Sunday, April 1, 2012

OBAMA'S LA RAZA "THE RACE" INFESTED ADMINISTRATION - CECILIA MUNOZ MEXICAN FASCIST FUNDED BY OBAMA AND WORKING OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE

OBAMA HAS INFESTED HIS ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA SUPREMACIST TO ADVANCE HIS AGENDA OF KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED FOR HIS WALL ST. PAYMASTERS (MOST OF WHO ARE LA RAZA DONORS).

THERE IS NO PRESIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY THAT HAS ASSAULTED THE AMERICAN WORKER, AND OUR BORDERS MORE THAN LA RAZA OBAMA!

CECILIA MUNOZ – LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY MEMBER WORKING IN OBAMA’S LA RAZA INFESTED ADMINISTRATION TO PUSH AGENDA OF LA RAZA SUPREMACY!

IT MUST BE WORKING! OBAMA SUES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OF ARIZONA WHO HAVE ATTEMPTED TO DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST THE MEX INVASION AND WELFARE STATE IN ARIZONA!
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VIVA LA RAZA? NOBODY DOES IT LIKE THE HISPANDERER OBAMA!

Lou Dobbs Tonight

Monday, February 11, 2008

In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third‑nation neutral arbitration of disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.

They claim all of North America for Mexico!
UCLA PROFESSOR CALLS FOR MEXICAN REVOLT IN UNITED STATES

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

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
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“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.” AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY
http://www.aztlan.net/anchor_baby_power.htm

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"This country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!

H. R. 1999, entitled the Hope Fund Act of 2007, should truthfully be labeled the "Perpetual Funding of La Raza Radicals Act."
THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN THE “WISE LATINA BITCH” SONYA SOTOMAYER WAS BECAUSE SHE PANDERS TO WALL ST. AND BIG BUSINESS LIKE OBAMA, AND HISPANDERS TO ILLEGALS LIKE OBAMA. JUDGE SOTOMAYER REFERS TO ILLEGALS AS “Undocumented Aliens”… LA RAZA SUPREMACY IN THE HIGH COURT!

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ACCORDING TO CA ATTORNEY GEN. (LA RAZA DEM), NEARLY HALF OF ALL MURDERS IN CA ARE BY MEX GANGS!

CNN NOW REPORTS THERE ARE NEARLY ONE MILLION MEX GANG MEMBERS IN THIS NATION!
Lou Dobbs Tonight    

And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.

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OBAMA’S LA RAZA MEX SUPREMACIST INFESTED ADMINISTRATION… and you thought he only had BANKSTERS working out of the White House?


"Despite his solemn promise to the American people to keep lobbyists out of his Administration, two more have slipped in. The Hill reports:

The waivers were provided for Jocelyn Frye, director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Munoz, director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president.
Munoz was a senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, where she supervised all legislative and advocacy activities on the state and local levels. Munoz was heavily involved in the immigration battles in Congress in recent years, and is now a principal liaison to the Hispanic community for the administration.
Thanks for all the lies, Obama!!"
“PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”… does that mean assault the legals of Arizona that must fend off the Mexican invasion, occupation, growing criminal and welfare state, as well as Mex Drug cartels???

OBAMA TELLS ILLEGALS “PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”

Friends of ALIPAC,

Each day new reports come in from across the nation that our movement is surging and more incumbents, mostly Democrats, are about to fall on Election Day. Obama's approval ratings are falling to new lows as he makes highly inappropriate statements to Spanish language audiences asking illegal alien supporters to help him "punish our enemies."

The fastest growing political party in America is NOT the tea baggers! It is the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA… “The Race”. .. The House now as 90 members, nearly one-quarter, that are CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS pushing for AMNESTY, no e-verify, expanded sanctuary cities, open borders, and illegals voting!

NATOINAL COUNCIL  OF LA RAZA

NCLR: Agents for the Government of Mexico?


Especially troubling is NCLR's leading role in the Fundacion Solidaridad Mexicano Americana (Foundation for Mexican-American Solidarity, FSMA), an organization founded and funded by the government of Mexico and directed by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Public Education. Both of these ministries have been engaged in efforts aimed at demanding full political rights for illegal aliens in the U.S. and indoctrinating America's Hispanic population in radical, racist La Raza ideology.
YOU WANTED TO TELL YOURSELF THAT ILLEGALS WERE NOT VOTING???? STOP AND SMELL THE TACO TRUCK! THIS IS A NATION UNDER VOLUNTARY OCCUPATION BY MEXICO!

JOBS GO TO ILLEGALS FIRST, ALONG WITH WELFARE AND LA RAZA MEXICAN SUPREMACY!

REALITIES ON THE MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION and EVER EXPANDING MEX WELFARE STATE…. It’s all about HISPANDERING for the ILLEGALS’ VOTES!

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“On Thursday, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, flatly predicted that Congress would not send an immigration measure to the president this year. Mr. Boehner accused Democrats of engaging in a “cynical ploy to try to engage voters, some segment of voters, to show up in this November’s elections.”

FROM NEW  YORK TIMES, MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA  AND 10% OWNED BY MEX BILLIONAIRE CARLOS SLIM:

November 22, 2010

NO ONE SEEMS TO HAVE TOLD THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, MEXICO, OR LA RAZA THAT IT'S STILL ILLGAL FOR ILLEGALS TO VOTE! BUT THEN THEY BREAK ALL OTHER LAWS IN OUR NATION WITH IMPUNITY. WHY SHOULD THAT BE DIFFERENT?
The Power of the Hispanic Voter

Democrats were hurt in the midterm election by low turnouts or faltering support from voters who were young, black or female. But overwhelming support from Hispanic voters appears to have helped elect Democratic senators in Nevada, California, Colorado and possibly Washington State. Hispanic voters may have kept the Senate in Democratic hands.
Several Hispanic Republicans were also elected, including two governors, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and a senator, Marco Rubio of Florida. But, over all, Hispanics voted at a rate of 2 to 1 for Democrats, according to several polls, and many were stirred to action by viciously anti-immigrant ads or comments made by Republican candidates.

Eligible Hispanic voters represent about 9 percent of the national electorate, a slight increase over previous years, but the percentages are much higher in the West, climbing to 22 percent in California. They are less predictably partisan than other ethnic groups and the two major parties have long contested for their votes. Early polls had suggested that many were disappointed in both parties for failing to act on immigration reform, and it appeared that they might sit out the midterms.

Then came a series of ads by Republican candidates like Sharron Angle, who was running for the United States Senate in Nevada. One of hers depicted Hispanics sneaking over the border, carrying weapons and appearing in police mug shots. Tom Tancredo, whose anti-immigrant sentiment was already known, ran for governor of Colorado by telling workers that their jobs were threatened by illegal immigration. Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, pandered to the same sentiment by saying her former housekeeper, an illegal immigrant, should have been deported.
Now Hispanic political activists had galvanizing issues. Groups like Mi Familia Vota, La Raza and Lulac spent the last weeks of the campaign organizing voters against these diatribes. A tracking poll conducted by Latino Decisions, a polling organization, found that the number of very enthusiastic Hispanic voters shot up to 58 percent on Oct. 25 from 40 percent a month earlier.

As the Hispanic electorate continues to grow faster than the overall population in the years ahead, the 2010 election should be a useful lesson. Anti-immigrant demagoguery occasionally works, as it did in a number of Republican victories in Arizona this year. But more often it will produce an angry reaction among a growing group of committed voters.


“PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”… does that mean assault the legals of Arizona that must fend off the Mexican invasion, occupation, growing criminal and welfare state, as well as Mex Drug cartels???

OBAMA TELLS ILLEGALS “PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”

Friends of ALIPAC,

Each day new reports come in from across the nation that our movement is surging and more incumbents, mostly Democrats, are about to fall on Election Day. Obama's approval ratings are falling to new lows as he makes highly inappropriate statements to Spanish language audiences asking illegal alien supporters to help him "punish our enemies."

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The fastest growing political party in America is NOT the tea baggers! It is the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA… “The Race”. .. The House now as 90 members, nearly one-quarter, that are CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS pushing for AMNESTY, no e-verify, expanded sanctuary cities, open borders, and illegals voting!

LaRaza Calls For Boycott Against Free Speech





No surprise here. Pulling the race/hate card again and using political correctness La Raza goes after cable shows reporting on illegal immigration.

"Murguía said she recognized that ultimately the power to change the debate lies with the Hispanic community itself. “Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs,” she said. “Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We have a significant role to play picking winners and losers in both arenas. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril.”

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/50375/
The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is not only one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful militant organizations in the country, it is also notoriously racist and subversive. The group's name, "La Raza," means "The Race," by which they are referring to ethnic Mexicans, or more broadly to "hispanics" or "latinos." And it is quite clear from their decades of vitriolic rhetoric — both spoken and written — that the La Raza activists are trying to engender not only race consciousness amongst hispanic U.S. citizens and Mexican migrants, but also racial militancy and animosity toward "Gringo America."


The NCLR grew out of the La Raza Unida (The Race United) Party and the Southwest Council of La Raza in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The key leaders were Marxist-Leninist followers of Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra.
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MAYOR ANTONIO “TACO RUNT”VILLARAIGOSA OF LOS ANGELES IS A LONG STANDING MEMBER OF THE MEX FASCIST PARTY OF M.E.Ch.A.
IN LOS ANGELES, 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SSI. THE COUNTY PAYS OUT $600 MILLION IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS!!! THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR CHARACTERIZES LOS ANGELES AS THE MEX GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICA!
The radical student group MEChA (Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), with which NCLR has been closely allied for several decades, is even more explicitly and militantly, having adopted the slogan, "Por La Raza Todo, Fuera de La Raza Nada," which translated means: "For the Race, Everything; Outside the Race, Nothing."
MEChA's founding documents and literature are replete with appeals to "La Raza de Bronce" (The Bronze Race) and condemnation of the "brutal gringo." MEChA, as its name suggests, is also a leading promoter of the radical "reconquista" (reconquest) movement, a plan of to take over the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas — a region they refer to as "Aztlan" — which they claim was stolen from the "Aztecan" peoples. NCLR provides major financial support to MEChA and many of NCLR's leaders were MEChA leaders in their college days.
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Friends of ALIPAC,

Many of you will remember that I told America on Fox News on Election Day 2010 that the Democrats planned to use illegal alien voters to save themselves from the Tea Party revolution. We believe we saw that with illegal alien voters saving Harry Reid in Nevada.

Now we have more evidence and we need you to take swift action to make this count.

Florida now joins the states of Georgia and Colorado where we have solid evidence of massive illegal alien voter registration and stolen American votes in elections.

Take the following important steps.

Step 1: Watch, rate, and comment on this copy of the video. Each time you watch it and comment you will help the video make it other people.

VIDEO: Illegal Immigrants Caught Voting In Florida In Vast Numbers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILJDudUpct0


Step 2: Forward this video to everyone you can via email, Facebook, and Twitter and ask them to do the same.

Step 3: Take the time this week to make sure you send copies of this video with a note encouraging officials to take action to your 1. Federal elected officials 2. State elected officials 3. Local state and Federal candidates for public office. 4. Local media. 5. Favorite national media. 6. Local board of elections. 7. State board of elections. 8. State Governor.

If thousands of you will respond to our simple request and spend about 30 minutes doing this then we might be able to generate enough interest and momentum to secure some of your ballots from illegal alien thefts.

If Americans set idle on our requests, then illegal aliens will likely continue stealing your vote and elections and your nation in 2012.


Will you act? Please do.


William Gheen & The ALIPAC Team
www.alipac.us


PS: Please report that you are taking action, ask questions, or share feedback at this link...
http://www.alipac.us/f8/massive-illegal-alien-election-fraud-detected-florida-take-action-now-254416/#post1270621

LaRaza Calls For Boycott Against Free Speech








No surprise here. Pulling the race/hate card again and using political correctness La Raza goes after cable shows reporting on illegal immigration.

"Murguía said she recognized that ultimately the power to change the debate lies with the Hispanic community itself. “Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs,” she said. “Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We have a significant role to play picking winners and losers in both arenas. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril.”

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/50375/

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is not only one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful militant organizations in the country, it is also notoriously racist and subversive. The group's name, "La Raza," means "The Race," by which they are referring to ethnic Mexicans, or more broadly to "hispanics" or "latinos." And it is quite clear from their decades of vitriolic rhetoric — both spoken and written — that the La Raza activists are trying to engender not only race consciousness amongst hispanic U.S. citizens and Mexican migrants, but also racial militancy and animosity toward "Gringo America."

The NCLR grew out of the La Raza Unida (The Race United) Party and the Southwest Council of La Raza in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The key leaders were Marxist-Leninist followers of Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra.

 
FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE” - OBAMA'S PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS:

by Michelle Malkin

(get Malkin’s book on OBAMA NOTED below!)

Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."

Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty.

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Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race":

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15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

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14."The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.

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13. "The Race" vehemently opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities.

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12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border.

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11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and to prevent local police officers from accessing the data.

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10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing.

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9. "The Race" joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.

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8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."

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7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.

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6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."

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5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."

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4. "The Race" is currently leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."

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3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain … ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."

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2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.

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1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy -- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' -- and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."

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The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza.

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LA RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”….

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA

1126 16th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

202-785 1670

Get on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand the Mexican occupation. NCLR.org

FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACY

LA RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL.

LA RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERICANS, AMERICAN LAWS, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, and the AMERICAN FLAG.

However LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.

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/


ACCORDING TO JUDICIAL WATCH, FUNDING FOR LA RAZA UNDER OBAMA HAS SOARED! YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!

HARRY REID PUTS MONEY IN LA RAZA’S DIRTY HANDS!

25% OF THE POPULATION OF REID’S STATE ARE ILLEGALS.
New Stealth Federal Funding Bill for La Raza

Which brings us to an extraordinary matter of some urgency. Several weeks before the White House and its Senate allies announced their big "breakthrough" legislation (S.1348), radicals in the House quietly introduced legislation to pump $5 million directly into La Raza next year — and $10 million per year for "each fiscal year thereafter."

“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.”  AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY

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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/

How To Accurately Detect Disingenuous Politicians

"Just look for the ones talking about jobs, taxes, health care, education, and government budgets, without addressing the negative impact of illegal immigration." -- William Gheen, President of ALIPAC. May 27, 2011


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-accurately-detect-disingenuous.html

OBAMA - WHY WALL STREET GORGES ON OBAMA - OR IS HE MERELY BUSH'S THIRD TERM? MAYBE THE ILLEGALS' FIRST ELECTED LA RAZA PRESIDENT???



HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS MADE MORE MONEY DURING THE FIRST TWO YEARS UNDER OBAMA, THAN THEY DID ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!

NOT ONE HAS GONE TO PRISON, EVEN HAS HUNDREDS OF OCCUPY WALL ST PROTESTORS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED.

IN FACT, THE SHIFT THIS NATION’S ECONOMY DEEPER INTO THE POCKETS OF THE RICH HAS CONTINUED UNABATED UNDER OBAMA!

HE IS THE 1% PRESIDENT, AND IF YOU’RE A BANKSTER, OR STRONG TIE$ TO BANKSTERS, OR A LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER, YOU CAN COME WORK FOR THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT!


 “This return of corporate power comes in part because the revolving door between government influence and corporate paydays has begun to turn anew. Even President Obama has submitted to its centrifugal force. His new White House chief of staff, William Daley, comes directly from J.P. Morgan Chase. Daley scored that lucrative gig after serving as commerce secretary during Bill Clinton's second term.”


TWO YEARS OF OBAMA:
Fifteen million Americans are out of work, thanks in part to reckless Wall Street activities. Yet corporate profits are at record highs, companies are sitting on vast amounts of cash, and, after a tough two years, business interests are again atop the Washington power structure.

THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE, LIKE OBAMA, ADVOCATES NO BORDERS WITH MEXICO, NO E-VERIFY, AND AMNESTY, OR AT LEAST CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT. IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!

Big business is back in business

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, January 12, 2011;

There was a festive atmosphere at U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters Tuesday morning as the corporate lobby delivered its annual "State of American Business" address.

Margaret Spellings, the former Bush Cabinet officer who cashed out and joined the business group, made the introductions, telling members that despite "the worst economic climate since the Great Depression," the chamber had scored a "number of legislative victories, tremendous success in the elections and another strong year of fundraising."

Thanks to the chamber, Spellings boasted, "the American business community always has a seat at the table."

A seat? Business has just about all the seats at the table - and more on back order.

Fifteen million Americans are out of work, thanks in part to reckless Wall Street activities. Yet corporate profits are at record highs, companies are sitting on vast amounts of cash, and, after a tough two years, business interests are again atop the Washington power structure.

This return of corporate power comes in part because the revolving door between government influence and corporate paydays has begun to turn anew. Even President Obama has submitted to its centrifugal force. His new White House chief of staff, William Daley, comes directly from J.P. Morgan Chase. Daley scored that lucrative gig after serving as commerce secretary during Bill Clinton's second term.

As Daley came in through the revolving door, OMB Director Peter Orszag had just gone out. He cashed out to become a vice chairman of Citigroup, where his government expertise should be worth seven figures annually. One of Orszag's partners on Obama's economics team, Larry Summers, is returning to Harvard - but that won't stop him from delivering the keynote address to the Global Hedge Fund Summit in Bermuda.

The thrill of cashing out has been endorsed by Obama himself. Explaining press secretary Robert Gibbs's decision to depart, the president told the New York Times: "He's had a six-year stretch now where basically he's been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay." The poor Gibbs, who had been earning a "modest" $172,200 a year, is now contemplating making much more than that representing corporate clients.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, corporate interests are becoming increasingly brazen. Lobbyists have snagged key staff jobs in the new GOP House leadership and chief-of-staff positions in many new lawmakers' offices. On the day John Boehner was elected speaker last week, lobbyists were literally strutting their stuff on the House floor.

Bob Livingston, the former Republican congressman, was buttonholing members; he's the head of a lobbying firm that advertises Livingston as "the only practicing former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee." Also on the floor, Marty Russo, the longtime Democratic congressman who had just stepped down as head of the lobbying giant Cassidy and Associates, shook Boehner's hand.

A House Republican source says Livingston left when informed that, as a registered lobbyist, he was not allowed to be on the House floor.

Such behavior by lobbyists - both registered lobbyists and unregistered corporate "advisers" - has become more common. At last year's State of the Union address, Post congressional correspondent Paul Kane observed, on the House floor, former members Mike Ferguson, who runs a lobbying firm, and Jim Greenwood, CEO of the biotech lobby. Kane has also spotted former senator Bill Cohen, who runs a big lobbying and consulting firm, on the Senate floor; former representative Sherry Boehlert, now a lobbyist, in the Speaker's Lobby off the House floor; and lawmaker-turned-lobbyist Al Wynn entertaining clients in the members' dining room.

The Center for Responsive Politics has identified more than 340 former members of Congress, and 3,665 former staffers, in lobbying or related fields. The few rules to slow the revolving door do little, both because of the routine granting of waivers and because of loose registration requirements for lobbying.

All of this gave the business lobby much to celebrate as chamber members discussed the State of American Business over mini-muffins and banana bread Tuesday morning. Tom Donohue, the chamber's white-maned CEO, hailed the "new tone coming from the White House" since the elections - which the chamber influenced by spending tens of millions of dollars from donors kept anonymous, Donohue explained, so opponents couldn't "demagogue them." Donohue said he's "absolutely convinced" that the new business-friendly White House will move his way on regulation and trade.

A reporter asked Donohue for a suggestion of what corporate America, with its record profits, should do to put people back to work. "I got to think about this for a minute," Donohue said, then added: "I think the most important thing to tell a company is to return a reasonable return to their investors."

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NEW YORK TIMES

January 10, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist

The Other Plot to Wreck America


THERE may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much.

What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.

The window for change is rapidly closing. Health care, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic may have exhausted Washington’s already limited capacity for heavy lifting, especially in an election year. The White House’s chief economic hand, Lawrence Summers, has repeatedly announced that “everybody agrees that the recession is over” — which is technically true from an economist’s perspective and certainly true on Wall Street, where bailed-out banks are reporting record profits and bonuses. The contrary voices of Americans who have lost pay, jobs, homes and savings are either patronized or drowned out entirely by a political system where the banking lobby rules in both parties and the revolving door between finance and government never stops spinning.

It’s against this backdrop that this week’s long-awaited initial public hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are so critical. This is the bipartisan panel that Congress mandated last spring to investigate the still murky story of what happened in the meltdown. Phil Angelides, the former California treasurer who is the inquiry’s chairman, told me in interviews late last year that he has been busy deploying a tough investigative staff and will not allow the proceedings to devolve into a typical blue-ribbon Beltway exercise in toothless bloviation.

He wants to examine the financial sector’s “greed, stupidity, hubris and outright corruption” — from traders on the ground to the board room. “It’s important that we deliver new information,” he said. “We can’t just rehash what we’ve known to date.” He understands that if he fails to make news or to tell the story in a way that is comprehensible and compelling enough to arouse Americans to demand action, Wall Street and Washington will both keep moving on, unchallenged and unchastened.

Angelides gets it. But he has a tough act to follow: Ferdinand Pecora, the legendary prosecutor who served as chief counsel to the Senate committee that investigated the 1929 crash as F.D.R. took office. Pecora was a master of detail and drama. He riveted America even without the aid of television. His investigation led to indictments, jail sentences and, ultimately, key New Deal reforms — the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the formation of banks too big to fail.

As it happened, a major Pecora target was the chief executive of National City Bank, the institution that would grow up to be Citigroup. Among other transgressions, National City had repackaged bad Latin American debt as new securities that it then sold to easily suckered investors during the frenzied 1920s boom. Once disaster struck, the bank’s executives helped themselves to millions of dollars in interest-free loans. Yet their own employees had to keep ponying up salary deductions for decimated National City stock purchased at a heady precrash price.

Trade bad Latin American debt for bad mortgage debt, and you have a partial portrait of Citigroup at the height of the housing bubble. The reckless Citi executives of our day may not have given themselves interest-free loans, but they often walked away with the short-term, illusionary profits while their employees were left with shredded jobs and 401(k)’s. Among those Citi executives was Robert Rubin, who, as the Clinton Treasury secretary, helped repeal the last vestiges of Glass-Steagall after years of Wall Street assault. Somewhere Pecora is turning in his grave

Rubin has never apologized, let alone been held accountable. But he’s hardly alone. Even after all the country has gone through, the titans who fueled the bubble are heedless. In last Sunday’s Times, Sandy Weill, the former chief executive who built Citigroup (and recruited Rubin to its ranks), gave a remarkable interview to Katrina Brooker blaming his own hand-picked successor, Charles Prince, for his bank’s implosion. Weill said he preferred to be remembered for his philanthropy. Good luck with that.

Among his causes is Carnegie Hall, where he is chairman of the board. To see how far American capitalism has fallen, contrast Weill with the giant who built Carnegie Hall. Not only is Andrew Carnegie remembered for far more epic and generous philanthropy than Weill’s — some 1,600 public libraries, just for starters — but also for creating a steel empire that actually helped build America’s industrial infrastructure in the late 19th century. At Citi, Weill built little more than a bloated gambling casino. As Paul Volcker, the regrettably powerless chairman of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said recently, there is not “one shred of neutral evidence” that any financial innovation of the past 20 years has led to economic growth. Citi, that “innovative” banking supermarket, destroyed far more wealth than Weill can or will ever give away.

Even now — despite its near-death experience, despite the departures of Weill, Prince and Rubin — Citi remains as imperious as it was before 9/15. Its current chairman, Richard Parsons, was one of three executives (along with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and John Mack of Morgan Stanley) who failed to show up at the mid-December White House meeting where President Obama implored bankers to increase lending. (The trio blamed fog for forcing them to participate by speakerphone, but the weather hadn’t grounded their peers or Amtrak.) Last week, ABC World News was also stiffed by Citi, which refused to answer questions about its latest round of outrageous credit card rate increases and instead e-mailed a statement blaming its customers for “not paying back their loans.” This from a bank that still owes taxpayers $25 billion of its $45 billion handout!

If Citi, among the most egregious of Wall Street reprobates, feels it can get away with business as usual, it’s because it fears no retribution. And it got more good news last week. Now that Chris Dodd is vacating the Senate, his chairmanship of the Banking Committee may fall next year to Tim Johnson of South Dakota, home to Citi’s credit card operation. Johnson was the only Senate Democrat to vote against Congress’s recent bill policing credit card abuses.

Though bad history shows every sign of repeating itself on Wall Street, it will take a near-miracle for Angelides to repeat Pecora’s triumph. Our zoo of financial skullduggery is far more complex, with many more moving pieces, than that of the 1920s. The new inquiry does have subpoena power, but its entire budget, a mere $8 million, doesn’t even match the lobbying expenditures for just three banks (Citi, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America) in the first nine months of 2009. The firms under scrutiny can pay for as many lawyers as they need to stall between now and Dec. 15, deadline day for the commission’s report.

More daunting still is the inquiry’s duty to reach into high places in the public sector as well as the private. The mystery of exactly what happened as TARP fell into place in the fateful fall of 2008 thickens by the day — especially the behind-closed-door machinations surrounding the government rescue of A.I.G. and its counterparties. Last week, a Republican congressman, Darrell Issa of California, released e-mail showing that officials at the New York Fed, then led by Timothy Geithner, pressured A.I.G. to delay disclosing to the S.E.C. and the public the details on the billions of bailout dollars it was funneling to its trading partners. In this backdoor rescue, taxpayers unknowingly awarded banks like Goldman 100 cents on the dollar for their bets on mortgage-backed securities.

Why was our money used to make these high-flying gamblers whole while ordinary Americans received no such beneficence? Nothing less than complete transparency will connect the dots. Among the big-name witnesses that the Angelides commission has called for next week is Goldman’s Blankfein. Geithner, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should be next.

If they all skate away yet again by deflecting blame or mouthing pro forma mea culpas, it will be a sign that this inquiry, like so many other promises of reform since 9/15, is likely to leave Wall Street’s status quo largely intact. That’s the ticking-bomb scenario that truly imperils us all.

*
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/18/112346/obama-ran-against-bush-but-now.html

Posted on Mon, Apr. 18, 2011

Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him

Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: April 19, 2011 09:15:43 PM

WASHINGTON — He ran as the anti-Bush.

Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change.

Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.

On the nation's finances, the man who once ripped Bush as a failed leader for seeking to raise the nation's debt ceiling now wants to do it himself.

On terrorism, he criticized Bush for sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them access to U.S. civilian courts. Now he says he'll do the same.

On taxes, he called the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy wrong, and lately began calling again to end them. But in December he signed a deal with Republicans to extend them for two years, and recently he called the entire tax cut package good for the country.

And on war, as a candidate he said that the president didn't have authority to unilaterally attack a country that didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S., and even then the president should always seek the informed consent of Congress. Last month, without a vote in Congress, he attacked Libya, which didn't threaten the U.S.

Big differences remain between Obama and Bush, to be sure. His two nominees to the Supreme Court differ vastly from Bush's picks. Obama does want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. He also pushed through a massive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.

Yet even on health insurance, his stand wasn't so much a reversal of Bush's approach as an escalation. Bush also pushed through a massive expansion of Medicare by adding a costly prescription drug benefit — at the time, the biggest expansion of a federal entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Indeed, some of the differences between the two presidents are measured in gray, not black and white as once seemed the case.

Some of the changes in Obama can be attributed to the passion of campaign rhetoric giving way to the realities of governing, analysts say.

"He is looking less like a candidate and more like a president," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "He has discovered that it's much easier to make promises on the campaign trail than it is to keep them as president."

At the same time, some of the surprising continuity of Bush-era policies can be tied to the way Bush and events set the nation's course, particularly on foreign policy.

"Morphing into Bush was not a willful act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."

For example, Obama found he couldn't easily close the prison at Guantanamo Bay because he couldn't find a place, abroad or at home, willing to take all the terrorist suspects held there.

"Bush created, on the military and security side, new realities from which no successor, Democrat or Republican, could depart, "Miller said. "It's like turning around an aircraft carrier. It cannot happen quickly."

Among the ways Obama has reversed his earlier promises and adopted, extended or echoed Bush policies:

DEBT

In 2006, Bush had cut taxes, gone to war, and expanded Medicare, and increased the national debt from $5.6 trillion to $8.2 trillion. He needed approval from Congress to raise the ceiling for debt to $9 trillion.

The Senate approved the increase by a narrow vote of 52-48.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted no.

"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally," Obama said in 2006. "Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

Now Obama's on the other side. He's increased the national debt to $14 trillion, and needs Congress to approve more debt. Moreover, Obama's aides now say that congressional meddling to use that needed vote to wrangle budget concessions from the White House would be inappropriate and risk financial Armageddon.

What about Obama's own vote against the president in a similar situation? A mistake, the White House said.

TAXES

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000 a year past their expiration on Dec., 31, 2009.

In 2007, he said he was for "rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the top 1 percent of people who don't need it." In a 2008 ad, he said, "Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, I'll focus on you."

As president, Obama proposed letting those tax cuts expire as scheduled, while also proposing to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for incomes of less than $250,000.

But he didn't get Congress to approve that. When the issue came to a head last December, Republicans insisted on extending all of the tax cuts or none, and Obama went along lest the tax cuts on incomes below $250,000 expire even briefly. His final deal with the Congress also added a one-year cut in the payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security.

"What all of us care about is growing the American economy and creating jobs for the American people," Obama said. "Taken as a whole, that's what this package of tax relief is going to do. It's a good deal for the American people."

He said again last week that he wants to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, this time on Dec. 31, 2012.

TERRORISTS

As a presidential candidate, Obama vowed a broad reversal of Bush's policies toward suspected terrorists.

Most pointedly, he said he'd close the prison in Cuba and try suspected terrorists in civilian courts, not in military tribunals.

"I have faith in America's courts," he said in a 2007 speech. "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

He ran into a torrent of opposition, however. Members of Congress balked at transferring suspected terrorists to U.S. prisons. New Yorkers balked when his administration said it would try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan.

Last month, he changed course, saying he'd keep Guantanamo Bay open, and would try Mohammed before a military court.

The reversal, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, "is yet another vindication of President Bush's detention policies by the Obama administration."

Echoing Bush, Obama's also asserted that he has the power to hold suspected terrorists without charges or trial, and that he has the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad if his government considers them a terrorist threat.

WAR POWERS

During his campaign, Obama signaled that he'd be far more circumspect than Bush was in using military power. He did say he'd send more troops to Afghanistan, which he's done, and that he'd attack al Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, which he's also done.

But he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and said he didn't think the president should wage war for humanitarian purposes or act without congressional approval, absent an imminent threat to the U.S.

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe in 2007.

"In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action."

On March 19, the U.S. attacked Libya on humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from Congress.

ORGY OF GREED… Wall Street Celebrates Victory Over Their Crimes on Americans! AND NO ONE SERVES THIS GREED MORE THAN BARACK OBAMA!

*
“On the other side of the social divide is an uninhibited orgy of greed, documented most recently by a Wednesday story in the New York Times (“Signs of Swagger, Wallets out, Wall Street Celebrates.”
Thanksgiving in America

US corporations shatter profit records

25 November 2010

US corporations took in $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, breaking records going back 60 years, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. It was the seventh consecutive quarter of profit growth at “some of the fastest rates in history” according to the New York Times.

If any more proof were needed, the third quarter profit record exposes the lie promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike that only the “free market” and private businesses can reverse the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate. The corporations and banks are sitting on a cash horde in the trillions of dollars. This money is not being used to hire workers, but to line the pockets of the executives and top shareholders.

The profit bonanza that lasted from July through September eclipsed the old record of $1.655 trillion established in the third quarter of 2006—just as the money-mad speculation of the financial elite was hurtling the US and world economy toward the precipice of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The resulting financial crisis, which erupted in the autumn of 2008, threatened a total collapse of the global financial system. In response, the governments of the world, led by the US, used the disaster to hand over tens of trillions in public wealth to the very finance houses that triggered the crisis. This process continues, as demonstrated by the International Monetary Fund/European Union-dictated rescue of the Irish banks this week.

The enormous profit realized by US corporations in the third quarter are only the latest indication that the Bush-Obama bailout of the financial and corporate elite has achieved its desired aim of protecting the personal fortunes of the rich:

*Annual bonuses rose by 11 percent for executives at the 450 largest US corporations last fiscal year, according to a recent survey published by the Wall Street Journal. Overall, median compensation—including salaries, bonuses, stocks, options and other incentives—rose by three percent to $7.3 million in 2009. Shareholder returns increased by 29 percent.

*An October survey by the Wall Street Journal found that employees at 35 of the biggest banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money management firms, and securities exchanges will be paid a record $144 billion in 2010.

*According to Forbes magazine, the net worth of the 400 richest Americans increased by 8 percent in 2010, to $1.37 trillion, more than the GDP of India, population 1.2 billion.

These vast fortunes have been made possible through the impoverishment of the working class, the vast majority of the population that must work in order to maintain itself.

*In 2009, 15 percent of all US households, about 50 million people, went part or all of the year without enough food to eat, according to a recent report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). More than a third of these households, home to one million children, went without meals on a regular basis.

*A record 49.9 million US adults went without health insurance for at least part of the past year, up from 46 million in 2008, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The uninsured now constitute 26.2 percent of the total adult population, more than one in four, up from 24.5 percent two years ago.

*Average annual wages for US workers fell by $457 in 2009, and the median annual wage fell by $247 to $26,261, according to recently updated data from the Social Security Administration (SSA).

*The US Census Bureau found that about 44 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, the highest number on record and an increase of 3.8 million in one year. Nearly 19 million Americans were living in extreme poverty in 2009, defined as half of the official poverty level, an increase of 11 percent in one year.

This sampling—many similar statistics could be cited—paints a portrait of a financial oligarchy literally gorging itself at the expense of the population. Yet this reality, which permeates every aspect of life in the US, has only whetted the appetite of the elite and its political servants.

The holiday season finds the lame duck 111th Congress putting the finishing touches on two years of wealth redistribution to the rich. It is almost certain to extend Bush-era income tax cuts for the richest Americans.

On November 30, five days after the Thanksgiving holiday, unemployment benefits will expire for 1.2 million workers due to Congressional inaction. By Christmas and the New Year, this figure will swell to 2 million. The fate of these workers and the several million children who depend on them, tossed out without cash income into the worst job market in seven decades, is of little consequence to the millionaires and multi-millionaires who populate Congress.

One result of these policies is that more people than ever, including those with jobs, are forced to turn to soup kitchens, even on a day when families traditionally gather for a holiday associated with the “bountiful harvest.” Charities across the country are reporting record demand for help on Thanksgiving—a holiday established at a national level by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to honor the material abundance of the Republic, even in the midst of the Civil War.

On the other side of the social divide is an uninhibited orgy of greed, documented most recently by a Wednesday story in the New York Times (“Signs of Swagger, Wallets out, Wall Street Celebrates.”) From cosmetic plastic surgery to high-priced art auctions, from rental properties in the Hamptons to bachelor parties that cost tens of thousands of dollars, “Wall Street’s moneyed elite are breathing easier again,” the article states.

The stranglehold over society and the economy exercised by this parasitic social layer, this modern-day aristocracy, must be broken once and for all.

Tom Eley

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

*
OBAMA'S PROMISE TO BANKSTERS: "I'm not here to punish banks!" FLOOR OF THE SENATE, STATE of the UNION MESSAGE!
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, November 12, 2007

Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Banks of America are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners. We’ll have that report.

“Rightly or wrongly, the bankers seem to believe that a return to business as usual is just around the corner.”  PAUL KRUGMAN


NEW YORK TIMES

April 27, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Money for Nothing


On July 15, 2007, The New York Times published an article with the headline “The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age.” The most prominently featured of the “new titans” was Sanford Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, who insisted that he and his peers in the financial sector had earned their immense wealth through their contributions to society.

Soon after that article was printed, the financial edifice Mr. Weill took credit for helping to build collapsed, inflicting immense collateral damage in the process. Even if we manage to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression, the world economy will take years to recover from this crisis.

All of which explains why we should be disturbed by an article in Sunday’s Times reporting that pay at investment banks, after dipping last year, is soaring again — right back up to 2007 levels.

Why is this disturbing? Let me count the ways.

First, there’s no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify those humongous paychecks.

Remember that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy’s wheels turning.

So why did some bankers suddenly begin making vast fortunes? It was, we were told, a reward for their creativity — for financial innovation. At this point, however, it’s hard to think of any major recent financial innovations that actually aided society, as opposed to being new, improved ways to blow bubbles, evade regulations and implement de facto Ponzi schemes.

Consider a recent speech by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, in which he tried to defend financial innovation. His examples of “good” financial innovations were (1) credit cards — not exactly a new idea; (2) overdraft protection; and (3) subprime mortgages. (I am not making this up.) These were the things for which bankers got paid the big bucks?

Still, you might argue that we have a free-market economy, and it’s up to the private sector to decide how much its employees are worth. But this brings me to my second point: Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private sector. It’s a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a k a “welfare.”

I’m not just talking about the $600 billion or so already committed under the TARP. There are also the huge credit lines extended by the Federal Reserve; large-scale lending by Federal Home Loan Banks; the taxpayer-financed payoffs of A.I.G. contracts; the vast expansion of F.D.I.C. guarantees; and, more broadly, the implicit backing provided to every financial firm considered too big, or too strategic, to fail.

One can argue that it’s necessary to rescue Wall Street to protect the economy as a whole — and in fact I agree. But given all that taxpayer money on the line, financial firms should be acting like public utilities, not returning to the practices and paychecks of 2007.

Furthermore, paying vast sums to wheeler-dealers isn’t just outrageous; it’s dangerous. Why, after all, did bankers take such huge risks? Because success — or even the temporary appearance of success — offered such gigantic rewards: even executives who blew up their companies could and did walk away with hundreds of millions. Now we’re seeing similar rewards offered to people who can play their risky games with federal backing.

So what’s going on here? Why are paychecks heading for the stratosphere again? Claims that firms have to pay these salaries to retain their best people aren’t plausible: with employment in the financial sector plunging, where are those people going to go?

No, the real reason financial firms are paying big again is simply because they can. They’re making money again (although not as much as they claim), and why not? After all, they can borrow cheaply, thanks to all those federal guarantees, and lend at much higher rates. So it’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may be regulated.

Or maybe not. There’s a palpable sense in the financial press that the storm has passed: stocks are up, the economy’s nose-dive may be leveling off, and the Obama administration will probably let the bankers off with nothing more than a few stern speeches. Rightly or wrongly, the bankers seem to believe that a return to business as usual is just around the corner.

We can only hope that our leaders prove them wrong, and carry through with real reform. In 2008, overpaid bankers taking big risks with other people’s money brought the world economy to its knees. The last thing we need is to give them a chance to do it all over again.

http://www.FAIRUS.org
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 Guideto American History

*

·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1596986123

·         ISBN-13: 978-1596986121


ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?


GET THIS BOOK!

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin

Editorial Reviews

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

From the Inside Flap

The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily

* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide

* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration

* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons

* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power

* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

Product Details

           Hardcover: 376 pages

           Publisher: Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)

           Language: English

           ISBN-10: 1596981091

           ISBN-13: 978-1596981096

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