge Fund Manager In 2013 Was...

 

certainly not "earning" it

[joeblast]

[joeblast]

why the hell does the dept of agriculture need assault weapons? (having a burst would qualify it to actually be an "assault weapon," unlike the normal civilian ar-15, but I digress on that perversion of verbiage...)

 

 

“…a civilian security force just as powerful and just as strong…”

 

yeah, okay, obozo. I think they know too large of a percentage of the lower ranks of the military are loyal to the constitution and the country before their leadership, whereas...federal agency thugs? pay mercenaries a good sum and you can get them to do any number of dirty deeds.

 

its like they're preparing for war, but not with russia (the installed kiev gov is already flying around in UN helicopters...)

[Brian]

Why does the US Department of Education need armed agents?

[joeblast]

right, why has damn near every federal agency all of a sudden grown a military police arm? right, posse comatatus and all that, cant have the military do things like this, so let's subvert the constitution in a more benign way and do it via federal agency.

 

totally illegitimate.

[joeblast]

just like this article on crony capitalism. very good point, the rotten heart of corporate boards of directors and the way executives are chosen, compensated, graded (or, not)

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-15/crony-capitalism-and-oracle-omaha

 

I am back from the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, and my brain is still spinning from the dozens of meetings and stimulating conversations. In a series of articles over the next few weeks, I’ll try to download the thoughts that were triggered by this trip, a lot of them unrelated to the main event — the Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger show — but rather by-products of the conversations I had.

 

After I wrote about my disappointment with Buffett’s mishandling of Coca-Cola Co.’s “excessive” compensation plan, I got an e-mail from Carol Loomis asking me if I wanted to ask Mr. Buffett a question about Cokegate. Loomis is the Berkshire Hathaway CEO’s longtime friend, editor of his annual shareholder letter and one of three reporters at the annual meeting who ask Warren and Charlie questions submitted by readers.

 

Here is the question I submitted:

 

I’ve been coming to shareholder meetings for seven years, and for the first time I’m seeing two Warren Buffetts: The first is the moral compass of corporate America — the standard of corporate ethics and integrity (the one we see in the Salomon Brothers scandal intro video year after year).

 

And then last week a second Warren Buffett emerged, the one who commented on Coke’s excessive compensation plan: “We didn’t agree with the plan. We thought it was excessive.” But then as a significant shareholder he abstained from voting on the plan, saying, “I could never vote against Coca-Cola.” The second Buffett behaved like just another middling American politician — the common type that all of us respect so little, the one that votes not for what he believes in but for what is going to keep him reelected.

 

Forty thousand people did not come to Omaha to see the second Buffett, the one that chose crony capitalism; they came to see the first one, who knows the difference between right and wrong. So I would like the first Buffett to judge the behavior of the second one. — Vitaliy Katsenelson,

 

Chief Investment Officer, Investment Management Associates, Inc., Denver, Colorado

Loomis ended up using someone else’s question on that topic, which asked (I am paraphrasing), “This spring, Coca-Cola proposed a large option program for its top managers. Why did Warren Buffett not say he was against the plan beforehand? Why did Berkshire Hathaway abstain rather than vote against?”

 

Buffett said that the proposal from a shareholder (mutual fund manager David Winters) opposing the plan made incorrect calculations and that the actual dilution from share issuance will be lower than a total of 16 percent over four years. With ease, Buffett went through a hypothetical example that showed that annual dilution would be 1 or 2 percent. He still believed it was excessive, he said, but not as excessive as Winters claimed. (Here is a link to Winters’ presentation.)

 

Estimating the true cost of stock option compensation is difficult because you have to make myriad assumptions about the future: where the stock price will be in four years (good luck) and how many stock options will actually be earned (deserved). You even have to guesstimate the average strike price (Coke has disclosed the strike price for the current plan, but compensation plans from the past are still active, and proxy disclosures are very vague). We don’t own Coke’s stock, thus my interest was very academic, but I went through Coke’s proxy, and by my calculation the dilution from stock options is closer to Buffett’s than to Winters’.

 

“We had no desire to go to war with Coca-Cola, and we did not want to endorse calculations that were wildly inaccurate,” Buffett stated, then noted, “I don’t think going to war is a very good idea in most cases.”

 

I understand why Buffett did not want to team up with David Winters or endorse his calculations. But Winters was not a loudmouthed activist who was proposing to break up Coke; he was just asking Coke’s shareholders to vote against a compensation plan that Buffett, before and during the annual meeting, had repeatedly called “excessive.”

 

All Buffett had to do was to check the “No” box on the proxy statement.

 

There may be some quirky nuances in the alternate universe of corporate governance to which I am not privy, but voting against a compensation plan is not considered going to war in the universe where I live. Buffett has been one of the loudest and most respected critics of exorbitant corporate compensation, but when it came time to lead by example, he did not — unless his message was, when you disagree with excessive compensation, abstain.

 

But you, dear reader, have heard nothing yet. In another question, Buffett was asked about his son Howard, who sits on the board of Coke and did not vote against its cushy executive compensation plan. Though the elder Buffett did not directly answer that question, his nonanswer sent chills up my spine.

 

He explained that independent directors are not necessarily independent. Though they don’t work for the company, they make $300,000 a year for attending six meetings. It’s a sweet gig, and they typically do very little to rock that gravy train. Aside from the financial benefit, there is a lot of prestige in being on a major corporate board. Boards don’t look for “dobermans,” Buffett said, “they look for cocker spaniels.” Then he added that when he served on many boards, he approved compensation plans and mergers he did not like.

 

Pause for a second to digest this. What Buffett told us (I truly applaud him for his honesty) was that corporate boards are not there to protect and serve the interests of shareholders. Their incentives — lavish compensation without any accountability for their actions or nonactions — have created an environment where board members are chosen not by how much value they’ll add to protecting the interests of shareholders but on their pedigrees and, more important, their ability to sing “Kumbaya.”

 

For a long time I could not understand how Hewlett-Packard Co.’s board — packed with talent — could vote to buy U.K. software maker Autonomy for more than $10 billion. The price tag was slightly insane, but, more to the point, a Google search or just some primitive, scuttlebutt research would have shown that some serious questions had been raised about Autonomy’s accounting (questions that proved to be valid and led to a significant write-off a year later).

 

What is slightly depressing about all this is that if even Warren Buffett voted for compensation plans and mergers he did not like in order not to upset the harmony of the corporate boardroom, what can we expect from the rest? For a long time the term “crony capitalism” held little meaning for me; but today, with great sadness, I look at corporate boards, I look at the vote to abstain by Buffett, and I realize that crony capitalism is defined by the corporate boardrooms of this country.

 

Suddenly, Carl Icahn, whose annual meeting doesn’t attract 40,000 people, looks like a crusader against crony capitalism. I never thought a visit to Omaha would trigger an appreciation of the role Icahn and other activist investors play in corporate America.

[Brian]

Many of them not only have armed agents but swat-like teams and armored vehicles. Not to mention all the "free" martial equipment being provided by the central government to state and local police agencies (but not so often to sheriffs' departments...)

[joeblast]

 

wsj,

March 29, 1929 Edited May 16, 2014 by joeblast

[Brian]

The term "crony capitalism" is intentionally misleading. It is not "capitalism" but "corporatism."

 

I'll leave it to the reader to research the term "corporatism" (or "corporativism," as it is sometimes labelled) in order to understand why it is being avoided...

[joeblast]

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Nothing is more amusing (and sad) than when I see some ignorant out of stater commenting about how nightmarish the legalization of marijuana has been for Colorado. The most high-profile and hilarious example of this came from disgraced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who I have criticized sharply on several occasions, here, here and here. He foolishly spouted some hysterical nonsense last month when he said:

“See if you want to live in a major city in Colorado, where there’s head shops popping up on every corner and people flying into your airport just to come and get high. To me, it’s just not the quality of life we want to have here in the state of New Jersey and there’s no tax revenue that’s worth that.”

Honestly, what planet does this clown live on? As someone who actually lives in Colorado, I can tell you that the only thing that has changed since legalization is that there is a greater sense of freedom and people are no longer getting arrested in droves for non-violent drug possession charges. Let’s not forget that the police arrest someone every two seconds in America, many of which are for mere drug possession charges. Apparently, Christie thinks this is a good thing and ultimately results in this mythical wonderful “quality of life” that apparently exists in some corner of New Jersey where rainbow farting unicorns roam the countryside.


As someone who spent nearly three decades in the New York metro area, and who has lived in Colorado now for over three years, I can tell you there’s no comparison. I’ve met many, many people who have intentionally left New Jersey for Colorado, yet I’ve never met a single person who has intentionally left Colorado for New Jersey. Perhaps that person exists and is currently flying back east on his unicorn and is therefore unavailable for comment.
Anyway, while we are on the topic, the Huffington Post posted a great article comparing the two states. They note:

Business climate: It turns out Colorado is a great place for business, ranking seventh out of the 50 states in a 2013 study from CNBC that took into consideration metrics like economy, infrastructure and the cost of doing business. New Jersey came in 42nd.

Forbes agrees, listing Colorado as the fifth best state for “business and careers.” New Jersey comes in 32nd on the Forbes list.

Economic growth and job creation: FreeEnterprise.com gathered data on just how well the 50 states do at creating jobs and fostering economic growth. They ranked Colorado second in the nation for innovation and entrepreneurship (New Jersey was 14th), 14th in economic performance (New Jersey came in at 33rd), and eighth for business climate (New Jersey was 49th).

The state of the states: Politico recently gathered various data points from the Census Bureau, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and incorporated them with a slew of other factors, including income, high school graduation rates, life expectancy and more. In their subsequent ranking of the 50 states, Colorado came in seventh overall, while New Jersey came in 12th.

General well-being: The health care company Healthways partnered up with Gallup in 2013 to evaluate well-being across the United States. Looking at residents’ habits and behavior, emotional and physical health, work environments and more, they determined that Colorado ranks seventh in overall well-being. New Jersey comes in 23rd.

Furthermore, the city I currently live in was recently ranked the most fit city in all of America, and 3 of the top 10 cities were in Colorado. New Jersey had no cities in the top ten. Although to be fair, Christie probably skews the data quite a bit. See the rankings here.

Technology and science: The Milken Institute, a California think tank, recently took a close look at how states foster growth in technology and science, two areas that will likely prove key to the United States’ economic recovery. Colorado was ranked fourth in the nation. New Jersey was ranked 15th.

Chris Christie is clearly an ill informed blowhard and let’s not forget this guy wants to become President. How scary is that?

Moving along to the meat of this piece, Vice recently published a great article explaining how the legalization of pot is causing Mexican drug cartels to reduce plantings of marijuana and it also describes the frighteningly irrational response from the DEA. It reports that:

Marijuana has accounted for nearly half of all total drug arrests in the US for the past 20 years, according to the FBI’s crime statistics. And according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a large portion of the US illegal drug market is controlled directly by Mexican cartels. The DOJ’s National Drug Intelligence Center, which has since been shut down, found in 2011 that the top cartels controlled the majority of drug trade in marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine in over 1,000 US cities.

Now, those cartels and their farmers complain that marijuana legalization is hurting their business. And some reports could suggest that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is more interested in helping to protect the Mexican cartels’ hold on the pot trade than in letting it dissipate. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that pot farmers in the Sinaloa region have stopped planting due to a massive drop in wholesale prices, from $100 per kilo down to only $25. One farmer is quoted as saying: “It’s not worth it anymore. I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.”

“Is it hurting the cartels? Yes. The cartels are criminal organizations that were making as much as 35-40 percent of their income from marijuana,” Nelson said, “They aren’t able to move as much cannabis inside the US now.”

In 2012, a study by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute found that US state legalization would cut into cartel business and take over about 30 percent of their market.

Given the DEA’s historic relationship with the Sinaloa cartel, and the agency’s fury over legalized marijuana, it almost seems like the DEA wants to crush the legal weed market in order to protect the interests of their cartel friends. Almost.

Not almost, that is exactly what they want to do.

 

"The DEA doesn’t want the drug war to end,” said Nelson, when asked about a possible connection between the agency’s hatred of legal pot and its buddies in Sinaloa. “If it ends, they don’t get their toys and their budgets. Once it ends, they aren’t going to have the kind of influence in foreign government. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but where there’s smoke there’s probably fire.”

The Sinaloa cartel came to prominence in January when the “Fast and Furious” scandal surfaced, in which it was revealed that DEA agents ignored Sinaloa drug shipments and essentially granted immunity to cartel criminals in exchange for information.

Another way the DEA tries to shut down legal marijuana dispensaries, and medical marijuana clinics, is through the banks. While large banks like HSBC and Wachovia have gotten away with laundering billions in cartel drug money, famously referred to as “too big to jail” by Attorney General Eric Holder, banks have been meticulously instructed by the DEA not to work with any kind of marijuana facility.

That’s pennies compared to what the US spends on the drug war. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, we spend $51 billion per year fighting illegal drugs. A 2010 study by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found that not only would the US save tremendous amounts of money were it to end drug prohibition, legalizing could bring in an additional $46.7 billion in yearly tax revenue.

“We’ve spent 1.3 trillion since 1972 on the drug war. What have we gotten for that? Drugs are cheaper and easier to get than ever before,” Nelson told VICE News.

For more evidence of the insane mindset permeating the DEA, check out this article that shows how the agency seized hemp seed from Kentucky as state universities attempted to participate in legal studies.

The DEA has no idea what to do with itself now that the population of innocent citizens it can harass for exercising a personal choice and the amount of bribe money it can extract from drug cartels dissipates. Bottom line is that people want drugs, and as long as that’s the case, no petty authoritarian wearing a badge and a costume on some misguided moral crusade will change that.

And in addition, Mark Thronton had some thoughts...

 

 

The Washington Post explains that drug legalization in Colorado and Washington, along with Medical Marijuana Legalization in many other states has hurt the illegal marijuana growing business in northern Mexico. However, the Mexican drug cartels have been bailed out by America’s drug warriors who have cracked down on prescription pain killers. Prescription pain killers and heroin are both very addictive and deadly dangerous so that legalization would not only put the cartels out of business, but would open opportunities to address the problems of pain and addiction in a medical format rather than the black market.

 

 

[joeblast]

I wonder if diebold was in charge of kentucky's primary

[joeblast]

[silent thunder]

That is demoralizingly concise... ouch.

[joeblast]

so remember when we just up and changed the gdp calculation to make everything look just a little better?

 

Italy decided they could do it too, by including hookers & blow in their GDP calculation. (no, you just cant even make this crap up)

 

“Even if the impact is hard to quantify, it’s obvious it will have a positive impact on GDP,” said Giuseppe Di Taranto, economist and professor of financial history at Rome’s Luiss University. “Therefore Renzi will have a greater margin this year to spend” without breaching the deficit."

[joeblast]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-29/meet-directive-302518-granting-obama-authority-use-military-force-against-civilians

 

 

Meet Directive 3025.18 Granting Obama Authority To Use Military Force Against Civilians

 

While the "use of armed [unmanned aircraft systems] is not authorized," The Washington Times uncovering of a 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans. As one defense official proclaimed, "this appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens." Meet Directive 3025.18 and all its "quelling civil disturbances" totalitarianism...

As The Washington Times reports,

 

Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities,” was issued Dec. 29, 2010, and states that

U.S. commanders “are provided emergency authority under this directive.”

“Federal military forces shall

not be used to quell civil disturbances unless specifically authorized by the president

in accordance with applicable law or permitted under emergency authority,” the directive states.

“In these circumstances, those federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the president is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to

engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances” under two conditions.

The conditions include military support needed “to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order.” A second use is

when federal, state and local authorities “are unable or decline to provide adequate protection

for federal property or federal governmental functions.”

A U.S. official said the Obama administration considered but rejected deploying military force under the directive during the recent standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his armed supporters.

 

“Federal action, including the use of federal military forces, is authorized when necessary to protect the federal property or functions,”

the directive states.

Military assistance can include loans of arms, ammunition, vessels and aircraft. The directive states clearly that it is for engaging civilians during times of unrest.

There is one silver lining (for now)...

 

“Use of armed [unmanned aircraft systems] is not authorized,”

the directive says.

And the full Directive is below...

Dod

[Brian]

I find the fundamental transformation quite disturbing.

[joeblast]

gotta make sure they can fire on the citizenry before they let the dollar go to zero

[Brian]

gotta make sure they can fire on the citizenry before they let the dollar go to zero

And crash healthcare, energy, education, etc...

[joeblast]

From Posse Comitatus to Posse's Comin At Us in one easy directive...