Taft-Hartley Revisited

“The most effective anti-poverty program ever invented was the labor union.”

—George Meany

There are three important things that need to be remembered about the 1947 Labor-Management Relations Act—commonly known as the “Taft-Hartley Act,” after its congressional sponsors, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, and House Representative Fred Hartley of New Jersey.

First, even though political pundits and social commentators continue to talk—60-odd years after the fact—about how Taft-Hartley was a necessary corrective, an antidote to runaway union excesses, a move that had to made to preserve the economic health of the nation, the legislation was far more toxic and insidious than these “reasonable response” accounts make it out to be.

Taft-Hartley was the naked attempt to neutralize America’s unions by revoking key provisions of the landmark 1935 National Labor Relations Act (commonly known as the “Wagner Act,” after its sponsor, New York Senator Robert Wagner), the act that legitimized a union’s right to strike, engage in collective bargaining, and serve as the workers’ sole representative.

Make no mistake, the vitality of the post-World War II labor movement was staggering—so staggering, in fact, that the federal government and America’s leading corporations were in a state of panic. It’s no exaggeration to say that never in our history had organized labor come so close to becoming an equal partner in the national economy than in the years directly following the war.

Not only were unions full of confidence and buoyed by the support of a sympathetic public, they were fearless. In 1946, the year before Taft-Hartley became law, five million people had taken part in strikes. Five million people had put down their tools or shut off their machines to hit the bricks, to protest the fortunes made by war profiteers, to protest the picayune wages being offered union members.

However, even though the working class was clearly on the ascendancy and the road ahead appeared wide-open, there were storm clouds gathering on the horizon. The realization that working men and women were now wielding genuine power—power that translated into independent political and economic clout—was scaring the wits out of the Establishment. It was that fear that precipitated the legislation.

Second, the Taft-Hartley Act did precisely what it set out to do. It crippled the labor movement. Among other things, it outlawed wildcat strikes, jurisdictional strikes, solidarity strikes, secondary boycotts and secondary picketing; and, in an odd footnote, it required union leaders to take an oath that they weren’t Communists (as if anyone who sided with the working class was a suspected Commie).

Taft-Hartley prolonged the union certification process; it gave the federal government the right to issue strike injunctions; it expressly excluded supervisors from union membership and collective bargaining; and it severely weakened the union security clause (language under which joining a union was a condition of employment).

By lengthening the certification process, management could now stall; with injunction power, the feds could now squelch any large-scale strike; by excluding supervision, bosses could now reclassify workers as “supervisors,” thereby exempting them from union membership; and by de-fanging the security clause, 22 states now have right-to-work laws—five of which (Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas and Florida) are embedded in state constitutions.

The third thing to remember about Taft-Hartley is that, while it became the law of the land despite the veto of President Harry Truman, it was congressional Democrats who assured its passage. Liberals and progressives like to place the blame on anti-union Republicans, but it was the Democrats themselves who pushed it across the finish line.

Fact: A majority of the Democrats in congress voted to override Truman’s veto. While many were Southerners (“Dixiecrats”), many were not. Had the Democrats simply supported their president—had they provided working people with the economic equivalent of the same privileges guaranteed to citizens under the Bill of Rights—Taft-Hartley would not have become law.

All of which raises a question: If American voters were given the choice, how would they choose to be governed? Would they prefer that Big Business—with the blessings of a corporate-oriented government—dictated our domestic and foreign affairs? Or would they prefer giving working men and women an equal voice in determining policy?

We can argue all we like about the practicality of regular citizens making national policy, but one thing can’t be disputed: If regular citizens had been running the show, they never would have abandoned our manufacturing base. They never would have agreed to enrich international oligarchies at the expense of the American economy.

Taking the greatest manufacturing power in the history of the world and dismantling it—relegating it to the role of industrial “spectator”—is something that working people would never allow to happen. Never. Only the U.S. Congress would see the wisdom in pissing away something that took 150 years to build.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright, is the author of “It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”. He served 9 terms as president of AWPPW Local 672. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

Schwarzenegger Orders Government Worker Furloughs

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday brought back furloughs for thousands of state workers until California passes a budget.

Schwarzenegger released a new executive order requiring state workers to take three unpaid days off per month starting next month. State workers were furloughed a total of 46 days when Schwarzenegger issued a similar order in February 2009, which translated to a pay cut of about 14 percent for workers.

It's unclear how long the latest round of furloughs could last as Schwarzenegger and lawmakers enter the fifth week of the new fiscal year

without a balanced budget.

"Without a budget in place that addresses our $19 billion budget deficit, every day of delay brings California closer to a fiscal meltdown," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

State Controller John Chiang has warned he will start issuing IOUs in August or September if the budget stalemate drags on in the Legislature.

The new order exempts employees who work for departments that collect revenue, including the Franchise Tax Board. It also exempts about 37,000 workers in six unions that recently reached tentative labor agreements with the administration.

The furlough puts pressure on other unions that have not agreed to the governor's demands for pension reforms. Unions have also been fighting the governor's efforts to impose the federal minimum wage while the state operates without a budget.

"To once again force state employees to take unpaid furloughs is just another punitive measure by Governor Schwarzenegger because he couldn't impose minimum wage," said Patty Velez, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists, which represents 11,000 state employees.

NEWS FLASH: U.S. industry SINKING FAST — what to do …

America’s only remaining economic engine has STALLED!

With unemployment sky-high and consumers too nervous to open their pocketbooks, the faint pulse U.S. manufacturing has — over the past year or so — been one of the economy’s only glimmers of hope.

But while most economists expected this morning’s report on durable goods orders to show a healthy increase, they posted their largest decline since August of 2009!

This has far-reaching implications. It means:

* More layoffs of factory workers and less rehiring. Yesterday, I told you how U.S. manufacturers were reaping a one-time boost to their profits by slashing their work force. Now, with factory orders slowing, they may need to cut even more deeply.

* A quick end to the recent earnings improvements. Earnings are the key factor that has been fueling some “bargain” hunting in the stock market recently. Now, we could see the reverse trend set in.

* The sour mood of millions of consumers is now spreading. It’s hitting manufacturers. And it’s getting worse. Indeed, just yesterday …

Despite all the hype and happy talk
from Washington and Wall Street,
consumer confidence plunged — AGAIN!

The Conference Board just reported that its Consumer Confidence Index fell far more than most economists expected — and it is now down nearly 20% since May alone!

This is abysmal news: A recovery can NOT happen without the consumer. Never has; never will!

Overall, we are now in the first stages of a classic vicious cycle: When consumer confidence falls, it guts retail sales, which, in turn, kills manufacturing, brings more lay-offs and sends consumer confidence into a deeper tailspin.

This is precisely why we’ve been shouting our warnings from the rooftops for several weeks now, telling you in no uncertain terms that …

• The U.S. economy is NOT recovering — every new report we see — on real estate … bank safety … consumer spending … retail sales … and more — is virtually screaming that it’s cratering again!
• When you see stocks rise in a sinking economy, it’s a great TRAP! It is ONLY A MATTER OF TIME until the stock market follows the economy into the abyss. The farther stocks rise in the meantime, the farther they will ultimately fall.
• With Phase II of this great double-dip recession in full swing, plunging stocks could cost you a bundle or multiply your money — YOUR CHOICE! But the only way to protect yourself — let alone to profit — is to buck the Wall Street crowd and make the right moves NOW!

Obviously, these warnings are NOT earning me any new friends on Wall Street. Everyone who makes their living from your stock market investing wants you to believe this recovery and stock market rally are for real.

So you have to ask yourself:
Who are you going to believe?

Would it be more prudent to stake your financial future on Pollyanna propaganda from politicians and Wall Street insiders who have obvious conflicts of interest — powerful ulterior motives to persuade you that the economy is recovering and the stock market is healthy?

Or would it be wiser to listen to the thousands of retailers and manufacturers who are watching orders dwindle — and the millions of consumers who are growing more reluctant to spend money almost by the day?

I said it to you yesterday and I’ll say it again: Given these worsening economic realities …

Every uptick in stocks is like a neon sign declaring that sanity MUST return to the stock market very, very soon …

And when it does, alert investors will have the opportunity to bank truly explosive profits!

Until now, Mike Larson has been biding his time — waiting until his indicators give him the clear signal that the insanity is about to end … that the investment markets are ready to eliminate the massive imbalance between economic reality and the irrational exuberance we’re seeing on Wall Street.

Specifically, Mike is eyeing a new bundle of upcoming investment recommendations designed specifically to help you profit from this dramatic turn of events.

The green-light go-signals on these new recommendations could come almost any day and when they do, it will be critical that you be ready to act on them immediately.

Click this link now to prepare and to read our full report on these opportunities while there’s still time.

Good luck and God bless!

Martin

TIGTA: Tax Liens Up 200%, With 26% IRS Error Rate

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today released Actions Are Needed to Protect Taxpayers’ Rights During the Lien Due Process (2010-30-072):

The IRS is not always following statutory requirements regarding the timely notification of taxpayers when liens are filed and does not always follow its own regulations for notifying taxpayers’ representatives of the filing of lien notices. ...

A Federal tax lien is created on balance-due cases in which the taxpayer has received a notice demanding payment and has neglected or refused to pay. The IRS files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien (lien notice) to protect its claims against taxpayers who owe delinquent taxes. These lien notices establish the IRS’s priority among secured creditors for the taxpayers’ property. The IRS must notify the affected taxpayers in writing, at their last known address, within five business days of the lien filings. However, as noted in previous TIGTA audits, the IRS has not always complied with this statutory requirement and it does not always follow its own internal guidelines for timely notifying taxpayer representatives of the filing of lien notices.

“This is a serious matter,” said J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. “Because of this problem, some taxpayers’ rights to appeal the lien filings may have been jeopardized, and others may have had their rights violated when the IRS did not notify their representatives of the lien filings,” he added.

Al Qaeda No. 2 Threatens More U.S. Attacks

Ayman Al-Zawahiri Also Mentions Times Square Attack in Audio Message

Al Qaeda's second in command Ayman Al-Zawahiri has surfaced again, this time threatening more attacks against the U.S. and the West.

Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, top left, is heard in a new audio message posted...

Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, top left, is heard in a new audio message posted online today, in which he threatens more attacks against the U.S. and the West in a eulogy for former al Qaeda official Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, bottom right.

(ABC News)
More Photos

"Oh American people…We offered you a peace plan, and mutual benefit; but your governments were proud and haughty, and so the attacks against you followed one after another, everywhere – from Indonesia to Times Square, by way of Madrid and London. And the attacks are ongoing, and more will come one after another," said Zawahiri, according to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington, DC.

Zawahiri also continued his promise of near victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues.

Former White House national security official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, said that up until this point, there haven't been any correlations between Zawahiri's past threats and any attacks actually occurring.

"U.S. government and counterterrorism officials are not going to increase their alert based on Zawahiri's statement, because of his previous track record," Clarke said. "But they're on relatively high alert already because of the increase in homegrown terrorist threats related to al Qaeda."

The 47-minute audio message, a eulogy for Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, was posted on jihadist websites July 27 by al Qaeda's media arm Al-Sahab.

Yazid, who was referred to by American officials as al Qaeda's No. 3 leader behind Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri, is believed to have been killed in the last half of May by an American missile strike in Pakistan's tribal areas. He was of Egyptian descent and was considered a top financial officer and al Qaeda's leader in Afghanistan.

Zawahiri was last heard from July 19, when an audio recording produced by Al-Sahab and posted on jihadist websites promised imminent victory in Afghanistan. He has released only a handful of videos this year, and terrorism experts believe the two messages released this month were likely transported out at the same time.

Also on July 19, an audio message from radical Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki was posted online, taunting President Obama and the U.S. military.

"Imperial hubris is leading America to its fate: a war of attrition, a continuous hemorrhage that would end with the fall and splintering of the United States of America," Awlaki said in the message, which featured a picture of him juxtaposed with those of Fort Hood massacre suspect Major Nidal Hasan and suspected Christmas Day bomber Omar Farouq Abdulmutallab.

CLICK HERE to follow the ABC News Investigative Team's coverage on Twitter.

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Consumers, Wall Street disagree on economy

WASHINGTON — The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street is growing.

Americans' confidence in the economy faded further in July, according to a monthly survey released Tuesday, amid job worries and skimpy wage growth. That's at odds with Wall Street's recent rally fueled by upbeat earnings reports from big businesses such as chemical maker DuPont Co. and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. That's because the pumped-up profits are being fueled by cost cuts like layoffs and overseas sales. In fact, big companies have shown few signs they're ready to hire.

The Consumer Confidence Index came in at 50.4 in July, a steeper-than-expected decline from the revised 54.3 in June, according to a survey the Conference Board. The decline follows last month's decline of nearly 10 points, from 62.7 in May, and is the lowest point since February. It takes a reading of 90 to indicate a healthy economy — a level not seen since the recession began in December 2007.

"Consumers have a much different view of the economy than the stock market does, and their views matter more to the economy," said Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells Fargo. The index "tells me the economy is heading for slower growth in the second half. We have low expectations for back-to-school."

Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, agreed, noting that the fatter profits have shown that companies have been able to squeeze out higher productivity from workers, but that also means that "households are not benefiting."

The profit picture is "good news for Wall Street, but not good for workers," he added.

The survey was taken July 1-21, beginning just before the Standard & Poor's 500 index hit a nine-month low of 1,022.58 on July 2. It had risen 4.5 percent by July 21 and has since climbed an additional 4 percent as upbeat earnings reports from key manufacturers have made investors more convinced that the economic recovery isn't stalling as much as they had originally thought.

Audit: US cannot account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds

BAGHDAD – A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

"Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money," said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money "should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation."

The report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction accused the Defense Department of lax oversight and weak controls, though not fraud.

"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," the audit said.

The Pentagon has repeatedly come under fire for apparent mismanagement of the reconstruction effort — as have Iraqi officials themselves.

Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, electricity service is spotty, with generation capacity falling far short of demand. Fuel shortages are common and unemployment remains high, a testament to the country's inability to create new jobs or attract foreign investors.

Complaints surfaced from the start of the war in 2003, when soldiers failed to secure banks, armories and other facilities against looters. Since then the allegations have only multiplied, including investigations of fraud, awarding of contracts without the required government bidding process and allowing contractors to charge exorbitant fees with little oversight, or oversight that came too late.

But the latest report comes at a particularly critical time for Iraq. Four months after inconclusive elections, a new government has yet to be formed, raising fears that insurgents will tap into the political vacuum to stir sectarian unrest.

In a sign that insurgents are still intent on igniting sectarian violence, at least six people were killed and dozens more wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up near a checkpoint in the holy city of Karbala, local police said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Thousands of Shiite pilgrims are converging on the city, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad, for an important religious holiday marking the birth of a Shiite saint known as the "Hidden Imam" who disappeared in the ninth century. Such mass displays of devotion by Shiites have often been targeted by Sunni extremists.

Iraqi lawmakers met Tuesday, but for the second time this month failed to convene a parliament session, leaving wide open the question of when the new government will take shape.

Underscoring its financial challenges, the International Monetary Fund in March approved a $3.6 billion loan to help Iraq meet its obligations. Iraq is projected to run a deficit through 2011, according to analysts, with a possibility of a surplus following that hinging on oil prices.

Iraq took a financial hit in 2008 as oil prices plummeted on the back of the global financial meltdown. While those prices have since rebounded, Iraq remains at the mercy of international oil markets, with revenues from petroleum sales accounting for over 90 percent of its government budget.

The $9.1 billion in question came from the Development Fund for Iraq, which was set up by the U.N. Security Council in 2003. The DFI includes revenues from Iraq's oil and gas exports, as well as frozen Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the defunct, Saddam Hussein-era U.N. oil-for-food program.

Iraq had given the U.S. authorization to tap into the fund, which is held in New York, for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, withdrawing that approval in December 2007.

With the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq shortly after the start of the U.S. invasion in 2003 until mid-2004, about $20 billion was placed into the account. The $9.1 billion audited by the Iraq reconstruction inspector general were funds withdrawn from that account between 2004 and 2007.

The report found that the Defense Department could not "readily account for its obligations, expenditures and remaining balances associated" with the DFI. At issue was $8.7 billion, or 95 percent of the withdrawn funds.

Of this amount, the Pentagon could not account at all for $2.6 billion, according to the audit.

Tracing the rest of the money is difficult because of a combination of lax financial controls and management, the failure to designate an organization to oversee the spending and the failure to set up and deposit the funds in special accounts, as required by the Treasury Department.

The Defense Department, in responses attached to the audit, said it agreed with the report's recommendations to establish better guidelines for monitoring such funds, including appointing an oversight organization mostly likely by November.

The failure to properly manage billions in reconstruction funds has also hobbled the troubled U.S.-led effort to rebuild Afghanistan. About $60 billion have poured into Afghanistan since 2001 in hopes of bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to the crippled country.

The U.S. alone has committed $51 billion to the project since 2001, and plans to raise the stakes to $71 billion over the next year — more than it has spent on reconstruction in Iraq since 2003.

An Associated Press investigation showed that the results so far — or lack of them — threaten to do more harm than good. The number of Afghans with access to electricity has increased from 6 percent in 2001 to only about 10 percent now, far short of the goal of providing power to 65 percent of urban and 25 percent of rural households by the end of this year.

As an example of the problems, a $100 million diesel-fueled power plant was built with the goal of delivering electricity to more than 500,000 residents of the capital, Kabul. The plant's costs tripled to $305 million as construction lagged a year behind schedule. The plant now often sits idle because the Afghans were able to import cheaper power from neighboring Uzbekistan before the plant came online.

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Associated Press writers Mazin Yahya in Baghdad and Robert H. Reid in Kabul contributed to this report.

Down To The Last Trillion in Red Ink

US Treasury Running on Fumes

July 27, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents “puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk.”

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of “our partners” in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.

If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not have sent them to a war, the purpose of which he cannot identify. Earlier in his regime, Obama admitted that he did not know what the mission was in Afghanistan. He vowed to find out what the mission was and to tell us, but he never did. After being read the riot act by the military/security complex, which recycles war profits into political campaign contributions, Obama simply declared the war to be “necessary.” No one has ever explained why the war is necessary.

The government cannot explain why the war is necessary, because it is not necessary to the American people. Any necessary reason for the war has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.

The Obama regime has made war the business of America. Escalation in Afghanistan has gone hand in hand with drone attacks on Pakistan and the use of proxy forces to conduct wars in Pakistan and North Africa. Currently, the US is conducting provocative naval exercises off the coasts of China and North Korea and instigating war between Columbia and Venezuela in South America. Former CIA director Michael Hayden declared on July 25 that an attack on Iran seems unavoidable.

With the print and TV media captive, why doesn’t Washington simply tell us that the country is at war without going to the trouble of war? That way the munitions industry can lay off its workers and put the military appropriations directly into profits. We could avoid the war crimes and wasted lives of our soldiers.

The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being sacrificed to the regime’s wars. The states are broke and laying off teachers. Even “rich” California, formerly touted as “the seventh largest economy in the world,” is reduced to issuing script and cutting its state workers’ pay to the minimum wage.

Supplemental war appropriations have become routine affairs, but the budget deficit is invoked to block any aid to Americans--but not to Israel. On July 25 the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the US and Israel had signed a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing to provide Israel with a missile system.

Americans can get no help out of Washington, but the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security is “not negotiable.” Washington’s commitment to California and to the security of the rest of us is negotiable. War spending has run up the budget deficit, and the deficit precludes any help for Americans.

With the US bankrupting itself in wars, America’s largest creditor, China, has taken issue with America’s credit rating. The head of China’s largest credit rating agency declared: “The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation.”

On July 12, Niall Ferguson, an historian of empire, warned that the American empire could collapse suddenly from weakness brought on by its massive debts and that such a collapse could be closer than we think.


Deaf, dumb, and blind, Washington policymakers prattle on about “thirty more years of war.”

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C

LPS Data Shows GSE Foreclosure Starts Are Accelerating

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are beginning to initiate foreclosures at a faster pace.

According to a new study from Lender Processing Services (LPS), GSE foreclosure starts have been accelerating and are currently at all-time highs. From May to June, foreclosures initiated by Fannie and Freddie jumped 21 percent.

The GSEs’ prime borrowers are performing the worst. Foreclosure rates among the agencies’ prime loans have soared nearly 400 percent since January 2008, with a notable hastening tracked over the last two months, LPS reports. That increase is second only to the swell seen in non-agency “jumbo” mortgages, for more than $729,750.

LPS says the recent momentum in GSE foreclosure starts coincides with Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) cancellations, with most of the volume concentrated in the very late stages of delinquency (six-plus months).

The latest HAMP statistics from the Treasury showed an extremely elevated number of cancellations from trial plans, as many borrowers who received temporary modifications have not been able to verify their income or have missed trial payments.

As of the end of June, 520,814 HAMP trials had been cancelled – more than have been converted to permanent status. In addition, 8,823 permanent modifications have been cancelled under the federal program.

In contrast, LPS says foreclosure starts have remained relatively stable over the last several months for the rest of the industry. The company puts the overall foreclosure rate as of the end of June at 3.65 percent, but notes that foreclosure inventories are still elevated.

According to LPS’ market data, total foreclosure starts for 2010 are at 1,456,000. That stat is lower than 1,682,000 for the same period in 2009, but up from 1,245,000 in the first half of 2008.

It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado

Rick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times

Todd S. Anderson used to keep his rain harvesting a secret.

DURANGO, Colo. — For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.

Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.

Now two new laws in Colorado will allow many people to collect rainwater legally. The laws are the latest crack in the rainwater edifice, as other states, driven by population growth, drought, or declining groundwater in their aquifers, have already opened the skies or begun actively encouraging people to collect.

“I was so willing to go to jail for catching water on my roof and watering my garden,” said Tom Bartels, a video producer here in southwestern Colorado, who has been illegally watering his vegetables and fruit trees from tanks attached to his gutters. “But now I’m not a criminal.”

Who owns the sky, anyway? In most of the country, that is a question for philosophy class or bad poetry. In the West, lawyers parse it with straight faces and serious intent. The result, especially stark here in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, is a crazy quilt of rules and regulations — and an entire subculture of people like Mr. Bartels who have been using the rain nature provided but laws forbade.

The two Colorado laws allow perhaps a quarter-million residents with private wells to begin rainwater harvesting, as well as the setting up of a pilot program for larger scale rain-catching.

Just 75 miles west of here, in Utah, collecting rainwater from the roof is still illegal unless the roof owner also owns water rights on the ground; the same rigid rules, with a few local exceptions, also apply in Washington State. Meanwhile, 20 miles south of here, in New Mexico, rainwater catchment, as the collecting is called, is mandatory for new dwellings in some places like Santa Fe.

And in Arizona, cities like Tucson are pioneering the practices of big-city rain capture. “All you need for a water harvesting system is rain, and a place to put it,” Tucson Water says on its Web site.

Here in Colorado, the old law created a kind of wink-and-nod shadow economy. Rain equipment could be legally sold, but retailers said they knew better than to ask what the buyer intended to do with the product.

“It’s like being able to sell things like smoking paraphernalia even though smoking pot is illegal,” said Laurie E. Dickson, who for years sold barrel-and-hose systems from a shop in downtown Durango.

State water officials acknowledged that they rarely enforced the old law. With the new laws, the state created a system of fines for rain catchers without a permit; previously the only option was to shut a collector down.

But Kevin Rein, Colorado’s assistant state engineer, said enforcement would focus on people who violated water rules on a large scale.

“It’s not going to be a situation where we’re sending out people to look in backyards,” Mr. Rein said.

Science has also stepped forward to underline how incorrect the old sweeping legal generalizations were.

A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.

But the deeper questions about rain are what really gnawed at rain harvesters like Todd S. Anderson, a small-scale farmer just east of Durango. Mr. Anderson said catching rain was not just thrifty — he is so water conscious that he has not washed his truck in five years — but also morally correct because it used water that would otherwise be pumped from the ground.

Mr. Anderson, a former national park ranger who worked for years enforcing rules and laws, said: “I’m conflicted between what’s right and what’s legal. And I hate that.”

For the last year, Mr. Anderson has been catching rainwater that runs off his greenhouse but keeping the barrel hidden from view. When the new law passed, he put the barrel in plain sight, and he plans to set up a system for his house.

Dig a little deeper into the rain-catching world, and there are remnants of the 1970s back-to-land hippie culture, which went off the grid into aquatic self-sufficiency long ago.

“Our whole perspective on life is to try to use what is available, and to not be dependent on big systems,” said Janine Fitzgerald, whose parents bought land in southwest Colorado in 1970, miles from where the pavement ends.

Ms. Fitzgerald, an associate professor of sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, still lives the unwired life with her own family now, growing most of her own food and drinking and bathing in filtered rainwater.

Rain dependency has its ups and downs, Ms. Fitzgerald said. Her home is also completely solar-powered, which means that the pumps to push water from the rain tanks are solar-powered, too. A cloudy, rainy spring this year was good for tanks, bad for pumps.

The economy has turned on some early rainwater believers, too. Ms. Dickson’s company in Durango went out of business last December as the construction market faltered. The rain barrels she once sold will soon be perfectly legal, but the shop is shuttered.

“We were ahead of our time,” she said.

The Establishment Protection Act

The so-called DISCLOSE Act currently under consideration in the Senate is an affront to personal liberties protected under the First and Ninth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. This knee-jerk reaction to Citizens United v. FEC constitutes a clear and present danger not only to the expressly stated freedom of speech listed in the First Amendment , but to the reasonable expectation of privacy and freedom of association American citizens have held throughout this country’s proud history.

Thousands of non-profits and corporations are facing costly and burdensome administrative regulations from this legislation. This bill would force organizations to adopt needless layers of bureaucracy in order to comply with new FEC filing requirements. That will exponentially increase the operating costs for groups that otherwise have low overhead. Additionally, the forced "disclosure" in the "stand by your ad" requirement would consume 15 seconds or more of a 30-second TV spot. This requirement would cut down an organization's free speech—not to mention donors' free speech—by only allowing a group to talk about an issue for less than half of the valuable airtime they are paying for. Short, 15-second ads might have to be eliminated altogether.

The ambiguous nature of this legislation's language attempts to intimidate businesses and non-profits into not running any ads this November, for fear that they might somehow be violating federal election law by doing nothing more than talking about the issues. This bill blurs the distinction between express advocacy for a specific candidate and mere issue advocacy. Expressing support for an issue is not the same thing as expressly endorsing a candidate. This legislation does not make a distinction between the two, and, as a result, organizations running ads this November could face expensive lawsuits after the fact for allegedly violating some unwritten enforcement provision.

We call this legislation the Establishment Protection Act because that is exactly what it is intended to do. Politicians will do anything they can to avoid being held accountable to their constituents for their actions during the legislative season. Any organization that challenges the status quo will come under greater scrutiny than those that endorse the status quo—and that will make donors to such groups targets for harassment and intimidation. Donors will be less likely to give money to "controversial" issue advocates, resulting in a chilling of free speech. Fear and intimidation are simply incompatible with a free society and intolerable.

One of the main arguments made for this legislation during House debate was the claim that this bill would decrease the amount of money spent on elections. That is an outright falsehood. Nothing in this act would decrease the amount of money it costs to run for public office; rather, by restricting third-party fundraising and advertising it actually increases the amount a candidate would need to raise, thus again favoring incumbents who have a natural fundraising edge over challengers.

Senators Schumer, Feingold, and Leahy claim on their site: "When you buy toothpaste now, the money you spend can be used directly for television ads attacking people that you believe in without you even knowing." The senators provide no evidence to back up these claims; it appears they are quite paranoid about Colgate and Crest having a political axe to grind against them.

In today’s society, where congressional representation affords us one representative for roughly every 700,000 people, the only way for "We the People" to have a voice is by banding together under the umbrella of issue-advocacy organizations. For many individuals in America, the only way to give voice to their views is through contributing to advocacy organizations. By stifling the free speech of these organizations, Congress is stifling the free speech of the individual.

What part of "Congress shall make no law... " do they not get?

Lies (excerpt from radio show)

Click this link ..... http://www.fateor.com/lies.htm

Southern Cone frozen: 100 dead and thousands of cattle lostThe polar wave that has trapped the Southern Cone of South America has caused an estimated

The polar wave that has trapped the Southern Cone of South America has caused an estimated one hundred deaths and killed thousands of cattle, according to the latest reports on Monday from Argentina, south of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia.

Deaths were caused by hypothermia or gas intoxication from defective burners and heaters.

In the south of Brazil and central Paraguay thousands of cattle have been reported dead, while in the south of Chile an agriculture emergency was declared and in Buenos Aires at the peak of the winter season, tens of regional flights had to be cancelled because of the extreme weather conditions leaving thousands stranded in the Argentine capital.

In Argentina the number of dead from hypothermia reached twelve plus another 33 intoxicated with carbon monoxide.

Bolivia reported 18 deaths because of freezing temperatures, most of them in EL Alto next to the capital La Paz, one of the highest cities of the world.

Even the east of the country which is mostly sub-tropical climate has been exposed to frosts and almost zero freezing temperatures.

To prevent contagion from flu and other illness the Bolivian Ministry of Education suspended schools until next Wednesday. Weather forecast is for the freezing climate to continue until August with cyclical peaks.

In southern Brazil at least 19 homeless died of hypothermia, and in the city of Urupema, next to Argentina temperatures dropped to a record minus 7.8 Celsius. In the Amazon basin in some cities thermometers dropped to 7 Celsius last Saturday.

In Santiago de Chile freezing temperatures reached minus 2 Celsius killing several homeless and intoxicating two families with malfunctioning burners.

But in the region of Aysen, 1.600 to the south of Santiago, villages are covered in snow and isolated; thousands of cattle and sheep are short of food and minimum temperatures dropped to minus 15 Celsius.

An agriculture emergency has been declared in Aysen; the main airport at Balmaceda has been closed for a week and several small towns have no power.

Paraguay so far has reported nine dead because of freezing weather, mostly homeless, and in the capital Asunción the government has opened refuges to host people overnight.

In Uruguay, one death has been reported and temperatures in the centre of the country dropped to minus 5 Celsius while the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables have soared.

In Peru which is more exposed to cold climate, so far 104 people have been reported dead because of pneumonia and respiratory diseases, caused by freezing temperatures and poor medical attention.

Although impressive these numbers are considered “normal” by Peruvian sanitary authorities for this time of the year.

Smoking Guns of U.S. Treasury Monetization

Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.

A significant feature of fiat money systems is the privilege for the custodian of the reserve currency to engage in regular practices of ham-fisted monetary management, even permission for fraudulent centers to flourish, surely developing a debt monster that an economy grows dependent upon. Fannie Mae might be the most offensive blight on such privilege. Unfortunately, many shenanigans have matured into grand fraud. They are smoking guns of USTreasury fraud and counterfeit, with strong whiffs of monetization. Much more monetization is to come, fully endorsed and sanctioned. Other clever techniques are being used, given the Quantitative Easing has officially been halted. A close look reveals that Excess Cash Reserves at the USFed are being drawn down, which are thus funding the USGovt deficits in the last couple months. Ironically, such reserves held by big banks at the US Federal Reserve were the only thing preventing vast insolvency. Now that cash is being used, and the USFed insolvency is slowly exposed. Details can be found in the July Hat Trick Letter reports. Evidence is compelling, and grand motive for foreign creditors to reject the USDollar, whose active control strings are traced to Wall Street. When recognized monetization destroys the last vestige of trust and confidence in the USDollar, when more official rounds of sponsored Quantitative Easing arrive, the USDollar will be on a downward spiral. In fact, all major currencies face the same prospect of vast monetary expansion. They will all fall sharply in value, and by counter-effect, the Gold price will rise powerfully.

CHINESE WARNING SHOTS ACROSS THE BOW

This story is a gem. The Chinese Dagong credit agency made an inaugural splash with a debt downgrade of the USTreasury Bonds. They called the US-based trio of debt rating agencies politically biased, an under-statement. The Dagong agency used its first splash into sovereign debt to establish a bold standard of creditworthiness around the world, giving much greater weight to wealth creating capacity and foreign reserves than Fitch, Standard & Poors, or Moodys. Dagong pays more attention to rapidly escalating debt levels. The Chinese Govt has coordinated their strategy, selling off short-term USTreasury Bills, but hangs onto a large raft of long-term USTreasury Bonds. On a net basis, the Chinese purchases have hit a plateau.

Meanwhile, with distracting commentary, China has doubled its gold holdings. At least the Chinese Govt has promised not to use their foreign reserves as a weapon. What a relief!! And Wall Street promises no more bond misrepresentation, no insider trading, no more fraud, no more drug money laundering (see Wachovia & Wells Fargo). What a relief!! The USGovt strives for clarity about management of China's $2.5 trillion in FOREX reserves, the world's largest. It contains $868 billion in USTreasurys at last count. The growing fear is that, in anger over trade friction, or in disgust over reckless USDollar management, or from a response to discovered hidden USTBond monetization, or with ambition to displace the US from its dominant post, China could dump USTreasury Bonds with a vengeance. The credit market analysts justifiably call it the Nuclear Option. The Beijing officials have given veiled warning to reduce the USGovt deficits and to put aside thoughts of another Quantitative Easing. The next QE2.0 comes as sure as night follows day. It comes with a heavy cost. The message is written on the wall, that the United States has forfeited its sovereignty with rampant debt production rather than industrial production.

USTREASURY ISSUANCE EXCEEDS USGOVT DEFICITS

This story is a gem. USTreasury bond issuance exceeds even the gargantuan USGovt deficits. The gap is $1.5 trillion over four years. One could guess that Wall Street is selling bonds and squirreling the money in foreign banks, a basic counterfeit in a syndicate operation. The operation might bring new meaning to monetization. At least a parallel exists. The majority of home mortgages have their income stream used in more than one mortgage bond. That is the real reason why home loan modification is a thin farce. The MERS database conceals the game, but the public has the satisfaction of knowing that MERS has no legal standing. The state courts are declaring no legal standing, and foreclosure procedures are blocked as a result. People cannot be removed from their homes when the database is used in handoffs of notes and titles.

Under Goldman Sachs rule, the USDept Treasury is running some bold kind of racket game, whose purpose is unclear, except it lacks legitimacy. The USGovt borrowing through debt issuance was $142 billion more than the June USGovt federal deficit, which means they are doing more than financing the deficit. The extra proceed funds are not accounted for. In chronic fashion, excess issuance has been the pattern, as the USGovt has issued $1.5 trillion more in debt securities than its budget deficit in the past four years. During the past 45 months, the USGovt has accumulated an incremental $4.7 trillion in new debt, but the federal budget deficit has grown by $3.2 trillion, much less but still a mammoth amount. Nobody asked why so, and nobody asks where the resulting funds from the bond sales go. One is left to speculate that a vast bold new syndicate technique is simply selling bonds beyond newly formed debt, seizing the funds in foreign locations for syndicate usage. The June USGovt official budget deficit was logged at $68.4 billion. During the same month, the USGovt borrowed a staggering total of $210.9 billion. These are not refinances of USTreasury debt in rollover. On a consistent basis, the USGovt has borrowed much more in each deficit month than was required to close the deficit and finance the debt accrued. The differential of excess debt issuance for the first six months of 2010 comes to a hefty $290 billion, a pattern in continuance.

Perhaps the Wall Street firms in control figure that with large numbers, nobody will notice, or given the hidden monetization, they might as well put the bond presses in hyper-drive. The cumulative data, as well as the mindboggling differential (dotted line) between the two series is shown on the attached chart. Perhaps it is for war funding far in excess of the stated costs, to save embarrassment and questions. Perhaps it is for enormous vertically integrated business investment in Afghanistan of clandestine type. Perhaps it is for the heavily rumored underground cities under construction for elite resident purposes. Perhaps it is extra costs for additional new military bases scattered across the globe. Perhaps the answer is simpler, in that it is just being counterfeited and stolen by the financial syndicate with impunity. This is a smoking gun.

ENGLAND BUYS $170B USTBONDS FROM SAVINGS ???

This story is a gem. The Chinese dump USTreasurys and England accumulates them. Or more accurately, the USFed hides its vast monetization efforts in the United Kingdom account ledger item. No way to the reasonable man can Britain purchase $170 billion in USTreasurys in five months from legitimate sources of savings!! In May 2010, China reduced their USTreasury holdings by $32.5 billion, now the lowest level since June 2009. China shed $35.4 billion in short-term USTBills, offset by a mere $2.9 billion in purchased USTBonds. Furthermore, Japan reduced holdings in USTBonds, as did the OPEC nations. However, buyers could be found, all Anglo descent, at least on the surface. The total foreign USTreasury holdings rose from $3957 billion to $3964 billion. Attribute the good tiding news to gigantic ongoing accumulation by England, just like the last several years. The UK-based buying is highly suspicious, like a group of homeless men walking out of a haberdasher shop wearing Brooks Brothers suits with bad hair and mismatched shoes, but arouses no attention except by intrepid analysis divorced from Wall Street or the USGovt. Generally, the United States financial system suffered a dramatic decline in May as foreign purchases of US assets hit a wall, falling from $110.3 billion to just $33 billion. See the graph of steady Chinese unloading of USTreasurys in the last several months.

As of end May, China still holds a gaggle of USTreasurys, but their USTBill holdings are down to a trifling $7 billion, as China sells into the confusion, especially at high principal prices tied to near 0% yields. China is selling the bubble. Without any question whatsoever, the USFed and USDept Treasury are using the United Kingdom as a ledger item for their mammoth USTreasury monetization, all barely hidden, with the TIC data used as a tiny fig leaf that offers inadequate coverage. The story receives no mainstream attention. The United Kingdom has wrecked banks, staggering deficits, no trade surplus, yet managed to buy a whopping $28 billion of USTBonds in just the month of May. Seems like Printing Pre$$ operations and London serving as the Hidey Hole. At end 2009, as of the December tally, the UK owned $180.3B in USTBonds, yet somehow managed to accumulate in the new year, up to the current $350.0B. THE UK SUPPOSEDLY HAS ALMOST DOUBLED THEIR HOLDINGS IN A MERE FIVE MONTHS!!

Bear witness to the shadow USFed debt monetization operation, operating out of the United Kingdom, or at least its accounting. The hidden USTreasury Bonds reside in England, home of the master to US bankers. Anyone who accepts the following graph on its face is foolish, compromised, or politically motivated to the extreme.

Bear in mind that we are talking about crippled England here, or the United Kingdom more generally. The UKGovt just announced spending cuts to reach 40% of budget, not the previous 20%. Britain could not cope with an extended episode in the credit crisis, according to the Bank For Intl Settlements. Yet this nation gobbled up $170 billion in USTreasurys from ripe savings in five months?? Hardly. The Bank For Intl Settlements has warned that sovereign debt under siege cannot adequate be relied upon as the coupon for broad national financial rescue and stimulus, not again, not in the next round. The UKGovt is admitting openly that the situation is worse than they said before. Newly ordained Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the officials to draw up 40% cuts, the biggest in history. He has ordered cabinet ministers to draw up a Doomsday budget whose essential service spending cuts could see tens of thousands given pink slips. Yet this nation gobbled up $170 billion in USTreasurys from ripe savings in five months?? Hardly. This is a smoking gun.

In the summer 2008 leading up the the Wall Street death experience, the British suffered their own shameful episode with Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland, even the venerable Lloyds of London each succumbing, no longer breathing life in a solvent sense. They are equally broken and insolvent as the biggest US banks. Billions of pounds were spent in nationalizing the Royal Bank of Scotland (partial), Lloyds Banking Group (partial), and Northern Rock (total) in an attempt to prevent their collapse. Neither the UK nor the US is on any path of reform or restructure. London redeemed failure from a real estate bust, which is the absolute opposite of investment or stimulus. Yet this nation gobbled up $170 billion in USTreasurys from ripe savings in five months?? Hardly. This is a smoking gun.

USGOVT HIDEY HOLE IN "HOUSEHOLD" CATCH-ALL

This story is a gem. Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Mgmt casts a suspicious eye at the USTreasurys for the so-called Household category in their accounting. It is a blatant ledger item for illicit monetization, a veritable crime scene without the cordoned zone and yellow tape. Sprott directs his accusations like a skilled prosecutor. He reinforces the claim of Ponzi Scheme cited by Bill Gross of PIMCO. Sprott calls the solution to finance the mammoth USGovt deficits to be the actual problem, namely hidden monetization. The Hat Trick Letter is in perfect sync with his line of reasoning and accusation, as the "Household" accounting ledger item is the culprit. This item has been the topic of past Jackass focus and analysis. Data in gory detail is offered in his indictment. Sprott points out that in order to balance the budget for fiscal 2009, the USGovt needed to sell $2041 billion in new debt, equal to three times the new debt that was issued in fiscal 2008. Witness the grand rampup without identified sources of buyers, mythical buyers in official USTreasury auctions, fraudulent accounting on the official books. No purchasing groups could could afford to increase their 2009 USTreasury purchases by 200%, a simple conclusion. So by process of elimination, the monetization source arises most visibly, but he shows where it appears in the accounting.

In the latest USDept Treasury Bulletin published in December 2009, ownership data reveals that the United States increased the public debt by $1.885 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009. That much is clear. According to this report, there were three distinct groups that increased their purchases from 2008 levels. The first was "Foreign & International Buyers" which purchased $697.5 billion worth of USTreasury securities in fiscal 2009, a 23% rise from fiscal 2008. The second group was the US Federal Reserve itself. Their published balance sheet reveals an increase in its USTreasury holdings by $286 billion in 2009, a 60% annual rise. Consider that jump to be a direct result of the official USFed Quantitative Easing program announced in March 2009. Quick summaries cover the other groups. Q1, Q2, and Q3 data from 2009 suggests that the State & Local Govts and US Savings Bonds groups were net sellers of USTreasurys in 2009. Then the pension funds, insurance companies, and depository institutions increased their purchases by only a paltry amount. The remainder was purchased by a category called loosely "Other Investors" as a catch-all. This other group purchased $90 billion in 2008, but then turned up into hyper-drive its purchases to $510.1 billion of freshly minted USTreasury securities so far in the first three quarters of fiscal 2009. On an annualized rate of purchase, the catch-all category is on pace to buy $680 billion of USTreasurys this year, over seven times the 2008 level. So the murky vague "Other Investors" saved the day and financed a gargantuan amount of the USGovt deficit.

Go to the source. The USDept Treasury Bulletin identifies "Other Investors" as consisting of Individuals, Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE, as in Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac et al), Brokers & Dealers (who sell as intermediaries), Bank Personal Trusts & Estates, Corporate & Non-Corporate Businesses, Individuals, and Other Investors. It is far-fetched to believe parties in these groups had $700 spare billion to invest in the USTreasury market in fiscal 2009. Sprott dug deeper, and found the source in the data. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors Flow of Funds Data provides a detailed breakdown of the owners of USTreasury securities to 3Q2009. Within these parties, the GSE group acted as small buyers of a mere $5 billion this year. Brokers & Dealers were sellers of $80 billion. Commercial Banks were buyers of $80 billion. Corporate & Non-Corporate Businesses collectively were buyers of $11.6 billion. Add these cited parties to arrive at a net purchase of only $16.6 billion. The huge increase of purchases in 2009 came solely from one source within the "Other Investors" group.

The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Report defines the infamous "Household Sector" which is a grab bag catch-all miscellaneous ledger item. The Hat Trick Letter has honed in on this corrupted ledger item in past reports. This category supposedly purchased $15 billion worth of USTreasurys in 2008, then jumped with ink jet assist (printing press) in 3Q2009 to a staggering $528.7 billion in purchases, a 35-fold increase. The Household is on track to buy $704 billion worth in all fiscal 2009. The bottom line is a shocker! What is the Household Sector? It is a combination of miscellaneous, ledger adjustments, and blatant monetization. Sprott calls it a PHANTOM that does not exist, but serves the purpose to balance the ledger in the US Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report. In the past, this ledger item was calculated as residuals, securities on loan across groups, even inclusive of rounding error. The monetization is no longer hidden. He concludes that USTreasurys have become one giant Ponzi scheme, just like Bill Gross of PIMCO quipped. This is a smoking gun.

BY THE END OCTOBER 2009, THE "HOUSEHOLD" ACCOUNTING CATEGORY OWNED MORE USTREASURYS THAN THE US FEDERAL RESERVE ITSELF. THAT IS CORRECT. MONETIZED USTREASURY BONDS ACCOUNT FOR MORE THAN WHAT THE USFED HOLDS. THE USTBONDS ARE HIDING IN ENGLAND.

Sprott summarized the bulk buyers of the $1885 billion in USTreasurys through Q3 of 2009:

1. Foreign & International buyers which purchased $697.5 billion
2. The US Federal Reserve which bought $286 billion
3. The Household Sector which bought $528 billion (think printing press).

Foreign USTBond holders share their worry openly. Zhu Min is deputy governor of the Peoples Bank of China. In a recent discussion on the global role of the USDollar, he told an academic audience that "The world does not have so much money to buy more USTreasurys. The United States cannot force foreign governments to increase their holdings of Treasuries… Double the holdings? It is definitely impossible." With foreign sources unwilling or unable to support USGovt debt, the monetization card will be used repeatedly and powerfully inside the desperate US-UK quarters. When the process is more widely recognized and publicized, the USDollar will be denigrated further, and rejected as quickly as any reasonable alternative can be produced by consensus. It is that simple. Worse, a viable alternative might be put forward with powerful force, enough to break any resistance from inertia or threadbare obstructions.

IMPLICATIONS TO THE USDOLLAR & GOLD

No creditor nation whose leaders are in their right mind would continue to support the USDollar as the global reserve currency when its debt securities are the object of such open fraud and high volume monetization. The USFed Chairman Bernanke before the USCongress testified that the USTreasury is not buying its own debt with printed money. His denial was a lie. He cannot identify the USTBond buyers. The evidence is compelling, and all around us. One does not have to be an advanced financial engineer to detect the trails of the monetized debt, its accounting location at the Household slot within the USGovt and within the United Kingdom in the Treasury Investment Capital (TIC) Report. The USGovt is racking up gigantic deficits, which will run in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion annually for some time. The second half recovery claim is for the simple-minded. Austerity measures are a pipedream. Reform is nowhere. Confusion is everywhere. Economic recovery is a mirage.

Recent condescension from Kartik Athreya of the Richmond Fed toward economist critique was particularly offensive and disgusting. One does not need advanced economics degrees to detect grand malfeasance like described in this article, and utter failure of policy directions. Trained and decorated economists in the United States have very little to show for their erudite prose, abstruse doctrinaire, and affluent effluence. They have given wreckage to the USEconomy and insolvency to its financial foundation, as the cancerous outcome to their arrogant financial engineering and complex money & banking charts. An advanced statistics degree totally overwhems an advanced economics degree any day of the week. We make tools to fine tune a business, as our resumes overflow with successful stories.

Blown opportunities, wasted bailouts, and lack of solutions like reform & restructure assure a much high gold price. Actually, they assure much lower currency valuations. With the redemption of Wall Street bond failure in October 2008 (see TARP Funds), and the nationalization of failed firms (see Fannie Mae, AIG), and the vacant economic stimulus that served little more than state budget shortfall plugs, the potential for a $2000 gold price was provided. Over $2 trillion was wasted. Debt across the debt-plagued landscape will be monetized. That is a fanciful way of saying newly printed money will be used to buy the wrecked debt, so that it can be shoved under the carpet. The growing lump under the carpet is not a piece of furniture, but rather a fashion cancer. With the redemption of British bond failure in 2008, and the nationalization of failed firms, the potential for a $2000 gold price was reinforced from the Anglo flank. Over one trillion British Pounds were wasted. Debt across the debt-plagued landscape will be monetized. With the redemption of European sovereign debt in May 2010, and the absence of stimulus in the European Economy, the potential for $3000 gold price was provided. Almost $800 billion was wasted. Debt across the debt-plagued landscape will be monetized. Gold thrives when the major currencies are debased, debauched, and destroyed.

The winds are showing strong signals of another powerful round of Quantitative Easing, the so-called QE2. When announced formally, or incontrovertibly detected, the potential for a $5000 gold price will be provided. The USEconomy is moribund, and the EU Economy is moribund. Economic stimulus and monetary accommodations have ended in the United States. The deceptive cry of a second half recovery is met by the arrival of a second half deep swoon. November elections are coming in the United States, when liberal policy, free spending, and reckless decisions are normally made. Numerous smart analysts like Eric Sprott, Jim Grant, Jim Rickards, and Porter Stansberry expect the QE2.0 to set sail soon, a second shameful voyage, maybe announced this calendar year. Some analysts believe another financial market crisis episode will be permitted first, in order to permit an easy political path for the next round of Quantitative Easing. The QE2.0 is assured, not even worthy of a forecast. My forecast is for QE3.0 to be announced by early 2012, and for QE4.0 to be announced in 2013. The reason is simple. Absolutely no effort is being made to fix anything. Vast sums of newly printed money are being thrown at a problem without much thought or planning, while many new rules actually freeze businesses. The prevailing objective is to preserve power, but at a cost of devaluating all major currencies with a flood of money supply.

Banks still hold tons of toxic debt, as mortgage debt has been written down by $270 billion but residential housing alone has come down $7 trillion in value. Even the SEC head Shapiro admitted that a slew of bank failures is coming soon. Restructure of the USEconomy is not even a topic, as consumption is desired, not seen, as job growth is desired, not seen. Capital formation and job creation are no longer an understood concept within the tarnished marble halls of US economist offices. Return of the US industrial base is not even discussed, a lost bastion. Instead, the priority of banking and political leadership is preservation of power, in order to control the coveted USDollar Printing Pre$$.

The entire world is working overtime behind conference doors to fashion a new global reserve currency. The IMF Special Drawing Rights vehicle is openly discussed, more like a Straw Man. The New Nordic Euro is a promising initiative conducted in secrecy, to be constructed with a gold component. By design, it is to enable a return to monetary system stability. However, by design it is also a USDollar killer. Its arrival will come without any doubt. When it does, the talk will not be about a skein of distracting topics. Talk will be about hyper-inflation and the United States facing a Third World prospect. Talk will be about $5000 gold. Talk will be about nothing fixed by the stewards in charge. Let's hope by then, that some form of justice is introduced into the unfolding chapters of an American Tragedy.

THE HAT TRICK LETTER PROFITS IN THE CURRENT CRISIS.

From subscribers and readers:

At least 30 recently on correct forecasts regarding the bailout parade, numerous nationalization deals such as for Fannie Mae and the grand Mortgage Rescue.

Illinois prepaid college tuition program loses big on ShoreBank investment

The state's prepaid college tuition program is caught in the downward spiral of ShoreBank.

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which manages $1 billion invested for the college educations of Illinois students, has written off all but $2 million of a $12.7-million investment it made in ShoreBank two years ago, just before the South Side community lender hit the skids. That stake, which made the prepaid tuition program ShoreBank's largest shareholder, was the agency's first and only direct investment in a privately held company.

The $10.7-million loss, though modest in the context of a $1-billion fund, could turn up the already considerable political heat on the monthslong effort to save ShoreBank from failure. Congressional Republicans have questioned whether the Obama administration pressured big Wall Street banks into rescuing the lender.

"This is just another of those examples of what appears to be the insider's world of Illinois politics," says Pat Brady, chair of the state's Republican Party. "The people who pay are the people who are trying to save money for college."

The $150-million bailout funded by the likes of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and GE Capital Co. is hung up over concerns that it won't be enough to save ShoreBank, even with a pending infusion of $75 million from the Treasury Department. The White House has denied any involvement.

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission runs the program allowing parents of young children to make upfront payments that lock in current tuition rates at the state's public universities for when their kids reach college age. ISAC invests the funds with a goal of generating sufficient returns to cover the eventual tuition bills.

At the time of the ShoreBank investment, ISAC's portfolio consisted mostly of publicly traded stocks and bonds, which are considered safer investments than less-liquid shares of private companies.

Andrea Feirstein, a consultant to state college savings plans, says she doesn't know of another prepaid plan that has invested in a privately held bank. "I think the plans tend to invest conservatively," she says.

Andrew Davis, appointed in early 2007 by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich as executive director of ISAC, says he contacted ShoreBank later that year after reading of the bank's plan to make rescue loans to local homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure.

"I thought that was an interesting opportunity," Mr. Davis, 53, says, hastening to add, "We didn't make the investment because we were being Dudley Do-Rights. We made the investment because we thought we were going to make money."

The growth in mortgage lending at ShoreBank just as the economy teetered on the precipice caused a big share of the massive loan losses that threaten the bank's future.

ISAC isn't participating in the Wall Street recapitalization of ShoreBank, and Mr. Davis shrugs off the 84% loss on the shares. He notes ISAC's fund produced a 10.5% gain for the fiscal year ended June 30. Its loss for the previous fiscal year was 15.4%, a better performance than some similar funds saw during the financial crisis, Mr. Davis says. He doesn't rule out investing directly in private companies again but says "it'll be a while before we invest directly in another community bank."

'We didn't make the investment because we were being Dudley Do-Rights.'

— Andrew Davis, Illinois
Student Assistance Commission

If the ShoreBank rescue succeeds, Mr. Davis says he expects his fund's position to be diluted to its current $2-million level. If the bank fails, ISAC will lose the remainder of its investment.

Shortly after investing in ShoreBank, Mr. Davis asked the lender to finance the commission's pilot program providing loans to students at Illinois public universities who needed money to finish their degrees.

Citigroup Inc. had agreed to provide the initial financing for the so-called Capstone loan program, but the New York-based banking giant pulled out in fall 2008, when the credit crisis worsened. ShoreBank agreed in late 2008, months after the prepaid tuition plan's investment, to provide $7 million to keep Capstone going in 2009. Mr. Davis says Capstone now is "on hold."

He says he wouldn't deny a connection between ShoreBank's agreement to fund Capstone and the tuition plan's status as its largest shareholder. "There aren't that many bank CEOs whose numbers I have in my Rolodex," he says. But he says the bank's executives followed exhaustive standards for approving loans to insiders or shareholders.

In a statement, ShoreBank says "the loan helped provide the resources that made a quality, affordable education more accessible to more students in low- to moderate-income communities."

©2010 by Crain Communications Inc.

What do you think?

Maybe they are Right, Despite the Evidence, Is that True?

Dog Poet Transmitting......

I guess I’m hopeful that I can play a role in things that have to happen in concert with other writers and human beings, working in one area or another who have the courage to say it, that some things need to fall apart. I think there needs to be a free will effort that works with cosmic force that is moving to create the state, where the institutions and systems lose their hold on the lies that keep them together because the power they’ve employed is going to be withdrawn. It’s a borrowed power that has made it possible for the period in which the progression of a particular temporal template went from wherever it started, into this total corruption that requires it to be changed. This is a cyclic thing that repeats in patterns from age to age.

I’ll digress for awhile. Yesterday I was feeling this intensity. It got a little strange, I had already been feeling the intensity to leave the house and I would start to sing. It developed into this tale about the world I was in and began defining the environment and conditions taking place here and how I was sitting a small park and being free and didn’t care about anything around me, except for being free in the midst of the human struggle to acquire and hold all they had to work to have which was somehow going to make them free and how these things confined them and made them fearful and suspicious about their property. It was about how they worked to be independent for when they were old and how they spent their force in bondage so that there was little left, for them to express whatever they thought they might say or do when their freedom came at last.

I was singing about how when that happened, all they could do was to change the way they spent their time, inside their mental cage and how freedom doesn’t come unless you risk your false ambitions to find something real inside and look for some way to express it and all the dangers that might entail, looking for something you couldn’t see and hope it might be found and I’m not the only one who can tell you, that not only is it there, but unless you set out after it you are going have that empty life, that is precisely what surrounds you and I hope you are okay with that. The song just went on the whole day. I had to keep leaving the house and I was back and forth on the streets and at a park bench or an outdoor pub. I might sing a little lower there but it would continue about what I saw and how that would relate to what else might be possible. There would be parts about why I was free and didn’t have any of the things the people around me had and how I was smiling and looked drunk or mad and the people watching were thinking maybe thinking something like this and none of them were smiling on the streets or in the pubs. I don’t really get drunk but you may be certain I am mad. I wasn’t loud or anything but you hear me as I went by. I was singing in English and they are German, except for the Christians from the Jantz Team missionary group. There are hundreds of them around and some other groups too.

They live on either side of my house in apartments that they rent from the tenants. For some reason, none of them, at any location, ever speak to me but they know I’m there, given the singing to myself in the streets or certain occasional behavior of a public nature that I have to demonstrate because I am damn well not going to let this shit confine me. It appears they think I work for the devil. That’s the impression I get. It must be because I am rich and prosperous I guess. It’s funny because my freedom to be singing and smiling is supposed to be an expression of the one they follow, right? I sing about that too

At some point I went down into the garden at the back of the house and I sat on the veranda of the unrented apartment there and I started singing about Christianity and Jesus Christ and that led to the conflicts in the message and all the things that went down through the centuries into present time and the millions dead Iraqis and everything else and insane hypocrisies that justified it all and the actual connection that some people, outside any of these systems found, that made it possible to speak the truth about what most people couldn’t see. That got very esoteric. It blew my mind and for some reason, I didn’t think about the Christians on either side until around then. This is a whole new development that been coming for a few days, when I began to be compelled to go out of the house at all hours, even late at night, to this little park a short distance away. No one’s ever on the benches but people with dogs sometimes walk by. The singing is a usual thing, so that was already happening, but it didn’t jump into this new thing until yesterday. It’s freaky and amazing to me the way it captures all the inconsistencies in this existence and I can’t really present all ways that it interplays with so many things.

This experience was amazing for me, because even though I am naturally extemporaneous for some time now and have done this in a more limited way, I have never had things like what is in the blogs and even things I hadn’t seen before just leap full blown into rhyme and express the seen and the unseen and a lot of the mysteries between the two and well, maybe you can imagine. This just went on until I had to go to bed and it was hard to stop it but I did achieve it long enough to fall asleep and Susanne said I was singing a number of times in the night, I guess when it briefly surfaced from a dream. It’s not forcing me right now but I can tell it’s just waiting me to finish this and fly out the door, even though its raining, there will somewhere to go and it’s really difficult to write this because it keeps wanting employ a rhyme or changing rhythms in the words and I have to work against it cause it wants to go back into what it was which is the same thing as this but different in certain ways, that do not serve the intention of this posting because it isn’t about this except I will certainly begin to record and apply it to what the first paragraph says.

The one thing that was glaring to me is the wide differential between myself and everyone around me here in the way I am in such a good mood and singing and sometimes, if there is a rare public event with music, I might start to dance and you can imagine the reaction but nothing hostile, just surprise. Susanne’s mother is from one of the more prominent families here so everyone knows what my connection is. The difference is profound in the sense that everyone here has spent their time in acquisition of the things of this world and in submission to the force of it and I have been mostly in unfortunate intentional and accidental conflict with its blanketing power to suppress the freedom it promises to offer but doesn’t let you freely express, except in the kind of way people do inside the limitations of what they accept to keep their stable face. There’s a difference between us somehow. That’s a kind of living proof, that you have to take the risk and one way or another, life will reward you with the ability to live outside of the repression of everything else.

All through my time here, I run into people and they will tell me about some problem or something they want and I’ll say here’s what you do and it’s provable even in the explanation, it’s what I do. There is no doubting it is possible, once it’s been explained and there are even certain practices I might give them and tell them to do, simple adjustments in attitude or awareness. No one ever does it from what I can see. There’s only one thing I talk about in my encounters, which has to do with the relationship between anyone in the world, what they get here and the varieties of opportunity for some passage into something else. No matter how the conversation starts, that is always where it goes. People, in one way or another, do not want to hear it, even when all their arguments fall flat against, so I tend to keep to myself. That’s fine, I’m not the one who’s lonely or unhappy or whatever the problem is and there is always a problem. Why aren’t they satisfied and showing it otherwise?

I should get to what I want to say before I run out of space. Things have been happening to me that are more and more startling and that is saying something, given what that takes to surprise me anyway. I know it has something to do with what’s coming and its impact on all of us in different ways and I get the sense that everyone who is working for positive change is going be experiencing something like this and that this is a partnership between us and the universe and it helps somehow that we are sharing in the effort. There’s not that many of us. I think our greatest way of helping is in reaching other souls who might be inclined in their own way to join and conspire to do the same and something exponential could add to what’s coming anyway.

It could be that our personal destinies are improved by doing this and I tend to think, 100%, that this is true. It’s also time to speak courageously and directly about the oppression and control of the world’s people by the forces in concert with the Zionist Jews and those that serve and assist them and whoever else is in it too and call them for what they are and tell the proven truth, about transparent lies concerning fictitious exclusivity and events and not be in fear of the consequences when the truth is evident. We need to publicly demand that no politicians anywhere be elected who supports Israel, period, and declare who owns the media and what that means and how they came into control of that and everything else by controlling the money and printing it and providing it to themselves and then loaning it out to everyone else to control what they have and what they do and then playing with the financial system to destroy the value of their efforts and properties to control and enslave them. This is what they do.

It’s time to take this slur of anti-Semitism and say it’s a badge of honor and say that at least you’re not a slave to their obvious lies and only a fool or a coward cares what anyone calls them, when you can prove the truth that you don’t care what they pretend they are, you just care about what they do …and that they are not Semitic anyway that the Palestinians are the original inhabitants of the land and that the DNA tests prove it so call me what you like and that power is on the way to being turned against them and nail them on what is provably true and write and sing and say it, because what use is your life anyway, if you live in subjugation to them? Is it going to improve for you? Is that their intention? That’s not what they do. Look at what is inescapably evident and tell yourself the truth. It gets very clear, very quick what is really going on, when you take the time to look.

I’ve seen some people lately who say it. They probably don’t know why. There’s been Mel Gibson, Helen Thomas, Oliver Stone and others and then they apologize. That’s a cringing cowards way to sell your ass to protect some employment, or whatever you think you might lose. Some of these people quit their positions or were forced out regardless and still apologized when what they said was true. I don’t even have to prove it but I damn well can. It’s demonstrably evident and time and destiny have got your back. Is this what you want to see about yourself? Do you want to see that you defended a lie whose intention was to destroy you? What are you saying? “Kill me anyway but let me provide you some cover when you do”? Isn’t this getting through? Is your life worth living in any case?

This gets back to the rotating cycle of slavery to forces that seem to rule the temporary world. It gets back to that Christian thing where they talk about who they serve and then make some deal with the world to pretend to be an example of someone who spoke against this very same thing. Ask yourself what you believe in and whether this actually means anything. Ask yourself if your integrity and honor are worth sacrificing to survive under the heel of your oppressor so that you can stay alive? Is it really in their hands?

Is there some kind of arrangement that guarantees that you are going to get eternal life if you spend this one on your knees, before the one’s who do not have the power to grant it, whether it exists or not? Do you hire a burglar to protect your house? I look at the multitude of obvious, in your face, realities that are all examples against every argument that is used to defend your cowardice and lack of faith in yourself and what is supposed to be motivating you. I can prove it from any perspective. I can explain your condition in respect of everything and have you agree it’s absolutely so. If you’re not asleep then what must you be thinking? You deny the truth to save your life? Why do you die in their wars? You want to be free? Why do you deny your right to express it? What the fuck is wrong with you? There are centuries of examples. This tiny group of whatever they are has been thrown out of every country for the same reasons. Was this all a mistake?

Who caused the Bolshevik revolution? Who killed so many Russians?” Who declared war on Germany because he did something about their money? Who controls the banks and politicians? Who finances all the wars for economic profit? Are there other forces too? Then call them on it. Don’t work for them. Don’t vote for them. Don’t pay taxes. They use that money against you. What the fuck is wrong with you? Their system cannot work without your compliance. They cannot exist without your support. Don’t give them another dime. How many of you have lost your jobs and homes for no reason except so that they could squeeze all that was left in you into more obscene profits? How much do they need? That isn’t the point is it?

Is this in question? Is this something else? Are really secret puppet masters controlling them from some unknown sphere? Does that matter? Shouldn’t you start right here with the ones you can see, if that is true? Won’t that affect the puppet masters? What the fuck is wrong with you? Well maybe you don’t think there’s a benevolent creator that controls all the power and maybe you don’t know that this whole thing is a test to see what you will do, to see if you have the courage and conviction, to challenge this charade in order to realize that you have to prove you deserve the freedom by risking seeming dangers that might appear, when you look past the appearances and actually check and see. What if nothing is outside it or inside you? What if this is all an accident? At least you know …and dead and gone or free at last, is it really worth the price to have lived as if you didn’t live and never even try? What the fuck is wrong with you? You bring me to tears on occasion. Sometimes I have to go somewhere and do just that. I have to go and weep that I live around all of you. You serve the thing that mocks you and no matter what it’s up to you.

You had better start speaking out. You had better stop cooperating. You had better start acknowledging what you take so much trouble to hide from yourself that it is ridiculous; and you can’t see it? Are you smiling about some private understanding that makes you want to dance or sing? Do you laugh without reason? Have you made a connection with something inside you that compels you to express a behavior and awareness that is ignored by most of the people around you?” Is part of you missing because you shut is out? It must have been telling you something you didn’t want to hear. I wonder what that might have been. avYouy You had better get a clue.

\End Transmission