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Posts Tagged ‘supreme court’

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The book about how your calls and emails and Facebook accounts are being secretly watched was released way back in 2006. It’s called State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Sure, maybe President Obama has expanded the program a little, but then maybe not. If you want a good read about the subject, this book is it. And people wonder why I call George W. Bush the most corrupt president in US history. This book illustrates only one of the ways that Bush was so massively corrupt, as well as completely incompetent.

Just think about this. You can write to the National Security Agency (NSA), which has a budget many times larger than the CIA and does much of the illegal spying, and request any information they have on you under the Freedom of Information Act. They responded to me with a form letter stating, among other things, “…because of the highly classified nature of the program, we can neither confirm nor deny whether records relating to you under this program exist. The fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 12958, as amended.” An executive order is given only by the president of the United States, which, in this case, was GW, himself.

The corrupt, corporate wing of the US Supreme Court ruled back then that you need to prove that the government is spying on you in order to stop it from doing so. Naturally, the NSA will neither confirm nor deny that you’re being spied on. So you can’t get any evidence. In other words, the government can send agents to break into your house when you’re not there, download everything on your computer, search your papers, your soiled undewear and other private things, and you can’t do anything about unless you have clear proof that the government was involved.

In addition, the court has ruled that certain government information is classified, and you’re not entitled to it if agents of the government simply say it’s a matter of national security. That information could be important; like you work at a Seven-Eleven, date a girl named Roxie, live in an apartment, wrote an email to a friend in Canada in which you mentioned that Roxie’s pit bull is a terror, and that you’re thinking about going back to school, are matters of national security. All an agent of the government has to do is say to the court that this information is classified as a matter of national security.

The court’s ruling is shocking since the program is clearly unconstitutional. The only reason they would argue that you need proof that you, personally, are being spied on, is to protect the illegal activity. The court could simply issue a legal decision that effectively bars the US government from this illegal activity, but it didn’t.

And that’s how corrupt your federal government is at all levels.

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Eric Holder: Another Lying Corrupt Politician in Bed With the 1 Percent[/caption

A day after Attorney General Eric Holder asserted that prosecutions of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions have lagged because they are, in fact, “too large” to prosecute, a pair of honest, non-corporate Democratic senators challenged regulators over the lack of legal oversight into the banks’ activities before and after the financial crisis.

Holder is a corrupt liar. Banks are not too large to be prosecuted. Instead, banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are tools used by the 1 percent to suck the rest of us financially dry. Holder, like President Obama, is protecting the rich and powerful and their corporations from prosecution because they are rich and the government is massively corrupt down to the marrow of the political system.

In other words, politicians hold the leashes of the federal regulators who are protecting the 1 percent. That means even the regulators are corrupt, so much so that Occupy Wall Street is suing them. Occupy Wall Street Suing All Wall Street Regulators

Large banks have reached a slew of settlements with federal authorities over mortgage and foreclosure fraud, rate-rigging scandals, and money laundering schemes, but they have largely avoided prosecution, a fact Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) pointed out to regulators from multiple agencies during a Senate Banking Committee hearing a few weeks ago. Prosecution, Warren noted, is less likely for banks that jeopardize the integrity of the American economy than it is for common criminals, The Hill reports:

“If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to jail,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at the Banking Committee hearing. “Evidently, if you launder nearly $1 billion for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley (D), unlike Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, is a strong supporter of financial regulation and author of many of the new rules in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. He joined in the criticism by questioning Holder’s assertion that large banks were “too big” to prosecute and wondered if Wall Street had become a “prosecution-free zone.”

Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was concerned that the size of some banks had made prosecuting them difficult because their downfall could damage the financial system and economy.

Sen. Merkley (D-Ore.) contended that this claim suggested that “we have a prosecution-free zone for large banks in America.”

Despite the well-documented financial abuses that occurred during and after the financial crisis, Wall Street prosecutions fell to a 20-year low in 2011. That’s how corrupt Holder is, that’s how corrupt our government is, that’s how corrupt our Supreme Court is.

Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have previously challenged the Justice Dept. over its lax approach to prosecutions, and Brown and another Republican senator, Louisiana’s David Vitter, called for legislation to break up the largest banks two weeks ago.

Instead of prosecutions, regulators have resorted to settlements that often appear as slaps on the wrist compared to the banks’ abuses. Banks have already figured out multiple ways to game foreclosure and mortgage abuse settlements, which haven’t extended the help to homeowners that was promised (in part because states weren’t required to pass money on to homeowners). And even when regulators levy large financial penalties on law-breaking banks, those penalties are tax deductible, allowing Wall Street to claim a tax break on the cost of its wrongdoing.

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From 2009 to 2012, the US government handed out $1.1 trillion in welfare to Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. These corporations earned $180.3 billion during the same years. They also handed out $477.6 billion in pay and bonuses. In other words, the US government directly redistributed almost $300 billion in taxpayer money so that these five horribly managed companies could increase pay and bonuses to the people who managed to wreck them. How’s that make you feel?

Buy enough politicians, be totally incompetent in managing a company, and the public servants that are owned by incompetent CEO’s like Jamie Dimond of JP Morgan will make certain that you’ll get a nice reward for your troubles.

The US government is almost completely corrupt. The same is true of the Supreme Court. It’s credibility has been destroyed by the billionaire Koch Brothers. Big money has destroyed all three branches of our democracy so that they’re only purpose is to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent while engaging in political theater. (more…)

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Obamacare has been designed to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. We should have expected this since the legislation was written by executives of publicly traded health care corporations whose stocks and bonds are bought and sold in the financial markets.

Take the case of a family of four in which the policyholder is fifty years old. We’ll call this family the Smiths. Say Mr. Smith is a college graduate. So is Mrs. Smith. Let’s assume they earn $93,699 a year in 2014, when all parts of Obamacare becomes the law. After taxes, that’s not a whole lot of money. The Smith’s might be in the lower middle class, maybe solidly middle.

The government is going to force them to purchase a health insurance policy whether they want to or not, or they’ll be penalized and compelled to pay a tax on something they don’t want to buy, which is ridiculous and clearly unconstitutional, as the insurance industries corrupt Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court clearly knows. The Smiths, however, decide to purchase the policy to avoid the hassle.

The cost of that policy will be $16,858 a year, but the government will subsidize the family and the health insurance industry by paying $8,901 of that policy.

The Smiths, however, have neighbors, the Thompsons. Mr and Mrs Thompson have no insurance coverage and they too will be forced by an unconstitutional law to purchase a health insurance policy from a publicly traded, limited liability, corporation. The Thompsons earn $93,700 a year, which is one dollar more than what the Jones earn. Their insurance policy also costs $16,858 a year, but because they earn one dollar more, they’ll need to pay the entire premium under Obamacare.

This will suck the Thompson’s dry, but it will also push health insurance company profits higher, and send their share prices and dividends for the 1 percent surging. The rich will get richer, but what will it do for the Thompsons? After they pay their taxes, the Thompson’s aren’t going to have a ton of money to spend after the insurance industry (and the 1 percent) financially rapes them via Obamacare. The economy might even contract because of the Obamacare income redistribution scam since 70 percent of the economy is consumer driven and the consumers are going to get financially raped big time. The rich, however, will get richer by sucking the middle class dry with another piece of legislation. That’s precisely why Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden voted for the bill. He’s always looking for ways to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

Don’t believe me? Click the following link. It’ll you take to Kaiser Permanente’s Health Care Reform Calculator. Plug in your numbers and see. http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx

By the way, this new law may encourage employers everywhere to opt out of providing their employees with health insurance. Target and Walmart have already cut employee hours to opt out of the law.

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Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist. He isn’t always correct on his economics and the political fallout from economic policy, but he is rarely wrong. I agree with him about Wall Street Mitt’s economic policy. They’re a disaster waiting to happen. But maybe the USA needs that for the 99 percent to wake up and take back their government and get rid of the corrupt corporate wing of the plutocratic US supreme court.

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Apparently, the Federal government can make you buy stuff if you don’t buy it. For the first time in US history, the federal government can make you buy something you don’t want to, thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts. Anybody who believes the government is too big and powerful now have even more to worry about.

Roberts may have voted yes to the “mandate’” provision of the law, because corporate insurance companies will enhance their profits with the law more so than without the law. He tends to vote for whatever redistributes the most money from the 99 to the 1 percent, and his stance on this issue may have everything to do with corporate profits than the constitution, which is typical of the corrupt Koch Brothers/corporate wing of the court.

“If an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes,” Roberts writes. He adds that this means “the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning an income.”

In other words, Roberts thinks the government can tax you for not buying something. Where in the Constitution is this provision?

click the link below for more information.

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare!

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By now it is clear that the Koch Brothers have bought half or more of the US Supreme Court; justices Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Do you remember when Chief Justice Roberts committed perjury under sworn testimony during his confirmation hearings in front of the senate when he claimed he would respect “legal precedence” and then promptly showed what a liar he was when he voted to destroy 100 years of legal precedence on campaign finance with his Koch Brothers inspired decision to vote yes on Citizens United? That’s the influence billions of dollars have on the Koch Brothers wing of the US supreme court.

Now it turns out the Brothers have influence on US energy policy. Click the link below for the complete story.

Do the Koch Brothers Determine US Energy Policy?

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The political “system is broken,” Arizona Senator John McCain said in an interview with David Gregory of NBC. He also called the decision by the corrupt Koch Brothers Wing of the Supreme Court, “the worst (court) decision of the twenty-first century.” Click below for details and video of the interview.

John McCain Calls Supreme Court Uniformed, Arrogant , Naive for Citizens United Decision

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