Monday, February 21, 2011

CHIPOTLE ONLY HIRES "cheap" LABOR ILLEGALS? LOS ANGELES PERIOD ONLY HIRES ILLEGALS!

CAN’T, OR DON’T WISH TO SPEAK ENGLISH? ARE YOU A LA RAZA GRINGO HATING RACIST MEXICAN? HAVE A POCKET FULL OF STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY CARDS?




JUST COME TO LOS ANGELES, OPERATED IN MEXICO AS THEIR WELFARE, “FREE” ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING CENTERS, JOBS AND JAILS PROGRAM.

IN LOS ANGELES ANY ILLEGAL CAN GET A JOB AT:

TARGET

CVS DRUGS

ROSS STORES

99 CENT ONLY STORES

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL

McDONALDS

BURGER KING

SOUP PLANTATION

AND ANY AND ALL FOOD SERVICES PLACES.. POSTED! NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!

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Over the last few weeks Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have issued “notices of inspection” to Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular fast-food burrito chain, at about 60 of its restaurants in Virginia and Washington, D.C. (LA Times, Feb. 7, 2011; My Fox DC, Feb. 7,

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LOS ANGELES IS MEXICO’S WELFARE OFFICE. THAT COUNTY PUTS OUT $600 MILLION PER YEAR IN WELFARE JUST TO ILLEGALS.

THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT STATES WITH A POPULATION GREATER THAN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, WHERE 50% OF ALL JOBS ARE HELD BY ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.

OBAMA, AND HIS LA RAZA DEMS, FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, BOXER, WAXMAN, along with Hispanic fascist Reps. BECERRA, BACA, and the notorious racist SANCHEZ SISTERS, all LA RAZA SUPREMACIST, have promised ILLEGALS CONTINUED BIT BY BIT AMNESTY AND ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, OR AT LEAST CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT!

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MEXICANS COME TO THIS NATION TO LOOT! THE VAST MAJORITY ARE INVOLVED IN CRIMES BORDER TO BORDER!

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Fraudulent Document Mill Busted ( The notorious MS-13 gang)



Fraudulent Document Mill Busted in Virginia

The Loudon County Sheriff’s Gang Intelligence Unit last week dismantled a document production mill which provided hundreds or even thousands of fraudulent IDs to illegal aliens. (Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2011) Sheriff’s deputies found evidence of at least 500 fraudulent documents in the Sugarland, Virginia facility, including social security cards, driver’s licenses, work visas and permanent resident cards. (Id.)



Law enforcement officials took four Salvadoran nationals into custody, and later charged three with manufacturing fraudulent documents. (Id.) Two of the individuals arrested had been previously deported, and the third man had an expired temporary protected status. (Id.) Police said the trio will likely face additional charges. (Id.)



FAIR’s sources in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were not surprised at the gang connection in this bust. The notorious MS-13 gang has a large percentage of Salvadoran members and is reputed to produce fraudulent and altered documents for use by illegal aliens.



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ICE Audits Popular Burrito Chain, Hundreds Fired (Employers may face criminal charges)





ICE Audits Popular Burrito Chain, Hundreds Fired





Over the last few weeks Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have issued “notices of inspection” to Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular fast-food burrito chain, at about 60 of its restaurants in Virginia and Washington, D.C. (LA Times, Feb. 7, 2011; My Fox DC, Feb. 7, 2011) The “notices of inspection” are warnings to the restaurant-chain that ICE will be conducting Form I-9 audits on its stores in an effort to discover unlawfully employed illegal aliens. (Id.) Form I-9 audits require employers to submit copies of I-9 employment-eligibility forms and other payroll documents to ICE officials for review. (Denver Post, Feb. 9, 2011) If documents are falsified, employers are given a warning, must dismiss the workers involved, and may be fined or face criminal charges in some instances. (Id.; See ICE Fact Sheet: Form I-9 Inspection Overview; Dec. 1, 2009)



The recent audits reflect the Obama Administration’s 2009 announcement that it plans to shift away from worksite enforcement actions (utilized by the Bush Administration) that focus on the illegal actions of both the employers and employees to a more employer oriented worksite enforcement strategy. (Fox News Latino, Feb. 8, 2011; CNN News, Feb. 8, 2011) Rather than taking illegal workers into custody, the current system of I-9 audits penalize companies discovered to have “knowingly” employed an illegal alien in violation of federal law (See INA Sec. 274A). ICE has nearly doubled its audits of employers in the last year to more than 2,700, but experts complain that this new policy is misleading. (Fox News Latino, Feb. 8, 2011) For example, under the Obama Administration’s I-9 audit program, ICE may or may not fine employers who have violated the law and ICE may issue a notice of intent to fine for a certain dollar amount, only to have that fine later reduced. And while employers usually fire the workers who cannot provide documentation that they are authorized to work, ICE does not detain or deport the illegal workers, leaving them free to find work elsewhere.



ICE’s activity in Washington, D.C. and Virginia comes shortly after ICE audited roughly 50 Chipotle restaurants in Minnesota at the end of last year. That audit resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of employees. (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2011) In response, protesters carried signs outside of one of the chain’s Minneapolis restaurants stating, “Chipotle: You cannot sell Mexican food and then sell out Mexican workers.” (Time, Feb. 9, 2011) However, Tanya, a 35-year-old woman who had been working illegally at the chain remarked, “I believe that when you go to apply there, they know beforehand that you don’t have papers.” (The Huffington Post, Feb. 8, 2011) Chipotle now faces a lawsuit from dismissed workers alleging that Chipotle violated Minnesota law by not immediately giving them their earned compensation upon their dismissal. (Fox News Latino, Feb. 9, 2011)



Chipotle spokesman, Chris Arnold, said that Chipotle uses a two-tier system of verifying its workers’ eligibility for employment. (Fox News Latino, Feb. 8, 2011) He explained that in the first step the hiring manager reviews the employment documents and then human resources personnel conduct a review. (Id.) “In spite of those two reviews for every set of documents, we still apparently had a number of people whose documents were not valid,” Arnold commented. (Id.) “On one hand, we must comply with ICE requirements to verify the status of every employee we hire, but we must do that without discriminating and violating the mandate of the Department of Justice,” Arnold said. (Washington Examiner, Feb. 7, 2011) According to Arnold, Chipotle is speaking with ICE about expanding its use of the E-Verify program, citing that it already uses it in states that require it such as Arizona and North Carolina. (Fox News Latino, Feb. 8, 2011)

OBAMA'S SOFT SPOT FOR MUSLIM DICTATORS - He Smells Presidentail Library Donors Over There!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com


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Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com



OBAMA WILL ALWAYS SERVICE THE STATUS QUO! BANKSTERS DONORS, WALL ST. PILLAGERS, MUSLIM DICTATORS, LA RAZA OPEN BORDERS FOR DEPRESSED WAGES!

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The US-backed monarchy has arrested scores of its opponents in recent months, charging them as “terrorists.” Political opponents have been subjected to savage torture to force them to sign false confessions. Opposition web sites, newsletters and publications have been shut down by the regime.

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HOW MUCH HAS THE HILLARY BILLARY LIBRARY TAKEN FROM SAUDI ROYAL WAHHABI TERRORIST? MILLIONS!!!

HOW MUCH HAS BIG BUSH SAUDIS CARLYLE OIL TAKEN FROM SAUDIS ROYAL WAHHABI TERRORIST?

HOW MANY WARS AGAINST SAUDIS ROYAL WAHHABI TERRORIST ENEMIES, i.e., SADDAM HUSSEIN HAS BUSH, HILLARY-BILLARY- OBAMA WAGED?

HOW MUCH LOOT DOES OBAMA EXPECT FOR KISSING SAUDI ROYAL WAHHABI TERRORISTS’ ASS FOR HIS LIBRARY?

ISN’T IT TIME WE CLIMBED OUT OF BED WITH MUSLIMS FASCIST TERRORIST DICTATORS?

DON’T EXPECT OBAMA TO! HE AND HILLARY ARE BANKROLLING THE AFGHAN DRUG ADDICT PRESIDENT, WHILE HE PROTECT THE SAUDIS WAHHABIST ASSES FROM SADDAM!

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

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Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com



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Mass protests spread in Middle East as Washington reassures Israel, Arab dictators

By Bill Van Auken

15 February 2011

Inspired by the Egyptian people’s overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, protests continued to spread in the Middle East on Monday, as Washington scrambled to reassure Israel and pro-US regimes in the region of its continued support.

For a fourth straight day, demonstrators in cities throughout Yemen clashed with security forces and mobs of plainclothes policemen and hired thugs posing as supporters of the US-backed government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In the capital city of Sana’a, the anti-government demonstrations grew in size on Monday. The AFP news agency said that over 3,000 people attempted to march towards the city’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square to demand the ouster of President Saleh, who has ruled the country for more than 32 years.

As they neared the square, they were attacked by riot police using batons, rifle butts and electric cattle prods. Mobs of plainclothes police thugs then attacked demonstrators with daggers and broken bottles.

Among those demonstrating were the country’s lawyers dressed in black robes. The protesters chanted, “The people want the regime to step down,” “leave Saleh” and “After Mubarak, Ali.”

Also on Monday, the police and thugs broke up a demonstration of several hundred students at Sana’a University. Security forces have blocked key streets with razor wire to prevent protesters from marching on the presidential palace.

Scores were reported injured in the repression, some of them suffering stab wounds. Many more have been detained by the security forces.

“Police and bullies hurled stones at the protesters fed up with bad living conditions, high unemployment rates, widespread corruption at the public institutions and oppression,” the Yemen Post reported. “They also beat them with stun batons, and police also fired live ammunition in the air in an attempt to disperse the protesters.”

In the southern city of Taaz, at least a dozen people were injured in attacks by police firing tear gas and assaulting protesters with electric batons.

In the southern port city of Aden, dock workers, who have waged a long battle against the regime, took the lead, storming the offices of the Yemen Gulf of Aden Port Corporation and seizing top officials, including the agency’s chairman, Mohamed Bin Aefan.

“We have had it with corrupt officials and it’s time to tell them to leave,” Ali Bin Yehya, a port worker told Al Jazeera. “What happened in Egypt and Tunisia motivated the workers to demand their rights.”

The Saleh regime has pursued the same tactic as Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt, ordering police to assault journalists in an attempt to block any coverage of the repression. BBC correspondent Abdullah Gorab reported live on Monday: “I’m bleeding from my head. The policemen who were accompanying a prominent official figure, Hafez Meayad, were running after me after they asked more than 50 protesters from the ruling party to hit us. They took my phone and my cameramen’s phone. They beat any correspondent who tries to film the attack on the protesters. This is the current regime now in Yemen. No rule, no law. I’m bleeding now as I escape from the police.”

The demonstrations have escalated despite the agreement of opposition parties to accept Saleh’s offer of “dialogue.” In response to growing unrest and the example of the Egyptian uprising, the Yemeni dictator announced that he was dropping his bid to change the country’s constitution to allow him to become “president for life,” and pledged that his son, the chief of the Republican Guard, would not succeed him. Opponents of the regime, however, point out that similar pledges were made in 2006 and then forgotten.

At the same time, the regime’s National Defense Council has unveiled plans for a new law giving it unfettered power to tap phone lines, open mail and monitor electronic communications, provoking even greater popular anger.

The poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen has an unemployment rate of around 40 percent, with some 45 percent of its nearly 20 million people living on $2 a day or less. These appalling conditions have been exacerbated in recent months by a sharp rise in food prices.

Already facing a separatist movement in the south of the country and a protracted armed conflict with Shia forces in the north, Yemen has been the focus of an escalating US military and CIA intervention, ostensibly directed against Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

Even as repression mounts in Yemen, the US military is expanding its training of Yemeni security forces. Citing Pentagon sources, the Associated Press reported Monday that Washington is launching a $75 million program to train Yemen’s counter-terror troops, a force now numbering 300. The program is designed to double the size of the force, which is a key component of Saleh’s repressive apparatus.

Demonstrations also erupted Monday in the Persian Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain, which serves as the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet and the Pentagon’s Naval Forces Central Command. The “Day of Rage” called by opponents of the Sunni monarchy which rules the predominantly Shia territory saw clashes erupt in two Bahraini villages as security forces imposed an intense crackdown.

Dozens of people were injured Sunday night and Monday as police sought to break up protests using teargas, rubber bullets and clubs. In the village of Nuweidrat, police attacked some 2,000 people who sat down in the street demanding the release of Shiite detainees and an end to the oppression of the majority population.

The US-backed monarchy has arrested scores of its opponents in recent months, charging them as “terrorists.” Political opponents have been subjected to savage torture to force them to sign false confessions. Opposition web sites, newsletters and publications have been shut down by the regime.

Shiites in Bahrain, while making up 70 percent of the population and 80 percent of the workforce, face discrimination in terms of jobs and housing and are severely underrepresented in a largely powerless parliament. They are barred from employment by the country’s largest employer, the security forces, which imports Sunni Muslims from abroad and then grants them citizenship as a reward for repressing the population.

The eruptions in Bahrain are of particular concern to the Saudi monarchy, Washington’s key ally in the region. The Saudi regime oppresses its own Shia population, which constitutes the majority in the country’s oil-producing Eastern Province.

The regime in Bahrain is, if anything, more ossified than that of Mubarak in Egypt. Power is concentrated in the hands of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle, who has held the post for nearly 40 years.

In a desperate bid to bribe the population into halting the protests, the al-Khalifa family dynasty has promised to award 1,000 dinars ($2,650) to every family in Bahrain and has suggested that it may release minors who have been imprisoned since a crackdown last year. It has also said it will rescind plans for budget cuts, demanded by international lending agencies, and instead spend another $417 million on food subsidies.

As the demonstrations spread throughout the Arab world, Washington focused its efforts on reassuring its principal ally in the region, Israel, as well as the remaining US-backed Arab dictatorships that they can rely on US support.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chief of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Jordan on Sunday for talks with King Abdullah II and his Jordanian counterpart, Lieutenant General Meshaal Al-Zabn. He then went to Israel for discussions with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli President Shimon Peres and the chiefs of the Israeli military.

On the eve of the visit, a Pentagon spokesman said that the chief US military officer would discuss “security issues of mutual concern and reassure both these key partners of the US military’s commitment to that partnership.” The key “concern” is quelling the Egyptian revolution and preventing its spread throughout the region.

Mullen told the Israelis, “our relations with the Egyptian army haven’t changed. Friendship at such a challenging time is very important.”

For his part, Netanyahu said on Monday that “an earthquake is shaking the Arab world,” and that Israel’s nuclear-armed military is “ready for all eventualities.” He described the Israeli military as “the foundation of our existence.”

Mullen’s tour was supplemented by a visit to Amman by Undersecretary of State Bill Burns. President Obama was reported to have called the Jordanian king, while Vice President Joe Biden was on the phone over the weekend to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has also faced mounting demonstrations over unemployment, living conditions and corruption, and to the ruling emirs in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.



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OBAMA, BUSH, HILLARY AND BILLARY… ALL KISSING THE ASSES OF MUSLIMS DICTATORS!



US Supreme Court declines to hear case of 9/11 families

By Joe Kishore

30 June 2009

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case brought by families of 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia, four members of the Saudi royal family, a Saudi bank and a charity. The action lets stand a lower court ruling that the Saudi members cannot be held liable in US courts.

The Obama administration supported the Saudi monarchs, who were accused of financially supporting several of the individuals involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The administration last month intervened to ask the high court to reject the appeal.

The family members claim that Saudi princes contributed to charities that funded Al Qaeda and the 9/11 hijackers.

In August 2008, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld a 2006 district court ruling that the Saudi officials and entities were protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The families argued that lower courts had made conflicting rulings on the scope of sovereign immunity, and that the Supreme Court should therefore intervene.

The Justice Department has sought furiously to prevent the release of documents assembled by lawyers for the families, which, according to a New York Times report, “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.” The government has had copies of the documents destroyed and has sought to prevent judges from even looking at them.

The US government has worked systematically to conceal from the American people evidence of Saudi support for at least two of the hijackers, part of a broader cover-up of the many unanswered questions that still surround the 9/11 attacks.

The documents gathered by the 9/11 families—including a classified section of the 2003 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks—likely include material on Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two Saudi nationals who were aboard the planes that crashed on 9/11. They were known by US intelligence to be members of Al Qaeda at least since 1999.

Despite their previous association, the two men were allowed into the US, where they found accommodations with the help of a Saudi intelligence agent (Omar al-Bayoumi) and, later, an FBI asset (Abdussattar Shaikh). Al-Bayoumi received financing from Princess Haifa, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar.

The suit filed by the families focuses solely on the role of Saudi Arabia. However, the more fundamental question is the role of sections of the American state. The Saudi royal family has had long and intimate ties with American intelligence, and the broader exposure of Saudi links to the attacks threatens to unravel the entire official story of the September 11 attacks.

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Obama administration seeks to quash suit by 9/11 families

By Barry Grey

26 June 2009

The Obama administration has intervened to quash a civil suit filed against Saudi Arabia by survivors and family members of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The suit seeks to hold the Saudi royal family liable, charging that it provided financial and other support to Al Qaeda and was thereby complicit in the hijack bombings that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC.

According to an article by Eric Lichtblau in the June 24 New York Times, documents assembled by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.” However, the article states, the documents may never find their way into court because of legal challenges by Saudi Arabia, which are being supported by the US Justice Department.

The administration is taking extraordinary measures to kill the suit and suppress the evidence of Saudi support for Al Qaeda and complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Last month, the Justice Department sided in court with the Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action. Moreover, it had copies of American intelligence documents on Saudi finances that had been leaked to lawyers for the families destroyed, and is now seeking to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

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Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.



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Report Illegals & Employers Toll Free... (866) 347-2423

INS National Customer Service Center Phone: 1-800-375-5283.

http://www.ice.gov/ ICE, ice, ICE

http://www.reportillegals.com/



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Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

www.CAIRCO.org





http://www.FAIRUS.org



http://www.JUDICIALWATCH.org



http://www.ALIPAC.us



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http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/mexico/2011/01/getting-over-the-border-fence-fast.html



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Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)





Article Link:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240045





CONTACT THE HISPANDERING LA RAZA PARTY PRESIDENT HERE:



You can contact President Obama and let him know of your opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/



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UCLA PROFESSOR CALLS FOR MEXICAN REVOLT IN UNITED STATES

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/7165215?fr=yvmtf



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Wake up America!!! Illegal Immigration has to be stopped. Take a look at this website and see where all your tax dollars are going: http://immigrationcounters.com/



See: CFR’s Plan to Integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20050816.htm The Great Alien Invasion - What's Happening Now http://www.rense.com/general69/inva.htm

FORBES - WHARTON Illegals In Our Jobs HOW CHEAP IS THAT "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR?

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com


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Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

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DO THE MATH BASED ON THE FAST THAT 12 MILLION ILLEGALS IS ONLY PROPAGANDA! THERE ARE NOW MORE THAN 40 MILLION!



“At stake in the debate are the lives and livelihoods of as many as 12 million undocumented workers, the companies they work for, respect for the rule of law, and the job opportunities of millions of low-skill American citizens--both native-born and immigrants who became naturalized by going through the proper channels.”

FORBES

WHARTON

01-02-07

THE IMPACT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION 2006 – (Now with unemployment double digits to you think it’s any better? In Mexican occupied Los Angeles, 47% of those employed are ILLEGALS using “borrowed” social security numbers)





Illegal immigration into the United States has sparked heated debate in Congress, roiled the two main political parties and prompted hundreds of thousands of immigrant supporters to take to the streets recently in peaceful demonstrations nationwide.



The controversy picked up new momentum on May 15 when President George W. Bush, in a televised address to the nation, called for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. He said he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to four states along the U.S.-Mexican border beginning in June to provide intelligence and logistical support--but not armed law enforcement--to civilian border patrol agents. In addition to securing the border, Bush also said it was necessary for the House and Senate to pass legislation that would allow illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for a long time to remain and be able to undergo a process to become citizens.



"There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation," the president said. "That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years and has a home, a family and an otherwise clean record." Meanwhile, Congressional leaders have said that they would like to send immigration-reform legislation to the president for his signature before the end of May.



At stake in the debate are the lives and livelihoods of as many as 12 million undocumented workers, the companies they work for, respect for the rule of law, and the job opportunities of millions of low-skill American citizens--both native-born and immigrants who became naturalized by going through the proper channels. The large number of illegal immigrants raises key economic questions: Do illegal immigrants depress wages paid to low-skill workers? Do they take jobs away from Americans? How dependent on undocumented workers is the U.S. economy? Should illegal immigrants be compelled by law to return to their native countries? Or should Democrats and Republicans hammer out legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to pay some type of penalty yet remain in the United States and continue working?



Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli and Vernon M. Briggs Jr., professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., are firm in their conviction that illegal workers exert downward pressure on wages and reduce job opportunities for low-skill U.S. citizens. Briggs believes that the negative impact of undocumented workers on American low-skill workers and on labor standards is so great that immigration authorities should clamp down on employers who hire illegals so that a clear message is sent to current and potential illegal workers: Illegal immigration will not be tolerated.



However, Bernard Anderson, practice professor in Wharton's management department and an assistant secretary of labor for employment standards during the administration of President Bill Clinton, says that while illegal workers do have some effect on wages and displace some American workers, their impact is far less onerous than Cappelli and Briggs assert. In addition, Anderson says, illegal immigrants work hard, do not come to the United States to receive welfare and should be allowed to remain in the U.S. after paying penalties.



Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer and senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C., says Pew, which bills itself as a nonpartisan "fact tank," has taken no formal position on the immigration issue. But he does say that the data on the broad economic impact of undocumented workers does not lend particularly strong support to either side of the argument.



Portrait Of Illegal Immigrants



A study released in March by the Pew Hispanic Center, which is supported by the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, contains extensive information on the nature and extent of illegal immigration. The study uses the term "unauthorized migrant," which it defines as a person who resides in the United States, but who is not a U.S. citizen, has not been admitted for permanent residence and has no temporary status permitting longer-term residence and work.



The report, which uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau's March 2005 Current Population Survey, estimates that the U.S. is home to between 11.5 million and 12 million illegal immigrants, up sharply from 8.4 million in 2000. Unauthorized migrants accounted for 30% of all foreign-born people in the U.S. as of 2005. Most unauthorized migrants--6.2 million, or 56%--come from Mexico. About 2.5 million, or 22%, come from the rest of Latin America.



In 2005, illegal migrants accounted for about 5% of the civilian labor force, or 7.2 million workers out of a labor force of 148 million. Approximately 19% of illegal workers were employed in construction jobs, 15% in production, installation and repair, and 4% in farming. The Pew report also shows that illegal immigrants comprise 24% of all workers in farming, 17% in cleaning, 14% in construction and 12% in food preparation. Within those categories, unauthorized migrants tend to be concentrated in specific jobs: They represent 36% of all insulation workers, 29% of all roofers and drywall installers, and 27% of all butchers and other food-processing workers.



It is often said by supporters of illegal, low-skill immigrants that the U.S. economy needs such laborers because they do the kinds of work that Americans will not do. But Cappelli calls that assertion a "complete myth." Immigrants have been hired to do such jobs in such large numbers not because Americans refuse them, but because Americans are not willing to perform such tasks where the wages are lower than they would otherwise be, where work rules may not exist and where the working conditions may be hazardous. Many employers seek illegal workers for the simple reason that it keeps costs down and means the companies do not have to invest in equipment and other capital improvements. Relative wage levels for low-skill and unskilled American workers, according to Cappelli, have plummeted over the past generation and show no signs of rising.



Cappelli says he has witnessed the effects of immigrant workers on wages and working conditions in other parts of the world, including the Middle East. In Bahrain, for instance, where guest workers from Bangladesh are frequently used on construction sites, a visitor can see them using picks and shovels instead of machinery.



Why do illegal immigrants force down wages? "That's how markets work," responds Cappelli. "It's hard for the average person to understand that these are markets. If illegal workers left the U.S. tomorrow, what would happen? Some people think nobody would do those jobs. If that were to happen, companies would change those jobs, and wages would go up. Yes, companies would hire the people who are not necessarily doing those jobs now. This goes on in every labor market. There are no jobs that we can think of where, over time, work doesn't get done. It doesn't happen."



While it is true that low-skill workers who enter the United States legally also exert downward pressure on wages, there is a significant difference between them and their undocumented counterparts. "The difference is legal immigrants are let in, at least in part, on economic judgments about where the needs are for their skills," Cappelli notes. "That's one of the criteria for being allowed to come in."



Cappelli says the United States needs legislation that "faces up to the real economic issues. If you allow more unskilled workers into the U.S., it will lower costs for employers. It will also lower wages for people who do those jobs. It's clearly a political question. If you want to benefit low-skill American workers, you reduce illegal immigration. It's important to have a very clear conversation on the choice we want to make. And we are ducking that by saying these are jobs no one wants to do."



Briggs, the Cornell professor, says turning a blind eye to illegal workers, as U.S. immigration authorities have done, can end up harming U.S. citizens and the illegal employees themselves. Undocumented workers can "displace," to use the term of labor economists, African-Americans and other minorities who are young and seeking their first jobs or older minority workers with few skills. Moreover, even if the illegal workers are earning the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour--and most are, according to Briggs--the conditions under which they work can be dangerous. Yet these people have no way to seek legal remedies because they are in the U.S. illegally.



Democracy's 'Seamier Side'



"Many [illegal immigrants] are working under conditions that are appalling," Briggs says. "Some are paid in violations of hours laws; some are children working in jobs they shouldn't be. It's one of the seamier sides of democracies. ... Some are working basically as slaves." Illegal immigrants are typically males ages 18 to 30 who are very ambitious, Briggs adds, and they will take any job, including those that make them vulnerable to abuse.



"Illegal immigration is an issue that takes everything down to its crudest level and makes it vile to discuss," he says. "The illegal immigrants will always win in jobs competition with U.S. citizens. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with U.S. citizens; it just means there is a contrast" between the U.S. and the illegal immigrants' countries of origin. "No matter how bad things are in the U.S., it's better than the country [these workers] are coming from. If it means crowding into apartments or working weekends, they will do it, and they won't complain about sexual discrimination or racial discrimination. Tragically, many employers, if given a choice between illegal immigrants or U.S. citizens, will always take the illegal immigrant."



Briggs acknowledges that there is scant data to support his concerns about the plight of many illegal workers. But he is firm in his belief that "if we don't get serious about enforcing [immigration laws], people are going to continue to be hurt. These are the most vulnerable members of society."



In Briggs' view, the only effective way to reduce illegal immigration is to take employer sanctions seriously and actively enforce them at work sites. "That means [instituting] heavy penalties on employers who hire immigrants and making it clear that illegal immigrants are not going to work. They are not supposed to be here; they are not supposed to be working. You have to make it impossible for them to work. They will gradually get the idea they have to go back, that there's not much hope they are going to get legalized status."



Briggs says it may be useful to require immigrant workers to carry a "job identification" card that they would have to present to prospective employers in order to obtain work and to apply for government services. Briggs opposes building "massive walls" along the U.S.-Mexico border, but adds that "physical barriers" of some kind in strategic locations along the border may help. "We could possibly build more electronic fences that give signals when people cross them and tell [authorities] where they are."



Anderson, the Wharton labor economist, disagrees with Briggs' view of illegal immigration, saying the situation "is not as bad as Briggs says it is. ... One line of argument as to why it's necessary to protect the borders is that the failure to do so subjects the United States to an intolerable risk of terrorism, not that there's been any evidence at all that terrorists have come through the southern border. The other question is what impact there is on wages, economic status and employment for American workers. That's where you get a clear divide in the economic literature. The evidence produced by economists who have studied this question is mixed."



Anderson says there is indeed much anecdotal evidence that Hispanics now do many of the jobs once performed by African-Americans, such as service jobs in the hotel industry. Anderson says he himself has witnessed such changes across the American South during his travels over the past 30 years. "No one will convince me that there has not been labor displacement," he says. Nonetheless, there also is evidence that many African-Americans no longer perform low-skill service jobs--not because illegal immigrants have taken those jobs from them, but because they have moved on to take better-paying jobs or have grown older and retired from the labor force.



"There has been substantial [improvement] in the economic status of minorities in this country as a result of the civil rights movement," Anderson says. "There is no question that African-Americans have benefited in their occupational status as a result of that." He says that 70% of black workers today hold white-collar and service-sector jobs, while others are working in the many auto-manufacturing plants that have sprung up across the South.



Weighing all the available evidence, and noting that the data are mixed, Anderson concludes that "there has been some displacement and some depression of wages" among U.S. citizens as a result of illegal immigration. "But it has not, in the main, had a significant effect in reducing the earnings and employment opportunities of American workers, including minority-group workers. Immigration, including illegal immigration, has not been terribly detrimental to employment opportunities for African-Americans. I firmly believe this. It is for that reason that you don't find African-American political leaders lining up with the opponents of immigration."



When you look at opponents of illegal immigration, Anderson adds, "you find the same right-wing, reactionary scoundrels who have opposed progressive legislation, who have opposed the minimum wage and efforts to improve the economic opportunities of minorities."



What kind of an immigration bill would Anderson like to see emerge from Congress? "We must secure the borders. That has to be part of any legislation. We have to recognize that the huge numbers [of undocumented workers in the U.S.] are not here to receive welfare; they are here to work. If there were no employment opportunities for them, they wouldn't be coming. But we should not have an immigration system that allows immigrant workers to reduce the wages and diminish the working conditions of American workers. Therefore, I say protect the borders to significantly reduce the inflow. We should then move toward the legalization of those who are already here. If we legalize them [after requiring them to pay a penalty], then we let them out of the box they are imprisoned in and set in motion a process for improving wages and working conditions."



On the broad question of the effects, positive or negative, of illegal immigration, Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, says: "I don't know if there's anything in the data that clearly points one way or the other. At one level, it's a lot of people: 11.5 million to 12 million. But it's about one in 20 workers, so it's not a huge share of the labor market. It is, of course, a much higher share of the low-education labor market, maybe as much as 15% or 20%."



Passel adds, however, that he has seen no evidence in the economic literature proving that illegal immigrants have displaced American citizens in low-skill jobs. "The presence of illegals is not associated with higher unemployment among natives, and it seems to me you would have to see that kind of thing for there to be true displacement in any sense. Geographically, it tends to be the reverse: Places with large numbers of illegals tend to have lower unemployment than places without illegals. Illegals go where the economies are strong, and as a result, there's no impact."



An Ineffective Policy



Although the Pew Hispanic Center takes no position on the immigration issue, Passel says it is clear from the demographic evidence that U.S. immigration policy is not working in its attempt to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States and reducing the number already here.



"At least for the last decade, and even longer than that, we have focused on two different approaches," Passel says. "One is we have made it harder for [illegal immigrants] to get in and have even tried to block people from coming in. That's clearly not working. There's some evidence from some of my work, and more directly from the work of others, that it's actually been counterproductive. What we have really done is, instead of keeping people out, we have kept people in."



The reason: Many illegal immigrants would actually prefer to move back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, taking employment when it is needed and returning home to visit family. But by making it more dangerous and expensive to come into the United States over and over again, the immigrants decide to bring their wives and children and stay put once they arrive. Indeed, Passel says that some 1.8 million illegal immigrants in the United States are under 18. About 3.1 million more are children who were born here to illegal immigrants and thus are U.S. citizens. Whatever policy decisions are made in Washington, they will have to take into account the fate of nearly 5 million children.



The second approach U.S. immigration officials have followed in recent years is to make it hard for undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States once they have arrived by refusing to give them drivers' licenses, making them ineligible for government benefits or cracking down on day-labor sites. "But that doesn't seem to have had much impact either," Passel says. "It's probably because no matter what is done to make life difficult, life is still easier than it was back home."



A European Perspective



Rafael Puyol, executive vice president of the Instituto de Empresa Foundation Madrid and an expert on demography and immigration, suggests that immigrants are almost always active in the same kinds of activities. "In the U.S., they are largely involved in agriculture, especially harvesting crops. They move throughout the country, following the calendar. In Europe, agriculture--particularly in eastern Spain--always [offers] entry-level [jobs], although many immigrants want to leave these jobs as soon as they can" and move into other industries. In Spain, in addition to agriculture, immigrants work in construction, hotels, restaurants and as domestics. Lately, however, Puyol has observed a greater diversification of activity into specialized services such as plumbing and home repair.



Two factors determine the arrival of immigrants in any particular place, Puyol says. "The first factor is the availability of jobs in the high-priority areas. In a country such as Spain, immigrants come from the Mediterranean region, where there is a combination of agriculture, construction and services." They also flock to large tertiary cities, "because there is a multitude of activities in both services and construction."



The main issue, he notes, is whether jobs are available. But there is also another very important consideration: "The impact of earlier immigrants to the same country, from the same geographical region. The people from the first wave of immigration usually greet, orient and assist those immigrants who come from the same place of origin. They help them get settled and find a job until they can be somewhat independent," he says. As a result, "relatives, friends and acquaintances play an important role when it comes time for new immigrants to locate."



Puyol believes that the two main focal points of immigration are the United States and "old Europe." The U.S., the primary focal point, "is a country of immigrants, and you cannot understand the demographic history of the United States without understanding its history of immigration. First, there was the European immigration, and lately it has diversified into other [regions] of origin--Latin America above all, but also Asia. The second focus of immigration is "old Europe"--the 25-member states of the European Union, which was the first region in Europe that had immigrants, and which now has an increasing number of them, from Eastern Europe. "Next are the smaller focal points in Asia, the Near East and, of course, Australia," he says.



Regarding immigration laws, he says: "You have to establish a regular process for dealing with arriving immigrants. In this day and age, you cannot pursue a policy of completely open doors. The results are economically inappropriate and socially complicated. You must arrange things so that the incoming migration is regulated. Second, the legal system must contribute to immigrants' progressive integration. Give immigrants the same legal rights as other citizens. Immigrants also have to accept the basic laws that regulate social life, [particularly with regard to] the constitution. Immigrants in the U.S. and Europe must enter the country in a legal way, and they must have access to arrangements that permit their gradual integration.



Laws that arrange for temporary legal status almost never provide good results, Puyol says. "You must let free-market forces determine whether people who enter the country want to stay there permanently or return to their country of origin," he says. "In addition, you must assist legal immigration by making arrangements with the countries of origin that help immigrants from those countries arrive at their destination through regularly established channels. That means you have to support a legal immigration policy that is sufficiently generous that immigrants arrive under favorable conditions. You also need a parallel, generous policy for integrating those people. Those generally applied laws must not have any special exceptions; they must be laws that are accepted by all countries that welcome immigrants."



Finally, Puyol makes a distinction between Europe and the U.S. "America has a better demographic situation than Europe. In America, immigrants come predominantly because of work-related reasons. In Europe, you have to add a certain demographic factor to the economic ones. Population growth in European Union countries is at rock bottom. Fertility rates are much lower than those in the U.S., and aging people constitute a much larger percentage [of the population] than in the U.S.," he says. "In Europe, we are going to require more immigrants or our labor market is not going to function; it will not be possible to finance pensions and social costs for those people who have already retired. In Europe, there are going to be a lot more immigrants in the future than there are now. Perhaps this the key difference between the situation in the U.S., on one hand, and old Europe on the other."

OBAMA'S GREATEST SUCCESS: HIS BANKSTER DONOR'S MASSIVE BAILOUTS AND PASS PRISON ON TO MORE LOOTING!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com


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Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.

HOW BADLY WILL THE BANKSTER OWNED PRESIDENT MUCK US OVER? HOW MUCH WIDER WILL HE PUSH OUR BORDERS OPEN? HOW MUCH MORE OF THE ECONOMY WILL HE HAND OVER TO HIS WALL ST. CRONIES?



HE IS ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND PERHAPS THE GREATEST ACTOR THAT MOVED INTO THE WHITE HOUSE!



FROM HIS FIRST DAY, OBAMA HAS PULLED TOGETHER THE MOST CORRUPT OF THE BUSH’S ADMINISTRATION’S BANKSTERS, SUCH AS BUSH’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTER WELFARE, BAILOUTS AND NO (REAL) REGULATION, TIM GEITHNER.

SHE IS BUSH’S WAR PROFITEER, AND ALSO ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, DIANNE FEINSTEIN SPOKE AT HIS INAUGUERAL. SHE FRONTED FOR HER BANKSTER DONORS, WELLS FARGO and BANK OF AMERICA AS THEY REWROTE THE BANKRUPTCY LAWS TO PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL MORTGAGES FROM BEING REWRITTEN!



THE BANKSTER PRESIDENT MADE SURE THAT BANKSTER BOYS, CHRIS DODD AND BARNEY FRANK, BOTH LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT, WAS COOKING UP THE BOOKS FOR THE OBAMA NO (REAL) REGULATION.



FROM THE SENATE FLOOR, AND IN FRONT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THIS PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED TO A NATION IN BANKSTER MELTDOWN, THAT HE WAS “not here to punish banks”….

HOW BADLY HAS OBAMA PUNKED US? WELL, THEY’RE STILL DOING IT TO US! AND OBAMA JUST MOVED IN A MAN OWNED BY HIS BIGGEST BANKSTER DONOR, J.P. MORGAN, INTO HIS OFFICE! THE ONLY OTHER PREREQUISATE THAT OBAMA HAD OF HIS NEW CHIEF OF STAFF, IS THAT HE BE AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS, AND MORE ILLEGALS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED FOR OBAMA’S WALL ST. DONORS



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FINANCIAL CRISIS PANEL URGES PROSECUTIONS OF INDUSTRY FIGURES



By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The congressional panel examining the root causes of the nation's financial crisis voted to refer to state and federal prosecutors a wide range of potential criminal wrongdoing by financial industry figures and corporations, people involved in the deliberations said Tuesday.

The politically divided Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is likely to detail the referrals on Thursday in releasing its final report, based on testimony from more than 700 people in coast-to-coast hearings and a review of millions of pages of documents.

The Huffington Post website first reported on the commission's referrals Monday evening.

It couldn't be learned which financial executives and companies were subject of the referrals to the Justice Department and state attorneys general. The panel investigated the roles of, among others, subprime mortgage brokers and lenders; Wall Street giants that bought, repackaged and resold the loans; bond ratings agencies; and a huge insurer that wrote protection on dicey bonds, enabling a U.S. housing bubble to swell until it burst, crashing the global economy.

Two people who had roles in the deliberations, speaking on condition of anonymity because the report is still confidential, said that the panel voted on a number of the Justice Department referrals months ago.

"And we've done some more," one of these individuals said.

The legislation creating the commission, signed by President Barack Obama on May 20, 2009, charged the 10-member panel to refer to the U.S. attorney general and appropriate state attorneys general "any person that the commission finds may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to (the) crisis."

"We did our duty," said one of the two involved in the process.

However, the other knowledgeable person stressed that the panel's thin investigative staff didn't attempt to compile evidence for solid criminal cases, but rather referred information that raised serious legal issues.

The panel sought to model itself after the hard-hitting Pecora Commission, the Depression-era panel that compiled evidence leading to prosecutions of high officials of some of the nation's biggest banks.

However, the Crisis Inquiry Commission's six Democrats and four Republicans split ideologically in the months after their appointment. The divisions showed up when Republicans chose to release their own findings in December, the original deadline for the final report, and blamed much of the crisis on the "national home ownership strategy" begun under President Bill Clinton and on secondary mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for jumping into the subprime market.

Commission members and staff signed agreements to keep details of the final report confidential until its release.

However, the New York Times reported late Tuesday that it had obtained a copy of the 576-page report, which it said concluded that the financial disaster was "avoidable" and laid blame on a range of actors from federal regulatory failures to shoddy mortgage lending and reckless risk taking.

Commission spokesman Tucker Warren said the report will be released Thursday and declined to comment further.

(Tish Wells contributed to this article.)





Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/25/107430/in-report-financial-crisis-panel.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz1CFd8kkpP



• Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011

Wall Street firms earn high profits with Uncle Sam's backing





Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/24/107342/wall-street-firms-earn-high-profits.html#ixzz1CFhXylu6



By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street giants that played roles in the subprime mortgage debacle are reporting huge profits and awarding hefty bonuses again even as the government remains on the hook for tens of billions of dollars of their debt.

Banking behemoths are among the scores of lenders and insurers that floated as much as $345.8 billion in federally guaranteed bonds under a program that's widely credited with helping to keep money flowing at the height of the financial crisis, when businesses had nowhere to turn for capital.

Now, with the crisis in the rearview mirror, banks that escaped tough federal pay restrictions by retiring more than $200 billion in direct loans from the Treasury Department are still benefiting from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s less-conspicuous debt guarantee program, which has no such strings attached.

Some of the Wall Street firms that are getting the guarantees are expected to draw criticism from the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this week when the panel issues its final report on the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown, which crashed the global economy.

Under the FDIC program, federal guarantees ensured that bonds that dozens of lenders, investment banks and insurers issued — including Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and General Electric — got gold-plated ratings that drew investors and drove down the cost of financing the debt.

The FDIC's bank insurance fund, which backs the bonds, has reaped more than $10 billion in fees from firms using the guarantees, while the outstanding debt declined to $267 billion as of Dec. 31.

The program doesn't expire until the end of 2012, and the agency says that most of the bonds don't expire until next year.

Robert Pozen, the chairman of Boston-based MFS Investment Management, argues that the government shouldn't have released firms from executive pay restrictions until they'd paid off the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program and the FDIC program.

"Any bank that gets out of TARP, it's basically saying that it's now 'good to go' in the private market," said Pozen, the author of the 2010 book "Too Big to Save?" "They shouldn't be continuing to have this big guaranteed subsidy."

However, the agency put tight restrictions on banks' ability to refinance the bonds. Further hampering refinancing is the fact that the market for unsecured bank debt is just beginning to thaw. Morgan Stanley only recently completed a $5.25 billion bond offering, the largest by a U.S. bank in 20 months.

Banking industry consultant Bert Ely said that the adequacy of the fees in the FDIC program, known as the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, was "the kind of thing that will be debated for years."

"If you don't charge enough, then that's what creates moral hazard" and the presumption that risky behavior won't be penalized, he said. "If you charge too much, you may end up sinking institutions that you need."

On Monday, the FDIC, which hadn't identified the participants in its program, gave McClatchy a list of the institutions involved.

Three of the nation's biggest banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Charlotte-based Bank of America — account for more than a third of the outstanding debt. Citigroup owes $58.2 billion, JPMorgan $36.1 billion and Bank of America $27.4 billion.

The biggest initial issuer, however, was GE Capital Corp., General Electric's financing arm, which reported nearly $74 billion in FDIC-backed debt as of March 2009, a figure that's since declined to $53.4 billion. Ally Financial, formerly the financing arm for General Motors, has $7.4 billion in guaranteed debt outstanding.

Ely said the banks "are clearly profiting by virtue of having this relatively low-cost funding in place, even though it's in this runoff mode. The question is, to the extent they're making money, how much of that is going into the bonuses? ... There's no way to figure that out."

Goldman, which is doling out $15 billion in employee bonuses for 2010, borrowed as much as $29.8 billion under the FDIC program. It still owes $18.8 billion.

Goldman became something of a pariah in Washington before it settled an SEC civil fraud suit last summer for $550 million that stemmed from its controversial sales of subprime mortgage securities. It's sought to restore its image by announcing an array of internal revisions.

Last week, perhaps symbolizing a return to normalcy, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein was among U.S. corporate chiefs invited to attend a White House luncheon with President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, followed by a state dinner.

Some skeptics have suggested that firms such as Goldman and Morgan Stanley could easily have used the proceeds of the guaranteed bond sales to pay off their TARP loans.

A spokesman for Goldman, which repaid a $10 billion TARP loan in the summer of 2009, declined comment on its government-backed debt.

Spokeswoman Sandra Hernandez of Morgan Stanley, which also repaid a $10 billion TARP tab from Treasury, said the money didn't come from the proceeds of its government-backed bonds, on which it still owes $21.3 billion.

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY





Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/24/107342/wall-street-firms-earn-high-profits.html#ixzz1CFdcr7D4



MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com





Obama seldom brings anyone into his administration that is not corrupt, a bankster, or LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER.

WITH HIS NEW CHIEF OF STAFF DALEY, OBAMA HAS BOTH! A J.P. MORGAN BANKSTER (J.P.s PROFITS UP THIS YEAR 47%), AND AN OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATE PER THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE.



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“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”



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FROM CREOLE FOLKS



Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist. MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything whenBarrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet. All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow.

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.



MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers

Posted: December 3, 2010 09:14 AM

Jamie Dimon: Becoming Too Big To Save -- Creating Fiscal Disaster

In Sunday's New York Times magazine, Roger Lowenstein profiles Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase. The piece, titled "Jamie Dimon: America's Least-Hated Banker," is generally sympathetic, but in every significant detail it confirms that Mr. Dimon is now -- without question -- our most dangerous banker.

Mr. Dimon is not dangerous because he is in any narrow sense incompetent. On the contrary, Mr. Dimon is very good at getting what he wants. And now he wants to run a bigger, more interconnected, and more global bank that -- if it were to fail -- would cause great chaos around the world. Lowenstein writes: "Dimon has always been unusually blunt, and he told me that not only are big banks like JP Morgan (it has $2 trillion in assets) not too big, but that they should be allowed to grow bigger."

The problem with very big banks is not that they are "too big to fail," in the sense that it is physically impossible for them to fail. It is that they are so large and therefore so connected with each other -- and with all aspects of how the modern economy operates -- that the failure of even one such bank would cause great damage throughout the world.

Lehman Brothers had a balance sheet of around $600 billion when it failed. Its collapse helped trigger the worst financial crisis and deepest recession since the 1930s. Imagine what would happen if JP Morgan Chase -- even at today's scale -- were allowed to go bankrupt.

Dimon is brilliantly disingenuous on this key point: "No one should be too big to fail," he tells me. And J. P. Morgan? "Right," he says. "Morgan should have to file for bankruptcy."

But Dimon himself argued, in a November 2009 op-ed in the Washington Post, that regular bankruptcy is not a feasible option for megabanks. Instead he eloquently advocated the creation of a special resolution mechanism for big banks -- an update and expansion of the powers that the FDIC has long used to handle the orderly failure of small and medium-sized banks with insured retail deposits:

Creating the structures to allow for the orderly failure of a large financial institution starts with giving regulators the authority to facilitate failures when they occur. Under such a system, a failed bank's shareholders should lose their value; unsecured creditors should be at risk and, if necessary, wiped out. A regulator should be able to terminate management and boards and liquidate assets. Those who benefited from mismanaging risks or taking on inappropriate risk should feel the pain. We can learn here from how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. closes banks. As with the FDIC process, as long as shareholders and creditors are losing their value, the industry should pay its fair share.

Unfortunately, the resolution authority that ended up being created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation does not cover JP Morgan Chase because Dimon's bank operates so extensively outside the US (30 percent non-US in its current business, on its way to 50 percent, according to Lowenstein). There is nothing in the current resolution mechanism or the broader powers of the Financial Stability Oversight Council that enables the relevant authorities to implement the orderly winding down of a cross-border bank, like JP Morgan is today or Lehman was in 2008.

And there is no prospect of any kind of inter-governmental agreement to put in place a process for imposing orderly and foreseeable losses on the creditors to cross-border bank. In fact, the Basel Committee of bank regulators, which has jurisdiction in this matter -- and which Dimon praises in the New York Times interview -- has definitely decided not to take up the issue.

JP Morgan Chase is already Too Big To Fail. If it were to threaten failure, the government would face a terrible choice: provide some form of unsavory bailout, i.e., fully protecting creditors; or risk the outbreak of a Second Great Depression. While the executive branch pondered these alternatives, there would be global financial panic.

But that is not the worst of our worries. Jamie Dimon is apparently dead set on ensuring JP Morgan Chase becomes even larger, in part by expanding its operations in emerging markets in India, China, and elsewhere.

As Ireland and other European countries have recently discovered to their horror, Too Big To Fail banks that want to expand globally can grow so large that they become Too Big To Save. "Too Big To Save" means that the government wants to save the bank -- e.g., by providing a blanket guarantee, as the Irish did in October 2008 -- but that creates such a large liability for the state that it pushes the entire country into insolvency.

JP Morgan Chase is well on its way to becoming Too Big To Save. Through expanding overseas, it effectively bypasses the weak controls we still have in place on bank size (no bank is supposed to have more than 10 percent of total retail deposits). Experience in Europe is that this strategy can enable individual banks to build balance sheets that are larger than the GDP of the country in which they are based -- in the UK, for example, the Royal Bank of Scotland had a balance approaching 1.5 times the size of the British economy. And then it failed.

If JP Morgan Chase were to reach the equivalent size in the US, it would be a $20 trillion bank. Perhaps that would take awhile, but JP Morgan Chase soon at $4 trillion or $8 trillion is easy to imagine.

Dimon argues that banks becoming bigger is the natural outcome of market processes. He is completely wrong -- as Thomas Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed explained in a New York Times op-ed this week:

These firms [big banks] reached their present size through the subsidies they received because they were too big to fail. Therefore, diminishing their size and scope, thereby reducing or removing this subsidy and the competitive advantage it provides, would restore competitive balance to our economic system.

(See also this news coverage on Hoenig's views.)

Or listen to Gene Fama -- the father of the modern "efficient markets" view of finance. He told CNBC that Too Big To Fail banks are "perverting activities and incentives", giving big financial firms, "a license to increase risk; where the taxpayers will bear the downside and firms will bear the upside."

Or read the recent letter to the Financial Times by Anat Admati and other top names in academic finance. They could be speaking directly of Dimon and his views in the New York Times piece when they say:

Many bankers oppose increased equity requirements, possibly because of a vested interest in the current systems of subsidies and compensation. But the policy goal must be a healthier banking system, rather than high returns for banks' shareholders and managers, with taxpayers picking up losses and economies suffering the fall-out.

(See also Professor Admati's follow up letter to the FT this week, further blasting the views of top bankers and their acolytes.)

Jamie Dimon's job is to make money for his shareholders and even he has struggled -- the bank's stock price is only roughly where it was when Dimon took control in 2004. He really believes that the answer to his stock price doldrums is to make JP Morgan Chase bigger and more complex. In effect, he wants to load up on risk -- hoping that this will pay off for him, his employees, and (presumably) his shareholders, and really not caring much about who bears the downside risk.

Lowenstein mentions at various points that Dimon was a protégé of Sandy Weill, but he neglects to remind us that Weill in his heyday espoused many of the same ideas that Dimon stresses in the interview. Weill believed there were great synergies between commercial and investment banking (and insurance). Weill was convinced that bigger was undoubtedly better both for shareholders and for society. He was wrong on all counts, as explained by Katrina Brooker in the New York Times earlier this year:

"The dream, the mirage has always been the global supermarket, but the reality is that it was a shopping mall," says Chris Whalen, editor of The Institutional Risk Analyst, of Citi's evolution over the last decade. "You can talk about synergies all day long. It never happened."

Sandy Weill, of course, built the modern Citigroup, which effectively collapsed -- in spectacular fashion -- in 2008-09, and which had to be rescued by the government at least twice. What was Citigroup's balance sheet at the time? It was just over $2 trillion, roughly the size of JP Morgan Chase today. And Citigroup was (and is) extremely global -- doing business in more than 100 countries.

Jamie Dimon is intent on building a bank that will surpass all the size and complexity records set by Sandy Weill's Citigroup.

Whether or not JP Morgan Chase will fail on Jamie Dimon's watch remains to be seen. He is, without doubt, a relatively careful risk manager in an industry where hubris tends to run amok.

But sooner or later Jamie Dimon will hand over the reins to someone who is decidedly less careful, someone who goes with the groupthink, and perhaps even someone like Chuck Prince, head of Citigroup, who inherited Sandy Weill's mantle and said -- in July 2007, "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing."

The music had already stopped when he said that.

If the Dimon's bigger, more global, and greatly interconnected JP Morgan Chase is still dancing next time the music stops, the choice will not be bailout vs. great recession. The real choice will be no choice at all: fiscal disaster through attempted bailout (Ireland), or fiscal disaster through economic collapse (Iceland).

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Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).



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BY DAVID SALTONSTALL



DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

July 1st 2008

Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg

Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.



Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.



"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."



Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.



"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."



For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.



It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax loopholes.



"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.



Wall Street's generosity toward Obama, in particular, would seem to run counter to its self-interests.



In addition to calling for corporate and capital gains tax hikes, Obama has proposed raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000.



But Wall Street is often motivated by something more than money - winning.



"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate they hope will win."



Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).



McCain's top five include Wall Street's Merrill Lynch ($230,310) and Citigroup ($219,551).



Obama's Wall Street haul is not the biggest ever. That distinction belongs to President Bush, who as an incumbent in 2004 raised $10,852,696 from Wall Street interests through April that year - about $1 million more than Obama.



"Sen. Obama went to Wall Street to tell executives that our economy isn't working if they alone are prospering but people living on Main Street are not," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

OBAMA'S PAYMASTERS: LA RAZA FASCIST - WALL ST. PILLAGERS - BANKSTER DONORS - MUSLIM DICTATORS - U. S. CHAMBER of CORP NAZIS

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com


*

Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.



THE CON JOB THAT IS BARACK OBAMA!



WSWS.org get on their free no ads E-NEWS!

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The media and Obama: Image and reality

28 December 2010

For the past two weeks the US media has been pumping out admiring commentaries on the “comeback” of Barack Obama. As if on signal, the man widely portrayed before and immediately after the November midterm elections as presiding over a failing presidency is being depicted as the protagonist of a political tour de force that has turned defeat at the polls into a triumph of reform legislation.

The key to this remarkable turnabout, according to the media narrative, is Obama’s turn to bipartisan collaboration with the Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives and have a larger presence in the Senate in the incoming 112th Congress. The stroke of genius that set the stage for ensuing legislative victories in the outgoing “lame duck” Congress was Obama’s announcement December 6 of a deal with the Republican leadership in the Senate to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.

Many commentaries go even further, equating the measures enacted by Obama and the Democratic-led 111th Congress—fiscal stimulus, overhaul of health care, financial regulatory reform, repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” in the military—with the major social reforms enacted under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

All of this media mythmaking is ludicrously at odds with reality. Ignored is the fact that Obama has embraced a whole series of measures that he himself previously denounced as boondoggles to big business and the rich, including health care “reform” that excludes a public option and the extension of tax cuts to the top 2 percent of American earners.

The actual content of Obama’s supposedly newfound bipartisanship—in reality, Obama has sought from the day of his election to rehabilitate the Republican Party—is his wholesale capitulation to the demand of the ruling class for even bigger cuts in its taxes.

The historical analogies to Roosevelt and Johnson are absurd. All of Obama’s “reform” measures are, in fact, aimed at rolling back the social reforms passed in the 1930s and 1960s. His health care overhaul, for example, will slash health coverage for tens of millions of working people and reduce Medicare spending by $500 billion. It will boost the profits of the insurance companies by compelling people to purchase insurance on the private market.

Roosevelt, under the pressure of an explosive growth of working class struggles, sought to save the discredited capitalist system by instituting massive public works programs that hired hundreds of thousands of workers. He won the hatred of large sections of his own class by establishing government-owned and run enterprises such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electrical power to large sections of the South and Appalachia.

Obama and the Democratic leadership have adamantly rejected any government hiring programs and insisted on the primacy of the “free market.”

The financial regulatory reforms that Roosevelt instituted have since been dismantled, and nothing in Obama’s overhaul restores them, leaving the big banks free to continue their speculative activities.

One fact says a great deal about the reality of Obama’s policies: the reduction in the estate tax included in his tax-cut deal with the Republicans brings the tax on inherited wealth to its lowest level since 1931, prior to Roosevelt’s coming to power. Roosevelt during World War II pushed for the tax rate on the highest income tax bracket to be raised to 91 percent and imposed a cap on executive salaries.

Obama’s measures will provide an estimated $70 billion a year in tax breaks for the rich and hand over an additional $23 billion in estate tax cuts to 6,600 families.

The shift on Obama exemplifies the ceaseless efforts of the corporate-owned and controlled media to artificially create political realities by means of image making. Obama’s election was largely the result of a media marketing operation, backed and financed by sections of the ruling class that saw the need for a change in image and personnel after the foreign policy disasters of the Bush years and in the face of public hatred for Bush and the Republicans.

Now, the media is seeking to repackage and repair the badly discredited Obama administration. Why? Because it is dutifully doing the bidding of the financial aristocracy.

Obama is presently being built up because he has made clear that his cave-in on tax cuts for the rich is only the prelude to a further shift to the right on social policy. Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, a multimillionaire Chicago real estate investor who is described as Obama’s liaison to business, said Obama would focus in the immediate future on reining in the deficit and improving his relationship with American business.

The administration has already called for a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending and federal employee pay and backed proposals for cuts in Social Security benefits, increased taxes on consumption, and a broad “reform” of the tax system that will sharply reduce income taxes for the rich as well as corporate taxes.

The content of Obama’s so-called rebound is an accelerated attack on ever-broader sections of the working class.

Not accidentally, the media has in recent days largely dropped the Tea Party movement. Built up by the media in the pre-election period as a mass movement on the right reflecting popular angst over budget deficits and coercive government interference in the market, the Tea Party was used to shift Obama and the Democrats further to the right and engineer the Republican victory in November.

For the present at least, with that mission having been accomplished and Obama making all of the right moves, the Tea Party is being pushed to the background. It stands ready to be revived by the media when the ruling elite deems it politically expedient to do so.

Barry Grey

*

ONE OF OBAMA’S GREATEST SUCCESSES FOR HIS WALL ST. BANKSTER PAYMASTERS IS MAKING SURE THERE WOULD BE NO REAL BANKSTER REFORM! ERGO FROM HIS FIRST DAY OBAMA HAD BUSH’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTER WELFARE, TIM GEITHNER ON BOARD, AND TWO OF THE BANKERS’ BIGGEST SLUTS, BARNEY FRANK AND CHRIS DODD HAMMERING OUT THE NO REAL REGULATION!

FROM THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE, RIGHT IN THE FACE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:



“I’m not here to punish banks” BARACK OBAMA



*

OBAMA HAS TWO AGENDAS. SERVICING BANKSTER DONORS, AND PUSHING OUR BORDERS OPEN FOR MORE ILLEGALS. HE KNOW WE WON’T BE PUNKED BY HIS PERFORMANCES THE SECOND TIME AROUND!

*

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”



*

FROM CREOLE FOLKS



Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist. MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything whenBarrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet. All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow.

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.



*

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses



BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY





Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

*

Next year, I hope to do a better job of annoying ideologues; the people who got rich from doing things that created our financial problems, but are still in power; and Wall Street types who whine about how unfair it is to criticize their eight- and nine-digit pay packages from institutions that wouldn't be alive today were it not for taxpayer support.





Looking back at 2010, writing more about financial 'reform' would have been wise

By Allan Sloan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 28, 2010; 12:00 AM

Ihave performed a painful annual ritual ever since I began writing a column about 20 years ago: rereading my work for the year and telling you, my audience, about the things I got wrong and the things I wish I had done differently.

This past year, I wish I'd written more about financial reform - or as I call it, financial "reform." I use the quotation marks because I don't think the system is close to being reformed.

I suspected all along that there would be more talk than action - that's how things were after the Enron and WorldCom scandals and how they always seem to be - but I'm shocked by how little we've gotten right.

We didn't fix the major problems that led to the financial meltdown that produced the "Great Recession," obliterating millions of jobs and dreams. We've still got undercapitalized financial companies that are too big and too interconnected to be allowed to fail; trillions of dollars in asset-backed securities that no one except a handful of experts with access to ultra-expensive databases can begin to analyze, and an incentive system that gives Wall Street types huge incentives to take risks with shareholder and taxpayer money.

I wished I'd been louder and more shrill about breaking up these institutions, establishing publicly available real-time databases for asset-backed securities, and giving shareholders and the government five-year clawbacks for compensation paid to top executives and board members if a company fails or needs a bailout. It probably wouldn't have made any difference, but I'd feel better.

My only hope for real change is the consumer-protection operation run by Harvard bankruptcy professor Elizabeth Warren. I've stayed away from that topic because so much has been written about it, and I think so highly of Warren, whom I've known for many years, that I'm not sure I can summon up the requisite skepticism about her operation.

If she can, in fact, create and require institutions to use a brief disclosure statement, in readable type, that a high school graduate can understand in 15 minutes, she'll be doing God's work. She'll also be doing Mammon's, because we ultimately won't have capitalism in this country if we don't have fairness.

I've been unusually nice to the Federal Reserve this year, a contrast to my usual Fed-bashing and Fed-sniping. For much of my career, I've focused on the Fed's omissions and mistakes while most of my competitors kissed up to Alan Greenspan. Now, with the move in Washington to micromanage and restrain the Fed, I realized by rereading this year's columns that I've changed sides.

We need to have at least one Washington institution that can act quickly and decisively; God knows the Treasury, Congress and White House don't seem capable of it. Let's not screw up the Fed with political-correctness requirements. During Greenspan's now-not-so-glorious days as chairman, those requirements came from the left. Now, they come primarily from the ultra-right.

Finally, there's Social Security, a subject about which I've written a lot over the years, and I expect to write a lot more.

This year, I've managed to annoy almost everyone interested in the topic because I don't have a fixed ideological position. I think the Social Security trust fund has no economic value, but we should gradually monetize its $2.6 trillion in bonds to buy time while we change its benefit formula and increase its revenue.

I also think that switching to private accounts is nuts, because Social Security is an intergenerational transfer program designed to protect vulnerable old people, the disabled and orphans. It is not an investment program.

Finally, I've written that the program isn't a Ponzi scheme, because Ponzi promoters deceive you, while Social Security tells you everything you need to know about itself and is run by high-grade, honorable people.

Next year, I hope to do a better job of annoying ideologues; the people who got rich from doing things that created our financial problems, but are still in power; and Wall Street types who whine about how unfair it is to criticize their eight- and nine-digit pay packages from institutions that wouldn't be alive today were it not for taxpayer support.

OBAMA'S CRONY CAPITALISM IS CALLED OPEN BORDERS AMNESTY! Keeping the U. S. Chamber of Commerce Off His Bowing Back!

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com


*

Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed in their communities around the country. While most of the population of California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.

*

OBAMA HAS TWO AGENDAS. SERVICING BANKSTER DONORS, AND PUSHING OUR BORDERS OPEN FOR MORE ILLEGALS. HE KNOW WE WON’T BE PUNKED BY HIS PERFORMANCES THE SECOND TIME AROUND!

*

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”



*

FROM CREOLE FOLKS



Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist. MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything whenBarrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet. All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow.

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.



*

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses



BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY





Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

*



Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.

Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:

* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control

* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda

* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)

* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists

* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

*

Praise for Obamanomics

“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”

—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”

—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”

—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History

*

• Hardcover: 256 pages

• Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

• Language: English

• ISBN-10: 1596986123

• ISBN-13: 978-1596986121



*





The Obamas’ new home has received a lot of attention in the corporate media and on the blogs. This post will discuss other perspectives.

Hyde Park, where the Obamas have lived since 1994, is home to the University of Chicago (UC) Law School and at least one of UC’s hospitals. Leo Struass taught in the university’s Committee on Social Thought. The Federalist Society was born at UC, and it is the alma mater of many Neo Cons, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Kenwood, where the Obamas’ new home sits, is a small neighborhood, only 1.09 miles in area. It is bound on the south by Hyde Park, on the north by North Kenwood, and on the west by the neighborhood of Highland. Kenwood was once one of the most elite neighborhoods in all of Chicago.

This map shows the juxtaposition of the Hyde Park and Kenwood neighborhoods:

The Obamas had decided that politics was Barack’s ultimate future while still dating. In 1991, then Michelle Robinson, who was then Obama’s fiancée, left her job at the law firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. She went to work for the city of Chicago, first as an assistant to Mayor Daley, then as the Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago, a nonprofit that provides leadership training to young adults interested in public service careers.

In 1996, she left the Public Allies to help create a student volunteer program at The University of Chicago. By the time of this interview, she was the Executive Director of Community Affairs for The University of Chicago Hospitals. This is how Michelle portrays her change of career:

She was devastated when her father died from MS complications. “That’s when I started analyzing my life, sitting in a firm,” she recalls, adding that in that same year she also lost one of her best friends from college to cancer. She soon left the firm to pursue a much lower-paying path in the public sector.

The fact is Michelle was actively recruited for City Hall by a close friend, Valerie Jarrett, who was Mayor Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff at that time. Valerie later became the Finance Chair of Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign and then First Treasurer of Barack’s political action committee, Hopefund.

It helps to have friends at City Hall. Among other positions, Michelle was appointed twice to sit on the board of the Commission of Chicago Landmarks for two consecutive terms. Michelle maintained this board seat from 1998 to March 2005, although normally a member only serves one 4 year term.

Flush from the success of Barack’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the Obamas decided it was time to find a residence more fitting for their anticipated new status. Barack’s 1995 autobiography Dreams of My Father soared, and they knew Alan Keyes was no threat to their future success in the US Senate elections.

Sitting on the Commission of Chicago Landmarks board, Michelle knew of a permit, waiting for review and approval to sell, for a designated Historical Georgian revival home built in 1910 with four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar owned by a doctor in Kenwood. The Commission is supported not only by donations and taxes but also by charges for permits. It’s a pretty extensive process, and they want a complete history of the house and property when a permit is requested. Once the Board approves a permit, the application goes to the city planning or zoning commission if more than a simple sale is involved.

The doctor who owned the Kenwood home wanted more than the Obamas could afford. As Barack has stated in numerous press interviews, buying the home would be a stretch. Barack contacted his patron Tony Rezko, despite knowing he was under investigation at the time, in order to see what could be done so the Obamas could afford their dream house. Sub-division was likely the agreed-on solution. In order to divide the lot, which the doctor purchased as one entity, he would have to:

– Hire an approved architect and general contractor, who had been involved in renovations and sub-divisions in Kenwood previously

– Have the lots surveyed and new plot plans drawn

– Re-start the Landmark Commission permit approval process

– Hold a public hearing (required).

On page 51 of the Commission on Landmarks Ordinances, one finds a justification for the doctor agreeing to subdividing the land.

The applicant bears the burden of proof that the existing use of the property is economically infeasible and that the sale, rental or rehabilitation of the property is not possible, resulting the property not being capable of earning any reasonable economic return.

Pages 51 and 52 of the Landmark ordinances show how many proofs and other forms of extensive documentation are required in order to subdivide the land. Can any rational person believe the doctor would have been willing to go along with having his property sub-divided, and all the work and time involved, without compensation and assistance? Who paid for this?

With Michelle sitting on the Landmarks board, Commission approval wasn’t expected to be an issue, even though I have not located notice of the Public Hearing from any of the involved boards. From there it would go to the City Planning Board and the Zoning Boards, which also require public hearings. Each of these steps average between 6 weeks and 3 months to complete.

The doctor’s property was located in what Chicago Zoning Terms refer to as Residential Single zone 1, or RS1. This means the house the Obamas bought required 6,250 sq. ft of area. Even if it had the designation lowered to RS2, it still would have required 5,000 square feet, as seen on page 5 of Chicago’s zoning ordinances. Starting on page 8, the ordinances specify setbacks and how much space must be available on each side of a building. The open space on the building’s sides normally conform to Fire Regulations, so that equipment can access all portions of a building during crises.

Public Records at the Chicago Commission on Landmarks, the Chicago Planning Department and Chicago Zoning Boards would show the exact dates of permits, hearings and approvals. Michelle was so confident she listed the Obamas’ condo, which was located on the first floor of a Hyde Park Brownstone. In October 2004, Michelle expressed surprise to a Chicago interviewer that the Condo had sold so quickly, which meant they either had to put off a closing date or write in a lease agreement for a specified amount of time in their Condo purchase contract.

2004 was a year flush with success for the Obamas: the autobiographical book sales increased; the DNC speech had been well received; Obama won his US Senate seat; and Michelle received a recent promotion to a $316,962-a-year position as Vice President at The University of Chicago Hospitals. Their income was over 1.67 million dollars, with anticipation of even greater gains ahead.

All that needed to be done, in the name of the doctor, on the Kenwood property was completed by March 2005, and the house was finally listed. Michelle Obama resigned her seat on the Chicago Commission on Landmarks at the same time. Barack and Michelle closed on their new home in June of 2005, for $1.65 million dollars, $300,000 less than the asking price, and most likely using the proceeds of their Condo for a down payment, while taking out a mortgage for $1.32 million from Northern Trust. Tony Rezko’s wife purchased the newly divided sub-plot for the full price of $625,000 and closed on the same day.

The City of Chicago requires parking permits, or people must rent space at parking garages for around $30 per diem. There is no overnight on-street parking. The Obamas had no yard to park on, and most likely parked on Rezko’s property.

Within in a month of purchasing their new home, the Obamas began the same process the doctor previously went through. Because Tony Rezko was being indicted, they needed to be distanced from him. So the Obamas hired a lawyer and an architect. Additionally, the Obama’s wanted to put up a fence separating the two properties. On page 21 of the Landmark Ordinances above, it states fences for Historic homes can be no more than 5’ high and must not be visible from the street. If the Obamas had purchased a prefab chain, picket or wooden fence, they would have lost the Historic designation and also the eight-year property tax freeze benefit accrued by agreeing to keep the house in conformance with Landmark regulations.

A picture of the front view of Obamas’ house reveals landmark and zoning requirements.

The concrete wall and evergreens were most likely done after the city appropriated land for sidewalks, and the paving of what has been noted as a wide and busy thoroughfare. If you notice, the trees were planted one to two feet behind the concrete wall, most probably a result of zoning constraints.

The new fence was specially fabricated to conform to historic standards, and the $14,000 cost was billed to Rezko per agreement by Obama and Rezko. Obama states he paid for the architect and Lawyer. Strangely enough the fence actually sits ON the property line between the two lots. Obama agreed to yard maintenance for both properties. And given Obama’s history with the Harvard Law Review and his limited known court experience from public records, Obama most likely either edited or personally wrote the legal documents for his sub-division and the fence. On January 12, 2006, the Obamas closed on the 1/6th of Rita Rezko’s property they purchased for $104,500.

Facts not specifically cited above, and much more, can be found in this Chicago Tribune article.

In all likelihood the driveway was previously on Rezko land. Behind the house is most likely an old carriage house converted into a garage. Parking on the street in that type of neighborhood is prohibited by zoning and fire safety laws, unless someone in authority had been previously notified of a large gathering.

One other event of note occurred in 2005. Daniel Mahru, Rezko’s partner in Rezmar for 16 years until the two men had, according to Mahru, “a difference of opinion,” resigned from Rezmar, Rezko’s slum landlord operation. Did Mahru leave because he knew any shady deals while Rezko was being investigated would lead to disaster?

There were lots of people involved in the purchase of the Obamas’ house, and they would all be owed some kind of consideration for their help and support. Obama’s favors from Rezko amount to $925,000, plus an additional $14,000 for the fence, bringing the total cash value to just one person to $939,000.

Will Rezko sit quietly in jail or will he bring Mayor Daley, Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama down with him?

How will Obama repay the “favors” he owes all these people?

I am sure Patrick Fitzgerald will reveal all these connections and much more in Rezko’s upcoming trial at the end of this month.