Is police brutality happening more these days or is it just that everyone has a cell phone camera on them? Either way we all must stand up and be willing to come forward when we see these type of injustices
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Cheerleader who took the flu shot back in August landed up having a horrible reaction to the vaccine. Now some are saying it may just be in her head. Please watch the following and you decide
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Multiple reports from users in Israel are that this video has been blocked “due to copyright restrictions in your country”.
What Really Happened
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Regulators shut California National Bank of Los Angeles and eight other banks as the weak economy continues to produce a stream of loan defaults.
The banks closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were in California, Illinois, Texas and Arizona. They were divisions of privately held FBOP Corp., a Chicago-based bank holding company.
U.S. Bank in Minneapolis, a division of US Bancorp, agreed to assume the deposits and most of the assets of the banks. The banks had combined assets of $19.4 billion at the end of September.
Deposits totaled $15.4 billion at the end of September. The nine banks had 153 offices, which will reopen as U.S. Bank branches Saturday.
The closing of nine banks in one day was the most the FDIC has shut since the financial crisis began taking down banks last year. The closings boost the number of failed U.S. banks this year to 115. In 1989, during the savings-and-loan crisis, the FDIC closed 534 banks, or about 10 a week.
California National Bank had 68 branches. About 100 FDIC employees arrived at the CalNational headquarters in downtown Los Angeles around 6:15 p.m. They were seen fanning out into various offices around the building, a squat concrete structure that prominently displays the failed bank’s name.
The FDIC simultaneously arrived at the bank’s other branches, spokeswoman Roberta Valdez said. She said the FDIC would spend the weekend transferring the bank to U.S. Bank.
Besides California National Bank, the banks involved in the latest round were Bank USA, NA, in Phoenix; San Diego National Bank; Pacific National Bank in San Francisco; Park National Bank in Chicago; Community Bank of Lemont in Illinois; North Houston Bank, Madisonville State Bank, and Citizens National Bank in Teague, all in Texas.
Rick Hartnack, vice chairman of consumer banking for U.S. Bancorp, said the move complements its existing operations in California, Illinois and Arizona. More than 20 percent of the company’s branch network will now be in California and the company will have 3,000 branches in two dozen states.
“California and Chicago turned out to be two of the most attractive markets in the country where we just didn’t have the branch density that we wanted,” he said.
As the economy has soured, with unemployment rising, home prices tumbling and loan defaults soaring, bank failures have cascaded and sapped billions out of the deposit insurance fund. It has fallen into the red.
Failures have been especially concentrated in California, Georgia and Illinois. While the pounding from losses on home mortgages may be nearing an end, delinquencies on commercial real estate loans remain a hot spot of potential trouble, regulators say. If the recession deepens, defaults on the high-risk loans could spike. Many regional banks, especially, hold large concentrations of these loans.
Also on Friday, agencies including the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision issued new guidelines for banks modifying troubled commercial real estate loans. They emphasize the principle that modifying loans in a prudent manner is often in the best interest of both the bank and the creditworthy commercial borrower.
The 115 failures are the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. They have cost the federal deposit insurance fund more than $25 billion so far this year, and hundreds more bank failures are expected to raise the cost to around $100 billion through 2013.
To replenish the fund, the FDIC wants the roughly 8,100 insured banks and savings institutions to pay in advance about $45 billion in premiums that would have been due over the next three years.
Depositors’ money — insured up to $250,000 per account — is not at risk, with the FDIC backed by the government. The FDIC still has billions in loss reserves apart from the insurance fund. It can also tap a Treasury Department credit line of up to $500 billion — $100 billion of which does not require Treasury’s approval.
The Obama administration recently proposed a plan to provide infusions of money to small banks at low interest rates, provided they agree to increase lending to small businesses. Banks and credit unions that serve low-income areas would get aid at even lower rates to help small businesses in the hardest-hit rural and urban areas. The aid would come from money still available in the $700 billion federal bailout fund, which went mostly to large banks.
The 115 bank failures this year compare with 25 last year and three in 2007.
Banks have been especially hurt by failed real estate loans. Banks that had lent to seemingly solid businesses are suffering losses as buildings sit vacant. As development projects collapse, builders are defaulting on their loans.
The number of banks on the FDIC’s confidential “problem list” jumped to 416 at the end of June from 305 in the first quarter. That’s the most since June 1994. About 13 percent of banks on the list generally end up failing, according to the FDIC.
Source: AP
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We all should take lessons from these guys. Get up off the couch and take action!!!
Source: Operation Mind Seed
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Today, Congressman Ron Paul, through his Campaign for Liberty, addressed the American public about the National Emergency giving more power to the President, the manipulated ‘pandemic’ data that Dr. Mercola and NVIC’s Barbara Loe Fisher alerted Americans about earlier this week, the H1N1 vaccine that the President’s children have not received, and healthcare.
Fabrication, deception and distraction: Hallmarks of fascism
Congressman Paul stated that the National Emergency “may be another thing to condition us.”
He explained that with a National Emergency, “They get a lot more power to dismiss certain regulations and do a lot more. When a National Emergency is declared for medical reason, thePresident gets more power, such as power to quarantine large numbers of people,” he said. (emphasis added)
Later in the address, he again stated the notion of conditioning the American public to accept greater control and reduction of democratic freedom, as the writer compares to be “like frogs in water to be boiled.“
Conditioning is a key to reducing democracy and introducing dictatorship, fascism.
The two-pronged conditioning and fascism explain the H1N1 ’swine flu’ data fabrication phrases, recently parroted by the President as rationale for declaring the National Emergency despite the data “overwhelmingly over-estimates” and questioned by many health experts such as Dr. Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher after CBS exposed the falsified data reports.
According to the Uncyclopedia, fascism is:
A fundamentalist artistic movement originating in Italy in the 1920’s that seeks to convince people of that which is demonstrably false. Similar to post-modernism, Fascism tries toblur the lines of reality. The purported works of Fascism are all completely fictitious and have no corresponding actuality. This is done by inventing vast domains of imaginary worlds with their own sets of axioms, paradigms, logic, and definitions of truth. The mechanisms of fabrication, deception, and distractions are time-honored hallmarks of the Paleo-Classical Fascist movement.
Ron Paul says he has two opinions on the matter of vaccines, his political opinion and his medical opinion:
The Congreeman questions that 2 billion dollars of taxpayer money has been paid to pharmaceutical companies for American swine flu vaccine to be available in October that has not been delivered as agreed.
Who’s getting the vaccine and who’s not?
The Presidents children have not received the H1N1, supposedly due to it not being available. “Obviously, the President can have whatever he chooses for his children,” says Ron Paul, adding, “If he has freedom of choice, I want to make sure all Americans have the same freedom of choice.”
Why be concerned about a National Emergency?
When an National Emergency is declared for medical reasons, the government has more centralized decision making such as mass quarantine, explained Ron Paul.
“American people are waking up. Sixty-five percent of Americans have decided to not take the vaccine,” he stated.
While emphasizing the National Emergency dangers to the American public, the Congressman did not elaborate on laws enacted that curtail democracy during a National Emergency or the combat troops stationed on U.S. soil to “assist” with civilian vaccinations.
Source: Examiner
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Pro-Illegal alien Amnesty supporting groups have been spreading lies about Lou Dobbs of CNN, trying to get him fired to censor his free speech, and foment hatred towards him because he stands against Amnesty.
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A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.
Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy’s expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation’s gross domestic product growth.
White House blows a gasket on Clunkers critique
The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.
The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.
“It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone,” said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation. “There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most.”
In order to determine whether these sales would have happened anyway, Edmunds.com analysts looked at sales of luxury cars and other vehicles not included under the Clunkers program.
Continued at CNN Money
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Just in time for Halloween, the press is telling spooky stories about the Oath Keepers, an organization of current and former soldiers and cops who have sworn to refuse unconstitutional orders. The latest scare piece to cross my screen appeared this week in Alternet under the headline “Right-Wing Extremist Group on Active Military Duty?” The author, Rob Waters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, jumps directly from describing the organization to writing this:
In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.
If you click on the link from the phrase “growing evidence,” you’ll find an article that claims the military is being infiltrated by neo-Nazis. You won’t see anything about the Oath Keepers there, which is appropriate, as there isn’t anything Nazi about them. The Oath Keepers’ founder, Stewart Rhodes, has written several articles for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and earlier this month he told the Las Vegas Review Journal, “I loathe white supremacists.” If you read the comment threads at the Oath Keepers site, you’ll sometimes see anti-Semites and other bigots crawling out to spew their propaganda, as they do all over the Internet, but you’ll also see the other commenters shouting them down.
Meanwhile, it seems odd to worry that you’re “training future domestic terrorists” when you’re discussing a group whose plan of action is to refuse to use their weapons. Indeed, after an unhinged fellow calling himself “Citizen Quasar” announced his support for the Oath Keepers on his Twitter feed while also announcing his plans to start a shootout at the Oklahoma State Capitol, the organization’s founder denounced him as a “nutbag.” Rather than spinning fantasies of a violent uprising, the group is adopting one of the core ideas of nonviolent civil resistance: persuading police and soldiers to disobey their commanders. Waters quotes an SPLC colleague, Mark Potok, who accuses the Oath Keepers of spreading paranoia and argues that “these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence.” But if that were true, surely it would be welcome to see a prominent player in that purportedly paranoid milieu pushing a strategy based on nonviolence. That would be a good influence, right?
And how paranoid is the group? The list of commands its members have pledged to refuse includes some that don’t strike me as likely, e.g., “orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people.” But it also includes commands that are easier to imagine — or which have already become standard operating procedure. One item on the list is “orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.” Maybe Waters and Potok haven’t noticed, but American police forces infringe on free speech and free assembly at pretty much every major political summit. I wish there had been some Oath Keepers on the force in Pittsburgh during the G20 meeting last month, or at the Republican National Convention last year.
If you review Rhodes’ writings online, you’ll find complaints about the militarization of police work, a process he links to both the war on drugs and the war on terror; about the expansion of federal power in wartime; about the illegal disarmament of civilians after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, normal civil libertarian concerns about policies already in place, not frantic speculation about the apocalypse to come. (Note that two of the last three links go to essays Rhodes wrote during the Bush presidency. The Oath Keepers were founded this year, but the organizers behind them didn’t need a Democratic president to discover the dangers of state power.)
This is the group that has the Southern Poverty Law Center invoking the specters of fascism and terrorism: a network of present and former public employees who are vigilant about the state of our civil liberties. If their vigilance sometimes shades over into paranoia, well, that’s a hundred times truer of the SPLC.
Source: Reason
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Under the Senate Finance Committee version of the health-care bill, health insurance companies would be allowed to charge tobacco users premiums up to 50 percent higher than those of non-users, while marijuana and crack cocaine smokers could not be penalized with higher premiums.
According to provisions spelled out in the Senate Finance Committee’s summary of the bill–the so-called “chairman’s mark”–insurance issuers selling policies to individuals could only vary premiums based on three characteristics: tobacco use, age and family composition.
Specifically, it says premiums could vary “by no more than the ratio specified” for each characteristic:
– Tobacco use: 1.5 to 1
– Age: 4 to 1
– Family composition:
1) Single: 1 to 1
2) Adult with child: 1.8 to 1
3) Two adults: 2 to 1
4) Family: 3 to 1
This means, for example, that for every $100 in premium that a non-tobacco user pays, a tobacco user could be charged $150. A family could be charged three times as much as a single person, and an older person could be charged four times as much as a younger person.
Premiums could also vary among, but not within, geographical rating areas to be defined by the states.
The bill doesn’t specify premium differentials for any other conditions. Pot smokers would suffer no penalty–at least in terms of premiums.
Economist Earl Grinols of Baylor University questioned why the bill is singling out tobacco users as opposed to people who engage in other habits that carry health risks.
“Why are they talking about tobacco use only, not drug abusers?” asked Grinols. “What about people who choose to do hang gliding and technical rock climbing without ropes? They’re going to have higher medical expenses as well.”
“To the extent that cocaine users and drug abusers also have higher costs, there’s no question that it’s favoring those types of medical abusers with respect to tobacco,” told CNSNews.com.
Grinols said that generally, a goal of premiums is to spur people to choose healthy behaviors.
“To the extent that tobacco use is known to be an unhealthy behavior and to lead to higher medical expenses on average in the future, you would definitely want individuals to be able to be charged more because if they’re going to be taking more out of the health care insurance, then they should pay more,” he told CNSNews.com.
Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws agreed that the Senate Finance Committee was being “rather selective” in singling out tobacco users over users of cocaine and marijuana. But St. Pierre said the government is attempting to further a social trend.
“It certainly doesn’t get away too far from an existing 20-year trend of government taxing tobacco at every-increasing rates and users of tobacco, so by extension, taxing the health plans or making them less available to people who use tobacco would be consistent with that 20-year trend,” he added.
Tobacco has become “politically incorrect,” St. Pierre said.
When asked by CNSNew.com why he thought tobacco was specifically targeted by senators but marijuana wasn’t, St. Pierre cited tobacco’s “killing capacity.”
“As much as other drugs are problematic, tobacco kills–according to the (federal) CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)–anywhere between 350,000 and 450,000 people a year. So at least from a public health point of view, if there was going to be one single drug that people were going to interact less with, one could make the argument that tobacco would be that drug,” he said.
“As tobacco use becomes more vilified, more demonized, it’s not too surprising that what come with it (are) great taxation, greater restrictions, and to a degree, criminality,” he said.
But Grinols, a former Treasury Department senior economist, wondered why the Senate Finance Committee was spending its time “paying attention to this level of detail” in health insurance.
“It seems to me like this is (congressional) micro-managing to the detriment of our system, not to the advantage of it,” Grinols said.
Insurance rating is something the market can best determine, not government, he said.
“This is not the kind of thing you want your government to be doing,” he said. “You want these things to be done within the setting of free underwriting by insurance companies who know what they’re doing and can check what the rates ought to be.”
Grinols added: “If the bill set up a proper structure so that insurance companies can rate on the things that people have choices over and life-style elements, there wouldn’t be any need for the government to put in these ratios.”
Source: CNSNews
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