Sports Authority will close all of its 450-plus stores across the
United States after it was unable to secure a buyer, according to a new
court filing.
The liquidation includes dozens of stores in
California. As of last month, the retailer had 76 stores in the state,
according to its website.
The Colorado-based company, which was once the largest sporting
goods store chain in the country with stores in 41 states and Puerto
Rico, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March with the
intention to restructure.
As
part of that restructuring, the company announced it would close 140
stores. But the retailer was unable to reach an agreement with creditors
and lenders, and was instead sold at auction.
A group of liquidation companies bought Sports Authority's assets. Store leases will be sold off at another time.
It's
unclear when stores will close. In the March filing, the chain said
store closures would take up to three months. Stores will be offering
going-out-of-business sales beginning next week.
Like other
big-box retailers, Sports Authority struggled in recent years with new
competitors online and in the bricks-and-mortar sphere.
Sports Authority was founded in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1987. In
1990, Kmart acquired the company. In 2006, the company was bought by a
private equity firm.
Sports Authority currently has the corporate naming rights to Sports Authority Field at Mile High, the stadium where the Denver Broncos play.
The
retailer reported $3.5 billion in revenue last year and employs 16,000
people, according to Forbes magazine. Representatives from Sports
Authority declined to comment.
Griffin writes for the Tampa Bay Times/McClatchy.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Vermont College Recently Led by Socialist Sanders’ Wife Closes in Financial Turmoil
(Steve Byas) The late Margaret Thatcher, former Conservative Party prime minister of Great Britain, once remarked that socialism works pretty well, until you run out of other people’s money.
Burlington College in Vermont was not a socialist, or state-run institution, but it was led until recently by Dr. Jane O’Meara Sanders (shown), the wife of avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. It was announced this week that it will close its doors on May 27.
Burlington has apparently run out of other people’s money.
The financial woes of the small, private college developed from the real estate deal that Dr. Sanders talked the board into making while serving as its president from 2004 to 2011. She persuaded the board to enter into $10 million of debt in the form of bonds and loans to obtain what has been described as “expensive lakefront” property. The land and buildings were purchased from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, in an apparent effort to attract more students to the campus, and more donors to its treasury. The school closes with less than 250 students.
From its inception, Burlington College was marketed as a “free spirit” institution, launched in the living room of its founder and first president, Dr. Stewart LaCasce. LaCasce was the commencement speaker on Sunday, but no mention was made of the school’s demise during the ceremonies, which marked the school’s 35th year of operation.
Much of the curriculum was tilted to the Left — not at all unusual in modern American colleges and universities. Its Media Studies program offered coursework in “media activism and social movements,” for example. But what set Burlington apart from most other institutions dominated by a left-wing ideology was its Cuba Semester Abroad.
The program, created in 2007, sent dozens of students from the Vermont campus to study at the University of Havana in Communist Cuba. According to the Burlington College website,
Living and studying in Cuba will sharpen the abilities of students to think critically and to imagine creatively. Cuba is a society that has gone its own way against enormous odds and has developed a society unlike any other. For the United States student, the island offers the singular opportunity to question, debate and discuss, to get beneath the surface of the issues and to evaluate independently the art, culture, history and politics of this unknown but compelling world, 90 miles from our shores.
Unknown world? Actually, there is really nothing unknown about Cuba except just how many of its citizens were executed or imprisoned since the Communist brothers Fidel and Raul Castro seized power there in 1959, establishing a totalitarian Communist dictatorship on the ill-fated island. While the “United States student” may have an opportunity to “question, debate and discuss,” Cuban students had better not openly question the Castro brothers, or they could be added to the afformentioned totals.
“A fascinating destination in the Caribbean, Cuba has been isolated from its northern neighbors in the United States since 1959,” the website noted without explaining why, but lamented, “In turn, we have been isolated from the Cuban people.” So Burlington College developed its Cuba Semester Abroad program in an effort to overcome this isolation, hoping to “open up the lines of communication.”
Now, with the closing of the little college, it appears that the goal of keeping lines of communication open with Communist Cuba will have to be handled by President Obama, who recently restored diplomatic relations with the nation.
When it became apparent in 2012 that Burlington College was facing an impending financial implosion, Sanders resigned, taking a generous severance package of $200,000. Coralee Holm, dean of operations at the college, recounted the efforts of the school to survive the crushing debt incurred during Sanders’ tenure:
We have explored multiple, multiple options — just about anything we could think of. This is a great loss to the higher ed community, so we did explore many other options. But in the final analysis, none of them came through.
For example, the college sold off much of the land it had only recently purchased, while holding onto the small six-acre plot with the central building. Despite lowering the debt to more manageable levels, the school was recently notified that its $1 million credit line would not be renewed. At that point, the college board of trustees felt it was out of options, and voted to close the college.
Another hit taken by Burlington was when, after being placed on probation by a Vermont accreditation agency because of its shaky financial situation, school officials were informed that they would not be able to award academic credit after January 2016. Despite the overwhelming debt taken on at the urging of Jane Sanders, school officials did not blame her.
Interestingly, among the more popular of the campaign proposals of her husband, Senator Sanders, who is locked in a battle for the Democratic Party nomination with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was his call for “free tuition” for America’s college students. National student loan debt is now estimated at $1.2 trillion nationally. Annual tuition (not counting fees, which many colleges use to hide the true cost of the college “education”) at Burlington was $21,500, which means a student who completed a four-year degree program (with maybe a little “study” abroad in Cuba) would take on $86,000 in debt, just for tuition — not counting room and board!
Sanders and his wife have claimed they care little about material things; however, they have a personal portfolio of more than a million dollars, mostly in stocks and property.
Mrs. Sanders told lenders at the time the loan was obtained that the college had received $2 million in fundraising pledges — a stipulation in securing the loans; however, the amount raised was actually only about $279,000.
In an interview with a volunteer in the Sanders for President campaign which appeared in the left-wing publication The Nation, Jane Sanders offered a prediction of her role in the White House in her field of higher education:
I see my overall role, if I had the honor, as listening to the voices here in America that are not being heard and putting them out there for people to hear, but also researching and learning some of the best practices everywhere else and bringing them back here and letting them be heard as well. Kind of a megaphone.
Hopefully, these so-called best practices will not include the slip-shod way Sanders conducted the finances of Burlington College during her tenure. Brady Toensing, a partner in the law firm of diGenova and Toensing, has even filed a legal complaint against Sanders with federal authorities, charging her with federal bank fraud.
It appears that Senator Sanders’ wife may wind up “feeling the bern” in a different way from that felt by Bernie’s idealistic supporters.
Venezuela’s Socialism Has Triggered Looting Instead of Shopping
(Sabrina Martin) EspañolLootings are becoming a common occurrence in Venezuela, as the country’s food shortage resulted in yet another reported incident of violence in a supermarket — this time in the Luvebras Automarket located in the La Florida Province of Caracas.
Videos posted to social media showed desperate people falling over each other trying to get bags of rice. One user claimed the looting occurred because it is difficult to get cereal, and so people “broke down the doors and damaged infrastructure.”
In the central province of Carabobo, residents ransacked a corn warehouse located in the coastal city of Puerto Cabello. They reportedly broke down the gate because workers were giving away small portions.
“There’s no rice, no pasta, no flour,” resident Glerimar Yohan told La Costa, “only hunger.”
Yohan, like the approximately 50 other people asking employees to give her a “little bit” of corn to feed her children for breakfast, was turned away.
Warehouse workers indicated that people managed to get about 50 bags of unprocessed corn.
According to the local newspaper, Carabobo and municipal police later arrived to the scene and took control of the situation, but not before residents set tires and other objects on fire.
The mayor of Chacao Ramon Muchacho warned that Caribbean islands and Colombia may suffer an influx of refugees from Venezuela if food shortages continue in the country.
“As hunger deepens, we could see more Venezuelans fleeing by land or sea to an island,” Muchacho said.
The mayor’s statements come after Curaçao President of the Red Cross Angelo Ramirez reported that the island is preparing itself for possible Venezuelan refugees “in the event that the situation in Venezuela becomes worse.”
Muchacho recently reported that with so little food available on supermarket shelves, Venezuelans have taken to the streets to hunt pigeons and other animals — even in the richer regions of Caracas.
Wendy’s to replace thousands of cashiers with automated kiosks… $15 wage demands lead to accelerating unemployment and social unrest
by Mike Adams
(NaturalNews) While whiney, over-privileged “safe space” millennials were marching through the streets demanding $15 an hour wages, fast food giants like Wendy’s were quietly working on automation innovations to make them obsolete. Now, Wendy’s has announced a rollout that would terminate the employment of thousands of cashiers by replacing them with automated kiosks systems.
The first rule of protesting for higher wages is to make sure you never become such a financial burden to your employer that they seek to automate your job out of existence.
These kiosks are so easy to use that even the cashiers who get fired by Wendy’s will be able to figure out how to use them. It’s all part of the fast food industry’s ultimate goal:Render humans obsolete.
And why not? Today’s whiney, hyper-privileged youngsters are incapable of recognizing real work. They believe society owes them everything — including ridiculously high wages for low-value jobs — and that none of them should ever have to engage in any real work at all. Besides, government benefits are so high for the unemployed that it’s almost easier to get yourself fired, collect unemployment and start living off the government without having to lift a finger to support yourself.
That’s right: Mass unemployment is the next phase of this government-run game ofeconomic roulette. Just as automated systems are taking over low-end jobs, open borders policies are also flooding states like California and Arizona with yet more able workers who are taking the remaining jobs away from everybody else. It’s a double squeeze, and it’s going to utterly destroy the jobs market for low-wage workers. Stupidly, they believe their way out is to demand higher wages for low-aptitude jobs. But this only ends in unemployment due to an acceleration of business investments in automated systems.
Sadly, public education has so utterly failed to teach basic economics and mathematics that almost no one understands the cause-effect relationship between higher minimum wages and accelerating unemployment. This economic ignorance is amplified by an illiterate leftist media whose finance writers got their economic theory from lunatic Marxist college professors who think that government creates wealth rather than destroying it. In their minds, wealth can be created by decree — declaring a mandatory minimum wage “by order of the King!” — and that whatever money is needed to fund such increases will magically appear out of an astral plane or a parallel universe somewhere.
But this isn’t how it works at all. In the fast food industry, profit margins are razor thin. Small increases in wages have huge impacts on long-term economic viability for franchise owners. To cover the costs of increased wages, many of these fast food chains will have to raise prices, placing their factory food menu items out of reach of even the poorest wage earners in society.
Sadly, the system has no use for them anymore. They are, from the point of view of globalists, “useless eaters” who are a net drain on economic resources rather than net contributors. The only real question at that point is, “How will the system get rid of all these people?”
Ebola, Chapter Two?
(NaturalNews) While whiney, over-privileged “safe space” millennials were marching through the streets demanding $15 an hour wages, fast food giants like Wendy’s were quietly working on automation innovations to make them obsolete. Now, Wendy’s has announced a rollout that would terminate the employment of thousands of cashiers by replacing them with automated kiosks systems.
The first rule of protesting for higher wages is to make sure you never become such a financial burden to your employer that they seek to automate your job out of existence.
Notably, automated kiosk systems
don’t complain. They work 24/7, never show up late and don’t smoke pot
in the parking lot then show up to work stoned. They don’t hit on other
employees, argue with customers or call in sick at the last minute. Even
better, employers don’t have to pay social security taxes, workers’
comp insurance and other wage taxes on robots. For every employee
demanding $15 an hour, a company is spending at least $25 an hour in
total benefits, taxes and risk.
No wonder Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and everybody else is
trying to figure out how to get rid of human workers altogether.Automated kiosks to be rolled out across 6,000 Wendy’s restaurants
As reported in Investors.com, “self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.”These kiosks are so easy to use that even the cashiers who get fired by Wendy’s will be able to figure out how to use them. It’s all part of the fast food industry’s ultimate goal:Render humans obsolete.
And why not? Today’s whiney, hyper-privileged youngsters are incapable of recognizing real work. They believe society owes them everything — including ridiculously high wages for low-value jobs — and that none of them should ever have to engage in any real work at all. Besides, government benefits are so high for the unemployed that it’s almost easier to get yourself fired, collect unemployment and start living off the government without having to lift a finger to support yourself.
The ultimate goal in fast food: Replace ALL human workers with robots
As mandatory minimum wage hikes kick in across economically disastrous states like California, entire industries (like the fast food industry) are accelerating their search for ways to replace minimum wage workers with automated systems. Nearly everything a human worker accomplishes in a fast food setting will soon be taken over by kiosks or robotic systems, and as this happens, minimum wage workers will be booted to the curb.That’s right: Mass unemployment is the next phase of this government-run game ofeconomic roulette. Just as automated systems are taking over low-end jobs, open borders policies are also flooding states like California and Arizona with yet more able workers who are taking the remaining jobs away from everybody else. It’s a double squeeze, and it’s going to utterly destroy the jobs market for low-wage workers. Stupidly, they believe their way out is to demand higher wages for low-aptitude jobs. But this only ends in unemployment due to an acceleration of business investments in automated systems.
Sadly, public education has so utterly failed to teach basic economics and mathematics that almost no one understands the cause-effect relationship between higher minimum wages and accelerating unemployment. This economic ignorance is amplified by an illiterate leftist media whose finance writers got their economic theory from lunatic Marxist college professors who think that government creates wealth rather than destroying it. In their minds, wealth can be created by decree — declaring a mandatory minimum wage “by order of the King!” — and that whatever money is needed to fund such increases will magically appear out of an astral plane or a parallel universe somewhere.
But this isn’t how it works at all. In the fast food industry, profit margins are razor thin. Small increases in wages have huge impacts on long-term economic viability for franchise owners. To cover the costs of increased wages, many of these fast food chains will have to raise prices, placing their factory food menu items out of reach of even the poorest wage earners in society.
The future is mass unemployment, rioting, social chaos and popular uprisings
It’s not hard to see where this all takes us. As automated systems displace human workers, mass unemployment will sweep the nation. These large numbers of unemployed, angry people with all kinds of free time on their hands will eventually riot in the streets.Sadly, the system has no use for them anymore. They are, from the point of view of globalists, “useless eaters” who are a net drain on economic resources rather than net contributors. The only real question at that point is, “How will the system get rid of all these people?”
Ebola, Chapter Two?
Empire of Lies: How the US Continues to Deceive the World About Puerto Rico
Puerto Ricans have watched the US government lie brazenly and
repeatedly -- to the American people and the world -- about its actions
and interests in the Caribbean. Now, members of Congress are trying to
lower Puerto Rico's minimum wage for young people.
Old
San Juan, a tourist destination important to Puerto Rico's economy,
February 3, 2014. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo / The New York Times)Help Truthout keep publishing stories like this one: We depend on reader support! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation today.
"There are three kinds of lies," said Mark Twain. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics." Unfortunately for Puerto Rico, this is not an aphorism; it is an operating principle.
Separated by an ocean and a language from the mainland, Puerto Ricans have watched the US government lie brazenly and repeatedly -- to the American people and the world at large -- about its actions and interests in the Caribbean.
The latest walk down liar's lane is a cut to the minimum wage, as proposed by the US House of Representatives' Committee on Natural Resources.
Efforts to Lower the Minimum Wage
On April 12, 2016, the House Committee on Natural Resources released HR 4900: the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, with the acronym of PROMESA. The bill creates a Financial Control Board, which will act as a collection agency for the hedge funds/vulture funds throughout the island.
Taking their cue from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Krueger Report and a study commissioned by 34 hedge funds, the committee decided that a "good" way to spark the Puerto Rican economy and improve the lives of its residents would be to lower their minimum wage ... so they stuck that in the bill, as well.
This appears in Section 403 of PROMESA (p. 75-6) with intentionally convoluted language. The section title, "First Minimum Wage in Puerto Rico," suggests that Congress is creating a minimum wage on the island. It then requires you to read Section (6)(g)(4) of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Only then do you realize that PROMESA will cut the minimum wage of newly hired young workers throughout the island, from $7.25 to $4.25 per hour. This will apply to everyone aged 20 to 24, whenever they start a new job.
In Puerto Rico, there are over 200,000 people in this age bracket. Many of them are paying student loans. Few of them can afford to live on $4.25 per hour, unless they continue to live with their parents.
The supply-side argument that this will "create more jobs and economic development on the island" is woefully myopic. At $4.25 per hour, $170 per week, $8,840 per year, a young worker will make 25 percent of the per capita income of a resident of Mississippi, the poorest state in the US. Someone needs to explain to the House Committee on Natural Resources that this is not "economic development." It is indentured servitude that smells of racism.
Standing for Ethics and Integrity -- While Accepting "Gifts"
Another brazen contradiction, which reeks of dishonesty, is the PROMESA policy toward "gifts" for the Financial Control Board.
On the one hand, the Control Board will conduct island-wide audits, subpoena witnesses, impose fines and imprison anyone who obstructs its mission of fiscal accountability and honest government.
On the other hand, the Control Board will be authorized to accept and use "gifts, bequests, or devises of services or property, both real and personal."
It is not clear why the Board needs to receive "gifts," or how these gifts enhance their standing as an "honest and ethical" ruler of the Puerto Rican economy. What is clear is that this open invitation to bribery, influence peddling and money laundering appears on page 21 of the PROMESA bill.
Dark Money Ads
The Orwellian deceptions are not limited to a "helpful" minimum wage cut, or "gifts" for a Control Board. Right now, as recently as May 17, a multimillion-dollar ad campaign funded by "dark money" sources (i.e. anonymous and undisclosed) is willfully deceiving the entire American public.
Throughout April and May of 2016, a group called the "Center for Individual Freedom" (CFIF) purchased hundreds of TV ads in media markets all over the US to convince legislators to deny any Chapter 9 bankruptcy relief to Puerto Rico.
The ads aired on Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates nationwide. They ran on local news programs and on the April 10 episode of "Meet the Press." You can view one of these ads here.
Like a toxic intravenous fluid, these CFIF ads are continually updated and injected into the US corporate media. The latest injection occurred on May 17, 2016.
These commercials are part of a larger propaganda machinery. According to The New York Times, "a coalition of hedge funds and financial firms has hired dozens of lobbyists, forged alliances with Tea Party activists, and recruited so-called AstroTurf groups on the island to make their case. This approach has proven successful overseas, in countries like Argentina and Greece, yielding billions in profit amid economic collapse."
As a "dark money" group, CFIF is not required to disclose its donors, so the sponsors of these ads are unknown. It is reasonable to assume that several vulture funds and their lobbyists are involved, but federal law and the Citizens United decision of the US Supreme Court make it illegal to compel the disclosure of who is paying for these "commercials."
Worst of all, the commercials are lying. They all urge a block of the "Washington bailout of Puerto Rico" and suggest that US taxpayers will be forced to pay for it. But bankruptcy restructurings are not bailouts, and vulture funds are not taxpayers.
When I pressed the CFIF for a clarification of its ads, CFIF leaders did not get on the phone. Instead they sent a position paper, which, after 2,031 words of obfuscation, admits that Chapter 9 bankruptcy is not a government-funded bailout, and would not be paid for by the US taxpayer.
Obviously, CFIF is not a bastion of truth. It is a hired gun. Its cynical conflation of terms is geared to create public confusion and provide political cover for members of Congress who are allegedly "responding to their constituents," when in fact, they are servicing their lobbyists and campaign donors.
This is Citizens United on steroids and nakedly transparent -- but 1,500 miles away, the people of Puerto Rico are powerless to stop it.
As they say on TV, "but wait, there's more!" The lies are not limited to the US Congress and "dark money" organizations. Some of the most lethal whoppers were hatched on Wall Street. Cynically and systematically, the entire Puerto Rican economy was set up to fail by the ratings agencies, with a junk bond rating scam.
Junk Bond Ratings
In 2010, the Big Three rating services (Fitch, Moody's, Standard & Poor's) all warned Puerto Rico to "get your act in order." If this "order" was not established, the services would slap Puerto Rico with the lowest possible credit rating: junk bond status. And so, in 2010, the government of Puerto Rico dutifully laid off 30,000 workers.
In 2013, it raised corporate tax rates to 39 percent and hiked the water rates by 60 percent. Also in 2013, islanders paid double the average electricity costs of the rest of the US, at 29 cents per kilowatt. The government also raised the retirement age, increased worker contributions and lowered government pensions and benefits.
Despite all these fiscal austerities, the three rating services pulled a last-minute trick on Puerto Rico. They kicked the island's credit rating into the gutter -- after Puerto Rico had done everything that the rating services demanded. In February 2014, all three rating services downgraded Puerto Rico's debt to junk bond status. This "junk bond" maneuver -- a bait-and-switch tactic by the three rating services -- cut the island off from any further credit, and accelerated its path to default.
These are the same rating services that were sued by federal and state governments and pension funds nationwide for their complicity in the subprime mortgage crisis.
A History of Lies
"How could this happen?" a reader may ask. "How can they get away with this?"
The answer is very simple: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in Puerto Rico ... never happens at all. For over a century, the abuses heaped on the island's residents are simply not reported in the US mainstream media. This happens so brazenly and frequently that, for many Puerto Ricans, the US is seen as an empire of lies. This mendacity is deeply rooted in the history of US relations with Puerto Rico. Here are just a few historical examples:
1) Blessings of Enlightened Civilization
On July 29, 1898, Gen. Nelson A. Miles delivered the first official US proclamation to Puerto Rico. As his men hoisted Old Glory over the Ponce town hall, Miles declared, "We come to bring you protection, not only to yourselves but to your property, to promote your prosperity, to bestow upon you the immunities and blessings of the liberal institutions of our government ... and the blessings and advantages of enlightened civilization."
But just two years later, in 1900, the US devalued the island's currency by 40 percent. Then, in 1901, Puerto Rico was prohibited from negotiating commercial agreements with any other nation, and prohibited from determining its own tariffs.
By 1930, US banking syndicates owned more than half of the island's farmland. They also owned the postal system, electric utilities, coastal railroads and the San Juan International Seaport.
So much for "protecting your property and promoting your prosperity."
2) US Citizenship
On March 2, 1917, the Jones-Shafroth Act conferred US citizenship on every resident of Puerto Rico. One month later, 18,000 Puerto Ricans were drafted and sent to fight in World War I.
But 57 years later, after spilling their blood in five wars, Puerto Ricans were still being denied the federal minimum wage ... for working on the very land that they'd once owned.
3) The Ponce Massacre
On March 21, 1937, on Palm Sunday, Puerto Ricans marched peacefully and with a permit to protest the land and employment abuses of the United States. Under the orders of then-Gov. Blanton Winship, the police shot at them with machine guns. Seventeen unarmed men, women and children were murdered and more than 200 were sent to the hospital. Among the dead was Georgina Maldonado, a 7-year-old girl who was shot in the back.
For weeks, The New York Times, The Washington Post and others in the mainstream US press kept reporting this as a "Puerto Rican riot," and insisted it had been a "gunfight with Nationalists." This lie was only exposed because of one photo.
4) The Gag Law of 1948
Under intense US pressure, in June 1948, Public Law 53 was passed in Puerto Rico, which made it a felony to say one word, sing a song, whistle a tune or communicate anything against the US or in favor of Puerto Rican independence. Ownership of a Puerto Rican flag was also a Law 53 violation.
The US called this an effort to "fight communism" in Puerto Rico, but it was actually a gag law to silence Pedro Albizu Campos (the independence leader who'd just been released from prison), and to discourage anyone from joining the Nationalist Party. Law 53 violations were punishable by 10 years in jail.
Ironically, this gag law was passed in the same year that George Orwell completed his novel 1984.
5) Commonwealth Status
In 1952, the US informed the UN Committee on Decolonization that Puerto Rico had freely chosen to associate itself as a "commonwealth" of the United States. This meant that Puerto Rico was no longer a colony and should be taken off the UN list of non-self governing territories (i.e. colonies).
Years later, the draftsman of the commonwealth filing documents and the "constitution" of Puerto Rico, José Trías Monge, the chief justice of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, repudiated this commonwealth as a diplomatic ruse.
Monge explained that the US could not wage a 1950s Cold War against the Soviet Union and be the "leader of the free world" while maintaining the oldest colony on the planet -- and so the US invented this "commonwealth" status. Monge's book was appropriately titled Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World.
The US government agrees with Monge. The Obama administration recently repudiated the entire "commonwealth" relationship and told the US Supreme Court that the island remains a dependent US territory.
So the commonwealth was a lie.
Countering the Lies
The entire 118-year history of the US-Puerto Rico relationship is riddled with deception, but the lies have become unsustainable, and Puerto Rico is at a breaking point. The sales tax is 11.5 percent. Electricity rates are 300 percent higher than in New York. In 2013, the water rates rose by 60 percent. Thanks to the Jones Act, the cost of living is 12 percent higher than in the United States, yet the per capita income is hovering at $15,200. No tortured logic, no trickle-down theorist or hedge fund hustler can credibly argue that a minimum wage reduction to $4.25 will help the island -- especially when the rest of the US is pushing for $15 per hour in all 50 states.
Even if ostensibly limited to workers aged 20 to 24, a $4.25 minimum will place a downward pressure on all wages throughout Puerto Rico. It will also discourage tens of thousands of students from attending or finishing college, thus creating a permanent underclass throughout the island.
If anything, this minimum wage cut will increase unemployment, because full-time work will pay less than the combined package of welfare, Medicaid and food stamp benefits for which a family of three will qualify.
Unless of course, the federal government intends to cut those, as well -- and then tell the rest of the world that Puerto Ricans are lazy, shiftless and need to "learn how to work" for $4.25 per hour.
This is not public policy. It is thievery in broad daylight.
VENEZUELA FOOD & ECONOMIC CRISIS – We Want Food! Venezuela Crisis Deepens. Coming Soon To USA?
VENEZUELA FOOD & ECONOMIC CRISIS – We Want Food! Venezuela Crisis Deepens. Coming Soon To USA?
Unemployed construction worker Roberto Sanchez could hear a time bomb ticking as he waited in line with 300 people outside a grocery store this week, hoping that corn meal or rice might be delivered later in the afternoon.
He fears that Venezuela could explode at any minute into political and economic chaos.
“We have no food. They are cutting power four hours a day. Crime is soaring. And (President Nicolás) Maduro blames everyone but himself for the mess we find ourselves in,” said Sanchez, 36. “We can’t go on like this forever. Something has to give.”
The question is what will give first. As the economy spirals into deeper disarray, protests aimed at driving the unpopular president out of office are growing. Maduro responded over the weekend by declaring a 60-day state of emergency to combat what he said are U.S.-sponsored efforts to overthrow his socialist government. It was around noon when a food truck rolled up to a Venezuelan state-subsidized supermarket in the town of Guarenas just east of the capital.
But, to the fury of the long line of people waiting out front, the cargo wasn’t unloaded. Instead soldiers took it away. The clubbing districts of Las Mercedes and San Ignacio in Caracas are as packed as ever, despite the economic crisis gripping Venezuela. But there is one notable difference: a lack of Polar beer. Empresas Polar SA, the country’s largest food and beverage company, has halted beer production because, it says in a statement on its website, it cannot obtain the foreign currency it needs to purchase malted barley. “The state of emergency isn’t improving anything. It is not making us eat better. There is only the black market and it is too expensive … this economic model of regulations is only making us poor, without any groceries, and hungry,” she says.
Venezuela’s opposition legislature has declared a “nutritional emergency,” proclaiming that the country simply does not have enough food to feed its population. The move comes after years of socialist rationing and shortages that forced millions to wait on lines lasting as long as six hours for a pint of milk, a bag of flour, or carton of cooking oil.
Opposition legislator Julio Borges announced the measure on Thursday, which would allow the legislature to push for more imports on basic food goods and inspect government-owned food companies to ensure they are meeting efficiency standards. “This will make corporations and expropriated lands produce food again, will simplify the process of national and foreign investment, and establish incentives for investors,” Borges promised. Venezuela food supermarket “South America” emergency nutrition health healthy economy collapse “economic collapse” life lifestyle people 2016 2017 oil line official hunger poverty “emergency supplies” latin charity leader leadership “united states” “food stamp” EBT “Clean water” “water filter” prepare survival news media entertainment shopping market eat supply “elite nwo agenda” gerald celente jim rogers marc faber gloom doom jsnip4 montagraph coast to coast am alex jones infowars louis farrakhan gold silver bullion crash end times earthquake california
Socialist party members are arguing that the decree goes beyond the scope of the power of the legislature and cannot override the executive decree President Nicolás Maduro put into motion in January, which declared an “economic emergency” and allowed the government to further intervene in private corporations. Venezuela’s Supreme Court extended the viability of the emergency decree this week, in a move many consider an attempt to keep the opposition legislature from asserting too much power over the food industry in Venezuela.
Socialist legislators also warned that “a food emergency would be an excuse for an American intervention.” While most economic experts attribute Venezuela’s dire economic situation to years of socialist mismanagement and, more recently, the international drop in crude oil prices, Venezuela’s government has long blamed the United States. Most recently, Maduro blamed American officials for allegedly prompting a violent supermarket riot in which the fight for bags of flour
Opposition economists, meanwhile, point at price controls which set prices for basic goods below market rates as causes for the shortages. It already owes China, its latest benefactor, $50 billion. such as raising the price of state-retailed gasoline, now below 1 cent per gallon, and altering a currency exchange system under which the U.S. dollar is worth 150 times more on the black market than it is at the official rate.
Unemployed construction worker Roberto Sanchez could hear a time bomb ticking as he waited in line with 300 people outside a grocery store this week, hoping that corn meal or rice might be delivered later in the afternoon.
He fears that Venezuela could explode at any minute into political and economic chaos.
“We have no food. They are cutting power four hours a day. Crime is soaring. And (President Nicolás) Maduro blames everyone but himself for the mess we find ourselves in,” said Sanchez, 36. “We can’t go on like this forever. Something has to give.”
The question is what will give first. As the economy spirals into deeper disarray, protests aimed at driving the unpopular president out of office are growing. Maduro responded over the weekend by declaring a 60-day state of emergency to combat what he said are U.S.-sponsored efforts to overthrow his socialist government. It was around noon when a food truck rolled up to a Venezuelan state-subsidized supermarket in the town of Guarenas just east of the capital.
But, to the fury of the long line of people waiting out front, the cargo wasn’t unloaded. Instead soldiers took it away. The clubbing districts of Las Mercedes and San Ignacio in Caracas are as packed as ever, despite the economic crisis gripping Venezuela. But there is one notable difference: a lack of Polar beer. Empresas Polar SA, the country’s largest food and beverage company, has halted beer production because, it says in a statement on its website, it cannot obtain the foreign currency it needs to purchase malted barley. “The state of emergency isn’t improving anything. It is not making us eat better. There is only the black market and it is too expensive … this economic model of regulations is only making us poor, without any groceries, and hungry,” she says.
Venezuela’s opposition legislature has declared a “nutritional emergency,” proclaiming that the country simply does not have enough food to feed its population. The move comes after years of socialist rationing and shortages that forced millions to wait on lines lasting as long as six hours for a pint of milk, a bag of flour, or carton of cooking oil.
Opposition legislator Julio Borges announced the measure on Thursday, which would allow the legislature to push for more imports on basic food goods and inspect government-owned food companies to ensure they are meeting efficiency standards. “This will make corporations and expropriated lands produce food again, will simplify the process of national and foreign investment, and establish incentives for investors,” Borges promised. Venezuela food supermarket “South America” emergency nutrition health healthy economy collapse “economic collapse” life lifestyle people 2016 2017 oil line official hunger poverty “emergency supplies” latin charity leader leadership “united states” “food stamp” EBT “Clean water” “water filter” prepare survival news media entertainment shopping market eat supply “elite nwo agenda” gerald celente jim rogers marc faber gloom doom jsnip4 montagraph coast to coast am alex jones infowars louis farrakhan gold silver bullion crash end times earthquake california
Socialist party members are arguing that the decree goes beyond the scope of the power of the legislature and cannot override the executive decree President Nicolás Maduro put into motion in January, which declared an “economic emergency” and allowed the government to further intervene in private corporations. Venezuela’s Supreme Court extended the viability of the emergency decree this week, in a move many consider an attempt to keep the opposition legislature from asserting too much power over the food industry in Venezuela.
Socialist legislators also warned that “a food emergency would be an excuse for an American intervention.” While most economic experts attribute Venezuela’s dire economic situation to years of socialist mismanagement and, more recently, the international drop in crude oil prices, Venezuela’s government has long blamed the United States. Most recently, Maduro blamed American officials for allegedly prompting a violent supermarket riot in which the fight for bags of flour
Opposition economists, meanwhile, point at price controls which set prices for basic goods below market rates as causes for the shortages. It already owes China, its latest benefactor, $50 billion. such as raising the price of state-retailed gasoline, now below 1 cent per gallon, and altering a currency exchange system under which the U.S. dollar is worth 150 times more on the black market than it is at the official rate.
BOOM: San Fran home prices record high, Two-thirds would struggle to cover $1,000 emergency
With high demand and a tight market, Bay Area
housing prices continue to soar, setting record highs in April in Santa
Clara and Alameda counties.
The median price of a single-family home in Santa Clara County hit
seven figures for the first time last month: $1 million on the button.
Prices grew even dizzier in San Mateo County, where the $1.2 million
average matched the previous record, set in May 2015.The East Bay also saw a run-up in prices, with the median Alameda County home reaching $750,000, up more than 10 percent from the previous month. Tugged upward by prices in Walnut Creek and other high-end areas, the median Contra Costa County price grew to $525,000, its steepest in seven years, according to new housing figures released Wednesday.
“We just don’t have a market under $700,000 in Walnut Creek,” said Alain Pinel agent Margaret Garber-Teeter. “And even at $700,000, you’re going to be in second-tier schools. So there’s still an affordability problem for young families, unless their parents help them, and a lot of young families get help.”
US Home Ownership – Massive Downtrend
source: tradingeconomics.com
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/home-ownership-rate
Poll: Two-thirds of US would struggle to cover $1,000 crisis
NEW YORK (AP) — Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming
up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive
poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years of recovery from
the Great Recession, Americans’ financial conditions remain precarious
as ever.These financial difficulties span all income levels, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Seventy-five percent of people in households making less than $50,000 a year would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. But when income rose to between $50,000 and $100,000, the difficulty decreased only modestly to 67 percent.
Even for the country’s wealthiest 20 percent — households making more than $100,000 a year — 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000.
“The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,” said Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings issues.
Harry Spangle is one of those Americans. A 66-year-old former electrician from New Jersey, Spangle said he thought he would always have a job and “lived for today” but lost his job before the downturn. He said he would have to borrow from friends or family in order to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b6a2
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