FedUpUSA

Archive for October, 2011

After four years of reporting on the various immoral, unethical and in many cases criminal acts perpetrated by people in our financial system and Congress, we now have our evidence at the bar.

This man was gassed for waving a flag.  He was not alone.

Last night “OccupyOakland” was literally laid siege by the police.  Firing rubber bullets and tear gas into a peaceful gathering, they committed hundreds of cases of felonious assault upon peaceful individuals.  I’ll lay odds that not one of the felons-in-blue will be indicted, prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes.

I remind everyone that our Constitution guarantees you the right of free speech including the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

This does not, of course, include the right to riot, destroy property and commit assaults and batteries.

Well, unless you’re the cops.  Then it appears that you have the right to do all of those things, irrespective of the fact that the people were exercising their lawful First Amendment rights – and nothing more.

The police didn’t stop with tear gas.  They also detonated explosives within the crowd – an act that, taken by an ordinary person, would constitute the use of a bomb and be considered terrorism.

Yeah, I know, they call them “flash-bangs”; intended to stun and surprise.  Let’s call them what they are: They’re explosives, otherwise known as a bomb, and legally known to the BATFE as a “Destructive Device” as they contain more than the lawful limit of powder for a common firecracker. They can (and do) cause personal injury when fired into a crowd.  That injury is reasonably foreseeable when the device is delivered.  This makes the act an intentional deployment of a destructive device with the intent to harm a person – a serious felony.

Of course such felonies are not prosecuted when the police commit them.  Just like the apparent felony murder committed in Chicago by a Gang-Banger in Blue who fatally shot an unarmed man in the back after he had already been shot four other times and was lying prone on the grass.

This man, it appears, was executed in a scene reminiscent of the various murderous thugdoms that have been all-to-common throughout history.  Now we have summary justice-by-gang here, and the gang is wearing blue uniforms and badges!

Police have a tough job, but that’s not an excuse for felonious behavior.  The job of the police is to Protect and Serve.  Lately, it appears they serve themselves, including smuggling guns, slot machines and stolen cigarettes, shooting anyone who might happen to be a nuisance to their “right” to tromp on the people’s necks whenever they so choose.

I’ve long asked the following question: What happens when the people determine that law enforcement agencies – or the government in general – are felons? 

This is no longer a rhetorical question, and the answer should give all law-abiding citizens pause.

I don’t care if you hail from the left or right, or what your particular view of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is.  The fact of the matter is that we no longer have the foundational principle of this nation underlying our nation: The Rule of Law.

That’s the difference between a Constitutional Republic and tyranny.

In a Constitutional Republic you do not have the rule of 100 jackbooted thugs wearing badges, discharging firearms (albeit – thus far – with rubber bullets) at people, tossing bombs into their midst and gassing them.  You also don’t have jackbooted thugs in blue shooting unarmed people in the back.  Any rogue individual who attempts such a stunt goes straight to prison to rot along with the common mugger or murderer, because he or she is one and should an entire agency show up to commit these acts the immediate response is that the National Guard rises and arrests the entire agency, tossing all of them into the clink where they belong.

Today, however, this sort of abusive crap is exactly what we have in this nation and The Guard, who has sworn an oath to protect this land against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is nowhere to be found.

Those in California (along with those in both New York and Chicago) are discovering the hazards of their failure to demand that entire Constitution be strictly enforced in favor of the rights of the people.

Now you see the consequences of that failure America.  You thought you were trading “a bit” of freedom for alleged security.  What you were really doing is ceding your rights to a band of gang-banging felons-in-blue who have now demonstrated their clear intent to gas, bomb and even murder you.

Have you discerned the error of your ways yet?

We shall see.

Dateline Oakland: FELONIOUS ASSAULT By Police?

Well, here it is.  If you want to REALLY STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING Bill Still is the man to do it.

FedUpUSA is honored and excited to endorse Bill Still for President of the United States.  We believe there is no one but Bill who is both knowledgeable and qualified to do what must be done to fix what is wrong with this nation.  We believe the time has come to stop choosing between the lesser of two evils.  The root of our problem is the debt-backed monetary system that allows banks to control the quantity of money in our economy.  This monetary system is the primary cause of the massive corruption between government and our financial system.

Corruption is a disease that spreads uncontrollably when the rule of law has been lost.  Our system of government was made with a division of powers among three separate branches of government, all constrained by limited scope and common-sense principles, for the sole purpose of inhibiting corruption and the inevitable rise of an elite ruling class.

Today, however, we have more than thirty-five thousand registered lobbyists in Washington DC. That’s nearly seventy lobbyists for each member of Congress.  Together they spent almost three and a half billion dollars last year — that’s over six and a half million dollars per congressman. With that money, they buy influence, not on behalf of The People, but to put forward the agendas of their clients.  Huge corporations, international banks, power brokers on Wall Street, foreign governments, media giants — the real self-appointed ruling class — their lobbyists write the bills, the congressmen work as scripted front men for tainted legislation and then they vote as they’re told.  This country was founded as a representative republic, but We The People are no longer represented.

There is no more ‘equal justice under the law’ – – there are laws written to favor the elite who pay the congressmen to write them and there are ‘exemptions’ to most laws to allow for the criminal activity of the elite.  Until the rule of law is restored, the financial crisis will not end.  The financial crisis is but a symptom of a disease that is terminal for the Republic.

Bill Still is the only candidate who can change all this.  Please consider supporting Bill and help STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING!

Obama and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan See Eye To Eye

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is introducing a new program on Monday designed to lower monthly mortgage payments for more troubled homeowners.

But a key new condition in the plan would shift the financial liability for refinanced loans from Wall Street banks to the American taxpayer. And by focusing on lower payments, the program does not confront what housing experts view as the core problem in the foreclosure crisis — borrower debt that exceeds the value of one’s home.

Faced with the weak response to the Home Affordable Refinance Program, the Obama administration is planning to open up the program to all borrowers who owe more on their mortgage than their homes’ worth, commonly dubbed being underwater, and have not missed a mortgage payment. HARP had been limited to borrowers who owed up to 25 percent more than their home is worth. More than 22 percent of all home mortgages — or 10.9 million homes — are currently underwater, according to CoreLogic data. Fewer than 900,000 borrowers have elected to go through HARP to date.

The revised program also eliminates several fees associated with refinancing that can make the decision to refinance uneconomical for borrowers. But the potential benefit of the eliminated fees could be relatively small: If a few thousand dollars worth of fees made refinancing a bad deal for underwater borrowers, the ultimate benefits that refinancing can pose would remain limited.

On a conference call with reporters, White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling referred to the HARP expansion as “a win-win policy” that will result in “less defaults” and “fewer foreclosures.” But one of the program’s new terms will benefit private-sector Wall Street banks, potentially at the expense of taxpayers.

The newly expanded program would expunge legal liabilities associated with mortgages refinanced through the program for the original lenders of the mortgages. Each time a bank sent a loan to Fannie and Freddie, it certified that the loan met Fannie and Freddie’s safe lending criteria. But many loans sent to the mortgage giants did not, in fact, meet those criteria. Currently, when borrowers default on those ineligible loans, the mortgage giants can “put back” the resulting losses onto the banks that pushed the loans.

Under the modified plan, “put back” liability at banks will be erased for any underwater mortgage that is refinanced through HARP, eliminating Fannie and Freddie’s ability to sack lenders with losses in the event that the mortgage does not pan out.

If borrowers go through HARP, but decide after several months that the modest monthly savings do not outweigh owing tens of thousands of dollars more than their home is worth, taxpayer-owned Fannie and Freddie will have to take the full loss. Even if the original loan was sent to Fannie and Freddie with false or fraudulent guarantees from the bank — promises that may directly be tied to the borrower’s current financial problems — banks will be immune from liability. Fannie and Freddie plan to charge banks “a modest fee” to extinguish this liability, but the administration has yet to determine what that fee will be.

While the revised program seeks to lower mortgage payments for underwater homeowners, the program does nothing to address the core problem — owing more than the home is worth. Though borrowers may save hundreds of dollars a month in lower payments by refinancing, they routinely owe tens of thousands of dollars more than their homes are worth, even after receiving aid.

“In most cases people would probably be better off walking,” said economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research.

During a conference call with reporters, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan acknowledged that negative equity is a problem, and said the administration hopes to address the issue on other fronts. Donovan cited settlement negotiations with big banks over widespread allegations of foreclosure fraud and initiatives under the Home Affordable Modification Program, a separate Obama foreclosure-relief plan administered by banks, as key initiatives.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have both objected to the foreclosure fraud settlement talks on the grounds that they give away too much to banks without investigating the scope of fraud problems in the system. The Home Affordable Modification Program has been a hotbed for the kind of borrower abuses that the administration is pressuring lenders to settle over.

Zach Carter – Huff Po

You’re not going to like this.

I don’t care.

Let me make this clear in case the title wasn’t: The Republican Party bears UNITARY responsibility for what is about to happen to the United States economy and political system.

That’s right: UNITARY responsibility.

It’s simple, really: The Constitution requires that all spending bills must originate in The House.

Therefore, the overspending, today is the responsibility of THE HOUSE, which has a Republican majority. 

Yes, it used to have a Democrat majority.  Then a Republican one before that.  But let’s remember how the die was cast here.

• Gramm-Leach-Bliley.  All three sponsors were from which party?
• Alan Greenspan allowed “sweeps” which were a blatant attempt to evade reserve requirements.  Since that was their only purpose they were intentionally fraudulent edifices.  Which political party’s President nominated him to The Federal Reserve?
• Alan Greenspan was responsible for off-balance-sheeting Medicare and Social Security.  Which party did that again?  (Hint: Someone named “Ronald” was the President at that time and appointed that commission.)

Do not take this to indicate that Democrats are not also responsible for the lead-up to this.  They are.  The fact of the matter is that both major political parties have serially made promises that cannot be kept.

This is active fraud upon the public and both parties are guilty of it.  In a just society the leaders of both parties would be indicted, tried and imprisoned for attempting to run serial Ponzi Schemes on the public.  We do not, obviously, live in a just society and the proof of same is that jackals like Reid and Boehner are free to ravage, er, wander amongst the people of this nation.

But that’s then, and this is now.

NOW we need to cut the federal budget not with a knife or a scalpel, but a chainsaw.

Bachmann has said “43%.”  There were gasps when she uttered those words.

Sorry, that’s not enough.  (Take your heart medication before continuing folks.)

Here’s the math.

Last year (Calendar 2010) we ran a 12% of GDP deficit, $1.7 trillion.  This year we are tracking to run about $1.4, but we have three months left.  If history repeats as to size it’ll come in around $1.4 trillion, which is approximately 9% of GDP.  This is within the rough range of 9-12% of the last three years.

The last year of Bush’s Presidency we ran somewhat over 9% of GDP.  Obama has run 11 and 12%, respectively, and this will be ~9-10%, so there’s no change in that regard.

But withdrawing the deficit spending is not enough because the withdrawal of that money, when it runs through the economy, then produces a (gross) reduction in tax receipts.  Figure 1/3rd of that deficit spending ultimately returns to the government in the form of taxes in some form or fashion by the time all of the “turns” those funds made in the economy (e.g. from company making the presidential limo to the folks making the alternator to the folks making the copper wire to the mine pulling the copper out of the ground), and subtract that off as well.

So now we need to reduce spending not by $1,700 billion but that plus about another $500 billion for the tax impact, for a total of $2.2 trillion out of $3.7 trillion spent.  About $500 billion of our spending at present is interest so this means we have: $3.7 – $2.2 – $0.5 = $1 trillion in total actual federal spending available to us out of an original $3.7 trillion.

Were you sitting down when you ran that number?

To put this in perspective DOD is $750 billion.  You cannot pay for both that and any of the “big 5″ entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, TANF/WIC/etc and Unemployment)

You can cut DOD by 50% and cover one of the big entitlement programs in full.  The other four and everything else in the Government gets zeroed.

I know what you’re going to say: That’s impossible – it will collapse everything.

Go talk to the Republican Party folks.  They allowed this to continue past August with the debt ceiling vote and they’ve allowed this through passing “continuing resolutions” where they had the ability to stop them in the Senate (since there was no filibuster-proof majority) all the way since George Bush was President.

When George Bush was President the gross reduction (in 2007) to address this was about 25%, not 43%.  It was still horrific, but not as bad.

Nobody from either party is telling the truth.  It doesn’t matter: Right now responsibility rests with the party that can put a stop to it here, now and today.

That party is the Republican Party.

This is an exponential series and in 2007 the contraction was about 25%.  Now it’s up to more than half and if we don’t cut this crap out we’re going to lose the ability to choose what happens at all.

Can we do this “more slowly”?  A bit, but not much.

Just remember one thing: So long as the government is running a deficit we’re merely extending how long we have before it all blows up – we’re not changing the outcome.

Yes, folks, it’s that bad.  I know people don’t want to hear it or believe it, but just because you don’t want to believe something does not make it untrue.

It just means you’re being an Ostrich and if that’s a hunter you are sticking your head in the sand to “avoid” dealing with you’re about to be turned into dinner.

The glory of debt spending and casino financial markets.  What is the typical income, tax situation, and household income for Americans?  Americans claiming student loan deduction surges from 4 million to 10 million in roughly one decade.  According to IRS AGI needs to be above $1 million to qualify for top one percent.

This weekend I spent time digging through IRS and Social Security data to get a better perspective on working and middle class Americans.  I find it amazing that in a consumer driven economy, meaning we live to spend in some respect that the media never even bothers to focus on household incomes.  Even on self branded “business” programs with fancy watermarks which tout their major expertise on knowing about Americans they fail to do any analysis on income.  Need we even point out their missing of the biggest economic recession in our recent history?  This silence as you know is purposeful.  The media is largely beholden to advertisers and it might be perceived as a downer to tell the public how far back they have gone in the last decade on the income treadmill.  It is understandable although not acceptable that large television outlets do not discuss wages and income but what about the respectable press?  Where is there voice?  Either way, as we dig into the data it is understandable why so few even bother to cover this unsavory topic.

Tax return data by income levels

First, let us gather a glimpse of actual household tax filing information:

Source:  IRS

With all the discussion about the 99 percent I think you have many people that are largely off on what they assume is the one percent.  The media is largely to blame and I have even seen business outlets interview people that claim to make $100,000 and are afraid of being taxed because they are in the one percent.  Uh, not exactly.

Let us examine the data:

66 percent of tax returns show an adjusted gross income of $50,000 or less

31 percent of tax returns show an adjusted gross income between $50,000 and $100,000

So with these two groups, you are covering 97 percent of all households.  Now keep in mind we are looking at adjusted gross income so actual wages will be higher, but not by much.

“So what does it take to be in the top one percent?  You will need an adjusted gross income of $1,000,000 or more.”

Even folks with an AGI between $200,000 and $500,000 don’t fall in this category.  Of course Wall Street investment bankers want to make people believe that even with a $100,000 household income that somehow if investment banks were regulated that they will lose their entire life savings (this is actually already happening with housing and the casino known as Wall Street).

Let us dig deeper into the tax data.

Read the rest at My Budget 360

It’s been a while since we reviewed the economic data. It’s not a pretty sight. David Cay Johnston took a long look at the first income data we have for 2010 in First look at US pay data, it’s awful (Reuters).

Anyone who wants  to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street and similar  protests across the country need only look at the first official data on  2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted on the Internet on  Wednesday.

The figures from payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration on jobs and pay are, in a word, awful.

These  are important and powerful figures. Maybe the reason the government  does not announce their release — and so far I am the only journalist  who writes about them each year — is the data show how the United States  smolders while Washington fiddles.

Doesn’t announce their release? Fiddling while Rome burns? Imagine that! Quelle surprise!

There were fewer jobs and they paid less last  year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more  than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009.

The  median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down  1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level,  after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.

The  number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more  than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million.

More significantly, the number of people with any  work has fallen by 5.2 million since 2007, when the worst recession  since the Great Depression began, with a massive taxpayer bailout of  Wall Street following in late 2008…

While median pay — the halfway point on the  salary ladder declined, average pay rose because of continuing increases  at the top.    Average pay was $39,959 last year, up $46 — or less than  a buck a week — compared with 2009. Average pay peaked in 2007 at  $40,764, which is $15 a week more than average weekly wage income in  2010.

The number of workers making  $1 million or more rose to almost 94,000 from 78,000 in 2009. However,  that was still below some earlier years, including 2007, when more than  110,000 workers made more than $1 million each…

Even as income and the number of workers fell in 2010, CPI inflation hit a new 3-year high of 3.9% (annual rate) in September. However, you will be pleased to know that non-core inflation is up only 2% over the past year, and that’s the more important number. Unlike normal people, Federal Reserve officials do not require food and never pay for gasoline, preferring to use teleportation instead. (You can disregard the rumor that they are from outer space.) The Wall Street Journal’s Kathleen Madigan covered the inflation issues in Pay Raises Trail Behind Even Mild Inflation.

When even a hawk like Charles Plosser acknowledges inflation isn’t a near-term threat, you know price pressures are a nonissue for the recovery.

See? For Fed officials, even if they are “hawks” like Charles Plosser, inflation is a non-issue. You know, for “the recovery”.

Last week, Plosser, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and one of the dissenters to recent monetary policy decisions, said he expects “inflation will moderate in the near term.”

Plosser remain cautious about future inflation — as any inflation  hawk would be — but he’s right to recognize current price pressures are  extremely low. The Labor Department said Wednesday the  consumer price index [CPI] increased 0.3% in September. Core prices, which  exclude food and energy, were up a milder 0.1%.

The Fed tends to watch the core rate, and policymakers are probably happy that core prices are up just 2.0% over the past year.

Households, however, have to deal with the jumps in energy and food  prices. The annual top-line inflation is running at a faster 3.9%.

Over  the past year, food prices have risen 4.7%, gasoline costs 33.3% more  and the cost of fuels and utilities used at home are up 4.0%. While  households can reduce buying some of these staples, they cannot avoid  them completely, which leaves less money to spend on other items.

More troubling for the consumer outlook, wage gains aren’t keeping  pace with price hikes. Real weekly earnings rose in September for the  first time since May. But the 0.2% gain reflected workers putting in  longer shifts, not from wages increasing. Real hourly wages fell 0.1% in  September from August.

After rising briefly at the start of this recovery, real hourly pay  is back to about where it was two years ago — despite the fact that  worker productivity has risen more than 5% since then.

There you have it. Fewer jobs, lower pay, 3.9% annual inflation and wage gains decreases are not keeping up with price hikes. Jobs and prices—American workers are getting screwed both ways, being shafted, sucking it up, getting the short end of the stick, taking it up the wazoo. In short, little has changed since the last time we looked at the economic data. What was Johnston’s word?

Awful.

Decline of Empire