The Matrix of Plunder - 4

In the previous post we talked about how the old congress attacked pensions of workers and retired people in a serious way (& Mr. Preznit "compromised").

The new congress (led by the right-wing) on its first day in office, opened up an attack on the Social Security System, which is insurance purchased by Americans with funds withheld from their pay-checks.

Not only that, this attack is mounted against disabled Americans, those who are the most vulnerable:

As one of its first orders of business upon convening Tuesday, the Republican House of Representatives approved a rule that will seriously undermine efforts to keep all of Social Security solvent.

The rule hampers an otherwise routine reallocation of Social Security payroll tax income from the old-age program to the disability program. Such a reallocation, in either direction, has taken place 11 times since 1968, according to Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

But it's especially urgent now, because the disability program's trust fund is expected to run dry as early as next year. At that point, disability benefits for 11 million beneficiaries would have to be cut 20%. Reallocating the income, however, would keep both the old-age and disability programs solvent until at least 2033, giving Congress plenty of time to assess the programs' needs and work out a long-term fix.

The procedural rule enacted by the House Republican caucus prohibits the reallocation unless it's accompanied by "benefit cuts or tax increases that improve the solvency of the combined trust funds," as paraphrased by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

In practical terms, the advocacy committee says, that makes the reallocation impossible; it mandates either benefit cuts across the board, which aren't politically palatable, or a payroll tax increase, which isn't palatable to the GOP.

(On Day One, emphasis added). The congressional cowards who did this are also bullies who learned their wickedness from their spiritual mentors who are bereft of the traditional American conscience.

The next thing they want to do is cut taxes for the 1%, the extremely wealthy plutocrats:

"Republicans today are extending their embrace of voodoo economics by wrapping their arms around voodoo scorekeeping.

They are changing House rules to be able to cook the books to implement their long-held, discredited notion that tax cuts pay for themselves.

I think that former Reagan and George H. W. Bush administration official Bruce Bartlett said it best: 'It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it's about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.'

That's what this is all about." -(NPR)

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Call it the Brownback effect.

Republicans once idolized Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback as a tax cutting superstar — now he’s a lesson in what not to do.

“It’s a cautionary tale on a national scale … Many of us felt that [Kansas] had been too aggressive,” said Indiana Senate Majority Leader and tax committee chairman Brandt Hershman, who helped GOP Gov. Mike Pence cut corporate taxes last spring. “We all like low taxes … but we have to ensure the stability of a revenue stream to provide basic services that our citizens expect.” -(GOP Doesn't Learn From Sam Brownback's Tax Debacle)

They also want to pass the Oil-Qaeda inspired Keystone XL pipeline bill:

One of the first pieces of legislation on the calendar for the new Congress would give a green light to the Keystone XL oil pipeline. It's been held up by court challenges and a regulatory review for more than six years. Backers hope to change that through legislation, but the White House is threatening a veto ...

(Keystone XL Pipeline Gets Another Chance With New Congress). So much for "responsible governing" by a whiny, gerrymandered group that got fewer votes than their opponents (House Democrats got more votes than House Republicans, Senate Democrats got 20 million more votes than Senate Republicans).

Next, they will try to destroy efforts to bring down green house gases to help all of civilization.

Which is exactly as Dredd Blog expected (Oil-Qaeda Wins Big - 2).

The previous post in this series is here.

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Irrationality within the cultural trance ...

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The Matrix of Plunder - 3

Pensions down the Plunder hole

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog, for years, has been observing and reporting on the plundering of the American People.

Plunder by the epigovernment, through the actions of their lackeys in federal and state governments (The Elections of Pontius Pilots).

Yes, Dredd Blog has been doing so for years (e.g. The Graphs Of The Age Of Plunder, 2, 3; Riders On The Storm ... Of Plunder, 2; Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

In today's post Dredd Blog is warning Americans that plunder is still happening to them (see the video at the bottom of the post for more info).

Basically, pensions of retired people can now be cut by as much as 60% under new laws passed in the "new budget."

If pension overlords think that the pension funds are encumbered (by their bad investments on Wall Street), then they change your life:

The legislation permits deep pension cuts to retirees in certain financially-troubled multiemployer plans. Financially-troubled plans are plans expected to not have enough money to pay 100% of benefits within 15 and, in some cases, 20 years. There are instances where the cuts could be more than 60% of a participant’s benefits. To find out how much your benefits could be cut use this calculator.

The decision to cut benefits is made by plan trustees, who are typically more aligned with active workers and employers than with retirees.

Retirees who are age 80 or over, or who are receiving a disability pension, are not subject to benefit cuts. Retirees ages 75-79 are subject to smaller cuts than retirees under age 75.

How big or small the cuts are for those under age 75 is determined by the trustees. The cuts are subject to certain legal limits, the most important of which is that benefits cannot be cut below 110% of the amounts that the federal pension insurance agency guarantees.

Plan trustees decide how to allocate the cuts. For example, they can cut retirees’ benefits more than those of active workers, and they can decide whether and how much to reduce survivors’ benefits.

Plan trustees are required to reduce the benefits of participants whose employers went out of business (or withdrew from the plan for other reasons without paying all of their obligations) first, before they reduce the benefits of any other plan participants. This will mean that those retirees whose companies went bankrupt will have greater reductions than other retirees.

UPS retirees in the Central States Teamsters plan are given special protection: their benefits are last in line to be cut. This provision is reportedly the result of a last-minute deal that will save UPS an estimated $2 billion that it would otherwise have been contractually be required to pay to its retirees.

There is no provision for automatic restoration of lost benefits if a plan’s funding status improves.

A trustees’ decision to cut benefits can only be reversed by the Department of Treasury, and then only if the Treasury concludes that the decision is based on a determination that is “clearly erroneous.”

Before cutting benefits, the trustees must provide information to all plan members about the cuts, and plans with 10,000 or more participants must appoint a retired plan participant to represent the interests of pensioners. The trustees appoint this representative and can even appoint a trustee or former trustee of the plan.

Plan trustees must allow all participants to vote on cuts before they are

Pirate Blackbeard

implemented. However, this right is largely illusory. First, a majority of all workers and retirees in a plan – not just a majority of the ones who vote – is required to block cuts. Thus, a vote to block cuts fails even if 100% of those voting oppose the cuts, if only 49% of participants actually vote. Moreover, ballots can be distributed by e-mail, which means that retirees who don’t use the Internet might not vote.

Even if all participants vote against cuts, the Treasury Department, in consultation with the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC, the federal pension insurance program) can override the vote and uphold the trustees’ decision to make cuts if it concludes that the plan’s insolvency would increase the PBGC’s projected liabilities by $1 billion or more.

The insurance premiums that multiemployer plans pay to the PBGC are increased from $13 to $26 per participant per year. In contrast, premiums paid to the single-employer plan program are between $57 and $475 per participant per year.

Retirees, widows, and widowers whose benefits are reduced cannot bring a lawsuit under the federal private pension law, ERISA, to challenge the legality of the reductions.

(Pension Rights Center, emphasis added). If you "[r]etirees, widows, and widowers" don't like the pain you feel when your pension is cut, you can't sue for redress (You Are Here).

And if you get mavericky and begin to do the marching in the streets thingy, first think about what they spent your plundered pension money on, and be careful (Will The Military Become The Police? - 10).

All we citizen journalists can do is inform you, as Dredd Blog has done for free for years (you are welcome).

You have even been warned that psychopaths are running the show, and that they are dangerous to your freedom:

... the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption.
...
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy). The ones who are directly plundering pensions are also psychopaths:

One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100. [Update]

(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths, 2, 3, 4). That is all we citizen journalists can do is warn you.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Video clip link.

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Once Upon a People

Once upon a People

The epigovernment (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) has decided that we need a change in direction from the past W Direction to the new future W Direction.

Therefore, the future will no longer be called "more of the same."

Instead, as the new bumper sticker shows, the new mantra is "a real and lasting future in every garage" together with "never ending Elijah oil in every pot" (The Peak of The Oil Lies - 6).

"Global warming induced climate change is over," because "we are still on God's planet" (You Are Here).

Get ready for this too: "we are cutting off DC's nuts" and moving the capitol to Lake Wobegon where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

And how will this be done?

Dust off the cold-war propaganda manuals, splice in some Ebola fear, together with some ISIS panic, and voila, MOMCOM freedom:

The military portion of MOMCOM has from 800 to 1000 bases around the world that depend on free handouts from the public trough.

They are not required to pay it back.

MOMCOM Feeds the Hoi Polloi "Freedom"

Food, weapons, housing, weapons, clothing, weapons, and careful MOM control is always free in the sense the military does not pay back the money that comes its way from the taxpayers.

It is like Wall Street bonuses with khaki on.

The main claim to fame is that the military portion of MOMCOM gives new meaning to freedom, which is what they claim is their number one product: MOMCOM Freedom.

It is what you get instead of getting your money back. No refunds from MOMCOM. MOMCOM Freedom is not free, they like to say.

Clearly they are right because their brand (MOMCOM Freedom) costs us more than all the rest of the world combined pay for it.

The president, congress, and the judiciary think this is a real bargain, exclaiming "you get the freedom you pay for".

(MOMCOM - A Mean Welfare Queen). The W Direction, also known as The Wobegon Trail, will be renamed Highway 61 (War is the Highway 61 of the 1%) when the old DC is castrated by Joni & Sarah, and the new government sits down sans nuts in its new seat.

Forward into the future past (American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

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Why privacy matters, Glenn Greenwald

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Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 11

It has been awhile since I posted about the banksters among us.

This series, which began in August of 2009, has dealt with the subject over a span of time (Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

The subject matter is basically that the banksters make things up as they go.

Therefore we really don't know the real economic conditions, we only know what they want us to think is happening in out economy.

A case in point is that we are now being told that the 2008 economic collapse was a bit more than the Bush II Administration was aware of:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a prominent student of the Great Depression, contends that the 2008 financial crisis was actually worse than its 1930s counterpart.

Mr. Bernanke is quoted making the statement in a document filed on Aug. 22 with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims as part of a lawsuit linked to the 2008 government bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc.

“September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” Mr. Bernanke is quoted as saying in the document filed with the court. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is quoted in the document offering a similarly apocalyptic assessment. From Sept. 6 through Sept. 22, the economy was essentially “in free fall,” he said.

(Wall Street Journal, emphasis added). They seem to never be able to figure things out ahead of time, even back in the day of that once Greatest Depression, there was hopium in the air:

ON THE night of October 22, 1929, one of America’s most widely known economists addressed a great banquet of credit men. Not only were Wall Street prices not too high, he told his delighted hearers, but we were really only on the threshold of the greatest boom in the nation’s history. The prophecy evoked a burst of applause. Next morning, a few minutes after the great bell announced the opening of trading on the Stock Exchange, the storm broke. The greatest economic depression in our history was formally ushered in — though it had been in progress for some time. From this point on, as the country slowly roused itself to a consciousness of the far-spreading crisis, leaders in politics and business repeated with invincible optimism that it was all just a wholesome corrective. After several years a waggish commentator published a little volume called Oh, Yeah! It was a sardonic recording of the persistent and unconquerable stream of promises of quickly returning health. There you will find recorded the statements of statesmen, financiers, university professors, leading economists, and editors assuring the people that it was all a blessing in disguise, a corrective phenomenon, that the broad highway to renewed prosperity lay just ahead. All of which proved quite conclusively that these men did not know what they were talking about because they had no understanding of the economic system under which they lived. Then came the collapse of 1933 on the grand scale — and a resumption of the bright prophecies of happy days.

(Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 3, emphasis added). Do "these men" still not get it at this late date?

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog calls the structure of "the economy" a plutocracy, which is much like the feudal plutocracies based on war (see The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

The talk of wars continue in the fog of the presstitutes as the plutocracy remains clueless to history (The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 10).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Life In The Ferengi Home World - 3

In the first and second posts of this series Dredd Blog considered the science fiction series Star Trek.

More specifically, that subject was narrowed down to a look at a species of humanoids called the Ferengi.

The Ferengi humanoids had a culture that was driven by what could be described as a "benign laissez faire capitalism" fused with a religion which could be called "the prosperity gospel."

More on those concepts in a moment.

But first, I wanted to inject something that the Star Trek episodes never considered: what if the Ferengi took over the United Federation of Planets ("the Federation") after becoming militant?

In short, what would a Ferengi coup, so as to take over the Federation, look like once it had settled in?

In today's post I will argue that it would look like The United States of Military Empire which is now entering into the final phase of the modern resource wars.

Wars that feed a planet destroying frenzy which will eventually bring down current civilization, and take it back to the Stone Age (at best ... and if we are "lucky").

Before we go there, let's remember what the Ferengi were like prior to the coup:

Their home planet ... is the center of the Ferengi Alliance and is governed by the Grand Nagus and a Commerce Authority made primarily of the Council of Economic Advisors (formerly Board of Liquidators). Like most of their culture, their religion is also based on the principles of capitalism: they offer prayers and monetary offerings to a "Blessed Exchequer" in hopes of entering the "Divine Treasury" upon death, and fear an afterlife spent in the "Vault of Eternal Destitution".

(Life In The Ferengi Home World). Now, take a look at the modern religion that will have been fused into the mix:

Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel) is a Christian [or Mithraic] religious doctrine which claims the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians.

The doctrine teaches that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth.

Its proponents teach that the doctrine is an aspect of the path to Christian dominion over society, arguing that God's promise of dominion to Israel applies to Christians today.

The doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, proposing that it is God's will for his people to be happy. The atonement (reconciliation with God) is interpreted to include the alleviation of sickness and poverty, which are viewed as curses to be broken by faith.

(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy). Now, let's add the third and final ingredient into this mix, so as to bring it all home.

That ingredient is a degeneration from the benign Ferengi into sociopaths, and later a further degeneration of the ruling Ferengi into psychopaths.

When fully played out this involves, first, a military coup (not a coup d'état, rather a military policy coup see e.g. this and this).

Let's review a description of that one final additional ingredient:

"The Worldwide control of humanity’s economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination.

Where is the Threat?

The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined “the State of the World” by focusing on so-called “level of threats” which might negatively influence or undermine US interests.

Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualized the greatest fraud in US history, namely “the Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the “free market” has unfolded.

Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to:

1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets,

2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations.

Geopolitical Outreach: Network of Military Bases

The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain." (American Feudalism - 6)

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"In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it. Its military has divided the world -- the whole planet -- into six “commands.” Its fleet, with 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, rules the seas and has done so

U.S. Gunboats Dwarf All Other Nations

largely unchallenged for almost seven decades. Its Air Force has ruled the global skies, and despite being almost continuously in action for years, hasn’t faced an enemy plane since 1991 or been seriously challenged anywhere since the early 1970s. Its fleet of drone aircraft has proven itself capable of targeting and killing suspected enemies in the backlands of the planet from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia with little regard for national boundaries, and none at all for the possibility of being shot down. It funds and trains proxy armies on several continents and has complex aid and training relationships with militaries across the planet. On hundreds of bases, some tiny and others the size of American towns, its soldiers garrison the globe from Italy to Australia, Honduras to Afghanistan, and on islands from Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.  Its weapons makers are the most advanced on Earth and dominate the global arms market. Its nuclear weaponry in silos, on bombers, and on its fleet of submarines would be capable of destroying several planets the size of Earth.  Its system of spy satellites is unsurpassed and unchallenged.  Its intelligence services can listen in on the phone calls or read the emails of almost anyone in the world from top foreign leaders to obscure insurgents.  The CIA and its expanding paramilitary forces are capable of kidnapping people of interest just about anywhere from rural Macedonia to the streets of Rome and Tripoli.  For its many prisoners, it has set up (and dismantled) secret jails across the planet and on its naval vessels.  It spends more on its military than the next most powerful 13 states combined.  Add in the spending for its full national security state and it towers over any conceivable group of other nations.

In terms of advanced and unchallenged military power, there has been nothing like the U.S. armed forces since the Mongols swept across Eurasia." (Epigovernment: The New Model - 5)

In other words, the final fusion is composed of:

1) a once-benign laissez faire capitalism that has morphed into unrestrained cancerous plunder,

2) a prosperity gospel religion that sees the rich as being holier than the poor ("the 99%") and a fundamental doctrine of "the poor are poor because they are not worthy", and

3) a morph from "defense of self" into a military-power based imperialism that basically has the crude, infantile philosophy of "me like, so me can take."

In short, the return of feudalism, or if you prefer, the advent of neo-feudalism, which is in essence the use of military power to accumulate a new type of concentrated wealth based upon the military control of environmental resources.

Highway 61

The kicker in this movie is that this takes place on a planet with an environment that must be healthy and undamaged to support those Ferengi and everyone else.

However, in their psychopathic state they can no longer see the relevance of that issue.

In other words, it is a cognitive-storm-surge engendered by cultural amygdala circuits in people in power who can no longer fathom the importance of anything other than consumption of resources in order to make more profit to become even more wealthy and powerful.

That they are animating the death of their civilization is of no moment to them, which brings up a parenthetical question ("where are the 99 percent?").

"Google it."

And/or, consider: Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? - 2 ...

The previous post in this series is here.

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The Common Good - 8

The Common Bad

Today we will once again, as we have for several years, talk about the coming bankruptcies of cities and states.

Specifically, let's talk about the bankruptcy of Detroit, which unlike bankster banks, was not too big to fail.

But first, let's review the purpose for this series.

Regular readers know that in this series we have been reminding ourselves about the purpose for government.

That purpose is the common good a.k.a. the public good.

In the first post we looked at that concept as it was expressed in the preamble to the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution (The Common Good).

The Preamble to the supreme law of the land begins "We the people of the United States ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Constitution of the people is the law that was designed to guide all government and national policies, both foreign and domestic.

As the graphic at the top of today's post shows, when our nation began to violate the supreme law and its purposes, we began to replace the common good with the common bad, i.e., some of us began to cannibalize the rest of us.

This happened often during the darker ages and feudal times which the founders of our republic revolted against, after living through and seeing what social cannibalism by the powerful few did to the many:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting "The Father of The Constitution"). What was fresh on President James Madison's mind was the dark ages of feudalism as well as what caused that dark age of feudalism:

Warfare was endemic in the feudal period, but feudalism did not cause warfare; warfare caused feudalism.
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Feudalism was the medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state. Feudal society is a military hierarchy in which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval beneficium), a unit of land to control in exchange for a military service. The individual who accepted this land became a vassal, and the man who granted the land become known as his liege or his lord. The deal was often sealed by swearing oaths on the Bible or on the relics of saints.
...
Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces.
...
Feudalism was a political system which was dominant in Europe during the Middle Ages. First used in the 1600s, the term refers to a hierarchy of reciprocal military and legal obligations among the nobility. In simplified terms, a lesser noble (the vassal) would pledge his loyalty (fealty) to a higher noble (the lord) in exchange for land (a fief). In return, the vassal gave military service to the lord. As armies were expensive to raise and maintain, a lord was able to distribute the cost (in men and money) among his vassals.
...
Feudalism was based on the exchange of land for military service. King William the Conqueror used the concept of feudalism to reward his Norman supporters for their help in the conquest of England. Life lived under the Medieval Feudal System, or Feudalism, demanded that everyone owed allegiance to the King and their immediate superior.
...
The feudal society was constructed for one reason: security. The nobles wanted the security of maintaining control over their far-reaching kingdoms, so they were forced to delegate power to local control. The peasants wanted security from marauders and barbarians from neighboring lands. They also wanted security from invading armies. And thus the development of the feudal system and the fief structure was almost inevitable. However, all this came at the great expense of the common man. He gave up many freedoms for his security. The question we ask you is: Was it worth it?

(American Feudalism - 6, emphasis in original). This is as true today as it was during those feudal, and later revolutionary times centuries ago:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

(The States of War Budgets, 2/16/2010, quoting President Eisenhower). Yes, General Eisenhower, like the founders of America before him, knew what war budgets have to do with the impoverishment of the people, that is, the cannibalization of the many by the few via warmongering:

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property.

Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn.

“I was often jealous because he had four enlisted people helping him all the time,” Gates said in response to a question after a speech Thursday. He wryly complained to his wife that “Mullen’s got guys over there who are fixing meals for him, and I’m shoving something into the microwave. And I’m his boss.”

Of the many facts that have come to light in the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus, among the most curious was that during his days as a four-star general, he was once escorted by 28 police motorcycles as he traveled from his Central Command headquarters in Tampa to socialite Jill Kelley’s mansion ...

The commanders who lead the nation’s military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.

The elite regional commanders who preside over large swaths of the planet don’t have to settle for Gulfstream V jets. They each have a C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737 ...

(American Feudalism - 3). We can pinpoint in greater detail exactly when the very latest episode of cannibalism surged in our nation:

So while some banks are getting trillions in bailout money, other banks are going down in near record numbers? Lets dig deeper.

The graph [] shows the military economy going straight up through the roof at the same time that banks are going down and while the domestic economy tanks into the basement.

You walk the low road, we'll march the high road

There are several obvious things wrong with this picture, however, I want to focus on a hidden economic "mystery" that the MSM will not yet talk about.

The red vertical line shows when "the most expensive public works legislation in US history" was passed.

The green line shows a reasonable time frame, following the passage of that bill into law, until "shovel ready" projects could have begun to receive funding pursuant to that public works spending revolution.

The mystery is that the domestic non-military trend line stays flat while the military trend line keeps climbing.

Following the domestic trend line, it is clear that "the most expensive public works legislation in US history" had no effect on the domestic economy, in fact, the domestic economy soon got worse.

In fact it was just after John McCain said "the economy is fundamentally sound" that the graph shows the domestic economy did a steep dive.

Perhaps he was talking about the military oil complex budget which he considers to be "the economy"? The military oil complex economy was the only one raking in the taxpayer's money hand over fist.

The yellow vertical line on the graph represents the U.S. infrastructure suffering a major bridge collapse after the greatest public works spending in U.S. history should have been fully operational.

This collapse indicates how much that public works money was needed here at home.

Did that money make its way to Baghdad where the largest, most fancy, and most mismanaged embassy in the world was being built? Or Dubai where the largest building and largest airport in the world were being built?

(Six More Banks Bite The Dust, 12/5/2009). That Dredd Blog post was written four years ago, so we saw it coming: "... [expect] to see more U.S. municipalities declare bankruptcy", and even worse:

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.

(The States of War Budgets - 3, 1/21/2011, emphasis added). The Detroit bankruptcy is part of the plunder of Americans by feudal warlords who will stop at nothing.

Nothing.

Better wake up doods and doodettes, the military has overthrown the common good for the benefit of The Epigovernment.

Let's close with a quote from the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, USA:

Article 10. Right of Revolution

“Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."

(Wikipedia, "Constitution of New Hampshire, 6/2/1784"). Does that make sense for the entire U.S.A. (since all U.S. states do not have such a law; but Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas also have this notion in their constitutions, see Wikipedia - Right of Revolution)?

The "Father of the U.S. Constitution" thought so.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Clash of the Titans of Export - 2

"It is our money now"

Over the past decade it has become well known that criminals have infested the U.S. government.

It is well known that the federal government is filled with neoCons, luddites, and know-nothings of the GOP T-Party.

It is well known that those wild-eyed extremist warmongers have seriously infected the other, once-upon-a-time mild mannered, Republicans.

It is also well known that the Democrats are having an identity crisis, constantly struggling for "balance", "compromise" and "civility" in government, which all too often means their capitulation to "only going halfway" with growing neoCon Republican madness.

It seems that they never get the idea that direction is the most important consideration for a ship, especially the ship of state (see e.g. Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset - 2, The W Direction = The Perilous Path, and Titanic Mistakes Using The W Compass).

The news is filled with rogue spying misadventures that have angered nations and peoples of the world, soiling the reputation of the U.S. even further (On The Origin of Security - 4, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6).

A reputation that had been soiled with a decade of warmongering and hedonistic jingoism rarely seen on the world diplomatic stage.

The military, speaking through NSA officials at recent House "Intelligence" Committee hearings, lashed out at the governments of the world, defending themselves by saying "they do it too."

Following in their footsteps, the U.S. Treasury Department, the zookeeper that distributes American Taxpayer monies around the world to puppet regimes and Epigovernment bank accounts, has now also lashed out at the victims of the military NSA peeping toms:

The United States reprimanded Germany on Wednesday, saying its exporting prowess was hampering economic stability in Europe and hurting the global economy.

The Obama administration has long called for countries with trade surpluses, such as Germany and China, to do more to spur domestic demand.

But in a semiannual report to Congress on international economic policies, the criticism of Germany stood out for its stark language and prominent placement.

"Germany's anemic pace of domestic demand growth and dependence on exports have hampered" efforts to make the euro zone economy more stable, the Treasury said in the report.

(U.S. Treasury Lashes Out At Germany). It is incredibly hypocritical for the Treasury Dept. of an economy that has had balance-of-trade deficits for longer than Ted Cruz's nose:

In 1975, U.S. exports had exceeded foreign imports by $12,400 million, but that would be the last trade surplus the United States would see in the 20th century.

(About Com Ecomonics). So, from 1975-1999 (24 yrs.) the U.S. consistently had a trade deficit, meaning we imported more than we exported.

That trend, habit, and/or failure has continued in the 21st Century, now totaling 37 years of negatives:

(PolicyMic, "...Our Negative Balance of Trade..." [they removed the graphic, so the Wayback Machine version they originally displayed is now shown]). The ridiculous pontificating by the U.S. Treasury Department becomes apparent when we consider what this means, as pointed out in the previous post of this series:

I pointed out a while back that just one state of The United States of Europe was a larger exporter than the U.S. or China.

Also I pointed out that the pacific was the place to watch in terms of economic power.

There is a report today which indicates that China overtook Germany as the number one exporter, but, lest the record become too contorted, let us not forget that The United States of Europe is composed of 26 nations; Germany being only one of them.

Nevertheless, this shows that Europe was hurt more by the U.S. financial debacle than China was. Nevertheless, the story here today for us is that the U.S. remains third.

(Clash of the Titans of Export). The U.S. is complaining that Germany's "exporting prowess [is] hampering economic stability in Europe and [is] hurting the global economy", but that our 37 year long inability to work up a trade/export surplus is helping our domestic economy and helping the global economy?

Here are two free clues for the treasury ghouls this Halloween: 1) lose the shackles of the epigovernment which drains the people's treasury  (Epigovernment: The New Model - 5), and 2) lose the feudal philosophies and polices of the dark ages (American Feudalism - 6).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The Virgin MOMCOM - 7

Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse

David and Michael put together a great book, and then got together with Rachel to put together a slam dunk documentary which was presented last night on MSNBC.

I am speaking of the book Hubris, written by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, as well as the related documentary narrated by Rachel Maddow of the MSNBC nightly The Rachel Maddow Show.

The book and documentary, as far as I am concerned, really beg the question: why are the warmongers so zealous for war?

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has wrestled with that question during a series posted on this blog which has presented shocking material that in fact does answer the question as far as the military religion in America is concerned (The Virgin MOMCOM-6, The Virgin MOMCOM-5, The Virgin MOMCOM-4, The Virgin MOMCOM-3, The Virgin MOMCOM-2, and The Virgin MOMCOM).

In a related series named by a work of George Orwell, focusing on other aspects of religion, we likewise saw that the religious underpinnings of warmongering in the United States is ubiquitous and murderous (On The Origin of The Bully Religion - 3, On The Origin of The Bully Religion - 2, On The Origin of The Bully Religion).

The surprising knowledge that we come away with, concerning this very powerful psychological dynamic that we call religious zeal, can be readily seen in its much greater grandeur if we observe religious practices that are not part of our everyday lives.

So, for an example let's look to another popular religious practice in the largest or most populous democracy on Earth:

The Kumbh Mela is an ancient pilgrimage festival that happens once every three years, rotating across four locations in India. The largest of these riverside fairs happens every 12 years in Allahabad at the confluence of two rivers, Ganga and Yamuna. On its opening day in January 2013, I was among its estimated ten million visitors. During the 6-8 weeks it lasts, tens of millions come to bathe in these rivers — as a meritorious act to cleanse body and soul — making it the largest gathering of humanity on the planet.

(River of Faith, 3QuarksDaily, emphasis added). A video about that mass gathering of religious zealots in the democracy of India is presented at the bottom of the article quoted from.

There is a certain amount of mystery involved in the beliefs that cause "the largest gathering of humanity on the planet", and there is also a certain amount of mystery in the hubris displayed when a supposed peaceful nation is lied into war by its own religious warmongers.

In yesterday's post we concentrated on one aspect of the religious hubris that is part of this heady religious brew:

What interests me here is that highlighted claim: that the US "is the greatest country in world history", and therefore is entitled to do that which other countries are not.

This declaration always genuinely fascinates me. Note how it's insufficient to claim the mere mantle of Greatest Country on the Planet. It's way beyond that: the Greatest Country Ever to Exist in All of Human History (why not The Greatest Ever in All of the Solar Systems?).

The very notion that this distinction could be objectively or even meaningfully measured is absurd. But the desire to believe it is so strong, the need to proclaim one's own unprecedented superiority so compelling, that it's hardly controversial to say it despite how nonsensical it is. The opposite is true: it has been vested with the status of orthodoxy.

(On The Peak of Intelligence - 3, quoting G. Greenwald). What can one expect when Americans are brought up from the cradle to the grave being taught this article of faith with religious fervor?

Is it really a surprise that they then end up believing it like the people who believe the bath in the river cleanses them mind, heart, body, and soul?

People will drift in their attempt to moor themselves to an understanding of this religious dynamic if they forget that religion is not the stuff of proof, it is the stuff of "faith":

The basis of something that has never been seen, never been felt, never been measured, but a lot of people believe exists anyway, is faith:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed ... so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible ...

(Bible, Hebrews 11:1, emphasis added). What is seen in our universe by scientists is called matter. No faith needed.

(Rebel Science: The Dark Matter of Faith). Mr. Greenwald grasped it, as pointed out by the quote above, nevertheless, it is still "unbelievable" to those who have not succumbed to the powers of the warmonger religion.

Finally, lying (spin, propaganda) is also a tenet of the warmonger religion, which means that when they lie to us to get into a war, by which they profit greatly, in their faith they believe that they are still serving their god or gods:

D. Michael Quinn called the use of deception by LDS church leaders, "theocratic ethics." (The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, page 112) Smith lied to protect himself or the church; which was an extension of himself. Dan Vogel in his excellent work, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, described Smith's viewpoint; he was a pious deceiver. Smith used deception if in his mind; it resulted in a good outcome. Smith had Moroni, an ancient American prophet and custodian of the gold plates declare, "And whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do good is of me; for good cometh of none save it be of me. ( Moroni 4:11-12). Translation: if deception was necessary to do good, or bring a soul to Christ, then it was worth it, as long as God approves. Smith believed he knew when God approved of lying.

(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 6). Whatever it takes, they seek only to quench their thirst for war.

So lying to us, using our tax dollars to pay for the experts who write lying words, is considered to be done to help us (The Ways of Bernays).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Lyrics of a warmonger-rock band can be viewed here.

Why do these warriors kill more of themselves than their imagined enemies do?

Yes, self suicide is their big killer, not the enemies Oil-Qaeda imagines for them.

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Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 10

Mr. America is The Wizard of Oz

This series began in August of 2009 with regular posts following that initial post, lasting until the previous post of November 2011.

Regular readers know that during this series Dredd Blog has made very serious allegations along the way.

Along with those allegations were appropriate links to documentation that backed up the allegations, as well as abundant documentation which pointed out that large scale plunder was taking place out in the open before our very eyes.

The only cover given by officialdom was lying through their teeth while McTell News was doing their "fiscal financial cliff" catastrophe propaganda.

In other words, Dredd Blog pointed out for years that they deliberately stole hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury and transferred the people's money to the criminals who had caused the financial crisis in the first place.

A recent piece in Rolling Stone backs up the Dredd Blog series:

The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come ...

"We will take good care of it"

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people...

"put your arms around him you can feel his disease" - Beatles

The sweeping impact of these crucial decisions has never been fully appreciated. In the years preceding the bailouts, banks like Citi had been perpetuating a kind of fraud upon the public by pretending to be far healthier than they really were. In some cases, the fraud was outright, as in the case of Lehman Brothers, which was using an arcane accounting trick to book tens of billions of loans as revenues each quarter, making it look like it had more cash than it really did. In other cases, the fraud was more indirect, as in the case of Citi, which in 2007 paid out the third-highest dividend in America – $10.7 billion – despite the fact that it had lost $9.8 billion in the fourth quarter of that year alone. The whole financial sector, in fact, had taken on Ponzi-like characteristics, as many banks were hugely dependent on a continual influx of new money from things like sales of subprime mortgages to cover up massive future liabilities from toxic investments that, sooner or later, were going to come to the surface.

(Rolling Stone, Secret and Lies of the Bailout, by Taibbi). The Taibbi piece is well worth the read.

Along the way in that series as well as other Dredd Blog posts that were linked to, the origin of the errors was pointed out by quoting the words of one of our forefathers:

James Madison was the 4th President, Bill of Rights author, Congressman, Cabinet Member, and was also called the "Father of the U.S. Constitution".

He voiced a conspiracy theory in 1795:

In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.

The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

(Toxins of Power Blog, emphasis added). The above quote is from his "Political Observations," April 20, 1795, in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491.

(Founding Fathers' Conspiracy Theories). Indeed, the plunder took place at a time when we had been lied into wars, then those wars were perpetuated by more and more lies.

Those lies emanated, as Madison indicated long ago, from the executive branch, the Office of the President, all in conspiracy against the people.

Some subsequent series (see e.g. The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy and MOMCOM: The Private Parts) pointed out that these banks are tips of the iceberg of an international web of international corporations that are not at all shy about saying "I am not an American company."

Likewise, they sure are not shy about the fact that they like to plunder the money of the American people.

Two books have recently been written about these people (see e.g. On The Origin of Assholes).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Inside Job: $CAD With Money - 2

One of the mysteries that people claim to well understand is why banksters have been given tons of taxpayer money as a reward for their plunder of the treasury.

It is almost the mother of all conspiracy theories following Bush II doing a heckuva job on "the turrisstsss."

A law was even passed which was touted as the tip of the spear that would jab them with justice.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog recently re-visited "White Collar Fraud Legislation Passed - 2" to review all the prosecutions of the plunder barons that have taken place under that law.

Some time back we also began a series that considered such bankster plunder to be a state crime against democracy, a "SCAD".

Here is the text of the Dredd Blog post on this date in 2010:

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The use of the word "$CAD" in the title (a take off on "SCAD") means State Crimes Against Democracy conducted by theft of the public fisc.

The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC yesterday was a mind blower to many folks, because it focused on the issue.

Dylan had on a guest who created "Inside Job", a documentary about the banksters who plundered the treasury, and who are still doing so wantonly.

This is another one of those situations where the government is complacent in some degree, clearly making this a broad based State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD).

Dredd Blog takes that position because it is a federal crime to steal public money by deception or similar means:

§ 648. Custodians, generally, misusing public funds

Whoever, being an officer or other person charged by any Act of Congress with the safe-keeping of the public moneys, loans, uses, or converts to his own use, or deposits in any bank, including any branch or agency of a foreign bank (as such terms are defined in paragraphs (1) and (3) of section 1(b) of the International Banking Act of 1978), or exchanges for other funds, except as specially allowed by law, any portion of the public moneys intrusted to him for safe-keeping, is guilty of embezzlement of the money so loaned, used, converted, deposited, or exchanged, and shall be fined under this title or in a sum equal to the amount of money so embezzled, whichever is greater, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). A creative U.S. Attorney could use these statutes to prosecute what has happened on Wall Street for a decade, but there are even more statutes to contemplate:

§ 653. Disbursing officer misusing public funds

Whoever, being a disbursing officer of the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or a person acting as such, in any manner converts to his own use, or loans with or without interest, or deposits in any place or in any manner, except as authorized by law, any public money intrusted to him; or, for any purpose not prescribed by law, withdraws from the Treasury or any authorized depositary, or transfers, or applies, any portion of the public money intrusted to him, is guilty of embezzlement of the money so converted, loaned, deposited, withdrawn, transferred, or applied, and shall be fined under this title or not more than the amount embezzled, whichever is greater, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). The scope of federal law reaches far, down into state banks and other banks that participate in utilizing public funds:

§ 656. Theft, embezzlement, or misapplication by bank officer or employee

Whoever, being an officer, director, agent or employee of, or connected in any capacity with any Federal Reserve bank, member bank, depository institution holding company, national bank, insured bank, branch or agency of a foreign bank, or organization operating under section 25 or section 25(a) of the Federal Reserve Act, or a receiver of a national bank, insured bank, branch, agency, or organization or any agent or employee of the receiver, or a Federal Reserve Agent, or an agent or employee of a Federal Reserve Agent or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, embezzles, abstracts, purloins or willfully misapplies any of the moneys, funds or credits of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or holding company or any moneys, funds, assets or securities intrusted to the custody or care of such bank, branch, agency, or organization, or holding company or to the custody or care of any such agent, officer, director, employee or receiver, shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both; ...

As used in this section, the term “national bank” is synonymous with “national banking association”; “member bank” means and includes any national bank, state bank, or bank and trust company which has become a member of one of the Federal Reserve banks;

(Cornell Law School). The little roots of federal law even go deep into the lending and insurance systems across the nation:

§ 657. Lending, credit and insurance institutions

Whoever, being an officer, agent or employee of or connected in any capacity with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Office of Thrift Supervision, the Resolution Trust Corporation, any Federal home loan bank, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Farm Credit Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, the Secretary of Agriculture acting through the Farmers Home Administration or successor agency, the Rural Development Administration or successor agency, or the Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation, a Farm Credit Bank, a bank for cooperatives or any lending, mortgage, insurance, credit or savings and loan corporation or association authorized or acting under the laws of the United States or any institution, other than an insured bank (as defined in section 656), the accounts of which are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or by the National Credit Union Administration Board or any small business investment company, or any community development financial institution receiving financial assistance under the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994, and whoever, being a receiver of any such institution, or agent or employee of the receiver, embezzles, abstracts, purloins or willfully misapplies any moneys, funds, credits, securities or other things of value belonging to such institution, or pledged or otherwise intrusted to its care, shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both;

(Cornell Law School). Any attempt to cover up or misrepresent the value of assets ("toxic assets") would fall into the financial criminal statutes as well:

§ 1005. Bank entries, reports and transactions

Whoever, being an officer, director, agent or employee of any Federal Reserve bank, member bank, depository institution holding company, national bank, insured bank, branch or agency of a foreign bank, or organization operating under section 25 or section 25(a) of the Federal Reserve Act, without authority from the directors of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or company, issues or puts in circulation any notes of such bank, branch, agency, or organization or company; or

Whoever, without such authority, makes, draws, issues, puts forth, or assigns any certificate of deposit, draft, order, bill of exchange, acceptance, note, debenture, bond, or other obligation, or mortgage, judgment or decree; or

Whoever makes any false entry in any book, report, or statement of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization with intent to injure or defraud such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or any other company, body politic or corporate, or any individual person, or to deceive any officer of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or the Comptroller of the Currency, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or any agent or examiner appointed to examine the affairs of such bank, company, branch, agency, or organization, or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; or

Whoever with intent to defraud the United States or any agency thereof, or any financial institution referred to in this section, participates or shares in or receives (directly or indirectly) any money, profit, property, or benefits through any transaction, loan, commission, contract, or any other act of any such financial institution — Shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(Cornell Law School). The creator of the documentary Inside Job was asked by Dylan Ratigan why not one, zero, nada, of the banksters had been prosecuted for the criminal enterprise that brought our economy down, that took millions of homes, millions of jobs, along with security and peace of mind from millions of American men, women, and children.

He said because Eric Holder is not willing to prosecute the criminals because he is soft on these types of crimes against democracy, which converts the situation into State Crimes Against Democracy due to complacency.

Here are a few Dredd Blog Posts on, or related to, this subject:

State Crimes Against Democracy - 5

Hood Robbin' From Poor Givin' To Rich

When Accountability Is A Plague

In conclusion, the banksters were said to be "too big to fail", but as it turns out they are Too Big To Jail.

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Break up the banks ...

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