Selfie Sticks Are Selling Out Everywhere

http://www.businessinsider.com/selfie-sticks-are-selling-out-everywhere-2014-12

Civil Asset Forfeiture: The Final Stage Of Collapse Of Empire

Only the Rich Can Afford to Keep Their Homes

Philadelphia prosecutors agreed last Thursday to halt efforts to seize the homes of two of the lead plaintiffs in a widely publicized federal suit challenging the city’s use of civil forfeiture laws in drug cases.

Philadelphia drops a Civil Asset Forfeiture case to prevent any court from ruling just seizing people’s property is unconstitutional. Phily.COM has reported the case of Christos Sourovelis and Doila Welch,who were both caught up in having their homes seized to pay police pensions when the police arrested a relative they claimed was dealing drugs on their properties. Today, you basically have to shun relatives and never pick up a hick-hiker in trouble for if they have any drugs, even marijuana, there goes your assets.

The prosecutors, only after these people has money for lawyers and the press got involved, moved for dismissal in Common Pleas Court. The prosecutor agreed to drop the cases against properties as long as both owners took “reasonable measures” to ensure no further drug crimes occurred there.

Here is the entire problem. Only the rich can win for it is your burden to fork-over huge legal fees. If you do not have the money for lawyers, there goes your property. This is what is desperately wrong in America. Any law passed becomes your burden to prove it is unconstitutional. They can actually pass the ancient right of kings under the Common Law since there is precedent known as Prima Noctum – first night. The governor, mayor, county freeholder, whoever, could “legally” claim the right to spend the first night in bed with any women getting married in their district. It would then become your burden to say – NO. That is uncivilized.

There is ABSOLUTELY nothing as it now stands for them to pass such a law. It is then the public’s burden to say no way and fight. This is seriously wrong within out legal system. This allows police to kill people randomly or to pull every person over on their way to work to see if they have all their identification. Whatever they do is OK because they do notFIRST have to go to some constitutional court and ask – is this law justified? Consequently, only the rich can defend the constitution. All others can pray – that’s about it.

This is the final stage of the collapse of the Roman Empire. When the state runs out of money, it historically attacks the people. In Rome, whole armies began sacking their own cities to get paid. The police are doing just that. Whatever they can confiscate goes to funding their own pensions. This is a national problem that will only get much worse going into 2020. We have NOBODY in Washington representing the people any more. It is all about them v the people. This is why we will see a rise in third-party activity for 2016.

Average:

As Medicaid Adds Millions, Lower Fees for Doctors Threaten Access to Care

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care.

The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expires on Thursday — just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid.

The impact will vary by state, but a study by theUrban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, estimates that doctors who have been receiving the enhanced payments will see their fees for primary care cut by 43 percent, on average.

Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute and co-author of the report, said Medicaid payments for primary care services could drop by 50 percent or more in California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, among other states.

In his budget request in March, President Obama proposed a one-year extension of the higher Medicaid payments. Several Democratic members of Congress backed the idea, but the proposals languished, and such legislation would appear to face long odds in the new Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses.

Dr. David A. Fleming, the president of the American College of Physicians, which represents specialists in internal medicine, said some patients would have less access to care after the cuts. It would make no sense to reduce Medicaid payments “at a time when the population enrolled in Medicaid is surging,” he said.

Dr. George J. Petruncio, a family physician in Turnersville, N.J., described the cuts as a “bait and switch” move. “The government attempted to entice physicians into Medicaid with higher rates, then lowers reimbursement once the doctors are involved,” he said.

But Nicole Brossoie, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, which runs the state’s Medicaid program, said the increase was not meant to be permanent. “The enhanced rates will not be extended in New Jersey,” Ms. Brossoie said. “It was always understood to be temporary.”

The White House says Medicaid is contributing to the “largest coverage gains in four decades,” with 9.7 million people added to theMedicaid rolls since October 2013, bringing the total to 68.5 million.More than one-fifth of Americans are now covered by Medicaid.

But federal officials have not set forth a strategy to expand access to care with enrollment, and in many states Medicaid payment rates for primary care services, like routine office visits and the management of chronic illnesses, will plunge back to 2012 levels, widely seen as inadequate.

For the last two years, the federal government has required state Medicaid agencies to pay at least as much as Medicare pays for primary care services. Family doctors, internists and pediatricians have thus received Medicare-level payments for primary care, with the federal government making up the difference in costs.

Continue reading the main story

The impending cuts are larger in states like California that have the widest gaps between Medicaid and Medicare rates.

A survey by the Ohio State Medical Association found that some Ohio doctors began accepting Medicaid patients because of the rate increase in 2013. Ohio doctors who were already participating in the program said they had accepted more Medicaid patients after the rate increase. And almost 40 percent of Ohio doctors indicated that they planned to accept fewer Medicaid patients when the extra payments lapsed.

Under federal law, Medicaid rates must be “sufficient to enlist enough providers” so that beneficiaries have at least as much access to care as the general population in their geographic area. In practice, doctors say, this standard is murky.

The Obama administration told the Supreme Court last month that health care providers had no legal right to enforce the “equal access” requirement in court. This section of the Medicaid law provides guidance to federal and state officials in setting Medicaid rates, but does not allow health care providers to sue state officials to enforce it, said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the solicitor general of the United States.

The case, Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, was filed against Richard Armstrong, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, by five providers of residential habilitation services to children with disabilities. They argued that Idaho’s payment rates fell below federal standards, and they sued to enforce federal law, invoking the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law “the supreme law of the land.”

The court sidestepped the issue in a similar case from California in 2012. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said then, in a dissenting opinion, that “nothing in the Medicaid Act allows providers or beneficiaries (or anyone else, for that matter) to sue to enforce” the equal-access provision.

Matt D. Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, which represents state officials, said his group had not lobbied for an extension of the Medicaid fee increase. “It has rewarded providers who were already doing the right thing, but did not bring in a flood of new providers,” Mr. Salo said.

The higher payments for primary care have been available in the traditional fee-for-service Medicaid program as well as in managed-care plans, which typically pay doctors a fixed amount per patient per month.

Joseph A. Reblando, a spokesman for Medicaid Health Plans of America, a trade group, said, “The fee increase was a good idea in concept, but it was built on an antiquated system in which doctors were paid a separate fee for each service.”

Boehner and GOP Allowed Obama to Add thousands of New Amnesty Workers With That 2015 Budget

Billions in wasted tax dollars, helped Obama inflate an already glutted government, Did nothing to stop the destruction of our immigration laws

Boehner and GOP Allowed Obama to Add thousands of New Amnesty Workers With That 2015 Budget

By Warner Todd Huston  December 27, 2014 | Comments| Print friendly |

This is why I despise government. Every decision made in DC adds thousands of new government placement at a cost of millions in salary and an ever expanding government. That is what happened when John Boehner did not immediately put a stop to Obama’s amnesty plans in that recently concluded budget negotiations.

One of the things that Barack Obama kicked into high gear with his illicit amnesty announcement was a government employee hiring frenzy. AsThe New York Times reports, as soon as GOP House Speaker John Boehner allowed Obama’s amnesty plan to keep its funding, 1,000 new federal jobs were opened up at a cost to the taxpayer of $40 million annually in salaries and benefits.

These new employees will be housed in a building in the DC environs (Crystal City, just across the river in Arlington, Virginia) that will cost taxpayers an additional $8 million in rent each year.

Even the left-wingers at the Times notes that this is a perfect example of how “swiftly” with the stroke of a pen and a single decision “a president’s words can produce bigger government.”

The fact is, with every such decision to create this new agency or enlarge the duties of that agency, or to initiate some new program or another, it always means the growth of government and more government jobs–all of which cost us all millions more a year in useless salaries and overly generous benefits.

Already this nation has gone topsy-turvy in that the most lucrative jobs from an individual’s perspective are government jobs. Government workers make better pay, have more time off, can retire earlier, and have better benefits than anyone in the private sector.

And government jobs offer little of value to the economy or the nation. Government doesn’t create jobs. It merely costs those of us working in productive jobs more in wasted tax dollars.

Sadly, by only mouthing the anti-amnesty line, House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican Party worked hand-in-hand with Barack Obama to cost the citizens billions in wasted tax dollars, helped Obama inflate an already glutted government, and did nothing to stop the destruction of our immigration laws.

Dipping Into Auto Equity Devastates Many Borrowers

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102295592

The rusting 1994 Oldsmobile sitting in a driveway just outside St. Louis was an unlikely cash machine.

That was until the car's owner, a 30-year-old hospital lab technician, saw a television commercial describing how to get cash from just such a car, in the form of a short-term loan.

The lab technician, Caroline O'Connor, who needed about $1,000 to cover her rent and electricity bills, believed she had found a financial lifeline.

Read MoreConsumers driving up record auto loans: Experian

"It was a relief," she said. "I did not have to beg everyone for the money."

Her loan carried an annual interest rate of 171 percent. More than two years and $992.78 in debt later, her car was repossessed.

Bariscan Celik | Getty Images

"These companies put people in a hole that they can't get out of," Ms. O'Connor said.

The automobile is at the center of the biggest boom in subprime lending since the mortgage crisis. The market for loans to buy used cars is growing rapidly.

More from The New York Times:
For Used Cars, Borrowers Pay Sky-High Rates
Miss a Payment? Good Luck Moving That Car
At Takata, President Cedes Job to Chief

And similar to how a red-hot mortgage market once coaxed millions of borrowers into recklessly tapping the equity in their homes, the new boom is also leading people to take out risky lines of credit known as title loans.

They are, roughly speaking, the home equity loans of subprime auto. In these loans, which can last as long as two years or as little as a month, borrowers turn over the title of their cars in exchange for cash — typically a percentage of the cars' estimated resale values.

"Turn your car title into holiday cash," TitleMax, a large title lender, declares in a recent television commercial, showing a Christmas stocking overflowing with money.

More than 1.1 million households in the United States used auto title loans in 2013, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — the first time the agency has included the loans in its annual survey.

Title loans are becoming an increasingly prevalent form of high-cost, short-term credit in subprime finance, as regulators in a number of states crack down on payday loans.

For many borrowers, title loans, also sometimes known as motor-vehicle equity lines of credit or title pawns, are having ruinous financial consequences, causing owners to lose their vehicles and plunging them further into debt.

A review by The New York Times of more than three dozen loan agreements found that after factoring in various fees, the effective interest rates ranged from nearly 80 percent to more than 500 percent. While some loans come with terms of 30 days, many borrowers, unable to pay the full loan and interest payments, say that they are forced to renew the loans at the end of each month, incurring a new round of fees.

Customers of TitleMax, for example, typically renewed their loans eight times, a former president of the company disclosed in a 2009 deposition.

And because many lenders make the loan based on an assessment of a used car's resale value, not on a borrower's ability to repay that money, many people find that they are struggling to keep up almost as soon as they drive off with the cash.

As a result, roughly one in every six borrowers who take out title loans have their cars repossessed, according to an analysis of 561 title loans by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit in Durham, N.C.

The lenders argue that they are providing a source of credit for people who are unable to obtain less-expensive loans from banks. The high interest rates, the lenders say, are necessary to offset the risk that borrowers will stop paying their bills.

Title loans are part of a broader lending boom tied to used cars. Auto loans allowing subprime borrowers — those with credit scores at 640 or below — to buy cars have surged in the last five years.

Read More5 tips to get the best deal on a car loan

The high interest rates on the loans have enticed an influx of Wall Street money. Private equity firms are investing in lenders, and some big banks are ramping up their auto lending to people with blemished credit.

Propelling this lending spree are the cars themselves, and how essential they are in people's lives.

In most parts of the country, a car is vital to participating in the work force, and lenders are betting that people will do virtually anything to keep their cars, choosing to make auto loan payments before paying for just about any other expense.

The title lending industry, perhaps more than any other facet of subprime auto lending, thrives because of the car's importance.

While people seeking title loans are often at their most desperate — dealing with a job loss, a divorce or a family illness — the lenders are willing to extend them loans because they know that most borrowers will pay their bill to keep their cars. Some lenders do not even bother to assess a borrower's credit history.

"The threat of repossession turns the borrower into an annuity for the lenders," Diane Standaert, the director of state policy at the Center for Responsible Lending, said.

Unable to raise the thousands of dollars he needed to repair his car, Ken Chicosky, a 39-year-old Army veteran, felt desperate. He received a $4,000 loan from Cash America, a lender with a storefront in his Austin, Tex., neighborhood.

The loan, which came with an interest rate of 98.3 percent, helped him fix up the 2008 Audi that he relied on for work, but it has torpedoed his credit score. Mr. Chicosky, who is also attending college, uses some of his financial aid money to pay his title loan bill.

Mr. Chicosky said he knew the loan was a bad decision when he received the first bill. It detailed how he would have to pay a total of $9,346 — a sum made up of principal, interest and other fees.

"When you are in a situation like that, you don't ask very many questions," he said.

Cash America declined to comment.

Rapid Expansion

Clutching handfuls of cash, a former Miss America contestant zips around in a red sports car, dancing and rapping about how TitleMax has "your real money."

Commercials like these help companies like TitleMax entice borrowers to take on the costly loans. TitleMax, a brand of TMX Finance, is privately held — like virtually all of the title loan companies — and does not disclose much financial information. But a regulatory filing for the first three months of 2013 offers a glimpse into the industry's tremendous growth.

During that period, the profits at TMX Finance rose by 47 percent from the same period two years earlier, and the number of stores it operated nearly doubled to 1,108. The total volume of loans originated during the first three months of last year reached $169 million, up 67 percent from the same period in 2011.

TMX Finance, based in Savannah, Ga., wants to expand further, opening stores in states where regulations are "favorable," according to a 2013 regulatory filing. Only a few years after emerging from bankruptcy in 2009, the company is enjoying an influx of cash from mainstream investors. Big bond funds managed by Legg Mason and Putnam Investments have purchased portions of TMX Finance's debt. The company also borrowed $17.5 million to buy a private jet.

High speed internet access in the US reaches farther, goes faster

Thought Google Fiber's gigabit connections sounded fast? Forget about that -- it's going to be like dialing-in to 56k for folks in Minneapolis. US Internet has just announced that it's bring 10 gigabit-per-second connections to the city next summer. The service costs a steep $400 a month, but "regular" gigabit internet will be available for a more palatable $65. The firm's high-end connections will only be available to 30,000 households west of the interstate, but it's a step in the right direction.

Minnesota isn't the only state in the region getting a connectivity upgrade: the hills ofeastern Kentucky are getting overhauled, too. The state's eastern mountains aren't typically known as a hub of technology, but state legislators have struck a deal that could change that. Over the next several years, Macquarie Capital will build a "ring" of fiber that runs through five Kentucky counties, eventually lighting up the entire state by the rend of 2018.

"Eastern Kentucky will bee equal to the word in limitless technology," Congressmen Hal Rogers said of the deal. "No more boundaries sketched by our terrain, no more boundaries for high tech work." Rogers says that fiber "levels" the Appalachian mountains, enabling the state to create a "Silicon Holler" that will keep Kentucky current.

France’s Anti-Semitic Nightmare

The Land of Enlightenment is fast becoming the land of darkness for France’s Jewish citizens.

And many in the French Jewish community have been aware of this sad situation for some time, a realization that was reinforced by the attack on two synagogues by Muslim rioters in Paris last summer during the Gaza conflict. But the latest shocking, anti-Semitic crime that occurred early in December in the same city has deepened the community’s feeling that the possibility of living peaceful lives with a Jewish identity in France is rapidly disappearing.

The latest outrage produced by France’s growing anti-Semitic climate, found especially in its Muslim community, concerns the brutal and horrifying robbery of a Jewish family in their home in Creteil, a Parisian suburb. Three gloved and masked men, armed with pistols and a sawed-off shotgun, gained entrance to the family’s apartment after ringing the doorbell. Present in the apartment were a young man, 21, and his 19-year-old girlfriend, who answered the door. Both were immediately tied up and robbed of jewellery, cellphones, computers and bank cards.

“They said they knew we had cash in the flat ‘because Jews have money and they never keep it in the bank’,” the young man, identified only as Jonathan, said in an interview on French radio.

But the worst was yet to come. While one of the robbers left to use the bank cards, the man and his girlfriend were placed in different rooms, and the young woman was then raped.

Police arrested the suspects soon after the robbery, while a fourth accomplice is being sought. French law does not allow the immediate publication of their identities; but a German newspaper reported their first names as Ladji, Yazine and Omar, while a British publication stated two were “of African and North African origin.”

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve stated the “anti-Semitic character” of the attack “appeared confirmed.” Unsurprisingly, the savagery perpetrated on the young Jewish couple also may not have been the gang’s first violent, anti-Semitic crime. Police suspect the criminals of having beaten a man in his seventies in Creteil in November because he was Jewish. Two young Jews, aged 18 and 23, were also viciously assaulted last May in the same suburb, which is home to many Parisian Jews. The two victims had just left their synagogue on a Saturday evening. Their assailants are unknown.

Regarding the home invasion, it was reported the gang had been monitoring their target for some time. It was reported that a couple of days before the robbery, one of the criminals had even gone to the apartment under a phony pretext to check whether Jews really lived there. The gang verified the family’s religious identity when the father appeared wearing a kippa.

“The horrible side of this aggression is its premeditation,” Haim Korsia, the grand rabbi of France, told Le Figaro newspaper. “It is not a crime of opportunity. It was thought through and reflected on. This act was ripened through a deeply rooted hatred over a length of time. It is therefore a very serious act that poses the question about the cohabitation of different persons in a same space.”

Some French Jews, however, have been answering with their feet the “cohabitation” question Korsia brings up. According to the German newspaper, Die Welt, immigration of French Jews to Israel is set to almost double over last year, when 3,280 left for the Jewish state, an increase of 70 percent over 2012. French Jews also formed the largest group of new immigrants to Israel this year. France has the largest Jewish community in Europe with an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 members.

According to Le Figaro, young, French Jewish families are also leaving France for Israel both because of the country’s increasing anti-Semitism, which, they believe, endangers their children, and the French economy’s poor performance. Parents fear putting their children into Jewish schools and summer camps because of anti-Semitic attacks. And who can blame them when one recalls French jihadist Mohammed Merah, who murdered four people, three of them children, at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012. Muslim rioters yelling “Death to Jews” in Paris during last summer’s anti-Israeli demonstrations have probably spurred others to head for France’s exits.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky is the director of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the country’s official immigration organization. In an interview with Die Welt, he related a telling incident concerning anti-Semitism in France and the fear it has engendered.  Accompanying a plane full of French Jews immigrating to Israel last summer, he said he asked the passengers, after they had received instructions concerning how they should react to rocket attacks in their new country, whether they had any fear?

“And they answered me: ‘No, in France we had fear. That’s over with here; we don’t have to hide’,” recalled Sharansky.

Sharansky also stated in the interview that anti-Semitism in parts of Paris has become so prevalent, it is dangerous even to go for a walk wearing a kippa.

“The threat here in Israel is different. Here, one can fight for his home,” he said. “In Europe, on the other hand, especially in France, the feeling is becoming stronger and stronger among Jews that they don’t have a home there anymore.”

And they most likely won’t, at least in France, if the political reaction to the anti-Semitic outrage in Creteil is anything to go by. The right words of condolence and outrage were said afterwards by all officials about the tragedy, but solutions to counter France’s growing Jew hatred were noticeably lacking.

President Francois Hollande serves as a good example of this phenomenon. He called the rape and robbery “unbearable violence” and “an assault on all France holds dear,” adding it proves the “fight against anti-Semitism must be carried out every day.” However, what Hollande left unsaid was how this fight was to be conducted and how it could be won.

Moreover, while Hollande says anti-Semitism must be fought, his Socialist Party (SP) supports a pro-Muslim immigration policy, since the SP views France’s six million strong Muslim community as its voting and ideological constituency. An increase in Muslim immigration, however, is a disaster for any struggle against anti-Semitism, as Jew hatred is highest among French Muslims. Many arrive in France from North African and other Islamic countries already possessing a strong hatred for Jews.

Korsia found it encouraging that “the social body” in France felt revulsion over the crime in Corteil, which, to him, was a “note of hope.” France’s Grand Rabbi would now like to see both Muslims and Jews approach each other and “encourage dialogue between the religions …especially, to reinvest in the national community.”

“It is necessary to work ceaselessly to make France a place of intelligence, of sharing, of respect, and to fight against those who do not want this,” he said.

Despite Korsia’s excellent, humanitarian intentions, however, the cards appear to be stacked against him. It is difficult to see how civilised dialogue will ever stop Islamist brown shirts, steeped in a deep, SS-like Jew hatred, from committing future barbarisms similar to that in Creteil, if not worse.

But France’s people should take note. A similar, virulent and violent anti-Semitism destroyed another leading European state 70 years ago. And if Jew hatred in France is left unchecked, their country appears destined for a similar, tragic fate.

“The hate against Jews in France is only the beginning,” warns Sharansky. “History shows that there, where Jews are being excluded, other people later become victims of the same ideology.”

Spain Takes a Giant Step Backward, Towards Its Dark Past

By Don Quijones, freelance writer, translator in Barcelona, Spain, and editor at WOLF STREET. Mexico is his country-in-law.  Raging Bull-Shit is his modest attempt to scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media.

Thousands of protestors, both young and old, took to the streets and central plazas of some thirty Spanish cities today to protest for the right to protest. It is a right that should be respected in any self-respecting democracy.

But not in Spain, thanks to new legislation which is on the verge of becoming law. Under the Orwellian-titled Law for Citizen Security, or more aptly named “Gag Law,” virtually all forms of political protest, including all non-violent forms, will soon be criminalized. But not with penal charges – most criminal cases brought against non-violent political demonstrators are promptly thrown out of court – but administrative ones. That way, the government can circumvent the traditional checks and balances of the criminal justice system while pocketing millions in administrative fines.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the financial sanctions the government seeks to impose (and, of course, collect upon) for acts of political protest or disobedience:

• Surrounding a government building: €30,000
• Criticizing or insulting the country, government or head of state during a protest or on social media: €30,000
• Participating in a demonstration that does not have the government’s prior approval: €100 – €1,000
• Organizing a demonstration that turns violent: €30,000
• Participating non-violently in a demonstration that gets out of control: €1,000
• Refusal to show personal documentation (I.D. card, passport) to the police: €1,000
• Uploading images of riot police in action that the government considers against their honor, intimacy or the public image of the police force: €100-€1,000.
• Taking part in a demonstration outside a political party’s headquarters on election day: €30,000-€600,000.
• Trying to prevent the forced eviction of a local resident, something that has become common practice among communities in recent years: €1,000-€30,000.

The list goes on and on while the fines rise and fall between €100 and €600,000. For the government, the sweeping new measures are all about “securing public order,” as a prerequisite for “ensuring individual liberty” – a roundabout way of saying that it is instituting a police state to protect itself.

For many Spanish people, the new law is the ultimate affront, bearing disturbing echoes of the Public Order Tribunal that Franco’s dictatorship used to try political crimes such as public criticism of the Chief of State, justice courts and government; rebellion and sedition; public disorder, illegal propaganda, and the discovery and dissemination of official state secrets.

The Ultimate Betrayal
Resurrecting the ghosts of Spain’s dark Francoist past is the ultimate refuge of a scoundrel government that has reneged on just about all of its election pledges, is mired neck-deep in just about every political corruption scandal imaginable (I wrote about it in April last year: Spain’s Descent into Banana Republicanism), and is to a great extent directly responsible for the collapse of some of Spain’s biggest savings banks.

Having lost all political legitimacy and most of the public’s trust, the Rajoy regime is doing what most desperate governments do when their back is firmly up against the wall: protect its own neck, and those of its corporate and financial masters (many of whom bear a striking resemblance to the same corporate and financial masters that not so long ago enjoyed Franco’s zealous protection).

The fact that the Rajoy regime has an overwhelming majority in parliament means that its every wish is quite literally Spain’s command. Despite the fact that the Citizens’ Security Law is opposed unanimously by every other political party in the land, not to mention over 80 percent of the Spanish public, it nonetheless passed through congress with breezy ease.

Dependent Judiciary, Government Controlled Media

But it’s not just in the political sphere that Rajoy et al are making their unwieldy presence felt. Just in the past week Spain’s Attorney General, Eduardo Torres Dulce, resigned, citing outside (i.e. government) interference in his duties. Two of the main causes of Torres Dulce’s fallout with the government were his refusal to stop the court case against the governing Popular Party’s chief treasurer, Luís Barcenas, and his initial unwillingness to launch a criminal case against Catalonia’s premier Artur Mas for daring to call a purely symbolic mock-referendum on November 11.

Torres Dulce’s replacement – a judge by the name of Consuelo Madrigal Martínez-Pereda – will be Spain’s third Attorney General in as many years. Just how long she lasts in the job will, one assumes, depends on her ability and willingness to see things the government’s way.

Another institution that is under intense pressure to see things through the government’s lens (or else!) is the state media. In the last three years virtually all voices critical of the government’s deeply unpopular austerity measures have been purged from both national radio and television. The Rajoy regime has also had a leading hand in the removal of a number of chief editors from national newspapers, including allegedly El Mundo and La Vanguardia.

None of these actions are remotely befitting of a supposedly democratic government. But then, just as I wrote a year ago in Fear Loathing and Collective Amnesia in Crisis Ridden Spain, Spain’s transition into a fully fledged constitutional democracy never came even close to completion. Now it’s being reversed at breakneck pace.

Indeed, the only remotely positive news is that the Rajoy government has just eleven months of absolute majority left. After the next elections the Popular Party will either have to form part of a coalition government or be demoted to the opposition benches. That said, Rajoy & Co can do a hideous amount of damage in eleven months. By Don Quijones

Obama’s NLRB brings down the hammer on McDonald’s

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all the moves that Barack Obama is making now that the election is over. In one which could have easily been overlooked, the President’s highly union-friendly National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has handed down a series of complaints against fast food giant McDonald’s.

In a significant victory for fast-food demonstrators, the Obama administration filed 13 legal complaints on Friday against McDonald’s USA, LLC, alleging 78 instances in which it violated federal labor law by punishing workers for taking part in fast food protests.

The complaints allege that the company and its franchisees retaliated against protesters by reducing their hours or firing them. It’s illegal to retaliate against any worker for “concerted activities” to protest workplace conditions, even when no union organizing takes place — which was almost always the case in the fast food protests.

What we’re seeing here is yet another case of Obama administration officials changing the rules to satisfy the social justice warriors in his base. The vast majority of McDonald’s outlets around the country are franchise operations which have private owners who pay a fee to use and maintain the chain’s name and brand, provided they operate within established corporate guidelines. The franchise owners are the actual employers and take responsibility for all personnel management decisions, hiring, firing, the setting of hours, etc. But earlier this year the NRLB general counsel redefined the rules of the game and said that McDonald’s could be considered a “joint employer” for purposes of such actions.

This is quite convenient for union organizers who would much rather go after the deep pockets of McDonald’s and other national brands than the individual operator who owns one or a handful of franchises. And make no mistake, it’s the SIEU that is behind most of this unrest. They want McDonald’s to magically summon up the money to double their labor costs, knowing that if they can organize the people working in these starter jobs and jack up their wages, they will be able to collect a fair portion of that money for themselves. But they have help from other groups as well. Take a closer look at this picture from a recent protest.

I wonder what the Socialist Worker has to do with all this?

Socialist Worker is a revolutionary socialist newspaper produced by the Socialist Workers Party, Britain’s largest revolutionary socialist organisation. It has been published every week since 1968. This website contains online reports, articles from the print edition, together with an archive of Socialist Worker stories going back to 1999.

My, my… there’s a great combo for you. That’s a better match than a Big Mac and a super sized order of fries.

Harvard Takes Political Correctness to an Entirely New Level of Stupidity

n a move that will certainly go down as one of the most ridiculous decisions in an effort to be politically correct, the dining services at Harvard University, the esteemed Ivy League institution, has removed the SodaStream labels from their water machines which were purchased from a company owned by SodaStream. This was done in an effort to end what was deemed as ‘microaggression’ towards Palestinian students.


SodaStream is based in Israel and operates its plant out of the West Bank. While the university’s dining services stopped purchasing machines from the company after an outcry from anti-Israel student activists, they did have machines already operating in the dining room. 

Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash, a member of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, spoke with the Harvard Crimson, the school’s newspaper, about the dangers of these machines. She said, “These machines can be seen as a microaggression to Palestinian students and their families and like the University doesn’t care about Palestinian human rights.” 

You may be wondering, “What exactly is a microaggression?” According to activists, a microaggression is a minor everyday statement or action that entrenches discrimination or degrades a person based on their group identity.

The anti-Israel activists believe that these inanimate objects can be harmful to their psyches, therefore they demanded their removal. Rather than remove the entire machine, Harvard’s dining services complied and removed the labels so that students didn’t have to read the words SodaStream, thereby saving their psychological well-being.

Leadership of the university, however, said that this unilateral decision made by dining services is in violation of Harvard’s school policy. Provost Alan Garber said in a statement, “Harvard University’s procurement decisions should not and will not be driven by individuals’ views of highly contested matters of political controversy. If this policy is not currently known or understood in some parts of the University, that will be rectified now.”
The incident is being investigated.

Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives

The sudden dramatic collapse in the price of oil appears to be an act of geopolitical warfare against Russia. The result could be trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses; and the FDIC could be liable, following repeal of key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act last weekend.

Senator Elizabeth Warren charged Citigroup last week with “holding government funding hostage to ram through its government bailout provision.” At issue was a section in the omnibus budget bill repealing the Lincoln Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, which protected depositor funds by requiring the largest banks to push out a portion of their derivatives business into non-FDIC-insured subsidiaries.

Warren and Representative Maxine Waters came close to killing the spending bill because of this provision. But the tide turned, according to Waters, when not only Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, but President Obama himself lobbied lawmakers to vote for the bill.

It was not only a notable about-face for the president but represented an apparent shift in position for the banks. Before Jamie Dimon intervened, it had been reported that the bailout provision was not a big deal for the banks and that they were not lobbying heavily for it, because it covered only a small portion of their derivatives. As explained in Time:

The best argument for not freaking out about the repeal of the Lincoln Amendment is that it wasn’t nearly as strong as its drafters intended it to be. . . . [W]hile the Lincoln Amendment was intended to lasso all risky instruments, by the time all was said and done, it really only applied to about 5% of the derivatives activity of banks like Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, according to a 2012 Fitch report.

Quibbling over a mere 5% of the derivatives business sounds like much ado about nothing, but Jamie Dimon and the president evidently didn’t think so. Why?

A Closer Look at the Lincoln Amendment

The preamble to the Dodd-Frank Act claims “to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” Butit does this through “bail-in”: authorizing “systemically important” too-big-to-fail banks to expropriate the assets of their creditors, including depositors. Under the Lincoln Amendment, however, FDIC-insured banks were not allowed to put depositor funds at risk for their bets on derivatives, with certain broad exceptions.

In an article posted on December 10th titled “Banks Get To Use Taxpayer Money For Derivative Speculation,” Chriss W. Street explained the amendment like this:

Starting in 2013, federally insured banks would be prohibited from directly engaging in derivative transactions not specifically hedging (1) lending risks, (2) interest rate volatility, and (3) cushion against credit defaults. The “push-out rule” sought to force banks to move their speculative trading into non-federally insured subsidiaries.

The Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2013 allowed a two-year delay on the condition that banks take steps to move swaps to subsidiaries that don’t benefit from federal deposit insurance or borrowing directly from the Fed.

The rule would have impacted the $280 trillion in derivatives primarily held by the “too-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks that include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Although 95% of TBTF derivative holdings are exempt as legitimate lending hedges, leveraging cheap money from the U.S. Federal Reserve into $10 trillion of derivative speculation is one of the TBTF banks’ most profitable business activities.

What was and was not included in the exemption was explained by Steve Shaefer in a June 2012 article in Forbes. According to Fitch Ratings, interest rate, currency, gold/silver, credit derivatives referencing investment-grade securities, and hedges were permissible activities within an insured depositary institution. Those not permitted included “equity, some credit and most commodity derivatives.” Schaefer wrote:

For Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the rule is almost a non-event, as they already conduct derivatives activity outside of their bank subsidiaries. (Which makes sense, since neither actually had commercial banking operations of any significant substance until converting into bank holding companies during the 2008 crisis).

The impact on Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and to a lesser extent, Wells Fargo, would be greater, but still rather middling, as the size and scope of the restricted activities is but a fraction of these firms’ overall derivative operations.

A fraction, but a critical fraction, as it included the banks’ bets on commodities. Five percent of $280 trillion is $14 trillion in derivatives exposure – close to the size of the existing federal debt. And as financial blogger Michael Snyder points out, $3.9 trillion of this speculation is on the price of commodities.

Among the banks’ most important commodities bets are oil derivatives. An oil derivative typically involves an oil producer who wants to lock in the price at a future date, and a counterparty – typically a bank – willing to pay that price in exchange for the opportunity to earn additional profits if the price goes above the contract rate. The downside is that the bank has to make up the loss if the price drops.

As Snyder observes, the recent drop in the price of oil by over $50 a barrel – a drop of nearly 50% since June – was completely unanticipated and outside the predictions covered by the banks’ computer models. The drop could cost the big banks trillions of dollars in losses. And with the repeal of the Lincoln Amendment, taxpayers could be picking up the bill.

When Markets Cannot Be Manipulated

Interest rate swaps compose 82% of the derivatives market. Interest rates are predictable and can be controlled, since the Federal Reserve sets the prime rate. The Fed’s mandate includes maintaining the stability of the banking system, which means protecting the interests of the largest banks. The Fed obliged after the 2008 credit crisis by dropping the prime rate nearly to zero, a major windfall for the derivatives banks – and a major loss for their counterparties, including state and local governments.

Manipulating markets anywhere is illegal – unless you are a central bank or a federal government, in which case you can apparently do it with impunity.

In this case, the shocking $50 drop in the price of oil was not due merely to the forces of supply and demand, which are predictable and can be hedged against. According to an article by Larry Elliott in the UK Guardian titled “Stakes Are High as US Plays the Oil Card Against Iran and Russia,” the unanticipated drop was an act of geopolitical warfare administered by the Saudis. History, he says, is repeating itself:

The fourfold increase in oil prices triggered by the embargo on exports organised by Saudi Arabia in response to the Yom Kippur war in 1973 showed how crude could be used as a diplomatic and economic weapon.

Now, says Elliott, the oil card is being played to force prices lower:

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.

. . . [A]ccording to Middle East specialists, the Saudis want to put pressure on Iran and to force Moscow to weaken its support for the Assad regime in Syria.

War on the Ruble

If the plan was to break the ruble, it worked. The ruble has dropped by more than 60% against the dollar since January.

On December 16th, the Russian central bank counterattacked by raising interest rates to 17% in order to stem “capital flight” – the dumping of rubles on the currency markets. Deposits are less likely to be withdrawn and exchanged for dollars if they are earning a high rate of return.

The move was also a short squeeze on the short sellers attempting to crash the ruble. Short sellers sell currency they don’t have, forcing down the price; then cover by buying at the lower price, pocketing the difference. But the short squeeze worked only briefly, as trading in the ruble was quickly suspended, allowing short sellers to cover their bets. Who has the power to shut down a currency exchange? One suspects that more than mere speculation was at work.

Protecting Our Money from Wall Street Gambling

The short sellers were saved, but the derivatives banks will still get killed if oil prices don’t go back up soon. At least they would have been killed before the bailout ban was lifted. Now, it seems, that burden could fall on depositors and taxpayers. Did the Obama administration make a deal with the big derivatives banks to save them from Kerry’s clandestine economic warfare at taxpayer expense?

Whatever happened behind closed doors, we the people could again be stuck with the tab. We will continue to be at the mercy of the biggest banks until depository banking is separated from speculative investment banking. Reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act is supported not only by Elizabeth Warren and others on the left but by prominent voices such as David Stockman’s on the right.

Another alternative for protecting our funds from Wall Street gambling can be done at the local level. Our state and local governments can establish publicly-owned banks; and our monies, public and private, can be moved into them.

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Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.