Militia Raids Part Of Government Effort to Provoke Violence, Purge Dissent
Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Related: Feds Release Indictment Against Michigan Militia
News of a bust on nine members of a militia group in Detroit who were planning to “levy war” against the United States and “oppose by force” the nation’s government, should be treated with extreme suspicion, given that every major terror bust in the U.S. in recent years has been contrived.
According to an indictment (PDF) unsealed this morning in U.S. District Court in Detroit, eight men and one woman were training in modern combat techniques for a prophesized battle with the anti-Christ.
The indictment described the nine as gearing up to use bombs and other weapons to kill local, state, and federal law enforcement officials in an effort to act as a “catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the government.”
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force carried out a series of raids on group members in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio over the weekend.
Known as the “Hutaree” militia, each of the nine faces three to five charges, including sedition, attempts to use weapons of mass destruction, teaching/demonstrating use of explosive materials and two counts of carrying weapons in relation to a crime of violence.
Seven of the defendants appeared in court this morning and were ordered held without bond until Wednesday.
“This is an example of radical and extremist fringe groups which can be found throughout our society,” FBI special agent Andrew Arena told The Detroit News.
“The FBI takes such extremist groups seriously, especially those who would target innocent citizens and the law enforcement officers who protect the citizens of the United States.” Arena added.
Comments made by a well known former militia leader indicate that the Hutaree were regarded by other militia outfits as radical and reckless “low-hanging fruits”.
Mike Vanderboegh, who has close connections with the militia movement in Michigan and all over the country, was critical of the Hutaree, saying that they “have indicated in the past that, much like John Brown, they WANTED to start a civil war, which is why no responsible militia group in Michigan was willing to ally with them.”
Vanderboegh described the group as “a perfect target” for the feds, adding that the raids could have provoked a nationwide uprising if they had turned violent.
As we highlighted earlier this month, following the highly suspicious Pentagon shooting, recent history proves that domestic terror, far from being a militia plot or an “extremist fringe” threat, is a government specialty.
Just a brief reprisal of the last handful of major terror cases in the United States instantly reminds us that in every single instance the plot was artificially engineered by the federal government and then later seized upon, with the enthusiastic support of the corporate media, as justification for more funding, more power, and more authority to denounce critics of the war on terror and dissent against the state in general.
From ensuring known extremist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, now known as the underwear bomber, was able to board Flight 253 in Amsterdam last December, to allowing Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to remain on a U.S. Army base, and even to participate in Homeland Security exercises, the actions of Federal authorities have provoked often tragic newsmaking incidents.
Dozens of terror busts and stings since 9/11 have been orchestrated by handlers aiding the accused terrorists at every turn. We have never come across a major case where the terrorists involved in a plot were not being prodded by the FBI and federal informants, or where clear prior knowledge and forewarning was not evident.
Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill “as many soldiers as possible” concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.
Similarly, the “Toronto 18″ terrorists turned out to be “a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac”. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the RCMP who had radicalized the group.
In the media-lauded Miami terror case in 2007, the supposed ringleader Narseal “Prince Marina” Batiste “had heard of Al-Qaeda, but wasn’t sure what it stood for. The FBI instigators made Batiste swear loyalty to al-Qaida; then had him call on his local buddies to form an ‘Islamic army’ in Miami. None had military training. Some could barely read. But Batiste assured the group in the midst of its collective marijuana buzz of greatness ahead,” wrote Saul Landau.
These were the men who comedian John Stewart referred to as “seven dipshits in a warehouse” after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had ludicrously told the press that the group of semi-retarded gang-bangers had planned to “wage a ground war against America”.
One of the more recent examples was the case of the so-called Muslim terrorists busted in New York, who supposedly wanted to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of the New York Air National Guard base. The men were provided with fake explosives and inactive missiles by an FBI informant, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Two of the ringleaders of the “deadly” plot which was endlessly hyped by the media turned out to be semi-retarded potheads, exactly as we had predicted would be the case due to the innumerable past cases with the exact same modus operandi.
Then we have the most deadly and contrived “christian-patriot” terror plot – the OKC bombing of 1995. While the SPLC, the ADL and similar organizations are happy to play the Timothy McVeigh card over and over again, to back up the notion that hate-filled right wing extremists are taking over the country, they are less enthusiastic to mention the fact that McVeigh planned his deadly assault on the Alfred P. Murrah building under the intimate direction of a high-level FBI official. This according to McVeigh’s co-conspirator Terry Nichols, a claim voluminously backed up by a plethora of evidence that has been presented in court on several occasions.
Time and time again it is revealed that the only prominent people who call for violence in the patriot movement turn out to be working for the feds.
Radio talk show host and racist firebrand Hal Turner recently admitted in federal court that he worked for the FBI as a “National Security Intelligence” asset. “Turner also claims the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements on his radio show, but the newspaper also found many federal officials were concerned that his audience might follow up on his violence rhetoric,” the Associated Press reported in November, 2009.
Turner’s code name was “Valhalla” and “he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance.
The FBI, under its long-running COINTELPRO, subsidized, armed, directed and protected the Klu Klux Klan and other racist groups.
In light of all these cases, and the ongoing effort to re-direct the focus of the war on terror away from foreign muslim terrorists to “home grown” American “extremists”, the question must be explored – were the FBI actively involved in radicalizing the “Hutaree” militia? Were any of the militia members FBI informants?
Count the hours until the links emerge.
Monday, March 29, 2010
CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down
CPS Warrior Nancy Schaefer Gunned Down
Infowars.com
March 29, 2010
From the Associated Press:
State investigators say the husband of former state Senator Nancy Schaefer shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. The couple’s bodies were found in their north Georgia home Friday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted autopsies on the Schaefer’s Saturday—investigators say all evidence points to the deaths as a murder-suicide. The bodies of Nancy and Bruce Schaefer, 73 and 74 years old respectively, were found by their daughter at the couple’s home in Clarkesville. Nancy Schaefer was a two-term state Senator representing Georgia’s 50th district. She lost her seat in 2008. Schaefer was also a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, Georgia lieutenant governor and governor of the state.
The corporate media does not bother to mention that Schaefer exposed the abuses of CPS and the international child sex slavery ring.
Appearing on the Alex Jones Show last May, Schaefer detailed how CPS is involved in child trafficking rings (see video below). After watching Schaefer’s interview with Jones, if you think Schaefer was involved in a suicide pact with her husband, you may also be interested in a famous bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
http://www.infowars.com/cps-warrior-nancy-schaefer-gunned-down/
Infowars.com
March 29, 2010
From the Associated Press:
State investigators say the husband of former state Senator Nancy Schaefer shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. The couple’s bodies were found in their north Georgia home Friday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted autopsies on the Schaefer’s Saturday—investigators say all evidence points to the deaths as a murder-suicide. The bodies of Nancy and Bruce Schaefer, 73 and 74 years old respectively, were found by their daughter at the couple’s home in Clarkesville. Nancy Schaefer was a two-term state Senator representing Georgia’s 50th district. She lost her seat in 2008. Schaefer was also a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, Georgia lieutenant governor and governor of the state.
The corporate media does not bother to mention that Schaefer exposed the abuses of CPS and the international child sex slavery ring.
Appearing on the Alex Jones Show last May, Schaefer detailed how CPS is involved in child trafficking rings (see video below). After watching Schaefer’s interview with Jones, if you think Schaefer was involved in a suicide pact with her husband, you may also be interested in a famous bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
http://www.infowars.com/cps-warrior-nancy-schaefer-gunned-down/
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies | San Francisco Bay View
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies | San Francisco Bay View
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies
[Translate]
by Eddie Milton Garey Jr.
The Rapiscan Secure 1000 has been called a “virtual strip search.” It shows a person’s private parts but obscures the face. Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff heads the so-called full body scanner lobby.In Illinois, federal judges have allowed at least two lawsuits to proceed against correctional officials for using full body scanners to reveal the anatomy of both prisoners and visitors without removing their clothing. This is the very same device that airports are seeking to implement on some inbound flights to the United States.
The cases of Young v. County of Cook, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 64404(N.D. 111.), and Zboralshi v. Monohan, 616 Supp.2d 792, 798 (2006, N.D. Ill), explain, “A Rapiscan is a machine that uses ‘back-scatter’ x-ray technology to conduct a body scan.” There is no significant difference between using Rapiscan and computer tomography (CT scan) whole body scanning.
Despite the clearance of some CT scanners (Rapiscan), the FDA’s website shows that no data has ever been presented to the agency as to the safety of these devices and states that it has never approved these devices as being safe because “some Food and Drug Administration officials were worried that full-body CT screening scans (Rapiscans) ‘may be exposing thousands of Americans to unnecessary and potentially dangerous radiation’ and that CT scans of the chest delivered 100 times the radiation of a conventional chest x-ray … between .2 to 2 rads of radiation during a single scan.” See, e.g., Virtual Physical Ctr-Rockville, LLC v. Philips Med. Sys., 478 F.Supp.2d 840, 842-43(D. Md. 2007) and “FDA Raises Body Safety Issue” by Marlene Cimons in the Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2001.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons officials have been forcing inmates at USP Big Sandy to submit to random computerized tomographic whole body radioactive scanners. If they refuse to submit to these radiation experiments, prison officials are charging them with disobeying a direct order and subjecting them to a wide range of sanctions, including but not limited to loss of good time credits, resulting in an extended time in prison, even if they agree to be subjected to an ordinary visual strip search as a reasonable alternative to radiation exposure from the whole body scanner. These images are saved and viewed by male and female staff and available online to certain civilian populations.
Regulations at 28 CFR §§ 512.11 and 512.12 prohibit the government from using inmates for this type of experimentation and require them to give both the inmates and the public notice of their intent to use inmates as test subjects as well as all of the possible effects related to being subjected to any such experimentation – and then only on a voluntary basis. See also Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551(4) and 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)-(d).
Federal regulations also prohibit the use of x-ray, MRI or similar devices on inmates for any reason other than legitimate medical purposes or only when there exists reasonable suspicion that the inmate has recently secreted contraband – and then only by a licensed practitioner in the manner set out in 28 CFR §§ 552.13(b)(1) and 541.48.
The government has been forcing prisoners, the majority of whom are Blacks and Hispanics, to be subject of these types of inhumane experiments for years. They recall the Tuskegee experiments, where 400 Black men were allowed to suffer with syphilis for 40 years so that doctors could study the disease. Also, Dr. Albert Kilgman, at Holmesburg Prison near Philadelphia, under the direction of major pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Dupont, exposed Black prisoners to herpes, gonorrhea, malaria, dysentery and even athlete’s foot from the 1950s to the 1970s.
In 1952 over 300 Black inmates at an Ohio state prison were injected with live cancer cells so that doctors at the Sloan-Kettering Institute could study the effects. In these cases the research subjects’ rights were violated because either they were not told that they were participating in an experiment or the government knew the experiments had no therapeutic value, or both.
Other cases include Heinrich v. Sthemet, 62 F.Supp.2d 282(D.Mass. 1999) (government utilized false pretenses to lure plaintiffs into participating in radiation experiments which the government knew had no therapeutic value); Stadt v. Univ. of Rochester, 921 F.Supp. 1023 (W.D.N.Y. 1996) (plaintiff, who thought she was receiving medical treatment for scleroderma, was injected with plutonium without her knowledge or consent as part of a U.S. Army study); In re Cincinnati Radiation Litig., 874 F.Supp. 796 (S.D. Ohio 1995) (plaintiffs were not informed that the radiation they were receiving from the Department of Defense was part of a military experiment rather than treatment of their cancer).
In Allen v. United States, 588 F.Supp. 247, 399 (D. Ut. 1984), the court held that it is becoming established that shortening of life span is a general effect of whole body exposure to ionizing radiation. Experiments have also shown a similar reduction may be caused by irradiation of substantial portions of the body from ingestion of radioactive materials.
In all of those cases, both the state and federal government had told the subjects that they experimented on that the radiation levels were harmless – only for the victims to learn later that they were in fact not harmless, but deadly!
It has also been reported that these whole body Rapiscan scanners have been malfunctioning. They have caused electrical shocks as in the case of Carrie Milton v. Rapiscan, 2005 U.S. Dist. Lexis 11574(E.D. La.). An airport security screener was severely shocked and suffered permanent injury to her hand operating one of these Rapiscans.
Independent tests on Rapiscan devices have also shown that the EEPROM chips, which are used to calibrate the radiation levels of the whole body scanners, have repeatedly malfunctioned, resulting in greater radiation exposure than Rapiscan reports on its own websites. Some prisoners have experienced blurriness of vision, headaches and groin pains after being subjected to these whole body radiation scans. Many of these prisoners have been Rapiscanned up to three times in a single day, even though they never left the institution or had any contact with anyone outside the institution.
In the 1960s and ‘70s the Bureau of Prisons forced inmates – mostly Black and Hispanic prisoners – to submit to radiation exposure to their testes in order to study the effects. See the case of Bibea v. Pacific Norththemst Research, 980 F. Supp. 349(D.Or. 1997); See also, Clay v. Martin, 509 F.2d 109(2d. Cir. 1974) (“The court reversed the decision that dismissed … prisoner’s complaint against defendants, federal government and prison officials, holding that it was against public policy to dismiss the complaint on pleading technicalities because the action involved experimentation on humans.”)
Other experiments include testing psychotropic narcotics on inmates who have not been prescribed them just to see their effects, such as in the recent case of Walker v. Hastings, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 80924, Case No. 09-CV-074-ART(E.D. KY). Walker was diagnosed with H Pylori, a bacterium that can infect one’s stomach or intestines, but was given Zyprexa, a psychotropic narcotic on at least nine different occasions by a prison pharmacist at USP Big Sandy seeking to test the effects of the medications for pharmaceutical companies.
If this is a legitimate security concern and not for the mere use of inmates as test subjects for private interests of companies like Rapiscan Corp., then ask the Obama administration, Eric Holder and Department of Justice officials why are they threatening inmates and charging them with disciplinary infractions for disobeying unlawful orders to submit to these radiation experiments, even when they are willing to submit to an ordinary strip search?
Update: Record long lockdown punishes cross-racial unity
The inmates have only refused to be exposed to harmful amounts of radiation and not to be the subject of a human radiation experiment, but they never disobeyed any lawful orders. Yet on March 1, the warden at USP Big Sandy imposed a lockdown that is expected to last at least two months.
The lockdown is clearly in retaliation against Black prisoners for exercising their First Amendment rights to petition the government for redress of grievances. Since this prison has been open, no lockdown has lasted more than 21 days – not even when there were repeated back-to-back murders.
But when all the inmates have found common ground for unifying lawfully, the federal white overseers have deemed this to be a threat to the order, security and discipline of the institution.
This warden finds it a serious security threat when all of the different factions of inmates decide not to focus on killing one another but on coming together in peaceful, lawful challenges to tyrants’ abuse of power in total, reckless disregard of our basic human rights and bodily integrity. Even the skinheads, Aryan Brotherhood and American Born whites came to an agreement with Blacks not to be subject to these human radiation experiments.
To my knowledge, there were no threats of violence, there were no assaults and there were no mass demonstrations – just individuals refusing to be the government’s test dummy for this Rapiscan x-ray product being illegally used on us in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations. But if we had ganged up on an inmate, no such lockdown would’ve occurred for more than a couple of days to a week. Imagine that!
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies
[Translate]
by Eddie Milton Garey Jr.
The Rapiscan Secure 1000 has been called a “virtual strip search.” It shows a person’s private parts but obscures the face. Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff heads the so-called full body scanner lobby.In Illinois, federal judges have allowed at least two lawsuits to proceed against correctional officials for using full body scanners to reveal the anatomy of both prisoners and visitors without removing their clothing. This is the very same device that airports are seeking to implement on some inbound flights to the United States.
The cases of Young v. County of Cook, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 64404(N.D. 111.), and Zboralshi v. Monohan, 616 Supp.2d 792, 798 (2006, N.D. Ill), explain, “A Rapiscan is a machine that uses ‘back-scatter’ x-ray technology to conduct a body scan.” There is no significant difference between using Rapiscan and computer tomography (CT scan) whole body scanning.
Despite the clearance of some CT scanners (Rapiscan), the FDA’s website shows that no data has ever been presented to the agency as to the safety of these devices and states that it has never approved these devices as being safe because “some Food and Drug Administration officials were worried that full-body CT screening scans (Rapiscans) ‘may be exposing thousands of Americans to unnecessary and potentially dangerous radiation’ and that CT scans of the chest delivered 100 times the radiation of a conventional chest x-ray … between .2 to 2 rads of radiation during a single scan.” See, e.g., Virtual Physical Ctr-Rockville, LLC v. Philips Med. Sys., 478 F.Supp.2d 840, 842-43(D. Md. 2007) and “FDA Raises Body Safety Issue” by Marlene Cimons in the Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2001.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons officials have been forcing inmates at USP Big Sandy to submit to random computerized tomographic whole body radioactive scanners. If they refuse to submit to these radiation experiments, prison officials are charging them with disobeying a direct order and subjecting them to a wide range of sanctions, including but not limited to loss of good time credits, resulting in an extended time in prison, even if they agree to be subjected to an ordinary visual strip search as a reasonable alternative to radiation exposure from the whole body scanner. These images are saved and viewed by male and female staff and available online to certain civilian populations.
Regulations at 28 CFR §§ 512.11 and 512.12 prohibit the government from using inmates for this type of experimentation and require them to give both the inmates and the public notice of their intent to use inmates as test subjects as well as all of the possible effects related to being subjected to any such experimentation – and then only on a voluntary basis. See also Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551(4) and 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)-(d).
Federal regulations also prohibit the use of x-ray, MRI or similar devices on inmates for any reason other than legitimate medical purposes or only when there exists reasonable suspicion that the inmate has recently secreted contraband – and then only by a licensed practitioner in the manner set out in 28 CFR §§ 552.13(b)(1) and 541.48.
The government has been forcing prisoners, the majority of whom are Blacks and Hispanics, to be subject of these types of inhumane experiments for years. They recall the Tuskegee experiments, where 400 Black men were allowed to suffer with syphilis for 40 years so that doctors could study the disease. Also, Dr. Albert Kilgman, at Holmesburg Prison near Philadelphia, under the direction of major pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Dupont, exposed Black prisoners to herpes, gonorrhea, malaria, dysentery and even athlete’s foot from the 1950s to the 1970s.
In 1952 over 300 Black inmates at an Ohio state prison were injected with live cancer cells so that doctors at the Sloan-Kettering Institute could study the effects. In these cases the research subjects’ rights were violated because either they were not told that they were participating in an experiment or the government knew the experiments had no therapeutic value, or both.
Other cases include Heinrich v. Sthemet, 62 F.Supp.2d 282(D.Mass. 1999) (government utilized false pretenses to lure plaintiffs into participating in radiation experiments which the government knew had no therapeutic value); Stadt v. Univ. of Rochester, 921 F.Supp. 1023 (W.D.N.Y. 1996) (plaintiff, who thought she was receiving medical treatment for scleroderma, was injected with plutonium without her knowledge or consent as part of a U.S. Army study); In re Cincinnati Radiation Litig., 874 F.Supp. 796 (S.D. Ohio 1995) (plaintiffs were not informed that the radiation they were receiving from the Department of Defense was part of a military experiment rather than treatment of their cancer).
In Allen v. United States, 588 F.Supp. 247, 399 (D. Ut. 1984), the court held that it is becoming established that shortening of life span is a general effect of whole body exposure to ionizing radiation. Experiments have also shown a similar reduction may be caused by irradiation of substantial portions of the body from ingestion of radioactive materials.
In all of those cases, both the state and federal government had told the subjects that they experimented on that the radiation levels were harmless – only for the victims to learn later that they were in fact not harmless, but deadly!
It has also been reported that these whole body Rapiscan scanners have been malfunctioning. They have caused electrical shocks as in the case of Carrie Milton v. Rapiscan, 2005 U.S. Dist. Lexis 11574(E.D. La.). An airport security screener was severely shocked and suffered permanent injury to her hand operating one of these Rapiscans.
Independent tests on Rapiscan devices have also shown that the EEPROM chips, which are used to calibrate the radiation levels of the whole body scanners, have repeatedly malfunctioned, resulting in greater radiation exposure than Rapiscan reports on its own websites. Some prisoners have experienced blurriness of vision, headaches and groin pains after being subjected to these whole body radiation scans. Many of these prisoners have been Rapiscanned up to three times in a single day, even though they never left the institution or had any contact with anyone outside the institution.
In the 1960s and ‘70s the Bureau of Prisons forced inmates – mostly Black and Hispanic prisoners – to submit to radiation exposure to their testes in order to study the effects. See the case of Bibea v. Pacific Norththemst Research, 980 F. Supp. 349(D.Or. 1997); See also, Clay v. Martin, 509 F.2d 109(2d. Cir. 1974) (“The court reversed the decision that dismissed … prisoner’s complaint against defendants, federal government and prison officials, holding that it was against public policy to dismiss the complaint on pleading technicalities because the action involved experimentation on humans.”)
Other experiments include testing psychotropic narcotics on inmates who have not been prescribed them just to see their effects, such as in the recent case of Walker v. Hastings, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 80924, Case No. 09-CV-074-ART(E.D. KY). Walker was diagnosed with H Pylori, a bacterium that can infect one’s stomach or intestines, but was given Zyprexa, a psychotropic narcotic on at least nine different occasions by a prison pharmacist at USP Big Sandy seeking to test the effects of the medications for pharmaceutical companies.
If this is a legitimate security concern and not for the mere use of inmates as test subjects for private interests of companies like Rapiscan Corp., then ask the Obama administration, Eric Holder and Department of Justice officials why are they threatening inmates and charging them with disciplinary infractions for disobeying unlawful orders to submit to these radiation experiments, even when they are willing to submit to an ordinary strip search?
Update: Record long lockdown punishes cross-racial unity
The inmates have only refused to be exposed to harmful amounts of radiation and not to be the subject of a human radiation experiment, but they never disobeyed any lawful orders. Yet on March 1, the warden at USP Big Sandy imposed a lockdown that is expected to last at least two months.
The lockdown is clearly in retaliation against Black prisoners for exercising their First Amendment rights to petition the government for redress of grievances. Since this prison has been open, no lockdown has lasted more than 21 days – not even when there were repeated back-to-back murders.
But when all the inmates have found common ground for unifying lawfully, the federal white overseers have deemed this to be a threat to the order, security and discipline of the institution.
This warden finds it a serious security threat when all of the different factions of inmates decide not to focus on killing one another but on coming together in peaceful, lawful challenges to tyrants’ abuse of power in total, reckless disregard of our basic human rights and bodily integrity. Even the skinheads, Aryan Brotherhood and American Born whites came to an agreement with Blacks not to be subject to these human radiation experiments.
To my knowledge, there were no threats of violence, there were no assaults and there were no mass demonstrations – just individuals refusing to be the government’s test dummy for this Rapiscan x-ray product being illegally used on us in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations. But if we had ganged up on an inmate, no such lockdown would’ve occurred for more than a couple of days to a week. Imagine that!
Nanotechnology Bringing Foods, Regulated or Not, to Grocery Near You - AOL News
Nanotechnology Bringing Foods, Regulated or Not, to Grocery Near You - AOL News
(March 24) -- For centuries, it was the cook and the heat of the fire that cajoled taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the pot. Today, that culinary voodoo is being crafted by white-coated scientists toiling in pristine labs, rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.
At last year's Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it's a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.
In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nano-ized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.
One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.
The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.
Posed a variation of the latter question, Dr. Jesse Goodman, the agency's chief scientist and deputy commissioner for science and public health, gave a revealing answer. He said he wasn't involved enough with how the FDA was handling nanomaterials in food to discuss that issue. And the agency wouldn't provide anyone else to talk about it.
This despite the fact that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have shown that nanoparticles pose potential risks to human health -- and, more specifically, that when ingested can cause DNA damage that can prefigure cancer and heart and brain disease.
Despite Denials, Nano-Food Is Here
Officially, the FDA says there aren't any nano-containing food products currently sold in the U.S.
Not true, say some of the agency's own safety experts, pointing to scientific studies published in food science journals, reports from foreign safety agencies and discussions in gatherings like the Institute of Food Technologists conference.
In fact, the arrival of nanomaterial onto the food scene is already causing some big-chain safety managers to demand greater scrutiny of what they're being offered, especially with imported food and beverages. At a conference in Seattle last year hosted by leading food safety attorney Bill Marler, presenters raised the issue of how hard it is for large supermarket companies to know precisely what they are purchasing, especially with nanomaterials, because of the volume and variety they deal in.
Getty Images
According to a USDA scientist, some Latin American packers spray U.S.-bound produce with a wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. "We found no indication that the nanocoating ... has ever been tested for health effects," the researcher says.
Craig Wilson, assistant vice president for safety for Costco, says his chain does not test for nanomaterial in the food products it is offered by manufacturers. But, he adds, Costco is looking "far more carefully at everything we buy. ... We have to rely on the accuracy of the labels and the integrity of our vendors. Our buyers know that if they find nanomaterial or anything else they might consider unsafe, the vendors either remove it, or we don't buy it."
Another government scientist says nanoparticles can be found today in produce sections in some large grocery chains and vegetable wholesalers. This scientist, a researcher with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, was part of a group that examined Central and South American farms and packers that ship fruits and vegetables into the U.S. and Canada. According to the USDA researcher -- who asked that his name not be used because he's not authorized to speak for the agency -- apples, pears, peppers, cucumbers and other fruit and vegetables are being coated with a thin, wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. The edible nanomaterial skin will also protect the color and flavor of the fruit longer.
"We found no indication that the nanocoating, which is manufactured in Asia, has ever been tested for health effects," said the researcher.
Getty Images
A science committee of the British House of Lords has found that nanomaterials are already appearing in numerous products, among them salad dressings and sauces. Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, says that they're also being added to ice cream to make it "look richer and better textured."Some foreign governments, apparently more worried about the influx of nano-related products to their grocery shelves, are gathering their own research. In January, a science committee of the British House of Lords issued a lengthy study on nanotechnology and food. Scores of scientific groups and consumer activists and even several international food manufactures told the committee investigators that engineered particles were already being sold in salad dressings; sauces; diet beverages; and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes, to which they're added to ensure easy pouring.
Other researchers responding to the committee's request for information talked about hundreds more items that could be in stores by year's end.
For example, a team in Munich has used nano-nonstick coatings to end the worldwide frustration of having to endlessly shake an upturned mustard or ketchup bottle to get at the last bit clinging to the bottom. Another person told the investigators that Nestlé and Unilever have about completed developing a nano-emulsion-based ice cream that has a lower fat content but retains its texture and flavor.
The Ultimate Secret Ingredient
Nearly 20 of the world's largest food manufacturers -- among them Nestlé, as well as Hershey, Cargill, Campbell Soup, Sara Lee, and H.J. Heinz -- have their own in-house nano-labs, or have contracted with major universities to do nano-related food product development. But they are not eager to broadcast those efforts.
Getty Images
A team in Munich, the House of Lords investigators also learned, is using nano-nonstick coatings to make it easier to get the last drops of ketchup out of the bottle.Kraft was the first major food company to hoist the banner of nanotechnology. Spokesman Richard Buino, however, now says that while "we have sponsored nanotech research at various universities and research institutions in the past," Kraft has no labs focusing on it today.
The stance is in stark contrast to the one Kraft struck in late 2000, when it loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that it had formed the Nanotek Consortium with engineers, molecular chemists and physicists from 15 universities in the U.S. and abroad. The mission of the team was to show how nanotechnology would completely revolutionize the food manufacturing industry, or so said its then-director, Kraft research chemist Manuel Marquez.
But by the end of 2004, the much-touted operation seemed to vanish. All mentions of Nanotek Consortium disappeared from Kraft's news releases and corporate reports.
"We have not nor are we currently using nanotechnology in our products or packaging," Buino added in another e-mail.
Industry Tactics Thwart Risk Awareness
The British government investigation into nanofood strongly criticized the U.K.'s food industry for "failing to be transparent about its research into the uses of nanotechnologies and nanomaterials." On this side of the Atlantic, corporate secrecy isn't a problem, as some FDA officials tell it.
Investigators on Capitol Hill say the FDA's congressional liaisons have repeatedly assured them -- from George W. Bush's administration through President Barack Obama's first year -- that the big U.S. food companies have been upfront and open about their plans and progress in using nanomaterial in food.
But FDA and USDA food safety specialists interviewed over the past three months stressed that based on past performance, industry cannot be relied on to voluntarily advance safety efforts.
These government scientists, who are actively attempting to evaluate the risk of introducing nanotechnology to food, say that only a handful of corporations are candid about what they're doing and collaborating with the FDA and USDA to help develop regulations that will both protect the public and permit their products to reach market. Most companies, the government scientists add, submit little or no information unless forced. Even then, much of the information crucial to evaluating hazards -- such as the chemicals used and results of company health studies -- is withheld, with corporate lawyers claiming it constitutes confidential business information.
Both regulators and some industry consultants say the evasiveness from food manufacturers could blow up in their faces. As precedent, they point to what happened in the mid-'90s with genetically modified food, the last major scientific innovation that was, in many cases, force-fed to consumers. "There was a lack of transparency on what companies were doing. So promoting genetically modified foods was perceived by some of the public as being just profit-driven," says Professor Rickey Yada of the Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
"In retrospect, food manufacturers should have highlighted the benefits that the technology could bring as well as discussing the potential concerns."
Eating Nanomaterials Could Increase Underlying Risks
The House of Lords' study identified "severe shortfalls" in research into the dangers of nanotechnology in food. Its authors called for funding studies that address the behavior of nanomaterials within the digestive system. Similar recommendations are being made in the U.S., where the majority of research on nanomaterial focuses on it entering the body via inhalation and absorption.
The food industry is very competitive, with thin profit margins. And safety evaluations are very expensive, notes Bernadene Magnuson, senior scientific and regulatory consultant with risk-assessment firm Cantox Health Sciences International. "You need to be pretty sure you've got something that's likely to benefit you and your product in some way before you're going to start launching into safety evaluations," she explains. Magnuson believes that additional studies must be done on chronic exposure to and ingestion of nanomaterials.
One of the few ingestion studies recently completed was a two-year-long examination of nano-titanium dioxide at UCLA, which showed that the compound caused DNA and chromosome damage after lab animals drank large quantities of the particles in their water.
Getty Images
Sono-Tek, a company based in Milton, N.Y., employs nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says its chairman and CEO. It is widely known that nano-titanium dioxide is used as filler in hundreds of medicines and cosmetics and as a blocking agent in sunscreens. But Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, worries that the danger is greater "when the nano-titanium dioxide is used in food."
Ice cream companies, Hanson says, are using nanomaterials to make their products "look richer and better textured." Bread makers are spraying nanomaterials on their loaves "to make them shinier and help them keep microbe-free longer."
While AOL News was unable to identify a company pursuing the latter practice, it did find Sono-Tek of Milton, N.Y., which uses nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says Christopher Coccio, chairman and CEO. He said the development of this nano-wrap was partially funded by New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority.
"This is happening," Hanson says. He calls on the FDA to "immediately seek a ban on any products that contain these nanoparticles, especially those in products that are likely to be ingested by children."
"The UCLA study means we need to research the health effects of these products before people get sick, not after," Hanson says.
There is nothing to mandate that such safety research take place.
The FDA's Blind Spot
The FDA includes titanium dioxide among the food additives it classifies under the designation "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS. New additives with that label can bypass extensive and costly health testing that is otherwise required of items bound for grocery shelves.
A report issued last month by the Government Accountability Office denounced the enormous loophole that the FDA has permitted through the GRAS classification. And the GAO investigators also echoed the concerns of consumer and food safety activists who argue that giving nanomaterials the GRAS free pass is perilous.
Food safety agencies in Canada and the European Union require all ingredients that incorporate engineered nanomaterials to be submitted to regulators before they can be put on the market, the GAO noted. No so with the FDA.
"Because GRAS notification is voluntary and companies are not required to identify nanomaterials in their GRAS substances, FDA has no way of knowing the full extent to which engineered nanomaterials have entered the U.S. food supply," the GAO told Congress.
Amid that uncertainty, calls for safety analysis are growing.
"Testing must always be done," says food regulatory consultant George Burdock, a toxicologist and the head of the Burdock Group. "Because if it's nanosized, its chemical properties will most assuredly be different and so might the biological impact."
Will Consumers Swallow What Science Serves Up Next?
Interviews with more than a dozen food scientists revealed strikingly similar predictions on how the food industry will employ nanoscale technology. They say firms are creating nanostructures to enhance flavor, shelf life and appearance. They even foresee using encapsulated or engineered nanoscale particles to create foods from scratch.
Experts agreed that the first widespread use of nanotechnology to hit the U.S. food market would be nanoscale packing materials and nanosensors for food safety, bacteria detection and traceability.
While acknowledging that many more nano-related food products are on the way, Magnuson, the industry risk consultant, says the greatest degree of research right now is directed at food safety and quality. "Using nanotechnology to improve the sensitivity and speed of detection of food-borne pathogens in the food itself or in the supply chain or in the processing equipment could be lifesaving," she says.
For example, researchers at Clemson University, according to USDA, have used nanoparticles to identify campylobacter, a sometimes-lethal food-borne pathogen, in poultry intestinal tracts prior to processing.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, food scientist Julian McClements and his colleagues have developed time-release nanolaminated coatings to add bioactive components to food to enhance delivery of ingredients to help prevent diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and hypertension.
But if the medical benefits of such an application are something to cheer, the prospect of eating them in the first place isn't viewed as enthusiastically.
Advertising and marketing consultants for food and beverage makers are still apprehensive about a study done two years ago by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment, which commissioned pollsters to measure public acceptance of nanomaterials in food. The study showed that only 20 percent of respondents would buy nanotechnology-enhanced food products.
(March 24) -- For centuries, it was the cook and the heat of the fire that cajoled taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the pot. Today, that culinary voodoo is being crafted by white-coated scientists toiling in pristine labs, rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.
At last year's Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it's a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.
In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nano-ized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.
One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.
The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.
Posed a variation of the latter question, Dr. Jesse Goodman, the agency's chief scientist and deputy commissioner for science and public health, gave a revealing answer. He said he wasn't involved enough with how the FDA was handling nanomaterials in food to discuss that issue. And the agency wouldn't provide anyone else to talk about it.
This despite the fact that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have shown that nanoparticles pose potential risks to human health -- and, more specifically, that when ingested can cause DNA damage that can prefigure cancer and heart and brain disease.
Despite Denials, Nano-Food Is Here
Officially, the FDA says there aren't any nano-containing food products currently sold in the U.S.
Not true, say some of the agency's own safety experts, pointing to scientific studies published in food science journals, reports from foreign safety agencies and discussions in gatherings like the Institute of Food Technologists conference.
In fact, the arrival of nanomaterial onto the food scene is already causing some big-chain safety managers to demand greater scrutiny of what they're being offered, especially with imported food and beverages. At a conference in Seattle last year hosted by leading food safety attorney Bill Marler, presenters raised the issue of how hard it is for large supermarket companies to know precisely what they are purchasing, especially with nanomaterials, because of the volume and variety they deal in.
Getty Images
According to a USDA scientist, some Latin American packers spray U.S.-bound produce with a wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. "We found no indication that the nanocoating ... has ever been tested for health effects," the researcher says.
Craig Wilson, assistant vice president for safety for Costco, says his chain does not test for nanomaterial in the food products it is offered by manufacturers. But, he adds, Costco is looking "far more carefully at everything we buy. ... We have to rely on the accuracy of the labels and the integrity of our vendors. Our buyers know that if they find nanomaterial or anything else they might consider unsafe, the vendors either remove it, or we don't buy it."
Another government scientist says nanoparticles can be found today in produce sections in some large grocery chains and vegetable wholesalers. This scientist, a researcher with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, was part of a group that examined Central and South American farms and packers that ship fruits and vegetables into the U.S. and Canada. According to the USDA researcher -- who asked that his name not be used because he's not authorized to speak for the agency -- apples, pears, peppers, cucumbers and other fruit and vegetables are being coated with a thin, wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. The edible nanomaterial skin will also protect the color and flavor of the fruit longer.
"We found no indication that the nanocoating, which is manufactured in Asia, has ever been tested for health effects," said the researcher.
Getty Images
A science committee of the British House of Lords has found that nanomaterials are already appearing in numerous products, among them salad dressings and sauces. Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, says that they're also being added to ice cream to make it "look richer and better textured."Some foreign governments, apparently more worried about the influx of nano-related products to their grocery shelves, are gathering their own research. In January, a science committee of the British House of Lords issued a lengthy study on nanotechnology and food. Scores of scientific groups and consumer activists and even several international food manufactures told the committee investigators that engineered particles were already being sold in salad dressings; sauces; diet beverages; and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes, to which they're added to ensure easy pouring.
Other researchers responding to the committee's request for information talked about hundreds more items that could be in stores by year's end.
For example, a team in Munich has used nano-nonstick coatings to end the worldwide frustration of having to endlessly shake an upturned mustard or ketchup bottle to get at the last bit clinging to the bottom. Another person told the investigators that Nestlé and Unilever have about completed developing a nano-emulsion-based ice cream that has a lower fat content but retains its texture and flavor.
The Ultimate Secret Ingredient
Nearly 20 of the world's largest food manufacturers -- among them Nestlé, as well as Hershey, Cargill, Campbell Soup, Sara Lee, and H.J. Heinz -- have their own in-house nano-labs, or have contracted with major universities to do nano-related food product development. But they are not eager to broadcast those efforts.
Getty Images
A team in Munich, the House of Lords investigators also learned, is using nano-nonstick coatings to make it easier to get the last drops of ketchup out of the bottle.Kraft was the first major food company to hoist the banner of nanotechnology. Spokesman Richard Buino, however, now says that while "we have sponsored nanotech research at various universities and research institutions in the past," Kraft has no labs focusing on it today.
The stance is in stark contrast to the one Kraft struck in late 2000, when it loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that it had formed the Nanotek Consortium with engineers, molecular chemists and physicists from 15 universities in the U.S. and abroad. The mission of the team was to show how nanotechnology would completely revolutionize the food manufacturing industry, or so said its then-director, Kraft research chemist Manuel Marquez.
But by the end of 2004, the much-touted operation seemed to vanish. All mentions of Nanotek Consortium disappeared from Kraft's news releases and corporate reports.
"We have not nor are we currently using nanotechnology in our products or packaging," Buino added in another e-mail.
Industry Tactics Thwart Risk Awareness
The British government investigation into nanofood strongly criticized the U.K.'s food industry for "failing to be transparent about its research into the uses of nanotechnologies and nanomaterials." On this side of the Atlantic, corporate secrecy isn't a problem, as some FDA officials tell it.
Investigators on Capitol Hill say the FDA's congressional liaisons have repeatedly assured them -- from George W. Bush's administration through President Barack Obama's first year -- that the big U.S. food companies have been upfront and open about their plans and progress in using nanomaterial in food.
But FDA and USDA food safety specialists interviewed over the past three months stressed that based on past performance, industry cannot be relied on to voluntarily advance safety efforts.
These government scientists, who are actively attempting to evaluate the risk of introducing nanotechnology to food, say that only a handful of corporations are candid about what they're doing and collaborating with the FDA and USDA to help develop regulations that will both protect the public and permit their products to reach market. Most companies, the government scientists add, submit little or no information unless forced. Even then, much of the information crucial to evaluating hazards -- such as the chemicals used and results of company health studies -- is withheld, with corporate lawyers claiming it constitutes confidential business information.
Both regulators and some industry consultants say the evasiveness from food manufacturers could blow up in their faces. As precedent, they point to what happened in the mid-'90s with genetically modified food, the last major scientific innovation that was, in many cases, force-fed to consumers. "There was a lack of transparency on what companies were doing. So promoting genetically modified foods was perceived by some of the public as being just profit-driven," says Professor Rickey Yada of the Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
"In retrospect, food manufacturers should have highlighted the benefits that the technology could bring as well as discussing the potential concerns."
Eating Nanomaterials Could Increase Underlying Risks
The House of Lords' study identified "severe shortfalls" in research into the dangers of nanotechnology in food. Its authors called for funding studies that address the behavior of nanomaterials within the digestive system. Similar recommendations are being made in the U.S., where the majority of research on nanomaterial focuses on it entering the body via inhalation and absorption.
The food industry is very competitive, with thin profit margins. And safety evaluations are very expensive, notes Bernadene Magnuson, senior scientific and regulatory consultant with risk-assessment firm Cantox Health Sciences International. "You need to be pretty sure you've got something that's likely to benefit you and your product in some way before you're going to start launching into safety evaluations," she explains. Magnuson believes that additional studies must be done on chronic exposure to and ingestion of nanomaterials.
One of the few ingestion studies recently completed was a two-year-long examination of nano-titanium dioxide at UCLA, which showed that the compound caused DNA and chromosome damage after lab animals drank large quantities of the particles in their water.
Getty Images
Sono-Tek, a company based in Milton, N.Y., employs nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says its chairman and CEO. It is widely known that nano-titanium dioxide is used as filler in hundreds of medicines and cosmetics and as a blocking agent in sunscreens. But Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, worries that the danger is greater "when the nano-titanium dioxide is used in food."
Ice cream companies, Hanson says, are using nanomaterials to make their products "look richer and better textured." Bread makers are spraying nanomaterials on their loaves "to make them shinier and help them keep microbe-free longer."
While AOL News was unable to identify a company pursuing the latter practice, it did find Sono-Tek of Milton, N.Y., which uses nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says Christopher Coccio, chairman and CEO. He said the development of this nano-wrap was partially funded by New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority.
"This is happening," Hanson says. He calls on the FDA to "immediately seek a ban on any products that contain these nanoparticles, especially those in products that are likely to be ingested by children."
"The UCLA study means we need to research the health effects of these products before people get sick, not after," Hanson says.
There is nothing to mandate that such safety research take place.
The FDA's Blind Spot
The FDA includes titanium dioxide among the food additives it classifies under the designation "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS. New additives with that label can bypass extensive and costly health testing that is otherwise required of items bound for grocery shelves.
A report issued last month by the Government Accountability Office denounced the enormous loophole that the FDA has permitted through the GRAS classification. And the GAO investigators also echoed the concerns of consumer and food safety activists who argue that giving nanomaterials the GRAS free pass is perilous.
Food safety agencies in Canada and the European Union require all ingredients that incorporate engineered nanomaterials to be submitted to regulators before they can be put on the market, the GAO noted. No so with the FDA.
"Because GRAS notification is voluntary and companies are not required to identify nanomaterials in their GRAS substances, FDA has no way of knowing the full extent to which engineered nanomaterials have entered the U.S. food supply," the GAO told Congress.
Amid that uncertainty, calls for safety analysis are growing.
"Testing must always be done," says food regulatory consultant George Burdock, a toxicologist and the head of the Burdock Group. "Because if it's nanosized, its chemical properties will most assuredly be different and so might the biological impact."
Will Consumers Swallow What Science Serves Up Next?
Interviews with more than a dozen food scientists revealed strikingly similar predictions on how the food industry will employ nanoscale technology. They say firms are creating nanostructures to enhance flavor, shelf life and appearance. They even foresee using encapsulated or engineered nanoscale particles to create foods from scratch.
Experts agreed that the first widespread use of nanotechnology to hit the U.S. food market would be nanoscale packing materials and nanosensors for food safety, bacteria detection and traceability.
While acknowledging that many more nano-related food products are on the way, Magnuson, the industry risk consultant, says the greatest degree of research right now is directed at food safety and quality. "Using nanotechnology to improve the sensitivity and speed of detection of food-borne pathogens in the food itself or in the supply chain or in the processing equipment could be lifesaving," she says.
For example, researchers at Clemson University, according to USDA, have used nanoparticles to identify campylobacter, a sometimes-lethal food-borne pathogen, in poultry intestinal tracts prior to processing.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, food scientist Julian McClements and his colleagues have developed time-release nanolaminated coatings to add bioactive components to food to enhance delivery of ingredients to help prevent diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and hypertension.
But if the medical benefits of such an application are something to cheer, the prospect of eating them in the first place isn't viewed as enthusiastically.
Advertising and marketing consultants for food and beverage makers are still apprehensive about a study done two years ago by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment, which commissioned pollsters to measure public acceptance of nanomaterials in food. The study showed that only 20 percent of respondents would buy nanotechnology-enhanced food products.
Loophole Exempts Washington Insiders From Obamacare Mandate
Loophole Exempts Washington Insiders From Obamacare Mandate
Loophole Exempts Washington Insiders From Obamacare Mandate
No Obamacare for Obama, his family, his staff, the vice president, the vice president’s staff, the rest of the administration, Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s staff, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Reid’s staff, all other House and Senate leaders and their staff, all committee members and their staff… the list goes on
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
A loophole written into the final healthcare reform bill passed on Sunday and signed into law by Obama yesterday, exempts Washington insiders and committee staffers from the mandate that now requires every American to purchase health insurance.
Members of Congress and their office staffers will have to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges created under the bill. However, those working for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate are excluded.
Politico reports:
…page 158 of the bill defines “congressional staff” narrowly, as “employees employed by the official office of a member of congress, whether in the district office or in Washington.”
The Congressional Research Service believes a court could rule that the legislation “would exclude professional committee staff, joint committee staff, some shared staff, as well as potentially those staff employed by leadership offices.”
If that’s so, staffers who work for Nancy Pelosi in her capacity as representative from California would go into the exchange program, while staffers who work for her in her capacity as speaker would stay on the government’s plan. Other Capitol employees, like those who work for the Clerk of the House or the House Historian, would be similarly exempted.
This means that committee staffers, those most intimately involved with drafting the legislation, have effectively opted themselves out of one of its key requirements!
While declaring that rank-and-file House and Senate staff will no longer benefit from the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) and must purchase their cover from restricted federal health insurance pools, along with the rest of the surfs, the Washington elite have ensured they will not have to participate.
“Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole.” a Washington Times editorial states.
Of course, it goes without saying that the president, vice president, cabinet members and top White House staff are also exempted from the mandate to buy coverage through the exchanges.
Republican Senators Coburn and Grassley, who both twice filed amendments last year to close the loophole, have accused the Senate leadership Democrats of purposely exempting upper-level staffers from the overhaul.
“The American people will be appalled to learn the health care bill exempts leadership and committee staff. This special deal for unelected staff underscores everything the public detests about the arrogance of power in Washington,” Coburn said. “I tried to fix this inequity along with senators Grassley, Burr and Vitter, but Majority Leader [Harry] Reid obstructed our effort.”
Grassley reiterated the sentiments in his own statement, declaring “The new health care law creates two double standards. The congressional staff who wrote the new law exempted themselves from the new health care system, while other staff will be in it.”
“And, President Obama himself will not live under Obama health care. The message to grassroots America is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.” the Senator added.
Grassley has now penned a third amendment to force all congressional staffers, as well as the Washington elite, to be included under the mandate.
The details highlight the hollow ring of Obama’s promises on health care, given that he frequently declared that the new legislation would provide everyday Americans with the same kind of health insurance as Congress.
In his speech on the eve of the vote, last Saturday, before the House Democratic Congress, Obama lauded the health care legislation, declaring that a major advantage would be that “people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition.”
Obama’s astounding hypocrisy continued into yesterday’s signing ceremony, where he commented that Americans will be “part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They’ll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves.”
All the while, the president cannot have been unaware that the loophole within the bill exempts high ranking insiders from having to share the same pool as the rest of America.
“…the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.” The Washington Times comments.
“Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his historic health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.”
This monster health care bill, the final version of which no one has yet read in its entirety, is sure to throw up many more issues that make this one look like a minor quibble. However, it is already clear at this early stage that the bill revolves around special interests and contains special exemptions for those who recognised the fact at it’s inception.
This is another instance of big government elitists dictating measures to the American people on behalf of K Street corporate lobbyists while excluding themselves from the aftereffects.
Loophole Exempts Washington Insiders From Obamacare Mandate
No Obamacare for Obama, his family, his staff, the vice president, the vice president’s staff, the rest of the administration, Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s staff, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Reid’s staff, all other House and Senate leaders and their staff, all committee members and their staff… the list goes on
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
A loophole written into the final healthcare reform bill passed on Sunday and signed into law by Obama yesterday, exempts Washington insiders and committee staffers from the mandate that now requires every American to purchase health insurance.
Members of Congress and their office staffers will have to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges created under the bill. However, those working for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate are excluded.
Politico reports:
…page 158 of the bill defines “congressional staff” narrowly, as “employees employed by the official office of a member of congress, whether in the district office or in Washington.”
The Congressional Research Service believes a court could rule that the legislation “would exclude professional committee staff, joint committee staff, some shared staff, as well as potentially those staff employed by leadership offices.”
If that’s so, staffers who work for Nancy Pelosi in her capacity as representative from California would go into the exchange program, while staffers who work for her in her capacity as speaker would stay on the government’s plan. Other Capitol employees, like those who work for the Clerk of the House or the House Historian, would be similarly exempted.
This means that committee staffers, those most intimately involved with drafting the legislation, have effectively opted themselves out of one of its key requirements!
While declaring that rank-and-file House and Senate staff will no longer benefit from the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) and must purchase their cover from restricted federal health insurance pools, along with the rest of the surfs, the Washington elite have ensured they will not have to participate.
“Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole.” a Washington Times editorial states.
Of course, it goes without saying that the president, vice president, cabinet members and top White House staff are also exempted from the mandate to buy coverage through the exchanges.
Republican Senators Coburn and Grassley, who both twice filed amendments last year to close the loophole, have accused the Senate leadership Democrats of purposely exempting upper-level staffers from the overhaul.
“The American people will be appalled to learn the health care bill exempts leadership and committee staff. This special deal for unelected staff underscores everything the public detests about the arrogance of power in Washington,” Coburn said. “I tried to fix this inequity along with senators Grassley, Burr and Vitter, but Majority Leader [Harry] Reid obstructed our effort.”
Grassley reiterated the sentiments in his own statement, declaring “The new health care law creates two double standards. The congressional staff who wrote the new law exempted themselves from the new health care system, while other staff will be in it.”
“And, President Obama himself will not live under Obama health care. The message to grassroots America is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.” the Senator added.
Grassley has now penned a third amendment to force all congressional staffers, as well as the Washington elite, to be included under the mandate.
The details highlight the hollow ring of Obama’s promises on health care, given that he frequently declared that the new legislation would provide everyday Americans with the same kind of health insurance as Congress.
In his speech on the eve of the vote, last Saturday, before the House Democratic Congress, Obama lauded the health care legislation, declaring that a major advantage would be that “people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition.”
Obama’s astounding hypocrisy continued into yesterday’s signing ceremony, where he commented that Americans will be “part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They’ll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves.”
All the while, the president cannot have been unaware that the loophole within the bill exempts high ranking insiders from having to share the same pool as the rest of America.
“…the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.” The Washington Times comments.
“Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama’s explanation why if his historic health care law is so great for America, it’s not good enough for him and his family.”
This monster health care bill, the final version of which no one has yet read in its entirety, is sure to throw up many more issues that make this one look like a minor quibble. However, it is already clear at this early stage that the bill revolves around special interests and contains special exemptions for those who recognised the fact at it’s inception.
This is another instance of big government elitists dictating measures to the American people on behalf of K Street corporate lobbyists while excluding themselves from the aftereffects.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
New rally cry: Don't submit!
New rally cry: Don't submit!
New rally cry: Don't submit!
'We're not going to roll over and let Pelosi have her way'
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has a message for the Americans people: Do not submit to "Obamacare," the massive health-care reform bill President Obama just signed into law.
"I want to let people know that we hear you," she told WND. "We want this bill repealed, too, and we're not just going to roll over and accept Obamacare. We're not going to roll over and let Nancy Pelosi have her way because it was just a handful of Democrats leadership that pushed this bill onto the backs of 300 million Americans. We don't have to accept this."
Now you can join nearly 15,000 Americans and 100 members of Congress in declaring your independence from Obamacare by signing the Declaration of Health Care Independence.
While Bachmann explained that she is not advocating civil disobedience, she said people must not give into apathy and believe the health-care bill cannot be overturned.
She was the first lawmaker down on the floor this week as she eagerly presented H.R. 4903, a one-page bill to repeal the Democrats' health "reform."
Asked whether the health-care bill really has a chance of being repealed, Bachmann replied, "It's very difficult. I won't put rose-colored glasses on."
She cited a poll that revealed 76 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress has been doing.
Americans must prepare to take the fight to the polls this election, she explained, and they must vote for constitutional conservatives to make up majorities in the House and Senate.
"What we saw on Sunday evening was the results of November 2008," Bachmann said. "Pure and simple, that's what it was. We also will have our day of victory, but we have to focus on November 2010. It is all about choosing constitutional conservatives who have a winnable chance of getting elected."
She added that the American people must also strategically select a strong presidential candidate in 2012.
"We can take no substitutes for our nominee. We cannot be fooled with someone who is conservative lite," Bachmann said. "It has to be a bold, strong, constitutional conservative who we run for president, one who is strong enough to see this fight through of repealing Obamacare. We absolutely can do it."
She called repeal of Obamacare a winning issue and the No. 1 concern that conservative candidates would be wise to embrace during their campaigns this year.
"We will continue to win this argument, and we'll win at the ballot box in November if we continue to press our case from now until November," Bachmann said confidently.
In light of the passage of the health reform bill – and the Democrats' more than questionable tactics – she said it is more important than ever that Americans declare their health-care independence. Nearly 15,000 people have signed the Declaration of Health Care Independence at WND. Bachmann has received signatures from an additional 11,000 Americans and nearly 100 lawmakers in rejection of an unconstitutional Washington takeover of health care.
Bachmann; Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa; Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, and other lawmakers drafted the Declaration of Health Care Independence and formally unveiled it on Jan. 27. The declaration is a commitment to protect the rights of the American people to make their own health decisions, reduce bureaucratic red-tape, decrease intergenerational debt and implement 10 common-sense principles for future health-care reform.
They presented the following 10 points of agreement in the declaration:
We, therefore, the People and Representatives of the United States of America, do solemnly Publish and Declare that health care reform, as a matter of principle, must: Protect as inviolate the vital doctor-patient relationship;
Reject any addition to the crushing national debt heaped upon all Americans;
Improve, rather than diminish, the quality of care that Americans enjoy;
Be negotiated publicly, transparently, with genuine accountability and oversight;
Treat private citizens at least as well as political officials;
Protect taxpayers from funding of abortion and abortion coverage;
Reject all new mandates on patients, employers, individuals or states;
Prohibit expansion of taxpayer-funded health care to those unlawfully present in the United States;
Guarantee Equal Protection under the law and the Constitution;
Empower, rather than limit, an open and accessible marketplace of health care choice and opportunity.
"The Declaration of Health Care Independence is a framework for going forward on health-care reform, something that we believe all Americans agree with," Bachmann explained. "All 10 of those statements are items that the president himself said that his health-care reform would embrace."
However, she said Obama's statements were untrue because the health bill contains full federal funding of abortion and allows illegal alien access to taxpayer-subsidized health care because there are no procedures for verifying immigration status prior to receiving benefits.
Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks to PJTV during protest against Obamacare at Capitol on March 21 (photo: Flickr, theqspeaks)
Bachmann added that Obama was wrong when he said Republicans do not want health reform.
"The president was very rude and arrogant when he stated that Republicans didn't have a plan," she said. "Even the day before the health-care vote, he stated very rudely and very arrogantly that Republicans and those who didn't vote for his bill wanted the status quo. That was patently false, and he knew that was false. We had more than 70 different proposals for health-care reform."
She said true health reform would embrace the principles in that declaration. As for the Democrats' passage of the health-care bill on Sunday, she said conservatives have a right to feel disappointed, but they must pull out all the stops in the upcoming months.
"What is at stake is the survival of the finest health care the world has ever known," Bachmann said. "We want to be able to continue that. We don't want to allow ourselves to devolve into a social welfare state, but that's clearly the president's intention for us."
She added, "Now it's up to us to fight for our country, just like those who have gone before us. We have to be up for the battle."
New rally cry: Don't submit!
'We're not going to roll over and let Pelosi have her way'
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has a message for the Americans people: Do not submit to "Obamacare," the massive health-care reform bill President Obama just signed into law.
"I want to let people know that we hear you," she told WND. "We want this bill repealed, too, and we're not just going to roll over and accept Obamacare. We're not going to roll over and let Nancy Pelosi have her way because it was just a handful of Democrats leadership that pushed this bill onto the backs of 300 million Americans. We don't have to accept this."
Now you can join nearly 15,000 Americans and 100 members of Congress in declaring your independence from Obamacare by signing the Declaration of Health Care Independence.
While Bachmann explained that she is not advocating civil disobedience, she said people must not give into apathy and believe the health-care bill cannot be overturned.
She was the first lawmaker down on the floor this week as she eagerly presented H.R. 4903, a one-page bill to repeal the Democrats' health "reform."
Asked whether the health-care bill really has a chance of being repealed, Bachmann replied, "It's very difficult. I won't put rose-colored glasses on."
She cited a poll that revealed 76 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress has been doing.
Americans must prepare to take the fight to the polls this election, she explained, and they must vote for constitutional conservatives to make up majorities in the House and Senate.
"What we saw on Sunday evening was the results of November 2008," Bachmann said. "Pure and simple, that's what it was. We also will have our day of victory, but we have to focus on November 2010. It is all about choosing constitutional conservatives who have a winnable chance of getting elected."
She added that the American people must also strategically select a strong presidential candidate in 2012.
"We can take no substitutes for our nominee. We cannot be fooled with someone who is conservative lite," Bachmann said. "It has to be a bold, strong, constitutional conservative who we run for president, one who is strong enough to see this fight through of repealing Obamacare. We absolutely can do it."
She called repeal of Obamacare a winning issue and the No. 1 concern that conservative candidates would be wise to embrace during their campaigns this year.
"We will continue to win this argument, and we'll win at the ballot box in November if we continue to press our case from now until November," Bachmann said confidently.
In light of the passage of the health reform bill – and the Democrats' more than questionable tactics – she said it is more important than ever that Americans declare their health-care independence. Nearly 15,000 people have signed the Declaration of Health Care Independence at WND. Bachmann has received signatures from an additional 11,000 Americans and nearly 100 lawmakers in rejection of an unconstitutional Washington takeover of health care.
Bachmann; Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa; Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, and other lawmakers drafted the Declaration of Health Care Independence and formally unveiled it on Jan. 27. The declaration is a commitment to protect the rights of the American people to make their own health decisions, reduce bureaucratic red-tape, decrease intergenerational debt and implement 10 common-sense principles for future health-care reform.
They presented the following 10 points of agreement in the declaration:
We, therefore, the People and Representatives of the United States of America, do solemnly Publish and Declare that health care reform, as a matter of principle, must: Protect as inviolate the vital doctor-patient relationship;
Reject any addition to the crushing national debt heaped upon all Americans;
Improve, rather than diminish, the quality of care that Americans enjoy;
Be negotiated publicly, transparently, with genuine accountability and oversight;
Treat private citizens at least as well as political officials;
Protect taxpayers from funding of abortion and abortion coverage;
Reject all new mandates on patients, employers, individuals or states;
Prohibit expansion of taxpayer-funded health care to those unlawfully present in the United States;
Guarantee Equal Protection under the law and the Constitution;
Empower, rather than limit, an open and accessible marketplace of health care choice and opportunity.
"The Declaration of Health Care Independence is a framework for going forward on health-care reform, something that we believe all Americans agree with," Bachmann explained. "All 10 of those statements are items that the president himself said that his health-care reform would embrace."
However, she said Obama's statements were untrue because the health bill contains full federal funding of abortion and allows illegal alien access to taxpayer-subsidized health care because there are no procedures for verifying immigration status prior to receiving benefits.
Rep. Michele Bachmann speaks to PJTV during protest against Obamacare at Capitol on March 21 (photo: Flickr, theqspeaks)
Bachmann added that Obama was wrong when he said Republicans do not want health reform.
"The president was very rude and arrogant when he stated that Republicans didn't have a plan," she said. "Even the day before the health-care vote, he stated very rudely and very arrogantly that Republicans and those who didn't vote for his bill wanted the status quo. That was patently false, and he knew that was false. We had more than 70 different proposals for health-care reform."
She said true health reform would embrace the principles in that declaration. As for the Democrats' passage of the health-care bill on Sunday, she said conservatives have a right to feel disappointed, but they must pull out all the stops in the upcoming months.
"What is at stake is the survival of the finest health care the world has ever known," Bachmann said. "We want to be able to continue that. We don't want to allow ourselves to devolve into a social welfare state, but that's clearly the president's intention for us."
She added, "Now it's up to us to fight for our country, just like those who have gone before us. We have to be up for the battle."
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
FEMA Detention Site Plans Exposed
FEMA Detention Site Plans Exposed
FEMA Detention Site Plans Exposed
Mark Anderson
American Free Press
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
If, God forbid, Americans are ever rounded up in large numbers during a natural or manmade disaster, where could they be detained? Well, perhaps look no further than the school building next door, the office building around the corner or the stadium downtown. And besides existing military installations, state fair grounds, horse stables, airports “and maybe even a hotel” also could be used as detention centers.
That’s according to Restore the Republic’s Gary Franchi at Freedom Law School’s recent Health & Freedom Conference. Franchi was one of several speakers who gathered at the Airport Hilton in Ontario, Calif., March 12-15 to talk about cutting-edge developments in health and politics.
Many vigilant Americans have become aware of some apparently underutilized military facilities and other installations around the nation that seem designed to detain large numbers of people but are largely empty.
Unsubstantiated rumors and urban legends have been circulated, and Franchi was careful not to overstate this issue. But he said there is cause for considerable concern in these post-9-11 days when the normal patriotic impulses of Americans are being relabeled as radical or even on par with terrorism by federal agencies.
Franchi told the conference audience that on April 1, 1979, under Executive Order 12127, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created but it unfortunately was “no joke” for April Fools Day. Just as FEMA was absorbed nearly 25 years later by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FEMA at its birth absorbed the Department of Defense civil-preparedness functions that designated schools, office buildings and other structures as atom bomb “fallout shelters” starting in the 1950s during the Cold War days with the Soviet Union.
DHS, created on the direct recommendation of the 9-11 Commission, that purported to deeply study what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, says, under its “Goals and Objectives” statement (Part VI), that its mission is to “protect our nation from dangerous people.”
Now under the DHS umbrella, FEMA’s three basic objectives, according to its own policy, are: national emergency recovery, continuity of government and “to combat perceived threats to the social and political order,” Franchi emphasized.
He showed an aerial picture of “FEMA City,” the drab barracks set up in Florida after Hurricane Charlie. These cookie-cutter mobile homes were “free housing with nosebleeds,” Franchi said, referring to the effects of chemical fumes emitted from the shoddy building materials.
The area, courtesy of FEMA, became a crime haven. Any genuine public benefit was marginal at best.
Fast-forward to Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, claimed by FEMA in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a place to put Louisiana refugees entering Texas. The New Orleans Superdome itself was “another private building used to house refugees,” Franchi added.
Given the ongoing “war on terror” and the threat to the people’s liberties that can arise from “anti-terror” measures, combined with steep economic decline and the procedures and policies that FEMA and DHS have developed or are still developing, Franchi says the situation looks grim unless Americans protest now and show they are informed of, and actively opposed to, potential plans to imprison large numbers of people, lest Americans bite the dust the way the USSR people did when they were sent to brutal labor camps amid political turmoil and the demonizing of “unlawful” political beliefs.
Pointing to the World War II detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans, Franchi said the detaining of Americans has already happened. Recall that during Woodrow Wilson’s days, many notable war dissenters were imprisoned in a nation supposedly dedicated to free speech. So it’s only a question of circumstance, as Franchi sees it.
The FBI’s Project Megiddo in 1999, the Missouri Information Analysis Center “militia” report from February 2009 and the April 2009 DHS report Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, are among the reports that have tried to tie Americans’ concerns and beliefs to supposed violent tendencies, so these linkages can be transformed into the “truth” and used to arrest political dissidents, just like what happened in the early 20th century, said Franchi.
He added that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tried to influence law enforcement and legislation, has issued yet another report that follows a similar tack. His research is in the documentary Camp FEMA. “We cannot let these people . . . intimidate us; we are sovereign U.S. citizens, and nothing is going to stop us from [resisting] this tyranny,” Franchi said, noting that public television stations may help.
FEMA Detention Site Plans Exposed
Mark Anderson
American Free Press
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
If, God forbid, Americans are ever rounded up in large numbers during a natural or manmade disaster, where could they be detained? Well, perhaps look no further than the school building next door, the office building around the corner or the stadium downtown. And besides existing military installations, state fair grounds, horse stables, airports “and maybe even a hotel” also could be used as detention centers.
That’s according to Restore the Republic’s Gary Franchi at Freedom Law School’s recent Health & Freedom Conference. Franchi was one of several speakers who gathered at the Airport Hilton in Ontario, Calif., March 12-15 to talk about cutting-edge developments in health and politics.
Many vigilant Americans have become aware of some apparently underutilized military facilities and other installations around the nation that seem designed to detain large numbers of people but are largely empty.
Unsubstantiated rumors and urban legends have been circulated, and Franchi was careful not to overstate this issue. But he said there is cause for considerable concern in these post-9-11 days when the normal patriotic impulses of Americans are being relabeled as radical or even on par with terrorism by federal agencies.
Franchi told the conference audience that on April 1, 1979, under Executive Order 12127, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created but it unfortunately was “no joke” for April Fools Day. Just as FEMA was absorbed nearly 25 years later by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FEMA at its birth absorbed the Department of Defense civil-preparedness functions that designated schools, office buildings and other structures as atom bomb “fallout shelters” starting in the 1950s during the Cold War days with the Soviet Union.
DHS, created on the direct recommendation of the 9-11 Commission, that purported to deeply study what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, says, under its “Goals and Objectives” statement (Part VI), that its mission is to “protect our nation from dangerous people.”
Now under the DHS umbrella, FEMA’s three basic objectives, according to its own policy, are: national emergency recovery, continuity of government and “to combat perceived threats to the social and political order,” Franchi emphasized.
He showed an aerial picture of “FEMA City,” the drab barracks set up in Florida after Hurricane Charlie. These cookie-cutter mobile homes were “free housing with nosebleeds,” Franchi said, referring to the effects of chemical fumes emitted from the shoddy building materials.
The area, courtesy of FEMA, became a crime haven. Any genuine public benefit was marginal at best.
Fast-forward to Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, claimed by FEMA in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a place to put Louisiana refugees entering Texas. The New Orleans Superdome itself was “another private building used to house refugees,” Franchi added.
Given the ongoing “war on terror” and the threat to the people’s liberties that can arise from “anti-terror” measures, combined with steep economic decline and the procedures and policies that FEMA and DHS have developed or are still developing, Franchi says the situation looks grim unless Americans protest now and show they are informed of, and actively opposed to, potential plans to imprison large numbers of people, lest Americans bite the dust the way the USSR people did when they were sent to brutal labor camps amid political turmoil and the demonizing of “unlawful” political beliefs.
Pointing to the World War II detention of thousands of Japanese-Americans, Franchi said the detaining of Americans has already happened. Recall that during Woodrow Wilson’s days, many notable war dissenters were imprisoned in a nation supposedly dedicated to free speech. So it’s only a question of circumstance, as Franchi sees it.
The FBI’s Project Megiddo in 1999, the Missouri Information Analysis Center “militia” report from February 2009 and the April 2009 DHS report Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, are among the reports that have tried to tie Americans’ concerns and beliefs to supposed violent tendencies, so these linkages can be transformed into the “truth” and used to arrest political dissidents, just like what happened in the early 20th century, said Franchi.
He added that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long tried to influence law enforcement and legislation, has issued yet another report that follows a similar tack. His research is in the documentary Camp FEMA. “We cannot let these people . . . intimidate us; we are sovereign U.S. citizens, and nothing is going to stop us from [resisting] this tyranny,” Franchi said, noting that public television stations may help.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The New Intolerable Act
The New Intolerable Act
The New Intolerable Act
The New Intolerable Act
By Mike Vanderboegh
3-22-10
To all free Americans who still hold dear the Founders' vision of a constitutional Republic and who wish to remain free --
Nancy Pelosi's Intolerable Act has been given passage by means so corrupt and twisted that even members of her own party recoil in disgust.
This act orders all of us to play or pay, and if we do not wish to, we will be fined.
If we refuse to pay the fine bout of principle, we will be jailed.
If we resist arrest, we will be killed.
They will send the Internal Revenue Service and other federal police to do this in thousands of small Wacos, if that is what it takes to force us to submit.
This arrogant elite pretends that this oppression is for our own good, while everyone else understands that this is about their selfish, insatiable appetite for control over our liberty, our money, our property and our lives.
The majority of the people have made it plain that they do not want this tyrannical transfer of power wrapped in soft lies.
It does not matter.
Pelosi and her confederates apparently do not understand that this Intolerable Act has some folks so angry that they are ready to resist their slow-rolling revolution against the Founders' Republic by force of arms. Why should they? For in the past seventy-five years of being pushed back continually from the free exercise of our God-given rights to life, liberty and property, WE HAVE NEVER SHOVED BACK. Rather, it was we, the law-abiding, who backed up each time, grumbling. ...
Here is what just grumbling has just gotten you:
"Medicine to be rationed politically.
"Forced insurance will only give more premium capital to Wall Street (insurance companies invest in Wall Street the money premiums they do not yet have to pay out -- and the government political rationing will mean that less and less is payed out so that more and more of the premiums stay in the hands of Goldman-Sachs etc.
"People don't have money to invest in stocks any more, nor can we save. Wall Street misses those savings which they got to invest -- and so the "health care" reform act was devised as a means of forcing people to "invest" through forced health insurance payments. The insurance companies will invest in Wall Street and the government -- working for Wall Street -- will ensure that actual payouts for medical care by those insurance companies will be minimized so the invested premiums we pay can stay in the hands of the Wall Street investors -- still profiting from other people's money. So to force saving upon the nouveaux pauvres they devised a system to coerce payments to the financal sector with mandatory insurance payments -- and then they will cut medical service to the people so wall street does not have to give as much of that money back to the medical sector. You now understand what it has all been about.
High Finance will determine what can be spared for operations, tests, medication, hospital care for the people.
"If you are very nice to Barney Frank or Lloyd Blankfein, maybe one of them will let you have cuts in line when your child needs an expensive life-saving operation. Otherwise they need the money for for their own international speculating." (inserted)
The Imperial Democrats do not care what you think. They will not hear you. They are every bit as arrogant and isolated as King George the Third was from the liberty-loving American colonists in 1775.
And yet, if we are to avoid civil war, we must get their attention BEFORE the IRS thug parties descend upon us each in turn -- when we will be forced into dozens of defensive slaughters and then, to end it, forced yet again to call Pelosi and the other architects of this war upon their own people to final account.
We are the law-abiding of this country, yes. We always have been. But when the "law" is distorted and twisted into an unconstitutional means of oppression, backed by the entire weight of the federal Leviathan, it is not "law" at all, but mere illegitimate force.
John Locke said it best:
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience."
...
Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
Note by Dick Eastman...
First rule: Don't do anything stupid like what the Tea Party operatives will be telling you to do (i.e. break windows etc.) They work for the same interests as does Pelosi and Obama.
Second rule: Blame Big Finance who own both political parties and all politicians (including Kucinich and Ron Paul) and always will until they are gotten rid of by unified resistance of all races and classes against the Money Power.
Third Rule: Listen to those who have investigated 9-11. They have proven that Jewish Money Power agents were behind a false-flag mass-murder attack. 9-11, the economic "Kleptastrope" and the great "Health Care" scam are the work of the same Jewish mafia and those they seduce and/or intimidate. We can bring down this organized crime by simply, for the first time, holding up the "bloody shirt" of the 9-11 crime so that all America and the world will see who is responsible and will insist that, regardless of their unlimited wealth, they be brought to justice with their wealth and power taken from them. Nothing less will succeed.
Would US troops fire on US-Americans? This article shows to you, that it ist not worth to fight for US-Wall Street and the British-Zionists City of London. Prepare for revolution in your own country:
http://www.henrymakow.com/would_american_troops_fire_on.html
The New Intolerable Act
The New Intolerable Act
By Mike Vanderboegh
3-22-10
To all free Americans who still hold dear the Founders' vision of a constitutional Republic and who wish to remain free --
Nancy Pelosi's Intolerable Act has been given passage by means so corrupt and twisted that even members of her own party recoil in disgust.
This act orders all of us to play or pay, and if we do not wish to, we will be fined.
If we refuse to pay the fine bout of principle, we will be jailed.
If we resist arrest, we will be killed.
They will send the Internal Revenue Service and other federal police to do this in thousands of small Wacos, if that is what it takes to force us to submit.
This arrogant elite pretends that this oppression is for our own good, while everyone else understands that this is about their selfish, insatiable appetite for control over our liberty, our money, our property and our lives.
The majority of the people have made it plain that they do not want this tyrannical transfer of power wrapped in soft lies.
It does not matter.
Pelosi and her confederates apparently do not understand that this Intolerable Act has some folks so angry that they are ready to resist their slow-rolling revolution against the Founders' Republic by force of arms. Why should they? For in the past seventy-five years of being pushed back continually from the free exercise of our God-given rights to life, liberty and property, WE HAVE NEVER SHOVED BACK. Rather, it was we, the law-abiding, who backed up each time, grumbling. ...
Here is what just grumbling has just gotten you:
"Medicine to be rationed politically.
"Forced insurance will only give more premium capital to Wall Street (insurance companies invest in Wall Street the money premiums they do not yet have to pay out -- and the government political rationing will mean that less and less is payed out so that more and more of the premiums stay in the hands of Goldman-Sachs etc.
"People don't have money to invest in stocks any more, nor can we save. Wall Street misses those savings which they got to invest -- and so the "health care" reform act was devised as a means of forcing people to "invest" through forced health insurance payments. The insurance companies will invest in Wall Street and the government -- working for Wall Street -- will ensure that actual payouts for medical care by those insurance companies will be minimized so the invested premiums we pay can stay in the hands of the Wall Street investors -- still profiting from other people's money. So to force saving upon the nouveaux pauvres they devised a system to coerce payments to the financal sector with mandatory insurance payments -- and then they will cut medical service to the people so wall street does not have to give as much of that money back to the medical sector. You now understand what it has all been about.
High Finance will determine what can be spared for operations, tests, medication, hospital care for the people.
"If you are very nice to Barney Frank or Lloyd Blankfein, maybe one of them will let you have cuts in line when your child needs an expensive life-saving operation. Otherwise they need the money for for their own international speculating." (inserted)
The Imperial Democrats do not care what you think. They will not hear you. They are every bit as arrogant and isolated as King George the Third was from the liberty-loving American colonists in 1775.
And yet, if we are to avoid civil war, we must get their attention BEFORE the IRS thug parties descend upon us each in turn -- when we will be forced into dozens of defensive slaughters and then, to end it, forced yet again to call Pelosi and the other architects of this war upon their own people to final account.
We are the law-abiding of this country, yes. We always have been. But when the "law" is distorted and twisted into an unconstitutional means of oppression, backed by the entire weight of the federal Leviathan, it is not "law" at all, but mere illegitimate force.
John Locke said it best:
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience."
...
Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
Note by Dick Eastman...
First rule: Don't do anything stupid like what the Tea Party operatives will be telling you to do (i.e. break windows etc.) They work for the same interests as does Pelosi and Obama.
Second rule: Blame Big Finance who own both political parties and all politicians (including Kucinich and Ron Paul) and always will until they are gotten rid of by unified resistance of all races and classes against the Money Power.
Third Rule: Listen to those who have investigated 9-11. They have proven that Jewish Money Power agents were behind a false-flag mass-murder attack. 9-11, the economic "Kleptastrope" and the great "Health Care" scam are the work of the same Jewish mafia and those they seduce and/or intimidate. We can bring down this organized crime by simply, for the first time, holding up the "bloody shirt" of the 9-11 crime so that all America and the world will see who is responsible and will insist that, regardless of their unlimited wealth, they be brought to justice with their wealth and power taken from them. Nothing less will succeed.
Would US troops fire on US-Americans? This article shows to you, that it ist not worth to fight for US-Wall Street and the British-Zionists City of London. Prepare for revolution in your own country:
http://www.henrymakow.com/would_american_troops_fire_on.html
YouTube - Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.
YouTube - Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.
Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.
Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Dem Congressman On Health Bill: Insurance Companies Are “Holding Hostages”
Dem Congressman On Health Bill: Insurance Companies Are “Holding Hostages”
Dem Congressman On Health Bill: Insurance Companies Are “Holding Hostages”
“There’s a difference between compromise and surrender”
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Friday, March 19th, 2010
A Democratic Congressman has stated that he will refuse to vote yes on the pending health care reform bill, declaring that the legislation represents a vastly bloated giveaway to insurance companies and big pharma.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) asserts that the Senate bill bankrolls the very companies that president Obama says are taking advantage of the American people.
“We’ve paid the ransom, but at the end of the day the insurance companies are still holding the hostages,’’ Lynch said in an interview with The Boston Globe yesterday.
“This is a very good bill for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It might be good for Nebraska, I don’t know. Or Florida residents. But it’s not good for the average American, and it’s not good for my district. Or for Massachusetts.’’ Lynch added.
“The insurers still rule,” Lynch said. “Were just pumping subsidies into the current system, but that won’t drive down costs.”
The Congressman says he also opposes the way in which the House Democrats intend to pass the legislation, bypassing a traditional vote and opting for the so called Slaughter rule of “Deem and Pass”.
Lynch, has said that the parliamentary move would be “disingenuous” and would fundamentally harm the credibility of Congress.
He added that the move “may be unconstitutional.”
“It’s a stretch,” Lynch said. “I think it hurts our credibility to try to pull a prank like that. We should stand up and tell voters where we stand.”
As we reported yesterday, president Obama glossed over questions surrounding the process, stating “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.”
Unlike his Democratic colleague from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, Lynch has stuck to his guns despite a meeting with Obama.
“The president was courteous and generous with his time,” Lynch said. “The president asked me if there was anything he could do that I should tell him, and I told him, ‘I have been over this bill and I still wasn’t satisfied.’ ”
“I continue to be opposed to the bill,” he said.
Kucinich had said he opposed the bill, citing the exact same points as Lynch, however, a 40 minute jaunt on board Airforce One with the president, in addition to veiled threats directed his way by Obama swayed Kucinich to change his mind.
“There doesn’t appear to be any way to put reform into this bill,” Lynch said. “It’s a very poor bill.”
“If they put reform back in the health reform bill, that would change my position,” he told reporters yesterday.
When reminded yesterday of Senator Ted Kennedy’s advice to not let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,’’ Lynch told reporters: “There’s a difference between compromise and surrender, right? And this is a complete surrender of all the things that people thought were important to health care reform.’’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team, as well as Obama himself are intensely lobbying individual representatives before Sunday’s anticipated vote as they seek to win the 216 votes needed to pass the measure. According to reports, the Democrats are still six votes short.
Dem Congressman On Health Bill: Insurance Companies Are “Holding Hostages”
“There’s a difference between compromise and surrender”
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Friday, March 19th, 2010
A Democratic Congressman has stated that he will refuse to vote yes on the pending health care reform bill, declaring that the legislation represents a vastly bloated giveaway to insurance companies and big pharma.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) asserts that the Senate bill bankrolls the very companies that president Obama says are taking advantage of the American people.
“We’ve paid the ransom, but at the end of the day the insurance companies are still holding the hostages,’’ Lynch said in an interview with The Boston Globe yesterday.
“This is a very good bill for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It might be good for Nebraska, I don’t know. Or Florida residents. But it’s not good for the average American, and it’s not good for my district. Or for Massachusetts.’’ Lynch added.
“The insurers still rule,” Lynch said. “Were just pumping subsidies into the current system, but that won’t drive down costs.”
The Congressman says he also opposes the way in which the House Democrats intend to pass the legislation, bypassing a traditional vote and opting for the so called Slaughter rule of “Deem and Pass”.
Lynch, has said that the parliamentary move would be “disingenuous” and would fundamentally harm the credibility of Congress.
He added that the move “may be unconstitutional.”
“It’s a stretch,” Lynch said. “I think it hurts our credibility to try to pull a prank like that. We should stand up and tell voters where we stand.”
As we reported yesterday, president Obama glossed over questions surrounding the process, stating “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.”
Unlike his Democratic colleague from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, Lynch has stuck to his guns despite a meeting with Obama.
“The president was courteous and generous with his time,” Lynch said. “The president asked me if there was anything he could do that I should tell him, and I told him, ‘I have been over this bill and I still wasn’t satisfied.’ ”
“I continue to be opposed to the bill,” he said.
Kucinich had said he opposed the bill, citing the exact same points as Lynch, however, a 40 minute jaunt on board Airforce One with the president, in addition to veiled threats directed his way by Obama swayed Kucinich to change his mind.
“There doesn’t appear to be any way to put reform into this bill,” Lynch said. “It’s a very poor bill.”
“If they put reform back in the health reform bill, that would change my position,” he told reporters yesterday.
When reminded yesterday of Senator Ted Kennedy’s advice to not let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,’’ Lynch told reporters: “There’s a difference between compromise and surrender, right? And this is a complete surrender of all the things that people thought were important to health care reform.’’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team, as well as Obama himself are intensely lobbying individual representatives before Sunday’s anticipated vote as they seek to win the 216 votes needed to pass the measure. According to reports, the Democrats are still six votes short.
Obama, Congress, and Treason Against the Constitution
Obama, Congress, and Treason Against the Constitution
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 19, 2010
On Thursday, Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, responded to a question about the so-called “Slaughter Rule” (named after Rep. Slaughter, who sits on the rules committee) that will be used by Democrats to force through Obama’s totalitarian care bill, probably over the weekend.
Gibbs’ answer was deliberately opaque. By not addressing the question, he essentially said “deem and pass” will be used in the future to enact unpopular legislation, including a bill that will legalize millions of illegal immigrants.
It is now official — the Constitution is dead. It may as well be used to wrap fish.
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution requires that both houses of Congress hold recorded yea-or-nay votes on a bill before it can be presented to the president for his signature and before it can become law.
Obama approves of sabotaging the Constitution. He said he does not “spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are,” in other words violating the spirit and law of the Constitution is not a biggie for him. “What I can tell you is that the vote that’s taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform,” he told Bret Baier of Fox News.
“These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism,” former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell told the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. “They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives.”
Author and talk show host Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation plans to file an immediate lawsuit if House Democratic leaders try to use the unconstitutional maneuver to pass the Senate version of Obama’s totalitarian care.
Good for Levin. However, according to constitutional experts, the underhanded procedure is unlikely to be reversed by the courts.
In short, Obama and Congress will not be called to task. The Constitution is now about as relevant as the Sunday funnies.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 19, 2010
On Thursday, Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, responded to a question about the so-called “Slaughter Rule” (named after Rep. Slaughter, who sits on the rules committee) that will be used by Democrats to force through Obama’s totalitarian care bill, probably over the weekend.
Gibbs’ answer was deliberately opaque. By not addressing the question, he essentially said “deem and pass” will be used in the future to enact unpopular legislation, including a bill that will legalize millions of illegal immigrants.
It is now official — the Constitution is dead. It may as well be used to wrap fish.
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution requires that both houses of Congress hold recorded yea-or-nay votes on a bill before it can be presented to the president for his signature and before it can become law.
Obama approves of sabotaging the Constitution. He said he does not “spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are,” in other words violating the spirit and law of the Constitution is not a biggie for him. “What I can tell you is that the vote that’s taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform,” he told Bret Baier of Fox News.
“These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism,” former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell told the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. “They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives.”
Author and talk show host Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation plans to file an immediate lawsuit if House Democratic leaders try to use the unconstitutional maneuver to pass the Senate version of Obama’s totalitarian care.
Good for Levin. However, according to constitutional experts, the underhanded procedure is unlikely to be reversed by the courts.
In short, Obama and Congress will not be called to task. The Constitution is now about as relevant as the Sunday funnies.
The Growing Movement for Publicly-owned Banks
The Growing Movement for Publicly-owned Banks
Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt
March 19, 2010
Money today is just a ticket, a receipt for work performed and goods delivered. We can fund the work we need done by creating our own credit.
As the states’ credit crisis deepens, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have now included that solution in their platforms.
“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”
–Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero in the Detroit News, May 9, 2010
Struggling with 14% unemployment, Michigan has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s economic downturn. Virg Bernero, mayor of the state’s capitol and a leading Democratic candidate for governor, proposes that the state relieve its economic ills by opening a state-owned bank. He says the bank could protect consumers by making low-interest loans to those most in need, including students and small businesses; and could help community banks by buying mortgages off their books and working with them to fund development projects.
Bernero joins a growing list of candidates proposing this sensible solution to their states’ fiscal ills. Local economies have collapsed because of the Wall Street credit freeze. To reinvigorate local business, Main Street needs a heavy infusion of credit; and publicly-owned banks could fill that need.
A February posting tracked candidates in five states running on a state-bank platform and one state with a bill pending (Massachusetts). There are now three more bills on the rolls – in Washington State, Illinois and Michigan – and two more candidates on the list of proponents (joining Bernero is Gaelan Brown of Vermont). That brings the total to seven candidates in as many states (Florida, Oregon, Illinois, California, Washington State, Vermont, and Idaho), including three Democrats, two Greens, one Republican and one Independent.
The Independent, Vermont’s Gaelan Brown, says on his website, “Washington DC has lost all moral authority over Vermont.” He maintains that:
“Vermont should explore creating a State-owned bank that would work with private VT-based banks, to insulate VT from Wall Street corruption, and to increase investment capital for VT businesses, modeled after the very successful State-owned Bank of North Dakota.”
The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned bank, is the model (with variations) for all the other proposals on the table. The Bank of North Dakota acts as a “bankers’ bank,” including doing “participation loans” with other banks, allowing them to compete with larger banks. In a participation loan, the community bank originates the loan and takes responsibility for it, while the participating bank contributes funds and shares in the risk and profits. The Bank of North Dakota also makes low-interest loans to students, farmers and businesses; underwrites municipal bonds; and serves as the state’s “Mini Fed,” providing liquidity and clearing checks for more than 100 banks around the state.
Read entire article
Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt
March 19, 2010
Money today is just a ticket, a receipt for work performed and goods delivered. We can fund the work we need done by creating our own credit.
As the states’ credit crisis deepens, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have now included that solution in their platforms.
“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”
–Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero in the Detroit News, May 9, 2010
Struggling with 14% unemployment, Michigan has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s economic downturn. Virg Bernero, mayor of the state’s capitol and a leading Democratic candidate for governor, proposes that the state relieve its economic ills by opening a state-owned bank. He says the bank could protect consumers by making low-interest loans to those most in need, including students and small businesses; and could help community banks by buying mortgages off their books and working with them to fund development projects.
Bernero joins a growing list of candidates proposing this sensible solution to their states’ fiscal ills. Local economies have collapsed because of the Wall Street credit freeze. To reinvigorate local business, Main Street needs a heavy infusion of credit; and publicly-owned banks could fill that need.
A February posting tracked candidates in five states running on a state-bank platform and one state with a bill pending (Massachusetts). There are now three more bills on the rolls – in Washington State, Illinois and Michigan – and two more candidates on the list of proponents (joining Bernero is Gaelan Brown of Vermont). That brings the total to seven candidates in as many states (Florida, Oregon, Illinois, California, Washington State, Vermont, and Idaho), including three Democrats, two Greens, one Republican and one Independent.
The Independent, Vermont’s Gaelan Brown, says on his website, “Washington DC has lost all moral authority over Vermont.” He maintains that:
“Vermont should explore creating a State-owned bank that would work with private VT-based banks, to insulate VT from Wall Street corruption, and to increase investment capital for VT businesses, modeled after the very successful State-owned Bank of North Dakota.”
The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned bank, is the model (with variations) for all the other proposals on the table. The Bank of North Dakota acts as a “bankers’ bank,” including doing “participation loans” with other banks, allowing them to compete with larger banks. In a participation loan, the community bank originates the loan and takes responsibility for it, while the participating bank contributes funds and shares in the risk and profits. The Bank of North Dakota also makes low-interest loans to students, farmers and businesses; underwrites municipal bonds; and serves as the state’s “Mini Fed,” providing liquidity and clearing checks for more than 100 banks around the state.
Read entire article
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Rising food prices may start with seeds - Los Angeles Times
Rising food prices may start with seeds - Los Angeles Times
Farmers say consolidation in the industry means they're forced to buy more costly seeds. But Monsanto, the world's largest seed firm, says competition 'is alive and flourishing.'
March 11, 2010|By P.J. Huffstutter
Dan Gill, Associated PressFor 40 years, farmer Todd Leake and his family have battled bitter cold, hungry pests and a short growing season to coax soybeans out of their fields in eastern North Dakota.
The one thing they never had to fight for, though, was their seeds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR THE RECORD:
Seed prices: An article Friday in Section A about the federal government examining whether certain practices in agriculture were driving food prices higher said officials were seeking to determine whether there were antitrust practices that violated federal laws. The practices should have been described as anti-competitive or monopolistic. —
A decade ago, salesmen from as many as 50 seed companies would compete for their dollars. Each would promise healthier plants, richer yields or a better discount.
Today the Leakes have little choice: There are four seed companies in their area, and all sell seeds that include genetic traits patented and licensed by Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed firm.
"There's basically nothing else available," said Leake, 48. "You have to use their seeds and pay their prices."
The concerns of farmers such as Leake will take center stage in Ankeny, Iowa, on Friday as the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture kick off the first of a yearlong series of public meetings to examine whether antitrust practices in agriculture are driving food prices higher.
The meetings are intended to allow producers, competitors and activists to air their concerns about the grain, poultry, dairy and livestock industries. The government is also trying to ferret out reasons for the sometimes vast gaps between what farmers are paid for producing food and the prices shoppers pay at the grocery store.
Justice Department officials, who spoke on background because they said it was too early to comment about concerns raised at the meetings, said the workshops were a chance for the government to examine the changes the food sector had undergone in recent years.
The push to hold such events, the officials said, was driven in part by President Obama's concerns over how consolidation has affected industry competition.
Many experts believe that rising food prices start with seeds.
In recent years, the companies that develop seeds for farmers to sow in their fields have consolidated. Complaints about unfair competitive practices by the few giant firms left have soared. As a result, critics say, the effects of more costly seeds have rippled out to the nation's dining tables.
Farmers say consolidation in the industry means they're forced to buy more costly seeds. But Monsanto, the world's largest seed firm, says competition 'is alive and flourishing.'
March 11, 2010|By P.J. Huffstutter
Dan Gill, Associated PressFor 40 years, farmer Todd Leake and his family have battled bitter cold, hungry pests and a short growing season to coax soybeans out of their fields in eastern North Dakota.
The one thing they never had to fight for, though, was their seeds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR THE RECORD:
Seed prices: An article Friday in Section A about the federal government examining whether certain practices in agriculture were driving food prices higher said officials were seeking to determine whether there were antitrust practices that violated federal laws. The practices should have been described as anti-competitive or monopolistic. —
A decade ago, salesmen from as many as 50 seed companies would compete for their dollars. Each would promise healthier plants, richer yields or a better discount.
Today the Leakes have little choice: There are four seed companies in their area, and all sell seeds that include genetic traits patented and licensed by Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed firm.
"There's basically nothing else available," said Leake, 48. "You have to use their seeds and pay their prices."
The concerns of farmers such as Leake will take center stage in Ankeny, Iowa, on Friday as the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Agriculture kick off the first of a yearlong series of public meetings to examine whether antitrust practices in agriculture are driving food prices higher.
The meetings are intended to allow producers, competitors and activists to air their concerns about the grain, poultry, dairy and livestock industries. The government is also trying to ferret out reasons for the sometimes vast gaps between what farmers are paid for producing food and the prices shoppers pay at the grocery store.
Justice Department officials, who spoke on background because they said it was too early to comment about concerns raised at the meetings, said the workshops were a chance for the government to examine the changes the food sector had undergone in recent years.
The push to hold such events, the officials said, was driven in part by President Obama's concerns over how consolidation has affected industry competition.
Many experts believe that rising food prices start with seeds.
In recent years, the companies that develop seeds for farmers to sow in their fields have consolidated. Complaints about unfair competitive practices by the few giant firms left have soared. As a result, critics say, the effects of more costly seeds have rippled out to the nation's dining tables.
What's In The Obamacare Bill? Who Knows?
What's In The Obamacare Bill? Who Knows?
What's In The Obamacare Bill? Who Knows?
By J. Speer-Williams
3-18-10
Millions of Americans want "free" health care from the US medical industry of illness and death, never knowing what such "care" would really offer. And, What does Obama's new health care bill offer us? Who knows? Even the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee doesn't know.
Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) questioned the sense of reading Obama's 1,990 page health care bill: "I love these members, they get up and say, 'Read the bill.'" remarked Conyers.
"What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?" said Conyers, a representative of the kind of democracy the USA has become.
"Ah ... Congressman, a question or two before you go: If you do not have the time to read legislation, nor would you understand it if you did read it ... er ... how are you able to vote on any bills before Congress? One more question, Sir: Where do you and your colleagues get the "talking points" given to the public regarding legislation, none of you understand?"
"Ah ... Congressman ... don't run away."
Well, he went anyway; but fortunately, the New York Times has answered my questions. On rare occasions, the Times slips up and prints something other than Banking Cartel propaganda.
According to the New York Times, in an article by Robert Pear, published on November 14, 2009, the statements made by some lawmakers regarding Obama's health care bill were written by lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world's largest biotechnology companies.
Now get this: These very same lobbyists wrote statements made by both democratic and republican lawmakers, that on the surface seemed to be in conflict, but were actually pushing the agendas of the Monetary/Banking Cartel's biotech, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations. So much for the phony left/right paradigm, that our "diligent" lawmakers pretend to play.
It's comical when a portion of the corrupt system in Washington gets exposed; but what is not funny is the above model is how all federal laws are enacted. In fascistic governments, the Cartel's corporate lobbyists, think-tanks, and tax-free foundations write and ensure the passage of all legislation, with senators and congressmen pretending to be in disagreement, but always passing laws that are favorable to the financial oligarchs of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, and disastrous to the American people.
J. Speer-Williams
JSW4@mac.com
What's In The Obamacare Bill? Who Knows?
By J. Speer-Williams
3-18-10
Millions of Americans want "free" health care from the US medical industry of illness and death, never knowing what such "care" would really offer. And, What does Obama's new health care bill offer us? Who knows? Even the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee doesn't know.
Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) questioned the sense of reading Obama's 1,990 page health care bill: "I love these members, they get up and say, 'Read the bill.'" remarked Conyers.
"What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?" said Conyers, a representative of the kind of democracy the USA has become.
"Ah ... Congressman, a question or two before you go: If you do not have the time to read legislation, nor would you understand it if you did read it ... er ... how are you able to vote on any bills before Congress? One more question, Sir: Where do you and your colleagues get the "talking points" given to the public regarding legislation, none of you understand?"
"Ah ... Congressman ... don't run away."
Well, he went anyway; but fortunately, the New York Times has answered my questions. On rare occasions, the Times slips up and prints something other than Banking Cartel propaganda.
According to the New York Times, in an article by Robert Pear, published on November 14, 2009, the statements made by some lawmakers regarding Obama's health care bill were written by lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world's largest biotechnology companies.
Now get this: These very same lobbyists wrote statements made by both democratic and republican lawmakers, that on the surface seemed to be in conflict, but were actually pushing the agendas of the Monetary/Banking Cartel's biotech, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations. So much for the phony left/right paradigm, that our "diligent" lawmakers pretend to play.
It's comical when a portion of the corrupt system in Washington gets exposed; but what is not funny is the above model is how all federal laws are enacted. In fascistic governments, the Cartel's corporate lobbyists, think-tanks, and tax-free foundations write and ensure the passage of all legislation, with senators and congressmen pretending to be in disagreement, but always passing laws that are favorable to the financial oligarchs of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel, and disastrous to the American people.
J. Speer-Williams
JSW4@mac.com
Round Two - Who Owns This Country?
Round Two - Who Owns This Country?
By Jim Kirwan
3-17-10
"The US Census Bureau has awarded IBM (NYSE IBM) Global Business Services a contract to provide data tabulation and dissemination services in support of the 2010 United States Census and other key Census Bureau Surveys. The project was awarded to IBM on September 20th and the value of the contract is $89.5 million over 9 years.
This is the same company that undertook the 1890 U.S. Census; the same company that was contracted by Germany's Third Reich to undertake census operations and similar advance people counting and registration technologies. IBM Germany not only head-counted the populace, but invented the racial census. They not only listed religious affiliation, but blood lines going back generations. This was the same company that was contracted to lease the whole-earth machine to the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. " (1)
Many Americans have been surprised to learn that the 2010 Census is not being run by the federal government of the United States, but by a private corporation using a registered version of that company's Logo for the 2010 Census, as was outlined in yesterday's article "Owning the United States ®." (2)
There is, it turns out, a somewhat awkward conflict between the mark they chose to register and the one they actually used. Here's what they registered: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:beajte.4.608
It appears that they chose NOT to use the image they "registered."
The "wings" (Or feathers) shown in the link above do not appear on the official papers, which of course only compounds the problems inherent by choosing to 'register' this logo in the first place. Apparently they created something which they obviously did not expect would cause much of a reaction. Now that these problems have been pointed out graphically - and this registered mark is now "in national use," this is provoking more questions than they will likely choose to answer.
The question herein is; 'might there be a violation of Federal law for misuse of a registered mark,' given that the United States would seem to indicate that the 2010 Census is being undertaken by the government of the United States: Not by some private corporate interests that has a very long and ugly history where collecting census data is concerned?
What happened to the U. S. Census Bureau which is listed on the return address of the envelope in which the Census forms arrived - why weren't they used to print and distribute this 2010 Census?
And how can this be explained given that this envelope is clearly marked
"OFFICIAL BUSINESS
Penalty for Private Use $300"
The OFFICIAL envelope looks very official, and there is no other indication that the 2010 Census is being run by a privately contracted corporation except for the symbol "®", just to the top right side of the Logo? Everything else about this envelope reeks of a government document. Even the metered stamp refers to the U. S. CENSUS BUREAU, and not to IBM (NYSE IBM). The contract for this Census is large enough so that one might think that
IBM could pay for the postage at least: but instead we get to do that on top of their $89.5 million contract. Why all the SECRECY, why all the conflicts that need not be conflicts: There would not be any conflict if there were no secret-contract with this private-corporation that has a very long reputation of collecting data on whole populations of people which somehow end up being very dead by the end of the contract. And the key to all of this confusion seems to have started with that tiny little symbol "®" that apparently is becoming very difficult to explain, in plain English!
Here's part of a Q & A that happened yesterday: Apparently I was wrong in thinking that the mark covered only the words United States; it was intended to cover the entire Logo as "the mark legally covers the whole phrase "United States 2010 Census"."
Question: 'The question remains, what authority does the United States Census Bureau have to obtain trademarks? The post office has been doing the Census for years, or so many believed; but it was recently "privatized". I'm sure their attorney Green would say that they do not want con men taking and using that phrase to defraud folks and they believed a trademark would give them more legal standing to go after any cons.'
Kirwan: "An interesting thought, but then why bother with that, being that the Census is no longer adhering to their original mandate which was to simply 'count' the people of this country once every ten years. In fact they now "count people" every year, and in some interviews they ask a great deal more of those being interviewed than just the literal number of people in the household. My point is there would be no 'reason' for anyone to attempt to hijack the "CENSUS" if the Census takers were not actually seeking and collecting, a whole lot more information that is not legally open to any census taker, by law."
Question: "Are you aware how far this 2010 census strays from Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution which allows enumeration (counting) only. Are you aware that the fine for non-compliance with the Census was secretly and recently raised from $100 to $5,000?"
Kirwan: "Yes, I am also aware that no such figures for failure to comply were included in the "by mail" version that was sent to me. In brief is this because there is a corporate use for the information that is not on the simple people-counting forms: Information such as income, medical histories, and virtual all areas of everyday life that might present problems for those people who choose to share that information with the government. The pamphlet does mention that it will keep whatever is gathered confidential - yet no mention is made of what will happen if that information is sold or leaked to another user, whether that's a government agency or a private entity?"
Question: Is the government attempting to set up folks who resist for prosecution, fines and taking away more rights. It seems like a covert set up to me.
Kirwan: "That would probably be a fairly credible assertion - so that they could then make examples of those individuals - as there might also be a prison term associated with the FAILURE TO COMPLY order?"
These were just some of the little things that this odd-ball Census-form seems to be raising.
Lots of people have sent abbreviated versions and links trying to explain this whole thing as a misunderstanding on my part-a stretch too far some believe.
But: 'It is the job of this government to explain this doublespeak, in
plain English, if they want to have a nation that is not seen as a total fabrication or as a place that is being held hostage to private and to very corporate interests - that is NOT MY JOB - it is the job of this
thoroughly corrupted government to answer the public's questions and to satisfy their questions with clear and candid responses.
There is certainly enough information available to enlighten anyone that wants to believe that their government is "not guilty" of any crime herein. I say let us treat them as they have been treating us now for the last ten years: Let the government prove that they have not broken any laws, otherwise whoever is at fault needs to face the most severe penalties: just as ordinary citizens must face, whenever they find themselves in one of our now totally-biased courtrooms around this nation.
Many people believe the double-talk and the mountains of legalese that half-assed lawyers try to cite to cover up this mess; but I'm staying with the basics - which until these questions become clearly a settled matter of law; then they must be answered publicly and on the record by whatever creatures now claim to speak for the US government.
I've been at this for over half-a-century and this has never been anything like a clear-cut affair to anyone outside the corridors of power! Cite all the obscurities you like - the fact is that when theCensus bureau issued this logo with that registration mark upon it they opened this steam of questions that could well threaten all their other lies - unless this matter is clearly positioned in an immediate and completely clear place in both our history and settled law.
The original question is still out there "Who owns us now?" The US government is supposedly owned by the people of this country. So when the government undertook to do this that way, in effect, it was as if we (the American people) were doing something for ourselves. However when a corporation is allowed to seize and use an agency of the public as if it were still the public's own agency; when in fact the project has become a private-for-profit contract with an agenda of its own: That is an entirely different thing from what the public has been led to believe is the case, at least when it comes down to actually 'taking' the 2010 Census!
Every single household in this country is about to get one of these things, if they haven't received one already: Study the contents and make up your mind as to whether or not you believe the lawyers and the corrupted government that has been lying to you all your lives: Or whether you think that this 'secret' contract for taking the 2010 Census is really just a front for something potentially much worse.
There is an IBM microchip that will be placed in people, it will give you a human IP address and it will plug you into the grid. It's sometimes been called the DEADSCAN and it's been out there for over 10 years now yet people are just waking up to it, I wonder how much that might have to do with this hush-hush contract for counting people-if anything?
kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net
1) One Mainframe to Rule Them All - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVWNlvI-eB4
2) Owning the United States ® http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2010/art38.htm
By Jim Kirwan
3-17-10
"The US Census Bureau has awarded IBM (NYSE IBM) Global Business Services a contract to provide data tabulation and dissemination services in support of the 2010 United States Census and other key Census Bureau Surveys. The project was awarded to IBM on September 20th and the value of the contract is $89.5 million over 9 years.
This is the same company that undertook the 1890 U.S. Census; the same company that was contracted by Germany's Third Reich to undertake census operations and similar advance people counting and registration technologies. IBM Germany not only head-counted the populace, but invented the racial census. They not only listed religious affiliation, but blood lines going back generations. This was the same company that was contracted to lease the whole-earth machine to the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. " (1)
Many Americans have been surprised to learn that the 2010 Census is not being run by the federal government of the United States, but by a private corporation using a registered version of that company's Logo for the 2010 Census, as was outlined in yesterday's article "Owning the United States ®." (2)
There is, it turns out, a somewhat awkward conflict between the mark they chose to register and the one they actually used. Here's what they registered: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:beajte.4.608
It appears that they chose NOT to use the image they "registered."
The "wings" (Or feathers) shown in the link above do not appear on the official papers, which of course only compounds the problems inherent by choosing to 'register' this logo in the first place. Apparently they created something which they obviously did not expect would cause much of a reaction. Now that these problems have been pointed out graphically - and this registered mark is now "in national use," this is provoking more questions than they will likely choose to answer.
The question herein is; 'might there be a violation of Federal law for misuse of a registered mark,' given that the United States would seem to indicate that the 2010 Census is being undertaken by the government of the United States: Not by some private corporate interests that has a very long and ugly history where collecting census data is concerned?
What happened to the U. S. Census Bureau which is listed on the return address of the envelope in which the Census forms arrived - why weren't they used to print and distribute this 2010 Census?
And how can this be explained given that this envelope is clearly marked
"OFFICIAL BUSINESS
Penalty for Private Use $300"
The OFFICIAL envelope looks very official, and there is no other indication that the 2010 Census is being run by a privately contracted corporation except for the symbol "®", just to the top right side of the Logo? Everything else about this envelope reeks of a government document. Even the metered stamp refers to the U. S. CENSUS BUREAU, and not to IBM (NYSE IBM). The contract for this Census is large enough so that one might think that
IBM could pay for the postage at least: but instead we get to do that on top of their $89.5 million contract. Why all the SECRECY, why all the conflicts that need not be conflicts: There would not be any conflict if there were no secret-contract with this private-corporation that has a very long reputation of collecting data on whole populations of people which somehow end up being very dead by the end of the contract. And the key to all of this confusion seems to have started with that tiny little symbol "®" that apparently is becoming very difficult to explain, in plain English!
Here's part of a Q & A that happened yesterday: Apparently I was wrong in thinking that the mark covered only the words United States; it was intended to cover the entire Logo as "the mark legally covers the whole phrase "United States 2010 Census"."
Question: 'The question remains, what authority does the United States Census Bureau have to obtain trademarks? The post office has been doing the Census for years, or so many believed; but it was recently "privatized". I'm sure their attorney Green would say that they do not want con men taking and using that phrase to defraud folks and they believed a trademark would give them more legal standing to go after any cons.'
Kirwan: "An interesting thought, but then why bother with that, being that the Census is no longer adhering to their original mandate which was to simply 'count' the people of this country once every ten years. In fact they now "count people" every year, and in some interviews they ask a great deal more of those being interviewed than just the literal number of people in the household. My point is there would be no 'reason' for anyone to attempt to hijack the "CENSUS" if the Census takers were not actually seeking and collecting, a whole lot more information that is not legally open to any census taker, by law."
Question: "Are you aware how far this 2010 census strays from Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution which allows enumeration (counting) only. Are you aware that the fine for non-compliance with the Census was secretly and recently raised from $100 to $5,000?"
Kirwan: "Yes, I am also aware that no such figures for failure to comply were included in the "by mail" version that was sent to me. In brief is this because there is a corporate use for the information that is not on the simple people-counting forms: Information such as income, medical histories, and virtual all areas of everyday life that might present problems for those people who choose to share that information with the government. The pamphlet does mention that it will keep whatever is gathered confidential - yet no mention is made of what will happen if that information is sold or leaked to another user, whether that's a government agency or a private entity?"
Question: Is the government attempting to set up folks who resist for prosecution, fines and taking away more rights. It seems like a covert set up to me.
Kirwan: "That would probably be a fairly credible assertion - so that they could then make examples of those individuals - as there might also be a prison term associated with the FAILURE TO COMPLY order?"
These were just some of the little things that this odd-ball Census-form seems to be raising.
Lots of people have sent abbreviated versions and links trying to explain this whole thing as a misunderstanding on my part-a stretch too far some believe.
But: 'It is the job of this government to explain this doublespeak, in
plain English, if they want to have a nation that is not seen as a total fabrication or as a place that is being held hostage to private and to very corporate interests - that is NOT MY JOB - it is the job of this
thoroughly corrupted government to answer the public's questions and to satisfy their questions with clear and candid responses.
There is certainly enough information available to enlighten anyone that wants to believe that their government is "not guilty" of any crime herein. I say let us treat them as they have been treating us now for the last ten years: Let the government prove that they have not broken any laws, otherwise whoever is at fault needs to face the most severe penalties: just as ordinary citizens must face, whenever they find themselves in one of our now totally-biased courtrooms around this nation.
Many people believe the double-talk and the mountains of legalese that half-assed lawyers try to cite to cover up this mess; but I'm staying with the basics - which until these questions become clearly a settled matter of law; then they must be answered publicly and on the record by whatever creatures now claim to speak for the US government.
I've been at this for over half-a-century and this has never been anything like a clear-cut affair to anyone outside the corridors of power! Cite all the obscurities you like - the fact is that when theCensus bureau issued this logo with that registration mark upon it they opened this steam of questions that could well threaten all their other lies - unless this matter is clearly positioned in an immediate and completely clear place in both our history and settled law.
The original question is still out there "Who owns us now?" The US government is supposedly owned by the people of this country. So when the government undertook to do this that way, in effect, it was as if we (the American people) were doing something for ourselves. However when a corporation is allowed to seize and use an agency of the public as if it were still the public's own agency; when in fact the project has become a private-for-profit contract with an agenda of its own: That is an entirely different thing from what the public has been led to believe is the case, at least when it comes down to actually 'taking' the 2010 Census!
Every single household in this country is about to get one of these things, if they haven't received one already: Study the contents and make up your mind as to whether or not you believe the lawyers and the corrupted government that has been lying to you all your lives: Or whether you think that this 'secret' contract for taking the 2010 Census is really just a front for something potentially much worse.
There is an IBM microchip that will be placed in people, it will give you a human IP address and it will plug you into the grid. It's sometimes been called the DEADSCAN and it's been out there for over 10 years now yet people are just waking up to it, I wonder how much that might have to do with this hush-hush contract for counting people-if anything?
kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net
1) One Mainframe to Rule Them All - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVWNlvI-eB4
2) Owning the United States ® http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2010/art38.htm
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
States may hold onto tax refunds for months - USATODAY.com
States may hold onto tax refunds for months - USATODAY.com
Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.
States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.
"It's an indicator of how bad it is," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "You know things are bad when you have to do that."
New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.
WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO? Enter your salary and see how tax rates have changed over time
Hawaii's Department of Taxation says some residents may not see state income tax refunds until the end of August, The Honolulu Advertiser reported. It was part of a plan by Gov. Linda Lingle to deal with a revenue drop-off by pushing costs into the next fiscal period, which begins in July.
States often do not have a timetable for refunds because delays are based on cash flow. Most states typically issue refunds within 30 days.
Delaying refund checks isn't unprecedented, Pattison said, but it is something virtually no politician wants to do, because taxpayers are owed the money and in most cases want it fast. Delays in paying refunds and other state bills can trigger interest on those overdue payments, depending on state laws, he said.
California's massive budget shortfall of more than $20 billion last year prompted it not only to delay tax refunds but to issue billions of dollars in IOUs to vendors and others who were owed money. State Controller John Chiang called the delayed payments a "shameful chapter in the State's history" when the IOUs ended last September.
California still faces budget problems, but Chiang said that revenue is running ahead of projections so far this year, lessening the threat of a repeat.
"Californians should expect to receive their hard-earned tax refunds on time," Chiang said.
The delays come as some states continue to face deep budget holes, even as economists say the nation as a whole has begun recovery. In a recent report, the budget officers group and the National Governors Association said state fiscal conditions "have continued to worsen," and that state revenues can be expected to lag one to three years behind a national recovery from recession.
This fiscal year, the report said, 36 states have cut nearly $56 billion in spending, and 30 states have cut funding to public and higher education.
Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.
States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.
"It's an indicator of how bad it is," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "You know things are bad when you have to do that."
New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.
WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO? Enter your salary and see how tax rates have changed over time
Hawaii's Department of Taxation says some residents may not see state income tax refunds until the end of August, The Honolulu Advertiser reported. It was part of a plan by Gov. Linda Lingle to deal with a revenue drop-off by pushing costs into the next fiscal period, which begins in July.
States often do not have a timetable for refunds because delays are based on cash flow. Most states typically issue refunds within 30 days.
Delaying refund checks isn't unprecedented, Pattison said, but it is something virtually no politician wants to do, because taxpayers are owed the money and in most cases want it fast. Delays in paying refunds and other state bills can trigger interest on those overdue payments, depending on state laws, he said.
California's massive budget shortfall of more than $20 billion last year prompted it not only to delay tax refunds but to issue billions of dollars in IOUs to vendors and others who were owed money. State Controller John Chiang called the delayed payments a "shameful chapter in the State's history" when the IOUs ended last September.
California still faces budget problems, but Chiang said that revenue is running ahead of projections so far this year, lessening the threat of a repeat.
"Californians should expect to receive their hard-earned tax refunds on time," Chiang said.
The delays come as some states continue to face deep budget holes, even as economists say the nation as a whole has begun recovery. In a recent report, the budget officers group and the National Governors Association said state fiscal conditions "have continued to worsen," and that state revenues can be expected to lag one to three years behind a national recovery from recession.
This fiscal year, the report said, 36 states have cut nearly $56 billion in spending, and 30 states have cut funding to public and higher education.
Senate passes ‘Termination Era’ PACT Act; tribal leaders will continue fight | Indian Country Today | Content
Senate passes ‘Termination Era’ PACT Act; tribal leaders will continue fight | Indian Country Today | Content
Senate passes ‘Termination Era’ PACT Act; tribal leaders will continue fight
By Gale Courey Toensing
Story Published: Mar 16, 2010
Story Updated: Mar 16, 2010
WASHINGTON – Handing big tobacco corporations a huge victory, the U.S. Senate has passed the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act – an act tribal leaders say is an attack on tribal sovereignty and economies that will devastate Indian tobacco businesses across the country.
The PACT Act passed by unanimous consent without a vote or a hearing late the evening of March 11. The act bans the shipment of cigarettes and certain tobacco products through the U.S. Postal Service, cutting off the only remaining delivery service for Indian retailers who do business through Internet sales. A few years ago, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was ousted in a prostitution scandal, “persuaded” private carriers such as Federal Express and UPS to “voluntarily” stop shipping tobacco products.
The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., has 20 co-sponsors, including New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The House version, which was introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., passed the House last year by a vote of 397-11.
The bill will now move back to the House for a vote, before being sent to President Barack Obama for passage. Tribal leaders are calling on Obama to send the bill back to Congress for an amendment that explicitly exempts sovereign Indian nations from the act.
The PACT Act passed without a single Senator objecting, said Lance Morgan (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska), CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc. and partner at Fredericks, Peebles & Morgan.
“So it comes down to Obama. He is an adopted Crow and he says all the right things, but this is real and not the campaign trail. So it will be interesting to see how he reacts when the rhetoric is tested against the reality of supporting tribes.”
White House spokesman Shin Inouye said the president will review the bill further.
“The White House continues to examine the PACT Act and is working with the Department of Justice to consider the bill’s impact while Congress resolves the differences between the House and Senate bills.”
A spokesman for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, who asked not to be named, said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., had made efforts to protect the nations in the bill.
“Sen. Dorgan had discussions informally with the authors of the bill to make changes to the way the bill was originally written that would ensure tribal governments’ sovereignty and that sovereign immunity would be preserved. For example, state attorneys general cannot sue tribal governments in federal court,” the spokesman said.
Even if the law protects tribal governments, it undermines hundreds, perhaps thousands, of individual business owners whose fees support tribal government services, Morgan said.
“It’s very likely that this law is going to kill the entrepreneurial people in this business and force a lot of business to be done by the tribal government itself. The tribe gets to retain its sovereignty and sovereign immunity, but individuals will be wiped out.”
The Seneca Nation of Indians blasted the Senate for supporting the “anti-Indian business” measure. The nation’s 230-plus licensed enterprises conduct a robust cigarette business through Internet sales and post office deliveries, and pay per carton fees to the Seneca government – funds that support government services to its citizens.
The PACT Act will destroy more than 1,000 Native and non-Native tobacco industry jobs in western New York, according to Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder Sr.
“What we’re witnessing is an effort by Philip Morris and other global tobacco companies to wipe out competition anyway they can, in this case, at the expense of our economy and our federal treaty rights.”
Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company in the U.S., has supported the PACT Act for the several years it has been in the federal legislature.
“Philip Morris USA is proud to support the PACT Act. The sale of untaxed and under taxed cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products remotely – via the Internet, mail or phone – harms legitimate wholesale and retail businesses, consumers and government budgets,” Philip Morris spokesman David Sutton has said, implying that the Indian tobacco trade is not “legitimate.”
The National Association of Convenience Stores, which has lobbied long and hard against Indian tobacco sales, said the PACT Act has now cleared a “major hurdle” in expanding what they perceive to be their market share.
The bill will “allow legitimate retailers to recover lost business,” NACS said, echoing Philip Morris’s implication that Indian tobacco sales are illegitimate.
Morgan said the bill gives states unprecedented power over sovereign tribal nations’ economic interests.
“The PACT Act is in its entirety an amendment to the Jenkins Act. It is not a stand-alone act, it just changes the Jenkins Act to add the mail ban, and increase reporting requirements and up the criminal penalties, and also allow the states to sue in federal court to enforce it,” Morgan said.
The Jenkins Act is a 1940s-era law that requires retailers who sell cigarettes into interstate commerce to notify that state’s tax department of purchasers’ names and addresses, as well as the number of cigarettes sold, on a monthly basis so the state can bill the purchaser for taxes due.
“The PACT Act is very tricky. It says it protects tribal nations, but we had those protections anyway, and it doesn’t protect us against the state suing those who deal with us, so in the end the state has figured out a way to win without directly attacking us,” Morgan said.
The increased reporting requirements make the PACT Act a Trojan horse against the nations, he said.
“If you sell to a tribe and don’t report you get sued. If you report your sales to the tribe, then you get sued under a different law. The only way you don’t get sued is if you give the state an extra $4.50 per carton and even then the state can blacklist the Native tobacco product and declare it contraband. This is especially helpful in protecting Marlboro’s market share, upon which the MSA payments are calculated. So this is about money. It is about taking money away from us and protecting the state’s money and the Marlboro Man’s market share.”
Snyder said the Seneca Nation will continue to fight the bill.
J.C. Seneca, councilor and co-chair of the Seneca Nation Foreign Relations Committee, said the PACT Act is part of a broader attack on Native economic gains.
“The ultimate effect of this legislation makes it clear that Termination Era policies to eradicate Indians and treaty rights in New York and across this country are alive and well. Congress has taken the first step on turning the clock back on the Indians in trying to return us to the want, squalor and dependency of the past. As Indian people we have faced these types of challenges and opposition on a daily basis.”
Snyder called on Obama to live up to the commitments he made to Indian country.
“What the Senate has done here flies in the face of the executive order that calls for tribal consultation in matters integrally affecting Native communities. The matter of government-to-government relations must be addressed.”
Senate passes ‘Termination Era’ PACT Act; tribal leaders will continue fight
By Gale Courey Toensing
Story Published: Mar 16, 2010
Story Updated: Mar 16, 2010
WASHINGTON – Handing big tobacco corporations a huge victory, the U.S. Senate has passed the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act – an act tribal leaders say is an attack on tribal sovereignty and economies that will devastate Indian tobacco businesses across the country.
The PACT Act passed by unanimous consent without a vote or a hearing late the evening of March 11. The act bans the shipment of cigarettes and certain tobacco products through the U.S. Postal Service, cutting off the only remaining delivery service for Indian retailers who do business through Internet sales. A few years ago, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was ousted in a prostitution scandal, “persuaded” private carriers such as Federal Express and UPS to “voluntarily” stop shipping tobacco products.
The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., has 20 co-sponsors, including New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The House version, which was introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., passed the House last year by a vote of 397-11.
The bill will now move back to the House for a vote, before being sent to President Barack Obama for passage. Tribal leaders are calling on Obama to send the bill back to Congress for an amendment that explicitly exempts sovereign Indian nations from the act.
The PACT Act passed without a single Senator objecting, said Lance Morgan (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska), CEO of Ho-Chunk, Inc. and partner at Fredericks, Peebles & Morgan.
“So it comes down to Obama. He is an adopted Crow and he says all the right things, but this is real and not the campaign trail. So it will be interesting to see how he reacts when the rhetoric is tested against the reality of supporting tribes.”
White House spokesman Shin Inouye said the president will review the bill further.
“The White House continues to examine the PACT Act and is working with the Department of Justice to consider the bill’s impact while Congress resolves the differences between the House and Senate bills.”
A spokesman for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, who asked not to be named, said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., had made efforts to protect the nations in the bill.
“Sen. Dorgan had discussions informally with the authors of the bill to make changes to the way the bill was originally written that would ensure tribal governments’ sovereignty and that sovereign immunity would be preserved. For example, state attorneys general cannot sue tribal governments in federal court,” the spokesman said.
Even if the law protects tribal governments, it undermines hundreds, perhaps thousands, of individual business owners whose fees support tribal government services, Morgan said.
“It’s very likely that this law is going to kill the entrepreneurial people in this business and force a lot of business to be done by the tribal government itself. The tribe gets to retain its sovereignty and sovereign immunity, but individuals will be wiped out.”
The Seneca Nation of Indians blasted the Senate for supporting the “anti-Indian business” measure. The nation’s 230-plus licensed enterprises conduct a robust cigarette business through Internet sales and post office deliveries, and pay per carton fees to the Seneca government – funds that support government services to its citizens.
The PACT Act will destroy more than 1,000 Native and non-Native tobacco industry jobs in western New York, according to Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder Sr.
“What we’re witnessing is an effort by Philip Morris and other global tobacco companies to wipe out competition anyway they can, in this case, at the expense of our economy and our federal treaty rights.”
Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company in the U.S., has supported the PACT Act for the several years it has been in the federal legislature.
“Philip Morris USA is proud to support the PACT Act. The sale of untaxed and under taxed cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products remotely – via the Internet, mail or phone – harms legitimate wholesale and retail businesses, consumers and government budgets,” Philip Morris spokesman David Sutton has said, implying that the Indian tobacco trade is not “legitimate.”
The National Association of Convenience Stores, which has lobbied long and hard against Indian tobacco sales, said the PACT Act has now cleared a “major hurdle” in expanding what they perceive to be their market share.
The bill will “allow legitimate retailers to recover lost business,” NACS said, echoing Philip Morris’s implication that Indian tobacco sales are illegitimate.
Morgan said the bill gives states unprecedented power over sovereign tribal nations’ economic interests.
“The PACT Act is in its entirety an amendment to the Jenkins Act. It is not a stand-alone act, it just changes the Jenkins Act to add the mail ban, and increase reporting requirements and up the criminal penalties, and also allow the states to sue in federal court to enforce it,” Morgan said.
The Jenkins Act is a 1940s-era law that requires retailers who sell cigarettes into interstate commerce to notify that state’s tax department of purchasers’ names and addresses, as well as the number of cigarettes sold, on a monthly basis so the state can bill the purchaser for taxes due.
“The PACT Act is very tricky. It says it protects tribal nations, but we had those protections anyway, and it doesn’t protect us against the state suing those who deal with us, so in the end the state has figured out a way to win without directly attacking us,” Morgan said.
The increased reporting requirements make the PACT Act a Trojan horse against the nations, he said.
“If you sell to a tribe and don’t report you get sued. If you report your sales to the tribe, then you get sued under a different law. The only way you don’t get sued is if you give the state an extra $4.50 per carton and even then the state can blacklist the Native tobacco product and declare it contraband. This is especially helpful in protecting Marlboro’s market share, upon which the MSA payments are calculated. So this is about money. It is about taking money away from us and protecting the state’s money and the Marlboro Man’s market share.”
Snyder said the Seneca Nation will continue to fight the bill.
J.C. Seneca, councilor and co-chair of the Seneca Nation Foreign Relations Committee, said the PACT Act is part of a broader attack on Native economic gains.
“The ultimate effect of this legislation makes it clear that Termination Era policies to eradicate Indians and treaty rights in New York and across this country are alive and well. Congress has taken the first step on turning the clock back on the Indians in trying to return us to the want, squalor and dependency of the past. As Indian people we have faced these types of challenges and opposition on a daily basis.”
Snyder called on Obama to live up to the commitments he made to Indian country.
“What the Senate has done here flies in the face of the executive order that calls for tribal consultation in matters integrally affecting Native communities. The matter of government-to-government relations must be addressed.”
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