DISORDER IN THE COURT: STILL BELIEVE IN THE “JUSTICE” SYSTEM?

Posted on June 4, 2014 by eggsistense

Judge Fight

Wow.  A judge actually says to an attorney: “Stop pissing me off” and “I’ll beat your ass.”  I thought judges weren’t supposed to be thugs.  The public defender and the judge actually go into the hall and the judge allegedly lands blows on the attorney:

“Judge John Murphy is accused of punching veteran public defender Andrew Weinstock after the two had words during court in which Murphy allegedly pressured Weinstock to get his client to waive his right to a speedy trial.

‘You know, if I had a rock I would throw it at you right now,’ Murphy tells Weinstock. ‘Stop pissing me off. Just sit down.’“

And the judge essentially declares his intent to stone the public defender, i.e., throw a rock at him.  Unbelievable.

The veneer of civilization is indeed “wafer-thin,” as is the line between justice and injustice.  This is of course well-known by  countless homeowners who have had judges berate them, ignore their arguments and evidence, throw them on the street, literally causing them to be homeless, all on admittedly manufactured “evidence” such as robo-signed documents.  This is in no way to minimize the “justice” meted out to the poor and minorities since, well, forever.

But this seems new, somehow.  It’s on camera, for one thing.  The judge knew he was being recorded.  This is the thinly-disguised thuggery of the courts going hot.  Keeping it real, as they say.  The barely-concealed contempt for the rule of law burning through the rules of “civil” procedure.  It’s street rules in the courts these days, chumps.  It’s so quaint, these attorneys bringing case law and facts to a barroom brawl.

The velvet glove is coming off the iron fist.  The little boy that sees very plainly that the emperor is naked is just about to speak up.

And here’s today’s meme…

Divine is forgiving debts meme copy

P.S.  Interesting side-note for indie rock nerds like myself:  since the judge’s name is John Murphy, I think of The Pixies.  Specifically Kim Deal, a/k/a “Mrs. John Murphy.”

Posted in civil rights, Kangaroo court | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

INSTEAD OF BANNING CASH, GO TO SELF-ISSUED CURRENCY

Posted on May 30, 2014 by eggsistense

FREE MONEY MEME LRM

Apparently Kenneth Rogoff doesn’t think the banks and their kept governments have enough ways to screw us all over, so he is proposing a ban on cash:

“Has the time come to consider phasing out anonymous paper currency, starting with large-denomination notes? Getting rid of physical currency and replacing it with electronic money would kill two birds with one stone.”

I originally wanted to include more of Rogoff’s actual text, but The Financial Times apparently has a hair up its ass about people cutting and pasting, so I’ll play along and just explain the rest in my own words.  The two birds that Rogoff thinks should be killed?  “Zero bound” interest rates and crime.

That is, he thinks you should have to pay the bank to hold your money, i.e., negative interest.  And he thinks you shouldn’t have access to cash because you might buy drugs with it or evade taxes with it.

Rogoff’s replacement for cash?  Government-issued electronic currency.  But that’s pretty much what we already have, given that the “binary money” (i.e., money that is not cash and essentially only exists in computer databases, i.e., your “checking account”) in existence already is extremely disproportionate to the amount of physical cash:

“Purchases can be made through a Web site, with the funds drawn out of an Internet bank account, where the money was originally deposited electronically. People are earning and spending money without ever touching it. In fact, economists estimate that only 8 percent of the world’s currency exists as physical cash. The rest exists only on a computer hard drive, in electronic bank accounts around the world.“

(Note: According to the Bank of England, it’s actually more like only 3% (p. 2 under “Money Creation In Reality))

FED MEME 04

So banning cash would only make us more beholden to our banking masters and their kept governments.  Which of course is the entire point.  Rogoff is pretty clear about this in his article, actually, explaining how his ideas will be of great benefit to central banks and governments without even once wondering about how they might affect the average person.

The real solution

But if, like me, you care about what happens to the average person more than you care about what happens to a central bank and the government it controls, then perhaps you find Rogoff’s ideas as distasteful as I do.  But not because I love cash and despise electronic currency.

No, I think what needs to happen is that government/central bank-issued money–whether physical cash or electronic/binary–needs to be eliminated.  And at least an Ivy League academic like Rogoff talking about extreme changes to our rapacious financial system makes it seem less weird when I do it…right?

Self-issued currency

I propose that government/central bank-issued money be replaced with self-issued currency.  That is, each individual person can issue as much currency as he or she needs to buy whatever he or she wants.  And he or she would also have to accept the self-issued currency of others.  Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s not.  At all.  I’ll give you a couple reasons it’s not:

1) Money is already self-issued.

That is, any time you sign a promissory note, you are self-issuing money.  That includes loans for real estate, cars, student loans, credit cards, starting a business, getting health care, etc.  Indeed, we are taught from birth that if we don’t have enough money for something we need, we have to go to the bank and borrow some.  But the bank doesn’t have the money you need either–banks DO NOT “lend” deposits.  The bank takes your promissory note and “lends” you “money” for the face value of the note–which most people still somehow vaguely think that means that the bank reaches into its vault and digs out an amount of cash equal to the face value of your note, and puts that “in your account.”

That is not at all what happens.  The promissory note you sign over to the bank IS the funding check the bank issues.  The note and funding check cancel each other out on the bank’s books.  In other words, YOU are creating your own money but being made to treat it as though the bank actually did reach into a vault and dig out the requisite amount of cash which the bank will then have to do without until you pay the “loan” back.

ENTER KEY

This is all explained very clearly and in no uncertain terms here: “Bank Says: If You Think Banks Lend Deposits, You Are Wrong.”

And a recent press release from the Bank of England described the above this way:

“Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. For this reason, some economists have referred to bank deposits as ‘fountain pen money’, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans.

This description of money creation contrasts with the notion that banks can only lend out pre-existing money, outlined in the previous section. Bank deposits are simply a record of how much the bank itself owes its customers. So they are a liability of the bank, not an asset that could be lent out. A related misconception is that banks can lend out their reserves. Reserves can only be lent between banks , since consumers do not have access to reserves accounts at the Bank of England.”

BANK-u mad bro

2) Money is already worthless.

The U.S. dollar has lost, by most estimates, 95-98% of its 1913 value (that date being significant because that’s when the Federal Reserve was born and was the last year the U.S. monetary system was not polluted by central bank chicanery).  That 2-5% of value left in the dollar exists only because we average people keep using it because we don’t really have much other choice at the moment.

purchasing-power-of-the-us-dollar-1913-to-2013_517962b78ea3c

Some might say, “Well, prices have gone up, so of course the dollar has lost some purchasing power since 1913–that’s over 100 years ago.”  True, but prices have gone up as result of inflation, not because things are worth more now than they were then.   For example, a steak dinner in 2014 costs way more than it did in 1913–but it’s still just cow meat and potatoes.  Why do cow meat and potatoes cost so much more in 2014 than they did in 1913?  Because the dollar is now worthless or near-worthless.

Because even though you can still buy things with dollars, you can’t buy nearly as much as you could in the past with the same amount of dollars.

This wouldn’t be a problem with self-issued currency, because although self-issued currency would be worthless just like our currency is now, inflation would not be an issue.

More on all this later, including the fact that I should have mentioned above in point #2 that money is only given value by our belief that it has value.  And I wanted to comment on the “dilemma of something for nothing,” but I have run out of time…

 

Posted in Asset Bubble, Conspiracy, Crap-italism, Debt, Debt Slavery, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Financial Terrorism, Financialization, Nixon Shock, QE unlimited, self-issued currency, Wages, Wealth transfer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

UNICORNS ARE REAL–IF YOU’RE A BANK

Posted on May 27, 2014 by eggsistense

UNICORNS AND MONEY copy

And if you’re not a bank, then…no unicorns, only trolls.

But really, it’s amazing the extent to which human society continues to run on myth, as one can see during the extended interview of Timothy Geithner by Jon Stewart, and around 31:20, Geithner accuses Stewart of “assuming a unicorn.”  He’s saying that for Stewart’s idea of rescuing homeowners–by giving money directly to them instead of indirectly through tax cuts and new programs–to work, he would’ve had to go to Congress and get Congress to appropriate billions for homeowners.  In other words, the “unicorn” Geithner says Stewart is assuming is free money to be given to homeowners.

Luckily, Stewart calls BS on that and counters with the fact that the banks DID get a unicorn in the form of billions–if not trillions–of dollars, money conjured up as if out of thin air.  Which is indeed what money always is.

That is the fundamental problem with the assumptions made by Geithner in this interview and Neel Kashkari as the bailout was happening back in 2008.  That fundamental problem is the false idea that money is a finite resource.  Indeed, at least once in the Stewart interview, Geithner asks Stewart to assume that he has a finite amount of money to work with as he tries to guide Stewart through a hypothetical alternative approach to the bailout.

Kashkari said it this way in 2008:

“If we went out to each of the people and businesses and communities and helped them directly the $700 billion wouldn’t go far enough. So we’re trying to take the $700 billion and stabilize the system as a whole so that credit can then flow out to everybody around the country who needs it. So it’s very hard–we’re trying to think of every day–if we have finite resources, how do we use those resources to the best possible benefit to the system as a whole, because that will help every American.”

You catch that?  We can’t help people individually because there’s just not enough money.  There’s only a finite supply of money, according to these people.  That is what they want you to assume.  However, that is a completely incorrect assumption, and they know it.  Geithner knows it.  Bernanke knew it.  Greenspan knew it.  They all knew it.  They just think we don’t.

QE puts the lie to their “money is finite” canard

Where was this argument when it came to QE–quantitative easing?  How can we possibly give $55 billion (down from $85 billion) a month to the banks if money is a finite resource?  Where  is that money coming from?  The Economist magazine tells us–from out of thin air, from out of a storybook with unicorns and trolls:

“To carry out QE central banks create money by buying securities, such as government bonds, from banks, with electronic cash that did not exist before. The new money swells the size of bank reserves in the economy by the quantity of assets purchased—hence “quantitative” easing.”

If that doesn’t convince you that money is but a figment of the imagination, then nothing will.  Except maybe how I explained it here, based on a recent press release from the Bank of England:

So here is a choice quote from the press release regarding point 1) above, which is that while most people believe that banks lend out deposits, they are wrong:

“One common misconception is that banks act simply as intermediaries, lending out the deposits that savers place with them. In this view deposits are typically ‘created’ by the saving decisions of households, and banks then ‘lend out’ those existing deposits to borrowers, for example to companies looking to finance investment or individuals wanting to purchase houses.”

So it is both “common” and a “misconception” that banks lend out “the deposits that savers place with them.” I’ll say it again—the central bank itself says that banks do not lend out deposits. That’s not my opinion, it’s not conjecture, it’s not made up. Banks do not lend money that existed prior to your asking to “borrow” it. The press release explains:

“Indeed, viewing banks simply as intermediaries ignores the fact that, in reality in the modern economy, commercial banks are the creators of deposit money.”

So Geithner’s fundamental assumption–that there wasn’t enough money to rescue both the financial system and the homeowners–is completely incorrect and he jolly well knows it.

One last proof that money is not a finite resource for the government, despite Geithner repeatedly referring (in the Daily Show interview) to the supposed fact the government just didn’t have the money to help out both the banks and homeowners (and therefore choose to help banks, natch)–a quote from an article by an economist, L. Randall Wray.  Note what the article says that Alan Greenspan told Paul Ryan:

“I began by noting that ‘money’ and ‘funding’ cannot be an issue for our federal government, which is the issuer of our sovereign currency. It spends through ‘keystrokes’ — by crediting bank accounts — and hence could never ‘run out of money’.

I am not alone in this argument. In March 2005, in response to a question by Rep. Paul Ryan (‘Do you believe that personal retirement accounts can help us achieve solvency for the system [Social Security] and make those future retiree benefits more secure?’), Chairman Greenspan said: ‘Well I wouldn’t say that the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure, in the sense that there’s nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.‘“

Nothing to prevent it, indeed, except for the apparent fact that the government only has the will to do that for banks, not for you and me–even though it could be done, according to the second-longest-serving Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  Put that in your pipe and…weep…

Posted in Asset Bubble, Crap-italism, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure fraud, QE unlimited, Redistribution, Too big to fail | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

AMERICA IS A NATION OF MEN, NOT OF LAWS

Posted on May 23, 2014 by eggsistense

DEBS-Soul-In-Prison copy

How many times have we heard this:

“America is a nation of laws, not men.”

Me, I’ve heard it about 20 billion times.  Every time we hear it or someone says it (or we say it ourselves), our mind control is supposed to kick in.  You know, the mind control that says judges aren’t corrupt, they follow precedent, courts are accessible to the people, all is fair and impartial, etc.

Bullshit.

That’s never been true.  Or if it has, it’s been the exception, not the rule.  The way it really works is just the opposite of the above:

“America is a nation of men, not laws.”

We only have to look at the case of Mary McCulley to see that.  Or, like Paul Craig Roberts, look at the cause célèbre that is Cecily McMillan.  As Roberts puts it:

“Cecily McMillan is an Occupy protester who was seized from behind by a goon thug cop–a goon thug with a long record of abuse of authority–by her boobs. One was badly bruised. Cecily McMillan’s elbow reflexively and instinctively came up, and Cecily was arrested for assaulting a goon thug. The goon thug was not arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman.

False arrests of this sort are common in the US. Indeed, they are more common than justified arrests. The police and the courts are completely corrupted institutions that reek of injustice and evil.

Cecily was locked up in Rikers Island without bail by the judge who sees his role as protecting the abuse of police and prosecutorial power. The judge would not allow evidence in behalf of Cecily to be presented to the jury.“

Why was evidence that would’ve proved McMillan’s innocence kept from the jury?  Because America is a nation of men, not of laws.  As such, no one is allowed to protect themselves.  No one is allowed to protest.  No one is allowed to act contrary to the mind control.  Not without paying a heavy price.

And so, we’ve fallen under a sort of “soft” martial law–that is, martial law is essentially in effect, it’s just unannounced and selectively enforced.  Roberts’ conclusion is spot-on:

“…justice is no longer the purpose of US law and it is no longer thought necessary for the US government to be accountable to law. To insouciant Americans these might seem like extreme statements, but the conclusion is unavoidable.

In the United States there is no longer law. There is only retribution. Cecily McMillan by her non-violent protest against the looting of America and the world by Wall Street became ‘an enemy of the people.’ The ‘people,’ of course, are the one percent. The 99 percent do not count.”

What do we do about this, my friends?  I’m not really sure, but it’s high time we figured something out.

Essentially, freedom has become illegal.  They’re taking liberties with our liberties.  They’re turning us into outlaws…

 

Posted in civil rights, Everything Is Rigged, Kangaroo court, Mary McCulley, Police State | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

PROFITS VS. OBSCENITY: MCDONALD’S EDITION

Posted on May 21, 2014 by eggsistense

So I posted this meme on my FB page today:

McDonald's low pay high profit

I made the following comment on the post:

“And this is what it all comes down to–there’s profit, and then there’s obscenity. These multinationals want obscenity. We’re saying, ‘No obscenity for you.'”

That brought out all the usual comments against raising the minimum wage.  I never seem to get comments from people who agree with me on this, only with people who disagree vehemently.

So I began this post as a series of responses to the comments, but it soon took on a life of its own.  It was meant to be my final word on the profit vs. obscenity debate that I felt was being obscured and derailed by the typical comments about how minimum wage should be increased.  So that is where this post begins…

Profit vs. Obscenity

However, all of that is beside the point.  The point is this: McDonald’s is in business to make a profit.  I’m okay with that.  That’s never been in question.

On the other side of the coin, the workers that McDonald’s has to have—or else the company can’t operate–are also in business to make a profit.  I think everyone is okay with that.

I say “I think” because there’s a lot of disparaging comments about low-wage workers whenever I post one of these memes, as if just because someone finds himself working in fast food, he unquestionably is an unskilled, uneducated, teenage chump who just needs to get some ambition and/or go back to school.

And most of the disparaging comments are variations on the theme of “a fast food worker doesn’t deserve to make very much money because he is unskilled/lazy/dumb/uneducated/young/part-time/in school.”  Implicit also in the comments is also usually some variation on the theme of “McDonald’s (or any other giant corporation) has the right—nay, the duty–to pay its workers as little as possible because McDonald’s is doing them a favor by giving these losers the crappy job in the first place, and paying them as little as possible does them a favor by making them desperate to go back to school/get a real job/learn a skill.”

mcjob

Do you really think that?

So think on that for a moment.  Do you find yourself in agreement with such sentiments?  If so, why?   Ask yourself why you think that the people who actually make—by hand—the product the giant corporation sells should be paid as little as possible while the profits of the corporation that employs these people should be as big as possible.

The meme implies that McDonald’s had an annual profit of $8.5 billion.  There does not appear to be a source for that figure, but it’s probably more or less correct, as here is information on McDonald’s gross profits (revenue minus cost of goods sold) for the 12 month period ending March 31, 2014: $10.93 billion.  “Cost of goods sold” includes labor, i.e., the much-maligned “burger flipper.”  So there’s still quite a healthy profit after paying the burger flippers–almost $11 billion.

Now, that profit is subsidized by the state, as pointed out here:

“[The effective state subsidy] comes to an average of $7 billion a year. That’s the amount of annual public assistance families of fast-food workers received between 2007 and 2011, according to a new report written by economist Sylvia Allegretto and others, sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and funded by Fast Food Forward, the group that helped organize the summer’s labor strikes. The authors used publicly available data.

The report calls out the fast-food industry for its low wages, citing a median salary of $8.69 an hour and a history of offering part-time work. That might have been fine when those behind the counter were mostly teenagers living at home. These days, though, 68 percent of fast-food workers are single or married adults who aren’t in school—and 26 percent are raising children.”

End UP Flipping Burgers

What if we…gulp…”redistributed” some of McDonald’s profits?

And now we start to see the obscenity of McDonald’s “profit.”  That $7 billion subsidy cannot be attributed totally to McDonald’s of course, as there are many other fast food establishments.  Let’s assume that McDonald’s is only responsible for $1 billion of that $7 billion.  And then let’s say that McDonald’s was forced to divide up the $1 billion equally among all its minimum-wage employees in exchange for being able to get those employees off welfare.  And, let’s say we take that $1 billion in a lump sum out of the nearly $11 billion gross profit we mentioned above.

In other words, we—gasp!–redistributed McDonald’s profit (except it’s not really redistribution, because that money should have gone to the workers in the first place)!  Suddenly McDonald’s doesn’t have $11 billion anymore, it only has—horrors!–$10 billion.  How can the company possibly survive?

Maybe McDonald’s should learn to budget better

In order to survive on a paltry $10 billion, perhaps McDonald’s could use the budgeting tips it provided to its low-wage workers last year:

“ Amid a movement of fast-food workers pressing for a higher minimum wage, a financial planning guide for McDonald’s workers has landed with a thud.

Suggested monthly expenses include $20 for health care; $600 for rent; and $150 payment for a car (that apparently needs no gas.) Unfortunately the budget doesn’t have an allowance for food.

‘It doesn’t speak to the realities of low-wage workers in the food industry,’ said Teo Reyes, the program director for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a nonprofit that seeks to improving working conditions for restaurant workers.

‘I think it would be commendable if it was also part of a movement to increase wages,’ Reyes said. “At this point is seems to be disingenuous and insulting.’”

See what an easy solution?  Make McDonald’s profit slightly less obscene but still quite healthy, pay workers more, relieve the state (read—you and me) of the burden of workers on welfare, McDonald’s gets to be the good guy, prices at the restaurant don’t have to increase.  What, other than McDonald’s makes slightly less and its employees make slightly more, could possibly be the problem with this?

The only problem?  Crap-italism

Exactly—there is no problem except the shrieking heads who love redistribution from the bottom to the top but think it’s immoral for redistribution to go the other way (see the Stanley Druckenmiller video here if you doubt that the true redistribution happening is from the bottom to the top).  We have been taught that to practice “capitalism,” we can never make enough money and that profits have to always increase, no matter what undesirable actions it takes to increase those profits, whether it’s paying workers as little as possible, laying off workers, raising prices, moving jobs overseas, diluting the quality of the products, etc.  That’s not an economy, that’s a psychological disorder.  It’s crap-italism.

Oh hell, here’s the Druckenmiller video in which he says we are experiencing the greatest redistro from the bottom to the top in all of history…you know I could never keep that from you:

Posted in "supply and demand", Crap-italism, minimum wage, Reverse socialism, Wage slavery, Wages, Wealth transfer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“GOTCHA” IS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE, NOT FOR BILLIONAIRES

Posted on May 14, 2014 by eggsistense

GOTCHA meme

“Gotcha”:  If YOU break a securities law, you’ll be thrown under the jail.  If a private equity firm breaks securities laws, the SEC will just look the other way and offer lame excuses as to why they looked the other way, as Yves Smith details here:

“…the SEC has now announced that more than 50 percent of private equity firms it has audited have engaged in serious infractions of securities laws. These abuses were detected thanks to to Dodd Frank. Private equity general partners had been unregulated until early 2012, when they were required to SEC regulation as investment advisers.”

This announcement was made by SEC hack (and future private equity partner, natch) Andrew (Drew) Bowden in a speech to a bunch of criminals…er, people from private equity firms.  What was the lame excuse that Bowden offered?  Check this out:

“We believe that most people in the industry are trying to do the right thing, to help their clients, to grow their business, and to provide for their owners and employees. We therefore believe that we can most effectively fulfill our mission to promote compliance by sharing as much information as we can with the industry, knowing that people will use it to measure their firms and to self-correct where necessary. Put another way, we are not engaged in a game of  ‘gotcha.’“

Oh thank goodness–I’m so glad they’re not playing “gotcha.”  That’s so comforting.  I was worried there for a minute.

I’m tempted to look up a bunch of statistics about SEC enforcement actions and government enforcement actions in general, but that’s boring and I don’t have a lot of time today.  So let me just say what we all already know: while the government may not be playing “gotcha” with billionaire private equity firm management, the government certainly is playing “gotcha” with everyone else.

They certainly played “gotcha” with Mary McCulley

McCulley Jail

Want a specific, representative example of how the government does play gotcha with people who aren’t billionaires? Mary McCulley.  She supposedly impersonates an FBI agent and gets a year in prison–supposedly she told some title company hack that she worked for the FBI and then interviewed him.  Ultimately she won a $6 million judgment against US Bank because they committed fraud against McCulley and lied to the court (judge’s words).

This entire “impersonation” charge is viewed as highly suspicious by many people close to the case, but let’s assume it’s completely true.  Let’s assume that McCulley did exactly what she was accused of and told some guy she was an FBI agent.  She received no monetary gain from it.  She really received no benefit at all from it, in fact she’s in jail now and will be until around this time next year.  The government definitely played “gotcha” with Mary McCulley.

However, the violations of the private equity firms DO cost people money and the private equity firms DO benefit from this illegal activity, as Smith describes:

“Needless to say, this overly cozy arrangement has proven to be a ripe breeding ground for illegal conduct. Again from Bowden:

By far, the most common observation our examiners have made when examining private equity firms has to do with the adviser’s collection of fees and allocation of expenses. When we have examined how fees and expenses are handled by advisers to private equity funds, we have identified what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50% of the time.

He went on to describe some of the common fee skimming models. For example:

Some of the most common deficiencies we see in private equity in the area of fees and expenses occur in firm’s use of consultants, also known as “Operating Partners,” whom advisers promote as providing their portfolio companies with consulting services or other assistance that the portfolio companies could not independently afford.

So there you go. Just another day in the farce that America has become, in which the regulators admit that they know for sure the law has been broken by private equity management but don’t do anything about it while it’s actually unclear whether a non-billionaire has broken any law or not and she’s sent straight to jail.  “Gotcha,” indeed.

Posted in Everything Is Rigged, Mary McCulley, Private equity, SEC, Securities | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE HOLY FATHER IS RIGHT ON THE MONEY ABOUT “REDISTRIBUTION”

Posted on May 12, 2014 by eggsistense

pope-francis

The headline of almost every news story about the Pope’s  speech to the United Nations went with, in one form or another, the idea that the Pope wants redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, even though this is what he actually said:

“I do not hesitate to state, as did my predecessors, that equitable economic and social progress can only be attained by joining scientific and technical abilities with an unfailing commitment to solidarity accompanied by a generous and disinterested spirit of gratuitousness at every level. A contribution to this equitable development will also be made both by international activity aimed at the integral human development of all the world’s peoples and by the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.”

Notice that he used the word “equitable” twice in the above quote and used the word “redistribution” only once–the only time he used either of those words in the whole speech.

In other words, the Pope is more concerned about equity, i.e., fairness and equality, than he is about taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

The “Commie Pope”

Some people are freaking out that the Pope is a communist and that redistribution is theft and doesn’t work.  For example:

“With his third major address infused with socialist buzzwords, it seems to be official. Pope Francis is the first Commie Pope. And this is a big problem for the Catholic Church and they’d better get a handle on it.

First of all it is disgusting that any member of the cloth would advocate for communism like this Pope seems to be doing. Communism and its sister ideologies socialism and Nazism are responsible for the deaths of more humans than anything man has ever done. Yes, even more than religion–In fact, more than all religions combined. If you are in favor of communism/socialism/Naziism (and there is no material difference between them), then you are an apologist for mass murder. It really is just that simple.”

Wow.

This is clearly a desperate attempt to conflate economic justice with mass murder.  It’s an extremely weak and illogical argument, but unfortunately some people will still find themselves in agreement with it.  Are we really to believe that if we don’t want people to live in filth and squalor, dying of hunger and/or malnutrition, that somehow that makes us the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin?

And why does the piece above leave so-called American capitalism out of its pathetic litany of mass murder?  Trans-Atlantic African slave trade, anyone?  Indian eradication?  Use of chemical and nuclear weapons, i.e., Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Vietnam? Millions killed in Iraq, both before and during the 2003 war?  “Capitalism” is no benign, harmless, equalizing entity, certainly not as it is practiced in the West.

America is an oligarchy

Gore-Vidal2

In fact, the United States has been found to be an oligarchy, contrary to what its citizens are repeatedly told and led to believe about their own country:

“America is no longer a democracy — never mind the democratic republic envisioned by Founding Fathers.

Rather, it has taken a turn down elitist lane and become a country led by a small dominant class comprised of powerful members who exert total control over the general population — an oligarchy, said a new study jointly conducted by Princeton and Northwestern universities.

One finding in the study: The U.S. government now represents the rich and powerful, not the average citizen, United Press International reported.”

In fact, there is a truism that many have expressed (I first heard it from Gore Vidal) that sums up this report:

“Gore Vidal, the recently demised American writer, once famously quipped that the US economic system is ‘free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.‘”

That fact is really beyond dispute at this point, so the Pope makes an excellent point that there need to be equitable solutions to these problems of poverty.

Unfortunately for the rich, that will likely involve some sort of redistribution, not necessarily by coming into their million-dollar homes and taking their art collections or raiding their offshore accounts, but certainly by letting their enterprises fail when they act stupidly–instead of bailing them out–and by ending other forms of bailout and upward redistribution such as quantitative easing, subsidies, tax breaks, and other forms of corporate welfare.

In other words, “equitable economic and social progress” does not mean “kill the rich.”  Not necessarily.

“Redistribution” only undoes the original, rapacious distribution from the bottom to the top

As we said in the previous post titled, “Hedge Fund Manager Sounds Just Like The Pope”:

That sort of criticism is fairly typical of the defenders of what I’ve long called “reverse socialism,” namely the idea that “our theory is absolutely correct even if it’s terrible in practice.” Reverse socialism is, of course, the system to which we are currently yoked and can be defined in a few words: profits are privatized while losses are socialized. The 2008 bailout springs immediately to mind as does the Cyprus “bail-in” of this year. Another way to define reverse socialism in a few words: “too big to fail.”

Redistribution: not what they’d have you believe

The PolicyMic article does make a really good point with which I totally agree:

“Redistribution is totalitarian and oppressive.”

Well, duh! Though the writer does not define “redistribution,” we know without having to ask that he means “redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor.” That kind of redistribution deeply offends the writer.

However, the redistribution is going in the complete opposite direction, from the poor and middle class to the very wealthy. And that’s not just me saying that, that’s Stanley Druckenmiller, again, a well-known hedge fund manger. He says exactly that in this video (at 10 seconds in):

If you didn’t watch the video, he said:

“This is the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich ever.”

What’s he talking about? The Fed’s decision to NOT stop QE unlimited, which is the Fed’s injection of $85 billion a month into the banking system.

When the pope agrees with a hedge fund manager whose last company had $12 billion in assets as of 2010, maybe we are in fact getting to the heart of the matter, i.e., that putting the lipstick of “capitalism” on the pig of reverse socialism is not getting us anywhere near to anything like the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that are among our “unalienable rights” that our government is supposed to be insuring for all of us.

 

Posted in Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Financial Terrorism, Pope Francis, Redistribution, Too big to fail | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MARY MCCULLEY IS A THREAT TO FRAUD, NOT TO BANKS OR THE PUBLIC

Posted on May 9, 2014 by eggsistense

Why is Mary McCulley in prison and why didn’t they let her out on May 8 despite public outcry?

McCulley Jail

Simply put, she is a threat.  Not to the public, not at all.  Not even close.  She certainly isn’t a threat to banks.  No, the only thing she’s a threat to is fraud.

And if you happen to be a bank engaged in fraud or who has otherwise incorporated fraud into your business model, then look out!  US Bank learned that the hard way when McCulley won a $6 million judgment against them back in February.  US Bank, to put it simply, defrauded her (so said the jury) and lied to the court (the judge called it “intentional deceit”–same diff).  This is not in dispute.

If it weren’t for McCulley’s tenacity in prosecuting the case, the fraud might never have come to light.  Remember, this woman appealed an unfavorable decision from prison and without an attorney.  It’s that kind of determination and tenacity that the banks who commit fraud and their puppet courts don’t like.

Banks who commit fraud don’t want those kinds of people walking the streets–they aren’t safe if the Mary McCulleys of the world and/or Mary McCulley herself are walking the streets.  They can’t have the people challenging their fraud and beating them in court!  But we the people are much, much less safe if the Mary McCulleys of the world and the woman herself are locked up.

 

Posted in Foreclosure fraud, Kangaroo court, Mary McCulley, US Bank | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

MCCULLEY SENT BACK TO PRISON: MOTION DENIED

Posted on May 8, 2014 by eggsistense

I figured as much…from Glenn Augenstein’s FB page:

MINUTE ENTRY for proceedings held before Judge Sam E Haddon: Motion Hearing as to Mary Ann McCulley held on 5/8/2014 re 93 MOTION to Amend/Correct 91 MOTION for Release from Custody filed by Mary Ann McCulley filed by Mary Ann McCulley. Pres in courtroom are cnsl for dft Mayo Ashely w/in custody defendant. Tim Raciciot appearing for govt. Stmts by ea cnsl. Dft witness Mary Ann McCulley sworn. Court denies motion and remands defendant back to the custody of USMS. Hearing commenced at 3:00 p.m. and concluded at 3:37 p.m. (Court Reporter JoAnn Bacheller) (Defense Witnesses Present: Mary Ann McCulley), (Hearing held in Butte, Montana) (ELL, ) (Entered: 05/08/2014)

This is an OUTRAGE!  More to come…

 

 

Posted in Foreclosure fraud, US Bank | Tagged , | Leave a comment

THE $6 MILLION WOMAN: INTERVIEW WITH MARY MCCULLEY

Posted on May 7, 2014 by eggsistense

NOTE: This interview was conducted in late February 2014, before a sentencing hearing that was eventually postponed.  Ms. McCulley was then sentenced to a year each of prison and probation on April 25, 2014.  She is now requesting a Reconsideration of her sentence, and this request will be heard on May 8, 2014.

Originally published: May 7, 2014

By Clinton Kirby and Glenn Augenstein

If you follow the news of foreclosure fraud and bad banks, you have certainly heard that on February 7, 2014, a Gallatin County, Montana jury awarded Ms. Mary McCulley an incredible $6 million verdict against US Bank of Montana, with $5 million of that figure being awarded for punitive damages.

It’s the kind of victory that foreclosure fighters have long dreamed of, yet rarely (if ever) seen:  a bank being found liable for actual fraud as well as constructive fraud. Indeed, the fact that banks have committed fraud related to foreclosures (among other things) is common knowledge to both the public and the government, but the banks usually get away with it because judges inexplicably let them off the hook in any number of lawsuits (usually performing extraordinary feats of legal gymnastics to do so), or there are undisclosed settlements with homeowners, or the regulators give them a slap on the wrist in the form of either fines (that are proportionally miniscule to the banks’ financial gain from their illegal behavior) or essentially toothless settlements (sometimes both).

So in that context, the jury’s verdict in Ms. McCulley’s case is remarkable to say the least and it provides hope that all is not lost, and that the tide is turning—or has turned—against the banks.

Perseverance and fighting spirit

However, Ms. McCulley’s road to victory was not an easy one.  If she had given up the fight at any number of stops along the way, it would have been completely understandable.  And the depressing part is that, even though she has this monumental victory under her belt, she is now incarcerated in a Montana correctional facility on what many believe are dubious charges.  Those charges apparently stem from complaints filed by Tom Cahill, formerly of American Land Title Company, and Attorney J. Robert Planalp, who made appearances on behalf of American Land Title Company.  American Land Title Company, and U.S. Bank of Montana, were named as Defendants in a civil suit brought by Ms. McCulley in June of 2009.  That is to say, even though U.S. Bank of Montana was found to have defrauded her, Ms. McCulley is the one doing jail time—not anyone at the bank, or anyone else who may have been involved in the fraud against her.

“By throwing me in jail for investigating my own fraud, when the FBI wouldn’t help me, and to punish me instead of the actual people that did forgeries and stuff, I think that is a very sad statement,” Ms. McCulley said in an interview conducted in late February 2014, shortly after she won the $6 million jury verdict, but before she was sentenced on April 25, 2014.  “So that’s what’s kind of keeping me down.  There needs to be a happy ending here, and not just for me, but for all of us that are fighting these banks, you know?  Millions of us.  Millions of us!”

What makes Ms. McCulley such an admirable woman is that she knows we’re all in this together.

Like many people fighting foreclosure, Ms. McCulley first contacted government agencies for help. It was later discovered that prior to recording, the deed of trust to her property had been altered by Tom Cahill (formerly of American Land Title Company) without her knowledge or consent.   Among the agencies she contacted was the FBI.  “So the sad thing to me is that I had undisputed facts that there was a forgery.  And the FBI just [said], you know–‘Have a nice day’–and they shoved me under the bus.  And so did pretty much every other government agency that I went to.”

Understandably dissatisfied with the response she received from the government, in June 2009 Ms. McCulley sued American Land Title Company and U.S. Bank of Montana.  Her case was heard in District Court of the Eighteenth Judicial District, In and For the County of Gallatin (Cause No. DV-09-562C), Honorable John C. Brown, Presiding Judge.  Despite compelling evidence that her deed of trust was altered after she signed it—but before it was recorded with the county—on January 12, 2012, the District Court granted motions for summary judgment in favor of U.S. Bank of Montana and American Land Title Company.

During this time, Ms. McCulley almost gave up.  “At my trial with US Bank, it was proven that their actions were so malicious and heinous—they drove me to a suicide attempt.  And you know who I wrote my letter to when I was going to kill myself?  The judge.  I didn’t write it to my mom or my brother—I said, ‘Dear Judge Brown, I quit.  They win.’  And went on to explain the fact that the title company’s lying, the bank’s lying, the lawyers are lying—how can I possibly fight this case when officers of the court are going to lie under oath?”

On April 25, 2012, Ms. McCulley was arrested on several charges, including a felony Assault with a Weapon.  Ms. McCulley was held on a $1 million bond.  At trial the jury passed on all but one of the charges, and came in with a guilty verdict for a misdemeanor assault charge.  Ms. McCulley was sentenced to 6 days.  After serving 309 days (303 more than the sentence), she was released.

Undeterred, Ms. McCulley did not give up the fight.  While incarcerated she contacted a paralegal who agreed to help her write an appeal of her unfavorable court decision, which was eventually heard by the Supreme Court of Montana.  “So I’m in jail, and I’m filing the appeal—and you don’t have anything but an ink pen—but I had a pay phone and I found a paralegal, this guy Alex.  And he came, and I told him the story and he helped me write it and we got it to the Supreme Court.”

Alex is deserving of some gold stars, and perhaps an adult beverage, or two.

Ms. McCulley was released in early March 2013.  On April 9, 2013, the Supreme Court of Montana ruled in Ms. McCulley’s favor, stating in part: “For these reasons, we reverse the District Court’s order of summary judgment in favor of the Bank on the issue of fraud and remand the matter to the District Court for further proceedings.”  American Land Title Company was dismissed from the suit, but U.S. Bank of Montana was not.

Upon remand, and through the trial of February 7, 2014, the jury recognized the defendant had been, to put it mildly, considerably less than honest and forthcoming.  Judge Brown, in his April 14, 2014 “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order re: Punitive Damages,” said:

At page 10, par. 37, “The Bank made these false statements to the Court in 2011, and the Court relied on the false statements in its summary judgment order.”

At page 13, par. 7, “When, as here, there is concealment of evidence of improper motive the Court will consider this in assessing reprehensibility of the Bank’s conduct.”

At page 13, par. 8, “Further, US Bank ‘blatantly misrepresented an important fact’ in one of its briefs filed with this Court.”

In the same par. 8, “This egregious behavior by the Bank constitutes intentional deceit and supports the conclusion that the Bank’s conduct was reprehensible.”

In a 1913 Harper’s Weekly article Louis D. Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”  Clearly Honorable Judge Brown is in agreement.

Perseverance pays off

“I’ve always kind of known I would win the suit against the bank because of the documents,” Ms. McCulley said.  “Like I said, it’s a document case; it’s not a hearsay case.  The documents speak for themselves.”  The Gallatin County jury agreed, in a big way. “That was a complete—just bombshell dropped.  That’s a huge verdict for Montana,” Ms. McCulley said.  “I think the money shows that banks can be evil, to get those kind of punitive damages, you know?”

Despite the ordeal she has already endured–and will continue to endure unless she is (hopefully) released from prison in the next couple of days–Ms. McCulley is keenly aware of what her victory means and the potential impact it could have:  “I don’t know if I’ll ever see a dime.  But I want this to be something that somebody else can use.  Or that we could parlay into some kind of political—something, you know–‘Hey wake up!  The banks do lie, cheat, and steal.  That’s the whole goal, you know.”

Ms. McCulley is currently incarcerated in the Cascade County Correctional Facility, Great Falls, MT.  Her reconsideration hearing is scheduled for tomorrow—Thursday, May 8 at 3:00 MDT.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Clinton Kirby: leftbehindchild@gmail.com, Glenn Augenstein: mrgl7enn@yahoo.com

#FREEMARYMCCULLEY

Posted in Foreclosure fraud, US Bank | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments