"Spill Obama Spill": Blow Out In The Gulf

Spill, Baby, Spill

Blow Out in the Gulf

By KARL GROSSMAN

The massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico formed as now an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil (210,000 gallons daily) gush to the surface following an explosion at an oil rig is what other areas of the United States will face under President Barack Obama’s plan to open more offshore waters to oil and gas drilling.

This could be the Atlantic which, in a speech last month, Obama proposed be opened for drilling—despite decades of it being closed because of oil and gas drilling constituting an environmental threat.

As an investigative reporter for the daily newspaper Long Island Press, in 1970 I broke the story about the oil industry seeking to drill in the offshore Atlantic.

In years following, I probed the environmental consequences of offshore oil and gas drilling finding, as Sarah Palin put it, “drill baby drill,” coming with the the inevitability of—spill baby spill.

I got on the story after a tip from a fisherman who said he had seen in the ocean east of Montauk—on the eastern tip of Long Island—the same kind of vessel as he observed searching for oil when he was a shrimper in the Gulf of Mexico.

I spent the day telephoning oil companies. PR people for each insisted their companies were not involved in searching for oil in the Atlantic. Several scoffed at the very suggestion. But at day’s end, as I was walking out of the office, there was a call from a PR guy at Gulf saying, yes, Gulf was involved in exploring for oil in the Atlantic—as part of a “consortium” of 32 oil companies. These included the companies which all day issued denials. It was a first lesson in oil industry honesty, an oxymoron.

I traveled on the issue including, in 1971, visiting the first drilling rig set up in the Atlantic, off Nova Scotia. It was apparent on the rig that the offshore drilling process is fraught with danger.

A rescue boat went round and round. Positioned on the rig were sealed capsules—designed to eject workers. “We treat every foot of hole like a potential disaster,” explained the representative of Shell Canada.

An oil well blow-out is one thing on land and another entirely on water. The Shell Canada official acknowledged that booms and other devices the oil industry claimed—and still maintains—contain spills “just don’t work in over five foot-foot seas.”

The Atlantic, off Nova Scotia or to the south off the United States, is normally rough—over five foot seas are common.

Thus the oil could be expected in many if not most circumstances to hit shore. But there are “stockpiles of clean-up material on shore,” said the man from Shell Canada. No,” he said, “not straw as in the States. Here we have peat moss.”

I pored over records involving spillage and offshore drilling. They reflected spillage as being chronic. According to Department of Interior records, between 1971 and 1975 there were 5,857 spills totally 51,421 barrels of oil from operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

And, it was acknowledged, the offshore Atlantic is a far more precarious place to drill. . As the President’s Council on Environmental Quality declared in a 1974 report, “A major spill along the beaches of Cape Cod, Long Island or the Middle or South Atlantic states could devastate the areas affected. The Atlantic is a hostile environment for oil and gas operations. Storm and seismic conditions may be more severe than in either the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico. Recreational industries could be hurt, especially where the character of the communities is one of isolation, historic preservation or natural beauty. Outer continental shelf oil and gas production will result in onshore development of huge refineries, petrochemical complexes, gas processing facilities.”

I traveled on the story—to Massachusetts where the Department of Interior was planning to lease 882,443 acres of offshore Atlantic lands on the George’s Bank, one of the globe’s foremost fishing grounds, for oil and gas drilling.

I went to the Florida Keys in whose turquoise waters Interior would let oil companies drill.

And I spent plenty of time in New Jersey—Interior held many of its meetings involving

Mid-Atlantic leasing in the state capital of Trenton. In 1976, it leased 529,446 Mid-Atlantic acres to the oil industry for $1.1 billion. There was strong resistance up and down the Atlantic coast which included lawsuits.

Various reports filed by Interior in response to the litigation admitted major environmental consequences from the drilling. In one, in 1978, in connection with the leasing of the 529,446 Mid-Atlantic acres, Interior said: “Recovery of the affected area from a large spill will be slow, probably requiring a minimum of ten years.” For the anticipated 20-to-25 year lives of the fields, it forecast four large spills of more than 1,000 barrels, 58 spills of 50 to 1,000 barrels and 3,340 spills of up to 50 barrels.

Much of the Atlantic coast—like that of the Gulf of Mexico where oil from the explosion at British Petroleum’s Transocean Deepwater Explorer rig is expected to arrive imminently—is composed of estuaries, bay backs and miles upon miles of fragile wetlands, the spawning and feeding grounds for the chain of marine life. It’s a “soft” coast that would absorb oil like a sop rag. There’s no way to clean oil from wetlands, to clean it off the bottoms of bays, no way to get it off bay bottoms where shellfish live.

The Department of Interior’s 1978 Mid-Atlantic report warned that “adverse effects on commercial fisheries will be encountered” which would include “smothering of shellfish…Finfish and shellfish will suffer mortality from oil spills and flavor may change because of tainting.”

A leading scientist speaking out on off-shore Atlantic oil and gas drilling was the late Dr. Max Blumer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He also noted a human-cancer connection. Oil picked up on human skin or taken in through the eating of marine life that had ingested oil could be cancer-causing, he said. “When oil is spilled into the environment we lose control of it,” Dr. Blumer warned. Countermeasures are “effective only if all the oil is recovered immediately after the spill. The technology to achieve this goal does not exist.”

It still does not exist.

Drilling of the Atlantic was stopped by Congressional action.

But that would end if Congress goes along with President Obama’s declaration in his March 30th speech that “my administration will consider potential areas for development” for oil and gas drilling in the Mid- and South-Atlantic, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the north coast of Alaska.

Beyond the environmental devastation threatened, the drilling itself would have a huge price: the cost of off-shore drilling is estimated at ten times the cost of drilling for petroleum on land.

This would make for very expensive gasoline, oil requiring huge capital and operating expenses to mine—the kind of money with which could vastly expand our getting energy from the sun, the winds and other clean, safe, renewable sources. But oil companies, being oil companies, are fixed on their product.

From Here

Obama's surrender, and cave in to the Globalized Oil Corps must be reversed.

No debate, no lobbying, no nothing. Just reverse it.

For once show the American people that you are not a Puppet.

Did Bin laden Confess? Is He Dead Or Alive?

Did Osama bin Laden Confess to the 9/11 Attacks, and Did He Die, in 2001?

In 2009, I published a little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?1 Much evidence, I showed, suggested that Osama bin Laden had died on or about December 13, 2001. (Although this book was ignored by the US press, it received major reviews in British newspapers,2 and it even provided the basis for a BBC special.3) Pointing out that the only evidence to the contrary consists of “messages from bin Laden” in the form of audiotapes and videotapes that have appeared since 2001, I devoted one chapter to an examination of the most important of these tapes, showing that none are demonstrably authentic and that some are almost certainly fakes.

In the chapter preceding that examination, I discussed two videotapes containing purported interviews of Osama bin Laden in the fall of 2001, when the issue was whether he had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I suggested that both of these tapes, in which bin Laden allegedly admitted his responsibility, were fakes. If they were, I pointed out, this fact would increase the likelihood that all of the “Osama bin Laden tapes” appearing in the following years – when the question of whether he was still alive was added to that of his responsibility for 9/11 – were also fakes.

The clearest example, I argued, was the most famous of the so-called bin Laden confession videos. Having allegedly been found in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in late November 2001, it is sometimes called the “November 9 bin Laden video,” because this date was stamped on it, implying that this was when it was made. It is also called the “bin Laden video of December 13,” because that was the date on which it was released to the public by the Pentagon – which is perhaps significant, given the evidence that bin Laden may have died on that day. (If he had, he would have obviously, and perhaps conveniently, been unable to comment on whether the tape was authentic.) In any case, I provided several reasons for concluding that this video was almost certainly fabricated.

I also suggested, with greater tentativeness, that another pre-2002 video had been fabricated. This one had been described in a November 11, 2001, article in London’s Telegraph by David Bamber entitled “Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It.” According to Bamber, the Telegraph had on the previous day “obtained access” to a video in which “Osama bin Laden has for the first time admitted that his al-Qa'eda group carried out the [9/11] attacks.” Bamber added that this video, which would “form the centrepiece of Britain and America's new evidence against bin Laden,” was going to be released to the public on November 14.4

When November 14 came, however, British Prime Minster Tony Blair said that his government did not actually have the video or even a complete transcript. But his government released quotations said to be “extracts” from it – quotations that were widely regarded as confirming Bamber’s assertion that bin Laden, when asked about 9/11, had in effect replied: “I did it.”

Saying that it was “hard to know what to make of this episode,” I argued that, if both the Telegraph and “intelligence sources” had copies of such a video, then Blair’s government would surely also have a copy. And if it did have a video in which bin Laden had for the first time confessed his responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, Blair’s government – which at the time was encountering much skepticism from the Muslim world about bin Laden’s responsibility for those attacks – would surely have released it.

Or, I added, Blair’s government would have done this “unless the video was a fake and the government decided, between November 11 and 14, that the fakery was so obvious that it should deny having a copy while merely releasing damning ‘excerpts.’”5

Then, while pointing out that “[t]his explanation is . . . merely one possibility among many,” I added two further factors supporting the “suspicion that a fake ‘bin Laden confession video’ had been made”: Blair had recently tried but failed (as the BBC pointed out) to provide convincing evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks; and Blair was getting ready to announce emergency powers to override human rights legislation in order to imprison suspected terrorists.6

There was only one problem with my argument: I had somehow missed news stories revealing that the reported video was a tape of an hour-long interview of bin Laden that, after being recorded on October 21 by Al Jazeera’s Kabul correspondent, Tayseer Allouni, was not aired by Al Jazeera.7 This fact, not being generally known at the time, was not mentioned in news reports appearing during the following month. On December 12, however, the New York Times reported that Blair had been referring to an Al Jazeera interview.8 And then CNN, which had an affiliate agreement with Al Jazeera, aired several minutes of this interview on January 31, 2002, after which, on February 5, it posted the entire transcript online.9

My speculation that the tape reported by Blair might have been a fake was, therefore, baseless, reflecting research that was, to say the least, inadequate.

This fact was recently pointed out in a critique of my book by Maher Osseiran entitled “Osama bin Laden, Dead or Alive? An Irrelevant Question Asked by David Ray Griffin.”10 Osseiran’s article contained four criticisms:

1. Whether bin Laden is dead or alive is irrelevant.

2. It had long been known that the video to which Blair referred was an interview of bin Laden by Al Jazeera.

3. I should have known that the bin Laden video released on December 13, 2001, was also not a fake, because Osseiran had shown, in articles known to me, that it was an authentic video made during a sting operation.

4. There is no good evidence for my book’s claim that bin Laden died in 2001.

Although I agree with Osseiran’s second criticism, I disagree with the other three. I will discuss his four criticisms in the above order (which is the order in which he introduced them).

Criticism #1: The Question of Whether Bin Laden Died in 2001 Is Irrelevant

Read More

IMO: He died shortly after 9/11. Either by a hit, Or by the grid bombing that occured at Tora Bora.

"The Shock Doctrine of Disaster Capitalism"

"The Shock Doctrine of Disaster Capitalism"
by Paul B. Farrell

"Hot tip for all you “mad money” aficionados: Invest in “Disaster Capitalism.” This new investment sector is the core of the emerging “new economy” that generates profits by feeding off other peoples’ misery: Wars, terror attacks, natural catastrophes, poverty, trade sanctions, market crashes and all kinds of economic, financial and political disasters. Wall Street is a “master of disasters. ” We first covered it in 2007 before the subprime credit melttown. In late 2008 we saw how accurately this amoral strategy fits Wall Street.

First we watched in awe as our Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman threw away $787 billion in taxpayer money to bailout an arrogant, corrupt and bankrupt Wall Street. Then, within a year, in a dramatic turn-of-events as the economy sank deep into 17% underemployment, and after creating an estimated $23.7 trillion in new taxpayer debt, Wall Street quickly returned to business-as-ususal, paying record $25 billion averaging $500,000 bonuses while screwing the public at every possible turn, such as inflating credit card fees and manipulating the Fed to keep Wall Street’s own interest rates near zero. Bottom line: Once again Wall Street demonstrates they’ve not only lost touch with reality, they’ve lost their “moral compass” and are adrift in the dark world of “disaster capitalism.”

In Wall Street’s Orwellian world, everything must be seen with new eyes: “Disasters” are “IPOs,” opportunities to buy into a new “company.” Corporations like Lockheed-Martin are the real “emerging nations” of the world, not some dinky countries like Greece or Iceland. Wall Street banks generate huge profits, grow earnings. And seen through the new rose-colored glasses of “Disaster Capitalism” they are hot new investment opportunities. To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the 21th century, Naomi Klein’s "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," whose roots trace back the ideas of three 20th century giants:

1. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned us against the self-perpetuating and ever-expanding economic power of our “military-industrial complex.”
2. Nobel Economist Milton Friedman,who said economic change never occurs without a crisis shocking the system; whether the crisis is natural, induced, or merely perceived, as with enflaming public fears of war and terror threats.
3. Economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose saw “creative destruction” as a healthy process by which new technologies and new products made old ones obsolete.

“Disaster Capitalism” is financing a new world economic order says Klein, not just in “the divide between Baghdad’s Green and Red zones” but in other disaster zones, from post-tsunami Sri Lanka to post-Katrina New Orleans.” Disasters come in many ways: Weapons destroying power plants and hospitals, nature weakening bridges, hurricanes wiping out towns, ideological conflicts turning Africa’s farmlands into deserts, global banking systems favoring investors over public works, shopping malls over schools, sewage treatment and power plants, and so on.

Yes, this is a hot-button political issue. But for the moment, let’s put aside partisan politics, which many will find disturbing for the future of America. Let’s look at this strictly as investors and briefly consider what is may also be a guide for aggressive investors searching for investment opportunities in Disaster Capitalism. In a brilliant Harper’s excerpt from "The Shock Doctrine," Klein makes clear how this new economy is the wave of the future for certain investors: “Today, global instability does not just benefit a small group of arms dealers; it generates huge profits for the high-tech-homeland-security sector, for heavy construction, for private health-care companies, for the oil and gas sectors – and, of course, for defense contractors.” This new market is enormous: “Reconstruction is now such a big business that investors greet each new disaster with the excitement of hot new stock offering:$30 billion for Iraq reconstruction, $13 billion for tsunami reconstruction, $110 billion for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.” Get it? Disasters are “IPOs!” Followed by on-going revenues for “projects” like the Blackwater security contracts and constructing the world’s largest embassy in the isolated Baghdad Green Zone. Think positive: The “Disaster Capitalism” played a major role in bringing America’s economy out of the 2000-2002 bear-recession: “The scale of the revenues at stake was certainly enough to fuel an economic boom. Lockheed Martin, whose former vice president chaired the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which loudly agitated for the invasion, received $25 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2005 alone.”

Putting that in perspective, Klein quotes Congressman Henry Waxman: "That sum exceeded that gross domestic product of 102 countries, including Iceland, Jordan and Costa Rica [and] was also larger than the combined budgets” of the Departments of Interior and Commerce, the SBA and the entire legislature. “Lockheed itself deserved to be characterized as an emerging market. Companies like Lockheed (whose stock price tripled between 2001 and 2005) are a large part of the reason why the U.S. stock market was saved” after 9/11, helping the recovery more than the housing boom!

Plus energy: “The oil and gas industry is so intimately entwined with the economy of disaster – both as a root cause behind many disasters and as a beneficiary from them – that it deserves to treated as an honorary adjunct of the disaster-capitalism complex.” Citing the “outrageous fortunes of the oil sector – a $40 billion profit in 2006 for ExxonMobil (XOM) alone … Like the fortunes of corporations linked to defense, heavy construction and homeland security, those of the oil sector improve with every war, terrorist attack, and Category 5 hurricane.”

How to invest in the new “Disaster Capitalism”: It’s easy to invest in the “Disaster Capitalism” and the new economy. See the Spade Defense Index (DXS) of defense, homeland security and aerospace stocks. Klein says it “went up 76 percent between 2001 and 2006, while the S&P 500 dropped 5 percent.” You can trade the Spade Index as a PowerShare ETF (PPA). In addition, the Fidelity Select Defense & Aerospace Fund (FSDAX) offers another opportunity. According to Morningstar data, there are similar stocks in both, including: General Dynamics (GD), Ratheon (RTN), Rockwell Collins (COL), Boeing (BA), Harris (HRS), Northrop Grumman (NOC), and United Technologies (UTX).

”The Shock Doctrine” is one of the best economic book of the 21st century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces coming together and (1) restructuring a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources, and (2) as America drifts away from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-financed and shadowy special interests. Here’s an overview of trends from the book as well as related ones:

One. Free market competes with government. In the past, when major catastrophes resulted in economic disruptions and human losses governments responded with “New Deals” and “Marshall Plans,” says Klein. Today, “Disaster Capitalism” companies see government agencies (like FEMA) and non-profits (Red Cross) as “competition” taking away new business. Military drafts would lower the need for mercenaries, even wars for high profits after a disaster, while engaging in lobbying to undercut the “competition.”

Two. Privatization of government for the investor class. These new forces are screaming to privatize our economy and government: After the Minneapolis bridge collapse Klein saw many calls for more private toll roads and bridges across America. Same with calls to privatize New York’s subways after rain closed them temporarily. Ditto with airports and their security. And in New Orleans, reconstruction moneys rebuilt private schools in upscale areas and neglected infrastructure in poor areas.

Three. War generates profits, peace hurts free markets. ”Disaster Capitalism” firms need wars to generate profits. And by sidestepping the draft, Iraq became a privatized war employing over 185,000 (20,000 more than the military), including truck drivers, PX clerks and mercenary soldiers. Blackwater was near bankruptcy before the war. Through secret no-bid contracts the US has paid for training centers which they now own. Peace does not generate disaster profits.

Four. Plutocratic government favoring wealthy over masses: “The vast infrastructure of the disaster industry, built up with taxpayer money, is all privately controlled” through special interests favoring the wealth classes during reconstruction. In New Orleans Klein saw the “so-called FEMA-villes: desolate out-of-the-way trailer camps for low-income evacuees [with guards that] treated survivors like criminals;” while the wealthy gated-communities quickly received water and power generators, private school and hospital services.

Five. Shadow banking system. Private equity firms and hedge funds are making our Federal Reserve Bank less and less relevant. Today a private banking system is emerging nationally and globally that operates in relative outside the established system and beyond the oversight of securities and banking regulators and the legislature, out in parallel universe beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of American taxpayers and Main Street investors.

So folks: Is “Disaster Capitalism” merely a hot short-term investment opportunity for you? Or is it a national “crisis,” a warning bell, a “shocking” call to rise above euphemisms like “creative destruction,” get into action and rein in the new “Wall Street/Washington Conspiracy” that’s pushing America every closer to the edge and over into a disastrous, self-destruct future? You probably already know the answer."

- http://wallstreetwarzone.com/disaster-capitalism-how-wall-street-makes-billions-from-
catastrophes-fear-war-terror-while-destroying-capitalism-democracy-from-within/#more-5182

War with China? The Dangers of a Global Conflagration

War with China? The Dangers of a Global Conflagration

Rising and Declining Economic Powers: The Sino-US Conflict Deepens

by Prof James Petras

Introduction

Will the intensified conflicts between the US and China inevitably lead to a global conflagration? If recent past history is any indication the answer is a resounding yes. The most destructive wars of the 20th century were the result of confrontations between established (EIP) and rising (RIP) imperial powers. The practices and policies of the former serve as guides to the latter.

England’s colonial exploitation of India, its markets, treasury, raw materials and labor served as a model for Germany’s war and attempted conquest of Russia[1]. The enmity between Churchill and Hitler had as much to do with their common imperial visions, as it did their conflicting views of politics. Likewise, European and US colonial plunder of Southeast Asia and China’s coastal cities served as a model for Japan’s drive to colonize and exploit Manchuria, Korea and mainland China.

In each instant the conflict between early established, but stagnant, imperial powers and late developing dynamic empires led to world wars in which only the intervention of another rising imperial power, the United States (as well as the unanticipated military prowess of the Soviet Union), secured the defeat of the RIP. The US emerged from the war as the dominant imperial power, displacing the established European imperial powers, subordinating the RIP of Germany and Japan and confronting the Sino-Soviet bloc[2]. With the demise of the USSR and the conversion of China into a dynamic capitalist country, the stage was set for a new confrontation between an established imperial power (EIP) the US and its European allies and China, the newly emerging world power.

The US empire covers the world with nearly 800 military bases[3], multi-lateral (NATO) and bi-lateral military alliances, a dominant position in the self-styled international financial institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) and with multi-national banks, investment houses and industries in Asia, Latin America, Europe and elsewhere.

China did not challenge or borrow the US model of military driven empire building. Even less does it look at the previous Japanese or German approach to challenging established empires. Its dynamic growth is driven by economic competitiveness, market relations guided by a developmental state and a willingness to borrow, learn, innovate and expand internally and overseas displacing US market supremacy in regions and countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, as well as inside the US and the European Union[4].

This is a long article but well worth the read.

About 90% Arizona Hispanics Under 18 Are U.S. Citizens

By Conor Dougherty

Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic in Arizona and the U.S., with a majority of the growth accounted for by births of new American citizens, an oft overlooked fact that underscores the delicate political fight over illegal immigration.

Hispanics make up roughly a third of Arizona’s 6.6 million people, according to the Census Bureau.

But while half of the state’s older Hispanics are immigrants that came to the U.S. either legally or illegally, about 90% of those under 18 were born in the U.S., according to analysis of Census data by Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute.

“If immigration ended tomorrow, Hispanic births would continue to fuel rapid growth because the population is young and has higher fertility than other groups,” says Mr. Johnson.

Non-white Hispanics are the major driving force of the U.S.’s changing demographics, accounting for half of the country’s population gain and a major reason why whites are projected to become a minority by 2042.

It’s also a big reason why politicians of from both parties have courted Hispanics through campaign ads in Spanish. Larger numbers of minority voters are a big reason that solidly Republican states like Nevada and Colorado were in play during the 2008 election, and helped sweep President Barack Obama into office. About five million more people voted for president in November 2008 than four years earlier, and minorities, many of them Hispanic, accounted for almost the entire increase.

Historically, much of the gain in Hispanic population has come from immigration, with the largest waves starting around the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s. Today, there are about 46.9 million Hispanics in the U.S., about 15.4% of the population, about a quarter of which are undocumented immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

But births have now become the driving force of the U.S. Hispanic population growth. According to a recent paper co-authored by Mr. Johnson, about 60% of the increase of the Hispanic population between 2000 and 2008 was accounted for by births. That’s a significant shift from the 1990s, when 58% of the growth in Hispanic population was the result of immigration.

From Here

As I have been saying: It is all about politics and fear. This has nothing to do with Immigration enforcement.

Published on Thursday, April 29, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Reprieve for Banks, Foreclosure for Homeowners

by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg

Its first attempt at foreclosure relief--dubbed Making Home Affordable--having proven a dismal failure, the Obama administration recently implemented a new program called the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) Hardest Hit Fund. According to Bloomberg News, the new program "[gives] bankers a reprieve."¹

Is this some kind of joke? Another reprieve for bankers? The total spent so far on mortgage relief is $75 billion. Meanwhile, Neil Barofsky, the inspector general charged with overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), estimates that the total cost of the Wall Street bailouts could eventually reach $23.7 trillion!²

Foreclosures are at a record high. According to RealtyTrac, filings topped 367,000 last month, the highest monthly total since the reporting began. Nearly 260,000 homes and other properties were repossessed in the first quarter of the fiscal year. That's an all-time record and a 35 percent jump from the previous year. 10,000 homes are going into foreclosure daily.³

The Congressional Oversight Panel headed by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren announced last week that the Obama program has helped just one borrower for every ten that have lost their homes. According to Warren, "The Treasury Department's response is lagging behind the pace of the crisis... [its] programs will not reach the overwhelming majority of homeowners in trouble." Permanent loan modifications have been made for fewer than 200,000 borrowers nationwide, leaving a growing backlog of distressed borrowers awaiting help.⁴

Another article on the Bloomberg site contains a breathtaking Deutsche Bank prediction that the number of ‘underwater' loans in the US may rise to 48 percent or 25 million homes by 2011!

On February 19, President Obama announced the first HFA Hardest Hit Fund with $1.5 billion in funding for "innovative measures to help families" in five states with home price declines greater than 20 percent. On March 29, the president announced the second HFA Hardest Hit Fund with $600 million in funding for five states in which the unemployment rate exceeded 12 percent in 2009.⁵

Unexplained on the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website is the rationale for changing strategies over a mere 40 days-from targeting states in which the price of the real estate has slumped to states where unemployment has soared.

Regardless, it's revealing that at the same time the administration is committing paltry sums to foreclosure relief for homeowners, it announced spending $200 billion in taxpayer funds to soak up preferred stock in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, twice what was previously pledged.⁶ Of course, both Fannie and Freddie are stockholder-owned corporations whose principal raison d'être is not rescuing drowning homeowners.

Where will dispossessed homeowners and their families go to get a roof over their heads? Will multiple families be forced to cram into apartments or converted motels? Will they go to shelters? Live in their cars or on the streets? And what will be the consequences of such massive dislocation? Could expectation of civil unrest resulting from economic calamity be a reason that for "the first time an active unit of the US military has been given a domestic assignment"?⁷ In a nation that already has by far the highest incarceration rates in the world, a new prison opens every week. How many of our soon-to-homeless fellow citizens will wind up inhabiting these cells?

Over the past year, even casual observers have witnessed an unmistakable pattern in this administration's approach to our national economic malaise-pennies for the poor and largesse for the wealthy. This pattern holds with respect to the debate on "cramdown" legislation. (A cramdown is a court-ordered reduction of the secured balance due on a home mortgage loan, granted to a homeowner who has filed for personal bankruptcy.⁸) Seven of the nine largest national banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, oppose the legislation,⁹ calling cramdown "a dangerous concept."¹⁰ Only Citigroup and Bank of America, both of which have taken billions in handouts and "backstops" through the TARP, have maintained public silence.

Well, leave it to a bunch of pin-striped banksters to recognize a "dangerous concept" when they see one. Aren't these the same guys who recently brought the world economy to its knees with their financial legerdemain?

It's doubtful that the meager Obamite sprinklings of help to beleaguered homeowners will do much good. Eligibility requirements are strict. In order to participate, a homeowner cannot have missed more than three payments. The homeowner must be receiving without a job and receiving unemployment benefits. The home in question must be worth 115% less than the value of the mortgage. The homeowner must also have a credit score above 500.¹¹

Soon after the meltdown in the fall of 2008, former Fed chairman and Obama advisor Paul Volcker had a better idea for keeping people in their homes rather being thrown out on the streets. He pushed for the creation of a government entity mimicking the Resolution Trust Corporation of the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to Volcker, "this new governmental body would be able to buy up the troubled paper at fair market values, where possible keeping people in their homes..."¹²

A northern California realtor recently told us that banks are looking much more favorably on foreclosures than on "short sales." This indicates that banks are actually more interested in taking people's property than they are in any kind of "work outs" that might save a homeowner from bankruptcy. The realtor we spoke with didn't know why this was the case but ventured an educated guess that it's simply more profitable for the banks to take and hold property at this time.

Maybe this is what Bloomberg.com's Elizabeth Hester meant in writing that the Obama foreclosure relief program is really "a reprieve for bankers" rather than for homeowners.

The prevailing logic of our politics seems to be "what's good for bankers is good for America". With a quarter of American homeowners underwater, and a government too stingy or too cozy with industry to seriously address the problem, the stability of both the banking system and the social fabric of the country are threatened.

Addendum: What would happen if people across the country sent their notices of foreclosure to Washington, DC as a reminder of just how serious this crisis has become? We recommend sending notices to President Obama with an accompanying letter. A sample letter is at www.voiceoftheenvironment.org.

Karl Denninger, "Heh, Someone Gets It (Buiter)"

"Heh, Someone Gets It (Buiter)"
by Karl Denninger

"When you allow this to go on for a decade:

It leads to this:

That red line is actual private demand expressed as the delta (or change) in GDP. I don't have accurate debt and GDP numbers on a contemporary basis for the rest of the nations that Buiter* cites, and besides, I focus on the United States anyway.

Buiter posits that The Fed could eventually be "forced" to monetize - that is, try to inflate it away. This is where Buiter and I part company, because it is impossible to inflate out of a mess like this when you have social spending indexed to inflation - and our entitlement programs all are in one form or another, with the most-ridiculous, Medicare, rising at much higher rates than general inflation. As such attempting to "inflate out" won't work - it will instead result in Weimar-style hyperinflation which, as it did in Weimer, will inevitably result in political and economic collapse.

Note that Bernanke has said "we cannot grow out of this"; he has (belatedly, but surprisingly) finally "gotten it." It would have been nice if he "got it" three years ago, of course. It might have altered his view on bailing out people and providing artificial support instead of demanding ab-initio not only the legal ability but the legislative mandate to close all of the so-called "too big to fails" and use the funds we have blown to pay off depositors instead.

Yes, that would have resulted in a Depression being "recognized." But we're in one now, as the above chart shows conclusively, and we have in fact been in one for two years. There is no evidence we're going to get out of it either - the only way that can happen is if private final demand replaces the government borrow-and-spend, and for that to happen deficit spending must decline while GDP continues to advance.

When you're borrowing from $115 to $333 billion a month and pumping it into the economy - that is, from roughly 9% to 30% of GDP - there's zero evidence that this can or will occur, and in fact despite all the market and media crooners claiming "it's getting better" the mathematical facts say exactly the opposite - it is in fact getting worse, as government replacement of private final demand with borrowed money is going up, not down. That recognition of the math is starting to seep into the consciousness of economic analysts at major international banks is an important signpost. The next one will be when recognition of the same math starts to poke through the mainstream media - despite strident claims otherwise from Geithner and others. Once that second signpost is reached there will no longer be time or opportunity for government to proactively respond. The market will, at that point, take final and irrevocable control.

If Obama has any intelligence at all he will fire Summers and Geithner immediately and in doing so stick them with responsibility for refusal to deal with the truth, close or break up the too-big-to-fails (via executive order if he can't get a bill passed immediately - yes, I know that will raise howls of protest but this truly is a national emergency!) and demand reimposition of Glass-Steagall and mark-to-market - right here, right now, forevermore.

The tough choices are never popular, but mathematics doesn't care about popularity, and as recognition is now seeping into the "mainstream economists" employed by major multinational financial institutions it is simply a matter of time before they ENFORCE austerity and withdraw their support for the markets if it is not forthcoming. All I can say is "see, I told you so!"

- http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

•
* Willem Buiter, "Global Economics View
Sovereign Debt Problems in Advanced Industrial Countries"
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/Buiter%204.26.pdf

GOP Candidate Wants To Inatall Microchips In Illegal Aliens Same as his Dog

Install microchips in illegal immigrants, GOP candidate says

By Jason Hancock 4/27/10 10:00 AM

Instead of building a border fence to help stem illegal immigration, the U.S. government should implant microchips into immigrants before deportation, much like what is done with pets, Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician and one of seven Republicans running in the 3rd District Congressional primary, said Monday.

While speaking at a Tama County Republican forum, Bertroche made it clear that he wasn’t joking when he suggested treating undocumented immigrants like pets.

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?

“That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under,” Bertroche said.

Five of the six other candidates vying for the chance to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell also spoke at the event, and each came out strongly against amnesty and in favor of tougher border security. State Sen. Brad Zaun of Urbandale said “illegal people who are here, put them on a bus and send them wherever they came from.” He also contended that immigrants in the country illegally receive government services, like education and health care, and typically aren’t helping pay to support those services.

But that isn’t true. A 2007 study by the non-partisan Iowa Policy Project found that the average undocumented family in Iowa pays about $1,254 in sales and excise taxes, $110 in property taxes and $307 in income taxes, for a total tax contribution of $1,671 each year. This represents approximately 80 percent of the total amount of taxes paid by a documented family in Iowa earning the same income.

Undocumented immigrant workers who work “on the books” also contribute additional state and federal taxes that go to pay for benefits that, because of their illegal status, these workers will never be able to access. Every year, employers pay the State of Iowa an estimated $1.85 million to $2.86 million in state unemployment insurance premiums on behalf of their unauthorized employees, and undocumented workers and their employers together pay an estimated $50.3 million to $77.8 million in Social Security and Medicare taxes to the federal government.

From Here

"Arizona: Desert Derangement Syndrome"

"Arizona: Desert Derangement Syndrome"

By Timothy Egan

PHOENIX — "Driving south from the high, age-worn plateau of northern Arizona, where the earth seems to have turned itself inside-out, I pulled over to take in the full sweep and wonder of this place during one of its better moments. The infinity of sky, the open gallery of sandstone masterpieces — it never fails to amaze.

Arizona is full of ancient communities — the Hopi, the Papago, the Havasupai, the Navajo — and outsized geology, with the Painted Desert, the Superstition Mountains and the big slit of the Grand Canyon. From Show Low to Tombstone, from Snowflake to Casa Grande, from the tiny Indian village at the bottom of the canyon to the Colorado River town that reassembled the old London Bridge on its desert edge, this is the American West of singular scenery and goofy glory.

But for all its diversity of land and people, Arizona is also a lunatic magnet. As I drove, I listened to the radio blather of a state in mob-rule frenzy of cranky old men. Once in Phoenix, I saw on television that sign in a car’s rear window, the new image of Arizona to the rest of the world: “I’m Mexican. Pull me over.” This week, Jon Stewart called Arizona the “the meth lab of democracy.” A few days ago, the governor signed the instantly infamous “show me your papers” law, allowing authorities to stop and question anyone who looks Hispanic. Another new measure lets people carry concealed weapons without a permit, following on the heels of the new-found freedom to pack heat in bars and restaurants, something that was outlawed in much of the Old West. And the state house has just approved a bill that would require candidates for high office to show a birth certificate. The birther bill is a sop to the flat-earthers who believe — without a shred of evidence, even after all the hard work of hard-right opposition-research — that our president was not born in the U.S.A.

“It suggests that Arizona is a place where any crackpot whim can be enshrined into law.” That was the verdict from the sensibly conservative Arizona Republic, the state’s leading newspaper, which had also urged the Republican governor, Jan Brewer, to veto the immigration bill that could foster a police state. She signed it, of course. Stewart, the Mark Twain of our day with a New Jersey quirk or two, got it right with his meth lab jab. But Arizona is more than a laboratory for intemperate times: this place is a warning of what a state can look like when it’s run by talk-radio demagogues and their television cohorts.

The crackpot laws owe their genesis to the crackpots who dominate Republican politics, who in turn cannot get elected without the backing of crackpot media. Arizona has always had a Looney Tunes side: who can forget Governor Evan Mecham, the car dealer with the bad toupee who used a tired insult to describe black children, told a Jewish audience that the United States was a “Christian nation” and canceled the holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He made history of a sorts: the first American governor to be removed from office by impeachment in nearly 70 years.

But Arizona has also given us smart, competent, forward-looking governors who stopped the crazies at the executive door. Now, there is not a single adult with a spine — let alone a conservative in the mold of Barry Goldwater, who had a healthy distrust of handing the police too much power — left among the Republican governing majority. Can it get any worse? Well, yes. Somewhere deep in the Sonoran Desert is the lost soul of John McCain. He’s taken back nearly everything he ever said or did that was admirable. He’s trying to get reelected to a fifth senate term by being just as grumpy, intolerant and wild-eyed as the aging white voters who make up the primary voting base for Republicans.

His Republican opponent, naturally, is a former wingnut talk radio host and ousted congressman, J.D. Hayworth. To lose to Hayworth, who was thrown out in 2006 from his safe Republican district in tony Scottsdale because of his immigrant-bashing and ties to a disgraced lobbyist, would be the lowest form of ignominy, but perhaps fitting. Hayworth is 250 pounds of broadcast-ready bile, a windbag hall of famer. He compared gay marriage to nuptials with a horse, said the birther bill did not go far enough and wrote a book with the tells-all-you-need-to-know title of “Whatever It Takes.”

Still, a sane plurality may yet show its face. Arizona is home to more than 2 million Hispanics — about 30 percent of its population. They are much younger than the average white voter, and do not show up at the polls in great numbers. They will now. Young people, business owners and retirees who are not afraid of the demographic change washing over America — they have also been on the sideline.

While the fringe that controls state government goes after the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country with a law that makes a mockery of American values, Arizona crumbles. Its state parks are orphans, left to volunteers. Its university system is being slashed and picked to death. They even considered a plan to sell the House and Senate buildings. What business will want to relocate to such a place? It will cost these hot-heads running the state. Probably not this year. But soon enough, because Americans have always considered the West a place that looks to tomorrow through a lens of hope, instead of hiding in the past, in fear."

- http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/desert-derangement-syndrome/
•

How crazy can they get? Here's State Senator Sylvia Allen, during official debate,
commenting that the earth is 6,000 years old. She truly believes this...

"'Defense' Spending Much Greater Than You're Told"

"'Defense' Spending Much Greater Than You're Told"

by Robert Higgs

"When President Obama presented his budget recently for fiscal year 2011, he proposed that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by about 4.5 percent beyond its estimated outlays in fiscal 2010, to a total of almost $719 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, few appreciate that the total amount of all defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amount budgeted for the Department of Defense. In fiscal year 2009, which ended last September, the Pentagon spent $636.5 billion. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, however, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as—sometimes even more surely than—the money allocated to the Department of Defense. On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. After all, the homeland is what most of us want the government to defend in the first place. Other agencies also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Justice Department, for example, includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury claims to have “worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.”

Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. About $5 billion of annual U.S. foreign aid currently takes the form of “foreign military financing,” and even funds placed under the rubric of economic development may serve defense-related purposes indirectly. Money is fungible, and the receipt of foreign assistance for economic-development projects allows allied governments to divert other funds to police, intelligence, and military purposes.

Two big budget items represent the current cost of defense goods and services obtained in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is authorized to spend about $124 billion in the current fiscal year, falls in this category. Likewise, a great deal of the government’s interest expense on publicly held debt represents the current cost of defense outlays financed in the past by borrowing from the public.

To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2009, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $636.5 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.7 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $51.7 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $36.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $95.5 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $54.9 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2009 total by nearly half again, to $901.5 billion.

Finding out how much of the government’s net interest payments on the publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 67.6 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2009. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $126.3 billion. Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.

In similar analyses I conducted previously for fiscal 2002 and for fiscal 2006, total defense-related spending was even greater relative to Pentagon spending alone – it was 73 percent greater in fiscal 2002 and 87 percent greater in fiscal 2006. In fiscal 2009, the ratio was held down in large part by the reduced cost of servicing the government’s debt, owing to the extremely low interest rates that prevailed on government securities. This situation cannot last much longer. As interest rates on the Treasury’s securities rise, so will the government’s cost of servicing the debt attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays. For fiscal 2010, which is still in progress, the president’s budget estimates that the Pentagon’s spending will run more than $50 billion above the previous year’s total. Any supplemental appropriations made before September 30 will push the total for fiscal 2010 even farther above the trillion-dollar mark.

Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and carefully, I may have left out items that should have been included—the federal budget is a gargantuan, complex, and confusing collection of documents. If I have done so, however, the left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. (I have deliberately ignored some minor items, such as outlays for the Selective Service System, the National Defense Stockpile, and the anti-terrorist activities conducted by the FBI and the Treasury. For now, however, the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Owing to the financial debacle and the ongoing recession, millions are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and private earnings remain well below their previous peak, but in the military-industrial complex, the gravy train speeds along the track faster and faster."

- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18758

Would Arizona Arrest Jesus Christ?

Lets do a profile shall we?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Or if I have missed any thing.

Jesus was NOT " White"!
He did not have a job!
He wore sandals!
He had long hair!
He wandered the country side!
He walked through the desert !
He did not have a permanent residence!
He carried no ID card!
He did not speak English!
He did not vote!
He had no money!


In Arizona he would most likely be arrested, and deported.

Consequences Of "Drill Obama Drill" ?

The Consequences of Drill, Baby, Drill

Slick Politics

By DAVE LINDORFF

British Petroleum had a fail-safe system for it’s Deepwater Horizon floating deep-water drilling rig.

You know, the one that blew up and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving a tangled spaghetti pile of 22-inch steel pipe one mile long all balled up on the sea floor a mile below the surface, and that is leaking oil at 42,000 gallons per day...so far.

The thing is, the fail-safe system, about the size of a McMansion sitting at the wellhead on the ocean floor, um, failed. It didn’t collapse and shut off the flow of oil as intended, and it could take months now to shut the well down--during which time the leak rate is likely to increase to up to 300,000 gallons per day, or over two million gallons a week.

President Obama claimed last month that off-shore drilling technology had become so advanced that oil spills and blowouts were a thing of the past. Of course, as he said this, Australia and Indonesia were still assessing the damage from a similar offshore oil platform, the Montana, in the Timor Sea, which blew out and poured millions of gallons of oil into the ocean off Western Australia for over three months before it could be sealed off.

Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Given that this is true, particular of complex technological enterprises, the question that needs to be asked is not, what is the probability of a catastrophic failure of an offshore well, but what is the potential damage in the event of even one such catastrophe for the local environment?

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, the potential damage if this well really blows is staggering. Just 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, it poses a near fatal risk to the region’s wetlands and bayous, with their shrimp and oyster fisheries, not to mention the breeding grounds they provide for endangered birds, fish and other animals.

But the real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon is what it means for expanded drilling in the Arctic waters north of Alaska.

Oil companies, including BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and others, like Goldman traders looking at a tranch of subprime mortgages, are casting covetous eyes on the Arctic Ocean and the oil and gas that studies suggest lie under the virgin sea floor. Their plan is to drill for these hydrocarbons once the summer sea ice vanishes as a result of rising global temperatures (more about this in a future article).

Obama, as part of his opening of more coastal areas to drilling, is including areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, which are already ice free during summer.

But let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose there were a blowout like the one in the Gulf of Mexico at a rig drilling in the Arctic? Suppose it happened towards the end of the short summer, when the ice was about to return to cover the ocean surface? If it was a blowout that couldn’t be plugged, like the Montana blowout in the Timor Sea, or if the fail-safe system at the wellhead failed, as with the Deepwater Horizon, and if the only solution was, as with the Montana well, to drill new wells to ease the pressure on the blown well, how would this be done, once the ice moved in?

Answer? It couldn’t be done. Murphy’s Law again. And so millions of gallons of crude oil would rise up out of the burst wellhead to spread out underneath the ice, whence it would eventually move on to destroy hundreds of miles of fragile coastline, probably killing untold numbers of species that live in the affected waters. The damage from such a completely predictable disaster wouldn’t just be staggering, like the Montana or the Deepwater Horizon blowouts, but incomprehensible!

So why are we even talking about this?

The argument, made ad nauseum by Republicans and Democrats alike, is that the US needs more energy, and that we don’t want to be dependent for our oil on “countries that hate us.”

And yet, there is a much simpler answer than hanging a hydrocarbon Sword of Damocles over our nation’s critical coastal areas. Just copy Europe and impose a 100% tax on gas and oil, to make people turn away from 15 or 20 or 25-mile-per-gallon vehicles and start driving fuel-efficient cars, car-pooling or forgoing cars altogether.

Even better, tax the crap out of cars that don’t get at least 35 or even 40 mpg.

Oh, I know. People will say, “but poor people in rural areas or in the suburbs can’t pay those rates for gas to get to work, and they have to buy used cars that don’t get such high mileage rates.”

I understand the problem, but it is solvable, by establishing refundable tax credits for low-income people who can document long commuting distances, for example.

The main point is that the country doesn’t need to drill in risky settings. It needs only to cut oil consumption.

What’s clear is that drilling in the open ocean is simply disaster after disaster waiting to happen.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com

From Here

This morning I heard on the news that they are going to light the oil slick on fire.

And the Doors sang "Come on Obama light my fire"

Consequences Of Criminalizing The Undocumented

The Consequences of Arizona's SB 1070

Criminalizing the Undocumented

By TANYA GOLASH-BOZA

There are many ways to become undocumented in the United States. Two of the most common ways are crossing the border undetected and overstaying a temporary visa. These are not criminal actions. The penalty for either of these is deportation – a civil procedure. The bill recently signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer – SB 1070 - criminalizes this civil offense.

In United States law, deportation is not considered punishment. It is a civil sanction. Were deportation to be considered punishment, all sorts of legal procedures would have to be in place in order for the punishment to be carried out. For example, in order for a police officer to arrest someone, they must have a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime. When a person is arrested as a crime suspect, they must be read their Miranda rights, which tell them that they have the right to remain silent and the right to counsel. After being arrested, suspects must be charged, convicted and sentenced in order to be punished.

In contrast, the civil penalty of deportation is a whole different ball game. Deportation is imposed with few procedural protections and is outside the purview of most Constitutional protections. For this reason, immigration agents can detain people without establishing reasonable suspicion and non-citizens are not afforded counsel in deportation proceedings. Deportation is not punishment for being illegally present in the US; it is a remedial action to correct the fact that a person is illegally present. If a person does not have the right to remain in the US, they can be removed.

The bill recently signed into law in Arizona criminalizes undocumented migrants by making undocumented migration a crime of trespassing. People suspected of trespassing will be arrested by police officers. Then, they will have to be charged and convicted in Arizona state courts. Trespassing is defined in this bill as a Class 1 misdemeanor – a person convicted faces up to a $2500 fine and up to six months in jail. Within Arizona, this process remains in the criminal justice system.

The State of Arizona does not have to power to deport anyone – only the Department of Homeland Security can do that. Once the person is charged and convicted in Arizona, they can be turned over to immigration authorities to be deported – as criminal aliens – people convicted of crimes prior to being deported.

What I find particularly contradictory in SB 1070 is that it criminalizes what is defined by the US government as a civil violation. Of course, once undocumented migration is criminalized, suspects will have to be afforded all of the rights that criminal suspects have. Since a Class 1 misdemeanor carries the possibility of jail time, defendants have the right to court-appointed counsel. In addition, when arrested, the grounds for reasonable suspicion must be met. How are police officers going to establish “reasonable suspicion” that a person is undocumented? Federal laws prohibit discrimination based on a person's national origin, race, color, and religion. This means that reasonable suspicion may not be based on any of these factors. What, then, will police officers use to establish reasonable suspicion?

Another issue is the case overload – both in Arizona and in the DHS. There are about a half a million undocumented migrants in Arizona and many, many others who could be suspected to be so. How is Arizona going to be able to handle this criminal case overload? The Department of Homeland Security only has 33,000 beds available for immigrant detainees. Where will they put all of these new arrivals?

These are questions that will have to be considered before this law takes effect in August. Hopefully, by that time, the Supreme Court will have ruled this law unconstitutiona

From Here

"Arizona Immigration Law- What Were They Thinking?"

Yeah, something like that... - CP

Jeb Bush Joins Call For Immigration Reform

Jeb Bush and an odd-bedfellows collection of conservatives, evangelicals and business leaders are calling on Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform this year.

Jeb Bush

While thousands prepare for a mass demonstration on May 1, Bush and other leaders are applying pressure in their own way, including a phone conference on Thursday billed as a “nationwide strategy call.”

It sounds like a telephonic rally.

They promise to “provide an update on the fallout from last week’s passage of Arizona’s divisive immigration law and pray for a solution to the moral, economic and political crisis caused by our broken immigration system.”

They also promise to suggest strategies for breaking the stalemate in Congress to move a reform bill this year.

Bush, former Florida governor, will be joined by:

Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of commerce under former President George W. Bush.

Alfonso Aguilar, former head of the U.S. Office of Citizenship under former President Bush.

Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference in Sacramento.

Jim Tolle, senior pastor of the The Church on the Way, of Los Angeles.

And others.

President Obama and congressional leaders plan to accelerate attempts to enact comprehensive reforms, which would mix enforcement with expanded foreign guestworker programs and a path to legal status for unauthorized residents.

They are meeting stiff resistance from most Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who prefer Arizona’s get-tough methods.

From Here

Here comes Jeb.

So the dems had better not be left behind on this one

He has been my long shot to run for President, or possibly the repubs will put him on the ticket for VP.

This is a move toward that. His wife is Mexican, he speaks Spanish. If the dems do not take the lead on immigration reform Jeb and his "main stream" republicans will. As I have been saying, this is political immigration reform.

Perception is everything. This will be a political fight for the future Latino vote.

M.I.A., Born Free ! Maybe NOT In Arizona

WARNING----This video is rated X extreme violence[reality] vulgar language, some nudity, recommended for mature audiences.

Hope YOU are not a red head. I do not know of too many red headed Mexicans living in Arizona.

UPDATE---UPDATE---This just hit CNN about this video.
You might want to read this before you watch the video.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

So, who is next. It always starts some where, some how.

This time around it is the Mexicans in Arizona.

Step by step.

TICK-TOCK

Do you feel any safer now?

Be afraid, be very afraid.

"Arizona Arrests Meteor Crater Formed By 'Undocumented' Asteroid"

"Arizona Arrests Meteor Crater Formed By 'Undocumented' Asteroid"
by Roy Rivenburg

"Acting on a tip received after passage of Arizona's tough new immigration law, police have arrested Meteor Crater. In a daring predawn raid, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a team of officers swept into Northern Arizona and surrounded the landmark, which made no attempt to resist. According to scientists, Meteor Crater was formed when a massive nickel-iron asteroid immigrated to Arizona illegally from outer space. "It looked suspiciously foreign," one resident said. Gov. Jan Brewer said the crater's arrest proves that "racial profiling won't be a factor" in enforcing the state's immigration policy."

- http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207574-Arizona-Arrests-Meteor-Crater-
After-Learning-It-Was-Formed-By-Undocumented-Asteroid
•
"Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups."
-Author Unknown

We Are All Mexicans In Arizona

"I AM A MEXICAN PLEASE PULL ME OVER"

This is what we should all be saying. This new law is an attack on all Americans.
Do we live in a police state?
Do Americans approve of Nazi Gestapo tactics?
Do Americans want an apartheid country?
Does a political agenda prevail over civil rights in our country?
Do we continue to live in fear, and xenophobia?

Americans have to draw a line in the sand. This line is now inscribed in the sands of the Arizona desert. Do we continue to live in fear, and xenophobia. Or, do we live as free Americans. This is not just an attack on Latinos, it is an attack on all Americans.
Arizona used to have a Libertarian mind set. Now it has turned into a tea bagging Gestapo mind set. This is not what America stood for.
The statue of Liberty has become a symbol of Apartheid.

There is nothing civil about this legislation. The proponents of this are using it for political gain, and to hide their incompetency.
They are using this to veil their inner racist thoughts, and agenda.

The demographics are changing in our country.
So, either we adapt, and evolve. Or, we allow these types of laws to continue.
If this law stands then who is next?

Should we all wear a photo copy of our citizenship paper on our lapel, next to a pin of the American flag?
Should we have a tattoo with our passports on our forehead?
Should we get a micro chip implanted with our ID on it?

Where does it STOP??

What is wrong with this country?

Where has the heart and soul of America gone?

Check out Dusty's blog she has a great post about this.

Is Arizona Immigration Law Racist?

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