Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Thurs 03.11.2010
Ron Paul-National ID-Welcome to USSA
Your PAPERS Pleeez! Immigration Reform Effort Re-Emerges With New Senate Bill By Trish Turner - FOXNews.com Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging onto the national stage as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill. Three years after efforts by Congress to reform the immigration system went down in flames, the issue is slowly re-emerging on the national stage, as two senators from the opposite sides of the political aisle work on crafting another bill. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. are set to appear Thursday at the White House for a meeting with President Obama in which they are expected to seek his guidance on charting a path forward.
* * * * * Important * * * * * Katherine Albrecht interview with Campaign for Liberty Part 1 Katherine Albrecht, RFID expert , Genesis Communications Network Radio Host, and Author of the Book Spychips sat down with Steve Vasquez on April 20th to discuss Real Id and the Enhanced Drivers license. What does it all mean? Legislation for total control and tracking. China already has a billion RFID chips in use for tracking its citizens.
Katherine Albrecht interview with Campaign for Liberty Part 2 Here is Part two of the Interview. Katherine discusses Enhanced Drivers license and the security aspect. Also Homeland Securities role in shelving Real Id for a back door approach to a national Id card.
National ID card The Spectrum & Daily News Abill under discussion in the U.S. Senate could force Americans to take sides on two issues that are extremely important to millions of people: illegal immigration versus privacy. The controversial legislation appears to be a solution to the problem of illegal immigration. It would require the issuance of identification cards for all workers in the United States. Besides the name and photograph, these cards would contain biometric information, such as fingerprints, so they would be extremely difficult to manipulate. The goal is to tie the worker to his or her card. If the information doesn't check out, then the person isn't eligible to work legally in the country.
Alex details New Bio ID Card Bill in WSJ "Required" for All Americans
ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan By LAURA MECKLER - WSJ Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.
Worker ID Card Spurs Controversy - WSJ
Obama looking to give new life to immigration reform By Peter Nicholas - LATimes In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation. Reporting from Washington — Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already. Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.
RFID - CNN, Lou Dobbs - 2008 RFID - 150,000 workers required biometric ID
You probably got one too! Apparently, it's Next-Week-Is-Census-Day Day! Once the initial "you have got to be kidding me" response subsided, I called up the folks at the Census Bureau and they were kind enough to send me their canned response to the "are you freaking kidding me?" calls and emails they have been getting all day. Excerpted below: Thank you for your email. We here at the Census Bureau certainly understand your concern, and I want to assure you we care a great deal about being good stewards of the taxpayer's money.... Based on historical response rates, we expect roughly two thirds of households will mail back their form. The rest we will have to send an enumerator to collect the data required by the Constitution. You can imagine that follow-up is an expensive proposition. In fact, every one percent increase in the number of households who mail back the form saves the taxpayers about $85 million in expensive door-to-door follow up. That's why we advertise and promote, to increase the mail back response rate and help save on expensive labor to follow up.
Gold recovers near $1111 in Asia SINGAPORE (Commodity Online) : Gold prices recovered in Asian trade Thursday after an overnight dip, the biggest decline in five weeks. The precious yellow metal gained for the first time in four days after the metal’s drop by the most in five weeks spurred purchases.
Gold recovers mildly on fresh buying, silver also up MUMBAI: Gold prices recovered moderately by Rs 60 per ten grams to Rs 16,735 at the bullion market here today on emergence of local buying interest driven by firm European advices. Silver rose sharply due to fresh demand from stockists as well as good industrial support.
Competition for the IMF’s Gold? The Casey Files - by Jeff Clark - FinancialSense.com On February 24, Reuters reported that the Reserve Bank of India was “set to be a buyer” of the 191.3 tonnes (6.74 million ounces) of gold the IMF is selling. Although the bank wouldn’t comment directly on the possibility, they did say, “We are closely looking at the gold market... gold is a safe bet.” The article then quoted an unidentified official from the China Gold Association as saying, "It is not feasible for China to buy the IMF bullion, as any purchase or even intent to do so would trigger market speculation and volatility.” But the next day, Finmarket news agency in Russia reported that China “confirmed its intention” to buy the IMF gold. "Chinese officials have confirmed previous announcements from IMF experts and said that the purchasing of 191 tons of gold would not exert negative influence on the world market.”
A Constitutional Dollar Mises Daily: by Michael Rozeff Are you aware that a Federal Reserve dollar bill is not a constitutional dollar? Perhaps you are, but if so, do you know what a constitutional dollar literally is? Is it gold? Is it silver? Is it both? What is actually meant by a metal standard? Can the United States or any country be on two standards at the same time? Can two metals circulate as coin if there is but one standard? Or does one metal have to drive the other out of circulation? How and why does Gresham's law work when a country uses metal coin for money? In what ways are certain statements of Gresham's law misleading?
Hyperinflation Special Report (Update 2010) John Williams - Shadowstats.com Defining the Components of a Hyperinflationary Great DepressionPDF Deflation, Inflation and Hyperinflation. Inflation broadly is defined in terms of a rise in general prices due to an increase in the amount of money in circulation. The inflation/deflation issues defined and discussed here are as applied to goods and services, not to the pricing of financial assets. In terms of hyperinflation, there have been a variety of definitions used over time. The circumstance envisioned ahead is not one of double- or triple- digit annual inflation, but more along the lines of seven- to 10-digit inflation seen in other circumstances during the last century. Under such circumstances, the currency in question becomes worthless, as seen in Germany (Weimar Republic) in the early 1920s, in Hungary after World War II, in the dismembered Yugoslavia of the early 1990s and most recently, in Zimbabwe where the pace of hyperinflation may have been the most extreme ever seen.
Collateral Damage in the War on Depression by Adrian Ash - FinancialSense.com SLASHING the Bank of England's base interest rate to an historic low of 0.5% was supposed to "rebalance" the economy...tipping it away from galloping consumption towards an export-led recovery. But all that the Pound's slump since rates began sinking in March 2008 has done so far, however, is gift a 50% gain to UK gold owners.
Whatever Happened to Free Trade? Michael C. Moynihan - Reason.com With the tedious details of healthcare "reform" and tickle-fighting fantasists sucking up all of the media oxygen, it takes someone like James Pethokoukis, the most informative Greek-American since Dimetrios Synodinos, to remind us that President Obama is neglecting (or purposefully ignoring) a hugely important issue: free trade. Not that Obama has a problem with trade. In his State of the Union speech to Congress last January, he stated an ambitious goal of doubling U.S exports by 2015. It is trade policy that he seems uncomfortable with. That bold declaration in the speech was a direct result of lobbying from Obama’s economic advisers. But the wonks aren’t driving U.S trade policy in the Obama administration. The political team is. Its priority is passing healthcare reform. To pass healthcare reform, Obama needs his core union support. And a push for new trade agreements would alienate Big Labor.
Beijing seeks a shift in geopolitics By Willy Lam - AsiaTimes China's ongoing tussles with the United States over issues including Taiwan, Tibet and trade are in a sense nothing new. For more than two decades, Sino-US relations have periodically gone through rough patches over these and related causes of disagreement. What is new is China's much-enhanced global clout in the wake of the world financial crisis, which is coupled with a marked decline in America's hard and soft power. More importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is gunning for a paradigm shift in geopolitics, namely, new rules of the game whereby the fast-rising quasi-superpower will be playing a more forceful role. In particular, Beijing has served notice that it won't be shy about playing hardball to safeguard what it claims to be "core national interests".
China to assess gold, forex strategy BEIJING (Commodity Online) : China’s parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC) is likely to adopt a blueprint regarding country’s gold and forex positions. China's 2010 economic blueprint, which was officially unveiled at the plenary's opening, likely to set the country's target growth rate at the proverbial 8 percent. China has been quietly increasing its gold reserves in an apparent effort to hedge the weakening value of the dollar and stabilize the value of its massive foreign exchange reserves. One of the key issues that Chinese leaders will have to tackle is whether to let the yuan rise to help restructure the domestic economy and rebalance the global economy.
Last 10 years a ‘lost decade' for most investors By SCOTT BURNS Universal Press Syndicate - Houston Chronicle Many now call the last 10 years a “lost decade.” The immediate reference is to 10 years of going nowhere, or worse, in the stock market. Fortunately, the stock market isn't a good barometer of wealth for most people. That reality led me to wonder: Is it possible the decade wasn't so bad? Maybe the pain was just being felt by the truly wealthy? Is it possible the rest of us are just muddling along? The Case-Shiller home price index, after all, rose at an annual rate of 4.74 percent for the decade. That's well ahead of the 2.6 percent inflation rate for the period, in spite of the fall in home prices since the bubble broke. An appreciation of nearly 60 percent for the decade is no stick in the eye. It's got to count for something, right?
Investors can soon make bets on movie box office By Nathaniel Popper reporting from New York and Ben Fritz reporting from Los Angeles - LATimes Two new futures exchanges will let studios spread the financial risk of creating films.Welcome to Hollywood's newest version of risky business: movie derivatives. Two trading firms, one of them an established Wall Street player and the other a Midwest upstart, are each about to premiere a sophisticated new financial tool: a box-office futures exchange that would allow Hollywood studios and others to hedge against the box-office performance of movies, similar to the way farmers swap corn or wheat futures to protect themselves from crop failures. The Cantor Exchange, formed by New York firm Cantor Fitzgerald and set to launch in April, last week demonstrated its system to 90 Hollywood executives in a packed Century City hotel conference room. Amid a spirited trading-floor atmosphere, the participants shouted out guesses and made bets on how much "Alice in Wonderland" might rake in at the box office
Rosenberg: S&P 500 Overvalued by 26 Percent By: Dan Weil - MoneyNews.com Star economist David Rosenberg is sticking to his guns that the economy and the stock market are in trouble. He wrote in a letter to clients of his firm Gluskin Sheff + Associates that some of them say he’s too bearish, and other believe he’s changing his views when he mentions positive news. “I am not changing my macro or market view, but merely providing some color on why it is that the equity market refuses to go down even in the face of what has been a slate of disappointing economic news over the course of the past month,” Rosenberg wrote, according to the Financial Times.
Monthly U.S. Debt Hits a New Record By JOSEPH LAZZARO - DailyFinance.com Mixed news for the U.S. economy Wednesday, as the nation's monthly budget deficit hit a record $220.9. billion in February, the U.S. Treasury Department announced. Although a record amount, it was lower than expected by analysts. Equally significant, revenue in February rose 23% to $107.5 billion -- the first year-over-year revenue increase since April 2008. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected the U.S. government to post a $223.0 billion deficit in February, following a revised $42.6 billion deficit in January and a $91.4 billion deficit in December. The federal government ran a $193.9 billion deficit a year ago, in February 2009. It also posted a record $1.42 trillion deficit in fiscal 2009, following a $454.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2008. The $1.42 trillion 2009 deficit was nearly three times the 2008 deficit due mainly to the bank bailout and $787 billion fiscal stimulus package.
Pimco's Gross: Fed Rate Hike Is Six Months Away By: Dan Weil - MoneyNews.com The economy is too weak for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for at least six months, says Pimco chief investment officer Bill Gross. The central bank’s recent increase of its discount rate represents a nod toward Fed board members who are concerned about inflation rather than a wholesale change in Fed policy, he said. "The timing was a little unusual and surprising,” Gross recently told CNBC. “I think it was really a move to appease the three or four (inflation) hawks on the Fed," Gross said. "They've had their moment, and now we'll continue to see this type of fed funds level going forward."
The Case Against the Fed from a US Senator JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN If you read through this letter from US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is also the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Economic Policy, you will get a grasp of how badly the Fed has mishandled its responsibilities over the past ten years at least. I thought the Senator was far too kind and reserved in his criticism. Yes, the Fed did focus on inflation. Unfortunately the definition of inflation which they used was inappropriate, since it did not include the obvious asset bubbles which were created by the Fed's own monetary policies.
Goldman Earned $55.7 Million From Build America Fees By Michael McDonald March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, has made $55.7 million from the sale of $36.4 billion of Build America Bonds, about a third of the fees it earned from its municipal business, it said in response to queries from Iowa Senator Charles Grassley. The effort to underwrite the federally subsidized municipal bonds is “highly competitive” with “over 10 major firms” vying for the business, Goldman Chairman Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a letter dated March 1 to the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Grassley said in a letter to Blankfein last month that he is “concerned that American taxpayers are subsidizing larger underwriting fees for Wall Street investment banks.”
Bove: Cuomo Is Father of the Subprime Crisis By: Dan Weil - MoneyNews.com Superstar bank analyst Dick Bove lambastes New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, calling him the "father of the subprime crisis." The Rochdale Securities financial strategist said Cuomo helped push Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to finance mortgage loans to low income people who couldn’t afford them when he was secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001. "One of the key reasons why (Fannie and Freddie) are bankrupt today, and why the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in supporting them, is because of the edicts pushed through by Mr. Cuomo," Bove told CNBC.
France vows retaliation against US in air tanker dispute By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk France has vowed to retaliate against the United States for allegedly shutting Europe's aviation giant EADS out of a $50bn (£33.4bn) defence contract, warning of potential damage to the Atlantic alliance. "This is a serious affair," said France's Europe minister Pierre Lellouche. "I can assure you that there will be consequences." "You cannot expect Europeans to contribute to global defence if you deny their industries the right to work on both sides of the Atlantic," he said, adding that French president Nicolas Sarkozy would take action "at the appropriate time". The escalating spat comes after EADS withdrew this week from a joint bid with Northrop Grumman to supply the Pentagon with A330 air refuelling tankers, alleging that the procurement terms had been rigged to favour Boeing.
EU silent on Chinese currency move ANDREW WILLIS - EU Observer EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union has yet to react to comments made by China over the weekend that it is considering an end to the renminbi's unofficial peg with the dollar, in place since mid-2008. European Central Bank officials declined to comment on the issue on Wednesday (10 March), a similar stance to that taken by the bank's president Jean-Claude Trichet earlier this week. Mr Trichet said the Chinese currency issue was not discussed during a meeting of central bankers from industrialised and major emerging countries at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel on Monday.
Welcome to the United States of Iceland By Paul Smalera - Fortune NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's time to start paying attention to the financial sinkhole that Iceland is trying to climb out of -- the view from inside of it is eerily similar to our own. An Icelandic savings bank, Icesave, had attracted billions in deposits from hundreds of thousands of British and Dutch citizens, due to the phenomenally high interest rates it offered. Icesave collapsed in 2008, for much the same reason Lehman Brothers, WaMu, and hundreds of local savings banks did: its bankers used their cash to make complicated, bad, leveraged investments, mostly on real estate.
Greece getting its house in order - Papandreou Reuters via The Guardian WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said on Wednesday his country was working to get its fiscal house in order and wanted markets to recognize that. Speaking at the end of his first visit to the United Sates as Greece's new leader, Papandreou said his government was not trying to "scapegoat" its problems by blaming them on market speculators. Papandreou said European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Euro Group Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker backed Greece's push to rein in unregulated markets, such as credit default swaps, blamed for exacerbating Greece's problems by betting on its debt.
Greece Warns of Worse Economic Downturn The Greek economy is set to shrink by more than expected this year, the government said on Wednesday, as it braced for nationwide strikes protesting its plans for bringing the country's budget deficit under control. Greece, grappling with a ballooning deficit and a 300 billion euro ($407 billion) debt pile, told the European Union that 2010 gross domestic product (GDP) would "most likely" shrink by more than the 0.3 percent currently forecast.
Forbes rich list topped by Mexican mobile phone titan Carlos Slim Andrew Clark in New York - guardian.co.uk -- Developing nations storm Forbes rich list as America Movil's Carlos Slim beats Microsoft's Bill Gates to top spot The old order is under threat at the world's billionaires club. Traditionally dominated by Americans and Europeans, the top ranks of the world's richest people have been infiltrated by scores of ultra-rich entrepreneurs from the developing world – capped by the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim. Today, Slim, the titan of mobile phones in Mexico, criticised as a ruthless monopolist, was crowned as the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine, which calculated his net worth at $53.5bn (£35.7bn). Bolstered by a surge in the share price of his America Movil empire, Slim's wealth edged ahead of the $53bn fortune amassed by the Microsoft boss Bill Gates, making the portly cigar-smoking 70-year-old the first non-American to hold the top spot since 1994.
Judge Napolitano : Lies the Government Told You!
Memo to Barney Frank from a Retired Chief Fannie Mae Lobbyist By John M. - HousingDoom.com Doom friend (and occasional antagonist) Bill is always worth a look, especially when he speaks to the GSEs and politics. This is right in his wheelhouse. What is Barney Frank (D-Mass) thinking? by Bill Maloni I’m sure I’m not the first person to wonder what, beyond his legendary intelligence and quick wittedness, causes the cerebral and sometime volatile Chairman of the House Banking Committee to stake out the policy positions he takes. Recently, as the world now knows, Frank called for “abolishing” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He soon will initiate congressional hearings to produce that desired legislative result. The fact that the Obama Administration hasn’t reached the same fever pitched conclusion as Barney likely means that this atomization will not occur in an already volatile political year. Since moving forward in this regard—with no idea what to employ as a mortgage finance system replacement–is fraught with huge political and systemic mortgage business risk for the Democrats and the mortgage industry.
Politics, shaky economy create no rush to restructure Fannie and Freddie By Zachary A. Goldfarb - Washington Post -- The federal government has spent the past half year seeking to roll back its emergency efforts at propping up the financial markets -- with the notable exception of its involvement in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the government has pledged more and more money to cover the companies' losses, it has assured the public that planning was underway for overhauling the firms so the bailouts would end. As recently as December, the Obama administration said it expected to release a preliminary report on how to remake Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac around Feb. 1.
Economists Trim Forecasts for 2011 U.S. Growth MoneyNews.com U.S. economists raised their forecast for economic growth in 2010 in March, the third straight monthly rise, while trimming their growth forecast for 2011, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Economists surveyed earlier this month in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter said the economy is expected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2011, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than estimates made a month ago. But economists raised their 2010 growth forecast for the third consecutive month to 3.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from February. Still, the economists predicted the recovery would be mild given the depth of the recession.
Govt. workers feel no economic pain By David M. Dickson - WashingtonTimes.com The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department. Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed. Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.
Census Jobs Tough to Fill By ANA CAMPOY - WSJ U.S. Struggles to Hire Thousands of Bilingual Workers Needed for Accurate Count DALLAS — The U.S. Census Bureau is scouring Texas for an oddly elusive worker: the Spanish-speaking American who qualifies for the job. Texas is home to more Hispanics than any other state except California, and the pool of job seekers should be brimming due to the highest unemployment rate in years. Yet the agency can't seem to come up with enough workers. "It's hard to hire so many people," said Efren Salinas, a Census spokesman based in the heavily Hispanic southern part of the state.
Senate Passes $138 Billion Bill Extending Jobless Aid By Brian Faler March 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate approved a $138 billion measure that would extend unemployment benefits and provide additional aid to states in lawmakers’ second major effort this year to boost the economy. The chamber voted 62-36 for the legislation, which would also extend dozens of expiring tax cuts, ease corporate-pension requirements and head off cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors.
Costly Cash: In Texas Towns Try Zoning Out Payday Lenders By PALLAVI GOGOI - DailyFinance.com Brownsville, Texas, a city in the state's southernmost part, is taking on payday lenders. In December, it placed a six-month moratorium barring these lenders -- which specialize in short-term loans backed by collateral and with interest rates equivalent to 300% to 400% or more annually -- from opening any new "money stores" in town. "Our most vulnerable citizens are easy prey for these legal loan sharks, and we want to protect our citizens by regulating them," says Mayor Pat Ahumada. Located on the Mexican border, Brownsville has a population of 140,0000.
another unexpected foreclosure nightmare in the burbs. . . Foreclosure lawsuit fiasco upends Estates man’s retirement By MATT CLARK - NaplesNews.com NAPLES — It was retirement incarnate. Then, the foreclosure lawsuit came. Warren Nyerges, 45, left his law enforcement career and moved to Golden Gate Estates late last year with his wife. He was spending his days preparing his backyard for grass, painting the interior of his home and joking about the snow he abandoned in Cleveland. “I’ve had nothing but a ball. To come down here, it’s a life dream,” Nyerges said. To top it all off, the couple’s single-story, 2,700-square-foot home was paid off. Nyerges said he even offered $5,000 more than Bank of America was asking, quickly sealing the deal with title insurance. But on Feb. 18, a man came to the couple’s home with a lawsuit. Bank of America had begun foreclosing on the property, and Nyerges’ dream was temporarily put on hold.
No fridge is better than no house Jennifer Abel - guardian.co.uk That a woman was made homeless for not having enough electricity reveals America's modern-day sumptuary laws If you see a woman drowning the decent thing to do is toss her a life buoy, or at least leave her the hell alone; sitting on her head to push her deeper under water is wholly unacceptable behaviour. Unless you live in America and work for some local-level housing authority, in which case it's part of your job. Being poor sucks in any country but especially in the US, which is so proud of being the Richest Nation on Earth that it makes sure everyone lives up to that whether they can afford to or not. Consider the case of Avondale, Arizona resident Christine Stevens, who has been in deep water (financially speaking) since losing her bank job in January 2009. She decided to discontinue her electricity service and make do with solar panels – Arizona has no shortage of sunshine, after all – and using an ice box in lieu of a refrigerator. But such frugality defies Avondale city codes, which require a refrigerator, heating and cooling system, and electricity enough for all. So Stevens' house was condemned, and Stevens kicked out.
Unemployment tops 20% in eight California counties By Alana Semuels - LATimes The state's jobless rate of 12.5% in January was its worst on record and fifth-highest in the nation. For many California areas, unemployment rates moved persistently higher in January, indicating that the national economic recovery hasn't yet translated into jobs for the Golden State. New county-by-county figures released by the state Wednesday showed that in eight counties, more than 1 in 5 people were out of work. Moreover, revised numbers for last year show that fewer people were employed than was previously believed.
RealtyTrac: Florida foreclosure activity up in February South Florida Business Journal Although the foreclosure rate nationwide slipped 2 percent in February from the previous month, Florida continues to be dogged by an increasing number of foreclosures, according to the latest numbers from RealtyTrac. In fact, foreclosure activity in the Sunshine State rose by nearly 15 percent in February, over the previous month, and was up more than 16 percent from the prior-year period, according to the Irvine, Calif.-based online real estate company. Florida also continued to post the nation’s second-highest total number of foreclosures, with 54,032 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in February.
Detroit: the last days Julien Temple - guardian.co.uk Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope When the filmmaker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent. Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.
Nancy Pelosi on Health Care: Peter Suderman - Reason.com "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Like a Tupperware container full of smelly mystery meat, Nancy Pelosi says that the only way we can find out exactly what's in the health care bill is to try it: You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
Pelosi: we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it
Rush Limbaugh, Costa Rica bound? Richard Adams - Guardian.co.uk In praise of Costa Rica's healthcare system – although Rush Limbaugh appears to be unaware of its existence My colleagues at Cif America have an entertaining poll running at the moment on Rush Limbaugh's vow to move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform gets passed by Congress. So far more than 2,000 voters are hoping that Rush will up and leave – although of course that number may include opponents of healthcare reform who side with Rush.
District 666 Presents: An Interview with Katherine Albrecht about RFID by Aaron Russo
The Mark Of The Beast 666 - PROOF !!!
Men now finding time to get back into shape BY CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN - MIAMIHERALD.COM With the economy in recession, many men now have the time and the inclination to get back into shape. When the financial markets were soaring, Paul Tanner would leave his office at Lehman Brothers after a long day and head to Capital Grille on Brickell Avenue to entertain a client over juicy prime rib and a martini or two. Then came the recession. As business slowed, Tanner looked in the mirror and saw an overweight man whose wealth had declined and whose gut had enlarged. ``I had a check-in financially and emotionally,'' Tanner says. Like many other men, Tanner has traded martinis and cigars for dumbbells and running shoes. Now at UBS, he has lost more than 50 pounds since October 2008 and recently participated in a local triathlon. Tanner says he has recruited at least a half dozen other men to recommit to exercise, too.
WellPoint CFO Says California Previews Obama Premiums By Alex Nussbaum March 10 (Bloomberg) -- WellPoint Inc.’s plan to raise rates for some California customers by 39 percent, a rallying point for Democrats seeking a health-care overhaul, is a preview of the prices Americans will face if the proposal succeeds, the insurer’s chief financial officer said. The health-care bill pushed by President Barack Obama will force healthy people out of the market while doing nothing to control medical costs, just the conditions that led Indianapolis- based WellPoint to raise rates in California, CFO Wayne DeVeydt said today at an investor conference.
Can States Say "No Thanks" to ObamaCare's Health Insurance Mandate? Peter Suderman - Reason.com -- Nancy Pelosi may be convinced that we have to pass health care reform in order to find out what's in it, but if it passes, there's at least one provision we can already count on: an individual mandate to buy health insurance. Polling shows that this requirement is one of the bill's least popular features, so it's not exactly surprising to find that states are taking action to allow individuals to bypass such requirements. More than 30 states are considering such laws, and a ban on mandatory insurance has already passed in the Virginia Senate.
Kucinich: ‘Heads They Win, Tails We Lose’ Rep. Dennis Kucinich tells us why he isn’t buckling under pressure to vote for the president’s health care reform bill (“Every plan that’s put forth by our government ends up benefiting the health insurance industry”).
Hurricane Season Poses ‘Above-Normal’ Threat, AccuWeather Says By Charlotte Porter -- March 10 (Bloomberg) -- The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be more active than last year’s and poses an “above- normal” threat to the U.S. Gulf and East coasts, AccuWeather Inc. forecasters said today. AccuWeather foresees 16 to 18 named storms forming in the Atlantic Ocean, with five becoming hurricanes and two or three of them going ashore in the U.S. as major systems. In all, 15 storms probably will be in the western Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico, and seven may make landfall in the U.S., said Joe Bastardi, chief long-range and hurricane forecaster. “This year has the chance to be an extreme season,” Bastardi said in a statement. “Certainly much more like 2008 than 2009 as far as the overall threat to the United States East and Gulf coasts.”
Climate Wars! By Alan Caruba on - CHCH Wars come and go, cities are destroyed and rebuilt, monuments are erected, and life goes on. This is the traditional view of war, but right now the world is engaged in the latest battle of a “climate war” that has been going on since the 1970s when the Club of Rome concluded in a report titled, “The real enemy then, is humanity itself”, that the world’s population had to be reduced. Whereas wars in the modern era have killed millions and communism as practiced in the former Soviet Union and the early decades of Red China under Chairman Mao killed millions more on a scale with which war could not compete, the advocates of population reduction rival the worst despots to have ever walked among us.
Representative Kennedy on War Powers Is it fair to call this a meltdown? The war in Afghanistan—and the media’s lack of interest in it—is certainly a subject worth losing one’s temper over. Rep. Patrick Kennedy had trouble using his indoor voice during Wednesday’s debate in the House.
Biden Urges Support for Mideast Talks Before Tel Aviv Speech By Gwen Ackerman and Jonathan Ferziger -- March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden will speak in Tel Aviv on U.S.-Israeli relations, one day after telling Israelis and Palestinians they will be held accountable for actions jeopardizing peace efforts. “It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them,” Biden said yesterday in the West Bank city of Ramallah after meeting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Joe Biden offers Israel full US support Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem - guardian.co.uk In talks with Binyamin Netanyahu, US vice-president stresses need to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons The US vice-president, Joe Biden, promised the Israeli government today that it had the strong support of Washington and said the US was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel's security," Biden said, after meeting the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem. Their talks appeared to focus on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, rather than on the new round of low-key, indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians that was agreed yesterday.
Iran and Israel play cat and mouse By Mel Frykberg - AsiaTimes RAMALLAH - Iran and Israel appear to be spoiling for a fight, going by recent belligerent statements emanating from several regional capitals. Military movement on the ground is also lending credence to the idea that the mutual loathing and major ideological differences between the two countries could lead to vortex of violence capable of sucking the entire region into a new war. "Diplomacy and sanctions are not going to work with Iran. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is a messianic ideologue. He is a follower of the extremist Shi'ite cleric Mesach Yazdi, who even the late Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini rejected as too extreme," says senior policy advisor Dan Diker from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Palestinians snub peace talks because of Israeli homes expansion Rory McCarthy - guardian.co.uk -- Mahmoud Abbas 'not ready to negotiate' after Israel announces 1,600 new homes for East Jerusalem The Palestinians pulled out of a new round of indirect peace talks last night, even before they had begun, as a protest at Israel's decision to announce approval for hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. The decision to pull out, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration and comes after the US vice-president, Joe Biden, delivered an unusually strong rebuke to Israel. Amr Moussa said he had been told by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that even this low-key process of so-called "proximity talks" could not start unless Israel stopped expanding its settlements.
US Census GPS Tagging Part 1/4 with Katherine Albrecht
Wednesday 05-06-09 Host: George Noory Guest: Katherine Albrecht
US Census Concerns In the last hour, consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht shared an update on the current US census plan which incorporates tagging homes with GPS readings. Data collection is being done by some 140,000 workers for the 2010 census, and she expressed concern that some of the information they are gathering could be misused by the government.
US Census GPS Tagging Part 2/4 with Katherine Albrecht
US Census GPS Tagging Part 3/4 with Katherine Albrecht
US Census GPS Tagging Part 4/4 with Katherine Albrecht
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