Dr. Barbara Bellar Candidate for Illinois State Senate, District 18 sums up Obamacare in one sentence. Please go to my website and contribute to my campaign. I am running against the Chicago Machine and I could use your financial help! Go to electbellar.com or send your checks to Citizens to Elect Barbara Bellar – PO Box 557766, Chicago, IL 60655.
Some weird shit going on in China. Who’s in control? Their economy is imploding and there appears to be a power struggle going on for the top spot. Fits nicely into the Fourth Turning Crisis scenario.
The China Post
Media speculate Xi injured in accident
10 September 2012There were a series of media reports saying that Chinese Vice President and presumptive future top leader Xi Jinping was injured in a traffic accident, barring him from some public functions.
Xi and He Guoqiang, who supervises discipline affairs in China, have been receiving medical treatments at Beijing’s 301 Military Hospital after they were injured in two separate road accidents on the evening of Sept. 4, according to reports of Boxun, a U.S.-based citizen news website.
There were also reports in Hong Kong media about the accidents, sparking speculation and rumors that they were assassination attempts.
Xi, aged 59 and a new-generation leader in China, has been widely tipped to take over the top Communist post from General Secretary Hu Jintao at the Communist Party Congress expected to take place in October this year. Xi is also expected to take over national presidency in next March.
But there were rife rumors after Xi canceled a public appearance for a meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sept. 5.
There were also unconfirmed reports that Xi was suffering from a painful spinal cord problem.
The media cited internal Beijing sources claiming that Xi was involved in a mysterious car accident in Beijing.
His vehicle was sandwiched by jeeps and Xi was said to have passed out during the collision before being rushed to Beijing’s 301 Military Hospital with injuries.
According to the source, He Guoqiang, the secretary of the Commission for Discipline Inspection, was involved in a separate road accident on the same night when a truck traveling at high speed hit his car from behind, causing it to turn over.
He also was rushed to the 301 Military Hospital and was said to be in a more critical condition.
There were rumors that the perpetrators could be military officers and supporters of Bo Xilai, former commerce minister and Chongqing party boss, who has been in detention for investigation concerning unspecified “serious discipline violations” since March.
Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was given a suspended death sentence last month for her role in murdering British businessman Neil Heywood. Bo was believed to have helped cover up the crime.
General Liu Yuan, political commissar of the General Logistics Department of the People’s Liberation Army of China, was reportedly to have personally coordinated the medical treatment for Xi and tightened security at the military hospital.
Liu, son of former Chinese President Liu Shaoqi, who was persecuted by ex-Communist leader Mao Zedong, was once thought to be among the senior military officers that have built close ties with Bo, son of another former Chinese Communist leader.
But Liu was thought to have ceded relations with Bo because of his close relations with Xi, who is expected to treat Liu as one of his own men in the influential military sector…
Nothing like a little Kunstler on a Monday morning to make you want to slit your wrists. This is a longer than normal depressingly accurate assessment of the world. Did you actually think this Fourth Turning would get better?
By James Howard Kunstler
on September 10, 2012 8:28 AM
In an age of gross zeitgeist dysfunction — when untruth, delusion, and deception rule – politics is mere advertising, which is to say surface shimmer playing on the public’s wish-fulfillment fantasies. The trouble at this moment in history is that the American public’s wishful fantasies are inconsistent with the circumstances that reality offers to us and the choices for action that they present.
President Obama’s historical role will be seen as a wish-fulfillment totem for late 20th century progressive liberalism – the first black president. The Democratic Party apotheosized the genial young lawyer with his appealing family in order to demonstrate the triumph of social justice, which was their great struggle of the era. Evidence of that is the striking divergence from the get-go between Mr. Obama’s Hope and Change advertising and his sedulous defense of pervasive racketeering at the highest levels of polity once in office. Otherwise, you must decide whether he was a tool of the giant banks, or a dupe-made-hostage to them, or simply too clueless to understand what was required in 2009 – namely the break-up and reorganization of the banks plus hearty prosecution of their executives for massive swindling (along with reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act). I voted for him in 2008, by the way, since the wish-fulfillment motif moved me, and also because of the horrifying McCain-Palin opposition.
In office, then, Mr. Obama quickly proved to be a different breed of porpoise than the voters bargained for. He let the Wall Street privateers run amuck another four years, aided with colossal infusions of conjured-out-of-nothing “money” from the Federal Reserve. He let loose the demons of a high-tech totalitarian “security” state with every sort of electronic surveillance, citizen data-mining, and drone spying that innovation allowed. He stood silent like a Banana Republic store mannequin after the supreme court decided that corporations could buy elections (he could have pushed loudly for legislation or even a constitutional amendment to redefine corporate “personhood”). And of course, he continued to prosecute the absurd war in Afghanistan where, after nine years, US forces are unable to accomplish the only aims of being there: to control the terrain and to moderate the behavior of the people who live there.
Hence, the appalling spectacle of the Democratic convention last week, with its odor of ideological bankruptcy, stale rhetoric, and empty promises. The party seeks only validation of its cherished fantasy: the social justice of reelecting the first black president. And all it really has to offer is cheerleading to that end – with some social justice table-scraps tossed to the lesser totems of social justice politics: women, assorted ethnic minorities, and gays.
Meanwhile, the “advanced nations” of industrial civilization all spiral into coordinated disintegration, especially in the realm where economy meets finance. Economy is about what we actually do to stay alive: make things, trade things, grow things, run things. Finance is supposed to be about maintaining the flows of accumulated wealth to support these things we do – with a modest service charge for the financiers who do the work. But in the great divorce of truth from reality in our time, finance is only about pretending to maintain these “capital” flows. In fact, it has degenerated into a set of looting operations, swindles, frauds, and political dodges, and it is on the verge of blowing up.
There’s a fair chance that global finance (and trade) will blow up this season leading to the US elections. The nations of Europe are stuck in an intractable predicament. The European Union can’t control the fiscal operations (taxing and spending) of its sovereign members, and it only pretends to be able to lend them the money to cover the interest payments on their previous loans. That shuck-and-jive is now headed for a climax. But the situation is not materially different in the USA and Japan. In one way or another, they are bankrupt, too, as are probably most of their commercial banks. China’s banks are certainly a fiasco, since they are government-run, with no independent accounting oversight whatsoever. China does have a big cushion of US Treasury holdings, huge stockpiles of industrial metals and cement, and many new tons of recently-acquired gold. But they are also hostage to the bankrupt West’s lost appetite for “consumer” goods, and tens of millions of laid-off Chinese factory workers could foment political upheaval in a delicate time of regime transition coming later this year.
The antics of the ECB, the US Federal Reserve, and all the other central banks in conjuring ever more money-out-of-nothing draws us toward that event horizon where faith is lost in a faith-based money system. The only question really is whether wealth destruction (deleveraging, debt default) out-paces currency destruction (inflation). My own guess continues to be that wealth destruction wins that contest, with massive unpayable debt sucked into a black hole, and then all the advanced industrial nations waking up one oddly warm morning to find their standards of living destroyed.
As a political matter in the face of all this, the big question is how we will reorganize daily life – the activities of a whole culture – to comport with the reality of a compressive contraction in economic reality. It also includes the shape and content of the consensus we construct to explain to ourselves what is happening. The obvious epic failure of the two major parties in the USA to even begin this necessary work may propel this country into an historic political convulsion to attend the financial implosion. Imagine, for instance, if the failure of international banks leads to the rapid paralysis of trade supply lines and then to empty shelves in American supermarkets.
People complain about “the size and burden of government,” but our problems extend to the size and burden of everything, beginning with the number of human beings now vying to occupy the planet and moving to the size and scale of every activity supporting them. Truthful political leadership would engage in preparing the public for a long “to do” list of necessary tasks – from the return to Main Street economies that will follow the inevitable collapse of WalMart to the reorganization of food production when agri-biz style farming fails from scarcities of cheap oil, phosphates, and capital for revolving loans. Include also the rebuilding of transportation networks not based on cars and airplanes and the painful reconstruction of a monetary and banking system based on the rule of law.
This is the true work of the future: the rebuilding of these systems. All the blather about “jobs” from the presidential convoys is based on looking backward to a way of life that is ending: the age of giant everything, especially corporations. The days of cubicle serfdom are numbered. Useful, gainful work in the decades ahead will be much more about how you fit into your local community. The word “job” may even become obsolete – a curious artifact of the industrial past. Which party is preparing young people for local agriculture and all the value-added activities around it? Which party understands that the national chain-store model of trade is doomed and Main Streets all over America will have to be re-activated? Which party understands that we’re in the twilight of mass motoring and commercial aviation? And what are they doing to prepare for the implications of that?
The two doddering parties want to promise more of what we’ve already got in a world that doesn’t have anymore of that to give. The result is likely to be that we will go through all the noisy motions of the 2012 elections only to find ourselves plunged into a political crisis possibly worse than the Civil War.
Sidebar on How “Smart” We Think We Are
TV commercial seen during the Women’s finals of the US Tennis Open:
Cadillac is bragging that they have replaced the old dashboard knobs and toggles with a “smart” iPad-type control system. Has a car company ever done something so fucking stupid? The whole point of knobs and toggles is that you can keep your eyes on the road while adjusting things by feel. An iPad you actually have to look at to see what you’re tapping on. Expect a colossal death toll from buyers of the latest Cadillacs in the next couple of years. I suppose there’s poetic justice in the automobile age winding down on a note of such supernatural idiocy.
Hold onto your socks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. It really isn’t as complicated as the morons and numbskulls in the MSM and government want you to believe. It’s simply the boom and bust cycle playing out as it has done for centuries. The average American is significantly poorer than they were in 2005. Their net worth has plummeted. If they’ve stayed employed, their real wages have declined. Millions have lost their jobs and are either unemployed or under-employed.
Americans buying cheap shit produced in China, using credit, was what made the world go round. Well guess what? When Americans were forced to scale back on buying shit, the rest of the world got kicked in the balls. Anyone who thinks the Chinese economy will keep chugging along without Americans and Europeans buying their socks, toxic dog food and rubber dog shit, is living a dream.
China has hit the proverbial wall at 100 mph. The casualties are many. The government will keep reporting fake economic numbers and the U.S. MSM will dutifully report them with a straight face. This will continue until this sand castle of hope, built on a foundation of socks, crumbles into the hamper of history.
So Solly.
The hosiery business has been good to the entrepreneurs of Datang, who rode out the 2008 crisis and recovered. But now business is slowing again – and experts fear that may presage a hard landing for the whole country
The foolish man built his house upon sand; the wise man built his house on a rock. The ambitious entrepreneurs of Datang chose a sturdy nylon and wool foundation. “People always need socks,” points out Xu Leile, whose company clothes the feet of the British and US armies, European hikers and pampered pet dogs.
Thanks to Xu and hundreds more like him, “Sock City” – north-west of Tie Town, east of Sweater Town – epitomised China‘s economic success story. The obscure settlement in eastern Zhejiang province became an export-driven boomtown, producing as much as a third of the world’s sock supply and thriving even through the financial crisis in 2008 and the subsequent global recession.
Last year, Datang made roughly two pairs of socks for every person on earth. Long and short, Argyle or polka-dotted, they cram the stores of the nearby wholesale market. In Xu’s spacious new factory, the shelves are stacked with huge reels of red, blue and orange thread. But ask Xu about the future and he grimaces. “I’m very worried. This year is much worse than 2008-9,” he says.
The biggest of his rivals to have gone under in May – the Anli Sock Group, which produced 60m pairs of socks annually – could prove to be “the Lehman Brothers of Datang”, according to Fan Jianping, chief economist of the State Information Centre.
Failures such as Anli’s and a slew of disappointing data in recent weeks are raising fears far beyond China that a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy is turning into a hard landing. In the face of Europe’s woes and the weak US recovery, Chinese growth has become more important than ever: the ripples are already being felt globally, with commodities analysts blaming tumbling prices on falling demand from China.
The country’s premier, Wen Jiabao, has issued repeated warnings about the economy, saying growth is under pressure and exports need support. Last week’s announcement of approval for infrastructure projects, which some estimate to be worth 1tn yuan (£99bn), appears to be an indication of just how alarmed authorities have become about the largely investment-driven economy.
Until now, they have taken a series of milder measures, such as cutting the reserve ratio requirement and reducing interest rates, mindful of the painful hangover that resulted from the huge 4tn yuan stimulus they adopted to stave off the last crisis. That inflated property prices again and left a legacy of massive local government debt and questionable loans and infrastructure projects.
China’s economy saw second-quarter growth of 7.6% year-on-year: enviable to US or European eyes, but the lowest rate in three years, and the sixth straight quarter of slowing growth. Export growth slid to 1% in July – the lowest rate for three years, bar January, which was skewed by the lunar New Year holiday – and earlier this week, the official factory purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.2 – the first time since November that it had dropped below the 50 barrier separating expansion from contraction.
“We should be very worried,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of Beijing-based J Capital Research. “The economy has been in a hard landing since the fourth quarter of last year, but seems to have been helped by the consumer economy … That’s now down as well.”
Most analysts are more optimistic, at least for now. While growth has fallen from a peak of 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010, when there were concerns about overheating, the decline is far less steep than last time, when it plummeted from a peak of 14.8% in the second quarter of 2007 to a low of 6.6% in early 2009.
But Alistair Thornton of IHS Global Insight warns: “More of the indicators we are looking at are showing strain and weakness. It’s nowhere near what we were looking at four years ago, but nonetheless pretty ugly.
“There are huge stockpiles of coal at Qinhuangdao; steel factories in Hebei are over capacity; in retail, auto dealers have two, three, four months’ more stock than they are used to.”
Cranes still tower over construction sites, but no one is working in them, says Yu Wankun, the sales manager for SANY Excavators in Jiangsu, the neighbouring province to Zhejiang.
“I feel like a blossoming summer has suddenly turned into a dull winter,” he laments. “In 2008, we didn’t feel the crisis at all. This year, we do feel the crisis has really struck. The government’s stimulus created a bubble. But many local governments are in debt now and the central government’s financial support has stopped.”
The knock-on effects hit people hard when exports started falling in May, says Xiao Zhou, boss of another Datang firm. “A lot of sock companies started doing real estate in Jiangsu – they went bust because of the property market, not because of sales,” he says.
Back in the sock factory, Xu says 73 clothing firms have gone under this year, with some leaving behind debts of billions of yuan. Things have not been so bad since 2003, when foreign buyers stayed away because of the Sars crisis. Usually Xu goes to the US once a year; this time, he has made three trips – but one major customer halved its usual $5m order anyway. Sales to civilian customers are down by at least a fifth.
It is a sign of the times that his firm, Huazhong, considers the boom in sales to the Syrian army as a rare bright spot. “Last year they bought 870,000 pairs. This year it’s 960,000 already,” he says. Few might imagine that camouflage or khaki ribbed socks came in so many varieties, but French, Singaporean and Saudi Arabian soldiers have proved exacting customers.
But Datang also has its strengths. Smart entrepreneurs have moved away from piling high and selling cheap to targeting foreigners. Xu decided early on to focus on high-quality products and military sales, which he hoped would prove more stable and more lucrative. Though his company has dabbled in producing woolly hats, lacy tights and dog booties, Xu’s latest target is the medical market, with products such as support stockings. Others in Datang have focused on domestic consumers or sought new markets in rival developing countries.
The rise in Chinese purchases and the increase in trade to the Middle East should also help to offset problems elsewhere, says Hou Zhiping, general manager of the city’s hosiery market.
So far, there is little sign of rising unemployment – admittedly a trailing indicator – which might fuel fears of social unrest. At the labour market in nearby Yiwu, a recruiter for the Xialaite sock company grumbled about the difficulties of finding enough employees.
Geoff Crothall of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based group supporting mainland workers, says there have been noticeably more layoffs than last year, especially in Zhejiang and Guangdong, “but nothing like 2008-9, when 20m workers were laid off … I don’t think there’s a huge number of unemployed migrant workers wandering around.”
Recruiters in those provinces had previously complained of severe labour shortages, he points out, and opportunities in migrants’ home provinces have improved: “Recently it was reported that, for the first time, there were more rural labourers from Sichuan working within the province than outside it.”
Beijing’s push to develop inland areas has also had some success, as Crothall points out: while Zhejiang’s economy grew 5.2% in the first half of 2012, down from 12.1% in the same period last year, western areas like Sichuan, Chongqing, Shaanxi and Guizhou all saw rates of above 16%, according to official figures.
But growth is now slowing in those regions, too – and because their economies are so much smaller, they have less effect on the overall situation. “You would have to triple Xinjiang’s economy to have an impact on the national picture … If you can’t fix Guangdong, you can’t fix China,” says Thornton.
Yet, says Patrick Chovanec of Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management, the outlook is not uniformly negative: “This is an economic adjustment and, in the long run, will be good for China and the world, but it doesn’t mean it won’t be painful.”
Officials and analysts have long warned that the Chinese economy is unsustainable; that the years of double-digit growth were fuelled by investment and exports, and that rebalancing and reform were desperately needed.
A powerful editorial in Caixin, the country’s most influential business magazine, raised fears that local governments were ignoring the centre’s cautious approach and instead attempting another major stimulus that would crowd out smaller private enterprises, deter competition and increase distortions in the system.
Continuing to pursue high-speed growth, fuelled by government investment, will mean that “growth will fall; discrimination will become pervasive, and rent-seeking and corruption rampant; our society and environment will be pushed to their limits; and development cannot be sustained. The mass protests, riots and environmental disasters we have seen are just some of the consequences of this distorting growth model. They are a warning,” it said.
“If we continue to hanker for economic ‘miracles’, we must be prepared to pay a high price in future.”
Additional research by Cecily Huang and Kathy Gao
Have you heard the news? Auto sales are booming. Total sales for the month of August were 1,285,202 vehicles, according to Autodata Corp, the highest monthly sales figure for any August since 2007, when 1.47 million autos were sold in the United States. Year to date auto sales have totaled 9.7 million and are on track to reach 14.5 million. Between 2006 and 2007, auto sales ranged between 16 million and 18 million. They crashed below 10 million in 2009. The Keynesians running our government have pulled out all the stops to restart this engine of consumer spending. First they wasted $3 billion of taxpayer funds on the Cash for Clunkers debacle. Almost 700,000 perfectly good cars were destroyed in order to keep union workers happy. This Keynesian brain fart distorted the used car market for two years, raising prices for cars needed by the working poor. After that miserable failure, they realized the true secret to selling vehicles is to give them away to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document, with 0% interest for 60 months, financed by Federal government controlled banking interests. Add in some massive channel stuffing and presto!!! – You’ve got an auto sales boom.
General Motors sales are up 3.7% over 2011. Ford Motors sales are up 6% over 2011. The Obama administration continues to tout their saving of the U.S. auto industry with their bailout in 2009 that saved unions and screwed bondholders. If this strong auto recovery is not an illusion, how do you explain the two charts below? General Motors stock is down 42% since 2011. The highly proclaimed success story called Ford Motors has seen their stock collapse by 50% since 2011. This is surely a sign of tremendous success and anticipation of soaring profits for these bastions of American manufacturing dominance.
This is America, land of the delusional and home of the vain. The appearance of success is more important than actual success. The corporate mainstream media dutifully reports the surge in auto sales is surely a sign the economy is recovering and the consumer has finished deleveraging and is ready to spend again. The government propaganda machine proclaims the surging auto sales are due to their wise and forward thinking policies (like the Chevy Volt). Luckily for them, there are millions of gullible Americans who believe the storyline and are easily convinced that driving a $30,000 new car, financed over seven years, makes them a success. The decades of Bernaysian marketing propaganda has worked its magic on the government educated, math challenged citizenry. There are only two things that matter to the non-thinking auto buyer (renter) – the monthly payment and what the next door neighbor and his coworkers will think. Buying a fuel efficient car they can afford, paying it off in three or four years, and driving it for ten years, while saving the monthly car payment, is what a practical, rational thinking person would do. The fact that only 20% of the 9.7 million vehicles sold this year have been small cars and the average sales price of new cars sold is now $31,000 proves Americans are still living in a delusional fantasyland of cheap gas and monthly payments for eternity.
As gas prices surpass $4 per gallon across the country, somehow 4.7 million of the 9.7 million vehicles sold in 2012 have been pickups, vans, crossovers or SUVs. Three of the top eight selling vehicles are pickups. Luxury vehicle sales are booming, with Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Land Rover and Audi showing double digit percentage sales gains over 2011. We’ve entered a recession, gas prices are approaching all-time highs, job growth is pitiful, and Americans continue to buy luxury gas guzzlers on credit. This will surely end well.
The average payment on a new car in 2012 is $461. For used cars, the average monthly payment is $346. Today, 77% of new car purchases are financed. About half of all used vehicles involve financing. Of those cars financed, 89% are through a loan vs. 11% with a lease. A critical thinking person might wonder how a country with 4 million less employed people than we had in 2007, median household net worth down 35%, and real wages lower than they were in 2007, could be experiencing an auto boom. The answer is a government/corporate/banker/media effort to funnel taxpayer funds to deadbeats across the land in a fruitless attempt to create a facade of recovery. Our governing elite are convinced that more debt peddled to the masses is the path to recovery for an economy that imploded due to excessive debt peddled to the masses in the first place. Essentially, it comes down to who benefits from the peddling of debt. It isn’t the masses, as they become enslaved in the chains of debt and monthly payments in perpetuity. Debt peddling benefits Wall Street bankers, politicians, and mega-corporations selling crap to the masses.
The storyline being sold to the vegetative dupes (watching Honey Boo Boo) that occupy space in this delusional paradise we call America, by the corporate media, is that consumers have deleveraged and are ready to resume their “normal” pattern of spending money they don’t have on stuff they don’t need. Of course, the facts always seem to get in the way of a good yarn. Consumers have never deleveraged. Consumer credit outstanding is at an all-time high of $2.58 trillion. The decline from $2.55 trillion in 2008 to $2.4 trillion in 2010 was NOT deleveraging. It was the Wall Street Too Big To Fail banks taking a big dump on the American taxpayers. They passed their bad debts to you through TARP, the Federal Reserve buying their toxic “assets”, and ZIRP.
Revolving credit (credit card) debt peaked at just above $1 trillion in 2008 and “declined” to $850 billion during 2010. The media storyline is that you buckled down and paid off your credit cards, therefore depressing consumer spending and creating a recession. Sounds convincing except for the fact that it’s a load of bullshit. The Federal Reserve’s own data proves it to be false. Your friendly Wall Street banks have written off $213 billion of credit card debt since 2008 and passed the bill to the few remaining taxpayers in this country. For the math challenged, this means that consumers have actually INCREASED their credit card debt by $68 billion since 2008. The bad news for our Chinese crap peddling mega-retailers is that the significantly poorer average middle class American household is using their credit cards to pay their property tax bills, IRS bills, and utility bills in order to survive.
Credit Card Charge-off in Dollars 2005 – 2011 — Not Seasonally Adjusted:
| Year | Dollar Amount |
| 2011 | $46,017,459,671 |
| 2010 | $75,090,106,350 |
| 2009 | $83,179,901,000 |
| 2008 | $53,506,353,600 |
| 2007 | $38,149,440,000 |
| 2006 | $32,111,934,400 |
| 2005 | $40,634,994,400 |
| Year & Quarter | Dollar Amount |
| 2012Q1 | $8,772,385,443 |
The category of debt that barely budged in the 2009 collapse was non-revolving credit. It stayed in the $1.5 trillion range in 2009 and has since surged to over $1.7 trillion in 2012. What could possibly have made this debt skyrocket by $200 billion when the GDP has only grown by 12% over the same time frame? You guessed it – your corporate fascist friends in Washington DC and on Wall Street. Non-revolving debt consists of auto loan debt of $663 billion and student loan debt of approximately $1 trillion. Student loan debt has shot up by $300 billion since 2008. This student loan debt is being distributed, like candy by a pedophile, from the Federal government in an effort to artificially hold down the unemployment rate.
Approximately $500 billion of the student loan debt is held directly by the Federal government, up from $100 billion in 2008. The Feds guarantee the majority of the remaining student loan debt. Can you think of a more subprime borrower than a 40 year old former construction worker getting a liberal arts degree from the University of Phoenix, sitting at his computer in his underwear scratching his balls, and paying with a $10,000 Federal student loan from you? This fraudulent attempt to obscure the true employment situation will end in tears for the borrowers and the American taxpayer. It’s tough to make a loan payment without a job. The student loan bailout is just over the horizon and will cost you at least $300 billion. Delinquencies are already off the charts.
When has offering low interest debt in ample portions to people without jobs, income or assets ever backfired before? The bankers and politicians that control this country seem to be a one-trick pony. They will never admit that debt is the problem and reducing it the solution. The real solution would make them poorer, so their solution is to pour gasoline on the fire with more debt at lower interest rates to more people. The addict will keep injecting more poison into their system until sudden death. The bankers and politicians know we are a car-centric society and appeal to our vanity and poor math skills to keep the game going.
During the first quarter of this year, total U.S. car loans totaled $52.5 billion. That’s 49% higher than the same period in 2009. Also during the first quarter, the average amount financed on new vehicles rose by $589, to $25,995, and for used cars by $411, to $17,050. Furthermore, buyers are stretching out payments for longer terms: The average length of new- and used-vehicle loans jumped a full month during the first three months of this year, to 64 and 59 months, respectively. The surge in auto sales is being completely driven by doling out more loans for a longer time frame to deadbeat borrowers. Subprime auto loans now make up 45% of all car loans and the vast majority of all used car loans. They have even created a category called Deep Subprime. Borrowers classified as “deep subprime” (i.e. those with Vantage scores below 600) account for 10.7% of auto loans. You can also classify them as loans that will never be repaid.
Two thirds of all car sales are for used cars, so the fact that 37% of all new cars are being sold to subprime borrowers is exacerbated by the ridiculous lending practices for used cars. The fine folks at Zero Hedge have provided the outrageous data and a chart that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what awaits the American taxpayer – another bailout. Zero Hedge has already revealed the GM fake recovery by detailing their channel stuffing over the last two years. Now they’ve dug up more dirt on why car sales are surging. What could possibly go wrong providing loans for more than the value of the asset to people with a history of not paying their debts?
It’s amazing how many cars you can sell when you aren’t worried about getting paid. This is the beauty of a fiat currency, a printing press, and a taxpayer available to pick up the tab after the drunken party gets out of hand. The chart below provides the details of our superhighway to disaster. The percentage of used car loans to prime borrowers is now at an all-time low, while the percentage of loans to subprime borrowers is near all-time highs reached just prior to the 2008 crash. When lenders cared about being paid back in the early 2000’s, they rarely made loans longer than five years. Today, more than 77% of all subprime used car loans are longer than five years and average FICO scores are now well below 600. Just to clarify – if your FICO score is below 600 – YOU ARE A DEADBEAT.
When you start to connect the dots, things that didn’t seem to make sense begin to crystallize. This is all part of the master plan concocted by Bernanke, Geithner, Obama and the Wall Street Shysters. The auto section of my local paper now makes sense. Offers of 7 year financing at 0% interest and monthly lease offers of $150 to $200 for brand new cars now are understandable. The newer model BMWs, Cadillac Escalades, Volvos, and Jaguars I see parked in front of the low income luxury gated townhome community in West Philadelphia now makes sense. A pizza delivery guy driving a new Lexus is now explainable.
The master plan is fairly simple. The Federal Reserve lends money to the Wall Street banks for 0% interest. These banks then turn around and provide credit card debt at 13% interest, new & used car loans to prime borrowers at 5% interest, and new & used car loans to subprime borrowers at 16%. When you can borrow for free, you can take a chance that a significant number of your borrowers will default. Essentially, Ben Bernanke is screwing the prudent savers and senior citizens by paying them 0.15% on their savings in order to subsidize the bankers that destroyed the country so they can make auto loans to the same people who took out the zero percent down interest only no doc mortgage loans in 2005. In addition, Wall Street knows the Bernanke Put is still in place. If and when these subprime loans explode in their faces again, Bennie, Timmy and Obamaney will come to the rescue with your tax dollars. Its heads you lose, tails you lose, again.
The chart below is like a who’s who of TARP recipients. The top 20 auto lenders control half the market. And look at the leader of the pack. Our friends at Ally Bank are the market share leader. You remember Ally Bank – they conveniently changed their name from GMAC (also known as Ditech – biggest subprime mortgage lender) after losing billions and being bailed out by you. They still owe you $11 billion and are 85% owned by the U.S. Treasury. No conflict of interest there. You have the biggest auto lender on earth controlled by the Obama administration. Do you think they have an incentive to make as many loans as humanly possible to help Obama create the illusion of an auto recovery? The only downside is for the American taxpayer when we have to eat billions more in Ally/GMAC losses. This insolvent excuse for a lending institution has been extremely aggressive in the subprime auto lending market and has forced the other wannabes – Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Capital One and Bank of America – to lower their lending standards. Does this scenario ring a bell?
We’ve become a subprime auto nation, addicted to easy debt, living lives of hope, delusion and minimum monthly payments. Storylines about economic recovery, fraudulent government statistics showing lower unemployment, feel good propaganda from the corporate mainstream media, and a return to easy money debt fueled spending does not constitute a real recovery. Until the bad debt is purged from the system and saving takes precedence over spending, the country will stagger and ultimately fall under the weight of its immense debt. We are lost in a blizzard of lies. This subprime fueled engine of recovery will propel the country into the same canyon of reality we entered in 2008. The crack up boom approaches.
There seems to be a notion among intellectuals that the U.S. Military would never conduct military operations against the citizens of the United States. I find that laughable, as the list below proves. American troops have been used against civilians since the inception of our country. Those in power will use everything at their disposal to retain that power, including using troops to slaughter Americans that choose to dissent. The persistent “training exercises” taking place in and around U.S. cities is not a coincidence. Those in power know our economic situation is tenuous and a collapse is on the horizon. I believe that National Guard and Federal troops will fire on Americans when ordered to do so. What do you think?
Does the entitlement/welfare/ warfare state benefit the Boomers or the Millenials? Has the massive consumer and government debt accumulated over the last 30 years benefitted the Boomers or the Millenials? Who will vote in massive numbers to keep the status quo? Who didn’t save enough for their retirement so they are not leaving the workforce, keeping young people out of the workforce? Who gets sent to die in wars started and managed by Boomers? During Fourth Turnings the Prophet Generation is supposed to lead and the Hero generation is supposed to follow and do the heavy lifting. Not too much leadership coming from the Prophet generation, just finger pointing, greed and blaming the youth for their own sins. Yes, Boomers have earned their reputation as the Shallowest Generation.
The acronym NEET first gained wide exposure last August, when riots blamed on young people “Not in Employment, Education or Training” broke out in London’s Tottenham district. It’s a useful term, particularly with youth unemployment fueling the angst over the European debt crisis.
The NEET rate among those 15 to 24 years of age is 19 percent in Italy, 18 percent in Greece and 17 percent in Spain and Ireland. In the United States, it’s almost 15 percent, according to figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Urban development expert Joel Kotkin has another term for this group of young people: “The Screwed Generation.” Writing at his website NewGeography.com, Mr. Kotkin calls these young people “the victims of expansive welfare states and the massive structural debt charged by their parents.”
Mr. Kotkin has a knack for a blunt phrase. In 2004, when he was at Pepperdine University in California, he was hired by the Greater St. Louis Economic Development Council to study how St. Louis could attract young professionals and entrepreneurs. Mr. Kotkin had some useful recommendations, few of which were remembered after he told a Post-Dispatch editorial board meeting, “Your downtown sucks.”
His view of the dim prospects facing today’s young people is rooted not just in NEET numbers, but in studies that show many college graduates are struggling to find full-time employment at a living wage. One study of 444 recent graduates by the Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University showed that only 51 percent of graduates of four-year colleges between 2006 and 2011 had found full-time employment. Twenty percent had gone back to graduate or professional school, but the rest were working part-time or not at all.
Data from the 2010 census show the number of unemployed young people, age 16 to 29, declined 18 percent between 2000 and 2010 to its lowest point since World War II. Nearly 6 million Americans aged 25 to 34 are living with their parents, up 25 percent since 2007. Among families with heads of household younger than 30, the the poverty rate was 37 percent.
Ninety-four percent of them came out of college carrying at least some debt; the median debt load for graduates of public universities was $18,690. It was $24,460 for private university graduates.
It’s not just that companies have been slow to expand, it’s that older workers are staying on the job longer, working at least until full Social Security and Medicaid benefits become available. These are benefits that young people will be taxed for (assuming they get work) but, given long-term budget outlooks, may not be available in 40 years.
And not only are older Americans hogging the jobs and the benefits, they’re voting in large numbers against changing the calculus. Having enjoyed the benefits of post-war prosperity, many older Americans don’t want to pay the debts they’ve incurred, much less preserve benefits, repair the infrastructure or fix global warming.
Screwed is right.
In the 2008 presidential election, record numbers of 18- to 24-year-old voters turned out at the polls. They may not match that 49 percent turnout this year. Their elders vote at rates of up to 70 percent.
It’s easy to understand why America’s NEETs and debt-burdened college graduates would be disenchanted with politics. But they really can’t afford to take the year off.
Time for a TBP competition. I just noticed the number on the National Debt Clock on the right side of the page. It is sitting at (well not exactly sitting – more like spiraling out of control) about $15.983 TRILLION.
You know what that means – We are going to hit the MAGICAL $16 TRILLION mark in the near future. I wish I could say this is a rare occurance, but we hit a new trillion dollar level every 11 months or so.
Let’s have a TPB bet. You need to guess which day and hour that our National Debt will hit $16 trillion. It will help me assess who on this site thinks math is hard. I’m also eligible to play – and as everyone should know by now – I always win.
The winner will get one year of free tax advice from Mitt Romney’s tax advisor, an all expenses paid trip to visit Obama’s birthplace in Kenya, and a low income housing luxury townhouse in West Philly with a leased Cadillac Escalade thrown in for good measure.
Get those calculators out. Ready, set, go.
Seventy three years ago today, World War II began. Over 65 million people (2.5% of the world population) died in the next six years. It began in year 10 of the last Fourth Turning. We are in the 4th year of the current Fourth Turning. If you think it has been bad so far, imagine what awaits.
At 4:45 a.m., some 1.5 million German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with German-controlled territory. Simultaneously, the German Luftwaffe bombed Polish airfields, and German warships and U-boats attacked Polish naval forces in the Baltic Sea. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. On September 3, they declared war on Germany, initiating World War II.
To Hitler, the conquest of Poland would bring Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German people. According to his plan, the “racially superior” Germans would colonize the territory and the native Slavs would be enslaved. German expansion had begun in 1938 with the annexation of Austria and then continued with the occupation of the Sudetenland and then all of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Both had been accomplished without igniting hostilities with the major powers, and Hitler hoped that his invasion of Poland would likewise be tolerated.
To neutralize the possibility that the USSR would come to Poland’s aid, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939. In a secret clause of the agreement, the ideological enemies agreed to divide Poland between them. Hitler gave orders for the Poland invasion to begin on August 26, but on August 25 he delayed the attack when he learned that Britain had signed a new treaty with Poland, promising military support should it be attacked. To forestall a British intervention, Hitler turned to propaganda and misinformation, alleging persecution of German-speakers in eastern Poland. Fearing imminent attack, Poland began to call up its troops, but Britain and France persuaded Poland to postpone general mobilization until August 31 in a last ditch effort to dissuade Germany from war.
Shortly after noon on August 31, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to begin at 4:45 a.m. the next morning. At 8 p.m. on August 31, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead concentration camp prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of the supposed Polish invasion, which Nazi propagandists publicized as an unforgivable act of aggression.
At 4:45 a.m. on September 1, the invasion began. Nazi diplomats and propagandists scrambled to head off hostilities with the Western powers, but on September 2 Britain and France demanded that Germany withdraw by September 3 or face war. At 11 p.m. on September 3, the British ultimatum expired, and 15 minutes later British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went on national radio to solemnly announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Australia, New Zealand, and India followed suit shortly thereafter. At 5:00 p.m., France declared war on Germany.
In Poland, German forces advanced at a dizzying rate. Employing a military strategy known as the blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” armored divisions smashed through enemy lines and isolated segments of the enemy, which were encircled and captured by motorized German infantry while the panzer tanks rushed forward to repeat the pattern. Meanwhile, the sophisticated German air force–the Luftwaffe–destroyed Polish air capability, provided air support for the blitzkrieg, and indiscriminately bombed Polish cities in an effort to further terrorize the enemy.
The Polish army was able to mobilize one million men but was hopelessly outmatched in every respect. Rather than take a strong defensive position, troops were rushed to the front to confront the Germans and were systematically captured or annihilated. In a famously ill-fated strategy, Polish commanders even sent horsed cavalry into battle against the heavy German armor. By September 8, German forces had reached the outskirts of Warsaw, having advanced 140 miles in the first week of the invasion.
The Polish armed forces hoped to hold out long enough so that an offensive could be mounted against Germany in the west, but on September 17 Soviet forces invaded from the east and all hope was lost. The next day, Poland’s government and military leaders fled the country. On September 28, the Warsaw garrison finally surrendered to a relentless German siege. That day, Germany and the USSR concluded an agreement outlining their zones of occupation. For the fourth time in its history, Poland was partitioned by its more powerful neighbors.
Despite their declaration of war against Germany, Britain and France did little militarily to aid Poland. Britain bombed German warships on September 4, but Chamberlain resisted bombing Germany itself. Though Germans kept only 23 divisions in the west during their campaign in Poland, France did not launch a full-scale attack even though it had mobilized over four times that number. There were modest assaults by France on its border with Germany but these actions ceased with the defeat of Poland. During the subsequent seven months, some observers accused Britain and France of waging a “phony war,” because, with the exception of a few dramatic British-German clashes at sea, no major military action was taken. However, hostilities escalated exponentially in 1940 with Germany’s April invasion of Norway and May invasion of the Low Countries and France.
In June 1941, Hitler attacked the USSR, breaking his nonaggression with the Soviet Union, and Germany seized all of Poland. During the German occupation, nearly three million Polish Jews were killed in the Nazi death camps. The Nazis also severely persecuted the Slavic majority, deporting and executing Poles in an attempt to destroy the intelligentsia and Polish culture. A large Polish resistance movement effectively fought against the occupation with the assistance of the Polish government-in-exile. Many exiled Poles also fought for the Allied cause. The Soviets completed the liberation of Poland in 1945 and established a communist government in the nation.
OK. Enough already.
Let me try and explain myself. First of all, it was not llpoh’s fault. It is nobody’s fault. I’m just mentally burnt out. I seem to have a problem with balancing my life. The daily rage required to keep this blog interesting affects my health. For a couple weeks I’ve sat in front of the computer trying to write part three of my last article. I keep drawing a blank. I don’t know why. I can’t seem to focus or think properly.
I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that trying to write five to ten commentaries per day and live my real life has mentally drained me. It happened back in December and seems to be happening more frequently.
I haven’t left the planet. My goal is to not leave the planet sooner than I want to. Keeping up the daily rage required to keep this blog growing will probably put me in an early grave. So, I’m just going to step back from the daily commentary.
I’ll post articles I find interesting from other people, but I’m going to try and not get worked up on a daily basis. I hope that my mental faculties return and I can write an occasional article.
I appreciate all of the nice things you’ve said, but I’ve learned far more from you than you will ever know. I won’t pull the plug on this blog because it wouldn’t be fair to all the brilliant, funny, intelligent people who have become like a family to me. A dysfunctional family, but a family none the less.
Thank you for the donations, but this has nothing to do with money or TBP being a business venture. I don’t care about making money. I care about the truth and my kids’ future.
So this isn’t about the end of TBP. I just need to find some sort of balance that doesn’t make me crazier than I already am.
P.S. This is really me. I have not been carted away to a mental institution by the authorities.
No one has threatened me or my family. I just need to step back and get some balance.
Keep throwing the shit.
Who the fuck knows? I certainly don’t. Maybe Muck can check with his sources and give us the answer. I can’t imagine that Obama would be supportive of oil prices going up to $150 a barrel just before the election. Is Netanyahu that crazy? He strikes me as a prick, but not crazy.
 |
| Abode of Chaos (CC BY 2.0) |
Israel’s Channel 10 reported this week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is determined to attack Iran before the U.S. elections” and that Israel is now “closer than ever” to a military strike intended to foil Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The station’s military reporter said Netanyahu was unlikely to wait for a potential meeting with President Barack Obama in late September. “I doubt Obama could say anything that would convince Netanyahu to delay a possible attack,” the reporter added, before saying that Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister believe Obama would be pressured to support an attack given the U.S. presidential elections in November.
Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern earlier stressed the possibility of such an attack.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly. Follow him on Twitter: @areedkelly.
The Times of Israel:
The TV station’s military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the Israel Air Force as it trained for a possible attack, reported that, since upgraded sanctions against Iran have failed to force a suspension of the Iranian nuclear program in the past two months, “from the prime minister’s point of view, the time for action is getting ever closer.”
Asked by the news anchor in the Hebrew-language TV report how close Israel now was to “a decision and perhaps an attack,” Ben-David said: “It appears that we are closer than ever.”
How come when you read the mainstream media versions of these vicious crimes, they never mention that all of the perpetrators are black? They refer to them as rowdy youths. LMFAO. They are nothing but the result of decades of Democratic welfare policies. The black community is responsible for creating these animals and Democratic politicians have encouraged and subsidized these murdering thugs. I thought Philly was bad. Frank is rolling over in his grave.
http://youtu.be/MpCoidxg6Ek
Rick Moran
The last few days have seen an astonishing explosion of violence in the city of Chicago.
Two nights ago, 4 were killed and 15 wounded in a spree where 13 of those victims were shot in just 1/2 an hour.
Last night, one was killed and 16 wounded in another spasm of violence. So far this August, there have been 50 homicides in the city, 15 more than occurred in August, 2011.
This website gives the gory details. Hundreds have been wounded in addition to the record number of homicides.
Meanwhile, police arrested 20 “juveniles” for “rowdy” behavior along the Magnificent Mile. Kids were pushing pedestrians, darting in and out of traffic as police pursued the gang up and down Michigan avenue.
The city is being rocked by lawlessness. Simply put, the streets are unsafe anywhere. There have been a lot of theories about why the sudden outbreak of violence is occurring. Blame is being assigned to Mayor Emanuel or the economic situation that has meant far fewer jobs for young men.
It hardly matters. The question is, what should be done about it?
If Chicago is going to act like a wild west town, they need a wild west solution; Wyatt Earp. Or at least someone with his hard headed, single mindedness (if not his tactics in keeping the peace which could be quite brutal).
Earp and his brother enforced the law. It really is that simple sometimes. New York liberals went ballistic when Mayor Rudy Guiliani began to arrest graffiti “artists,” turnstile jumpers, vandals, and other petty criminals, enforcing laws that had rarely been enforced under previous mayors. It appeared to work. The message that the law would be enforced — along with federal prison guidelines that took violent criminals off the streets for longer periods of time — drove New York’s crime rate down significantly.
Might something like that work in Chicago? Rahmbo better try something quickly. Chicago is turning into a shooting gallery and citizens are living in fear that the next outbreak of violence may target them or their loved ones.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/chicago_needs_wyatt_earp.html at August 27, 2012 – 08:05:53 AM CDT
Another example of government protecting us from savages roaming the streets of Philly and other urban kill zones across the land. They take your taxes and then proceed to function like a drunken retard. A nineteen year veteran officer was gunned down in cold blood by two black animals last week. Now the best part. One of these animals was let out of prison by a government judge and told to stay in his grandma’s house under house arrest. He was supposed to have an electronic monitoring device on his ankle. Guess why he didn’t when he gunned down Moses Walker? The PA Dept of Probations needs a telephone land line for their bracelets to work. His granny didn’t have a land line. These clueless government drones ORDERED this fucking savage to have a land line installed. He had better things to do like killing and robbing. Government at its finest.
If you think government is going to protect you from anything or anyone, you are living in a delusional fantasyland.
By Mark Fazlollah, Mike Newall, and Joseph A. Slobodzian
When a judge on July 25 sentenced alleged cop-killer Rafael Jones for violating his probation on a gun conviction, she ordered him confined to house arrest at his grandmother’s North Philadelphia rowhouse.
But the state Board of Probations and Parole failed to set up the electronic monitoring bracelet mandated by the judge, and Jones never returned to live at the house, his family said Friday.
The day he got out of prison, Aug. 8, Jones was hanging out at 18th and Susquehanna Streets – the corner where he was shot last winter – without the bracelet ordered by Common Pleas Court Judge Susan I. Schulman.
Ten days after that, police say, he and another man stalked and killed Officer Moses Walker Jr. in a pre-dawn robbery attempt.
On Friday, Jones, 23, was arraigned on murder, robbery, firearms, conspiracy and related charges in the shooting of Walker, a 19-year veteran of the force killed while walking home after his shift at the 22d District in North Philadelphia. As is police custom when an officer is killed, Walker’s handcuffs were placed on Jones’ wrists by Walker’s fellow officers from the 22d.
Jones was held without bail and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 12 in Municipal Court.
Jones, a thin man with a shaved head, said nothing except to acknowledge his identity and the charges.
Police also issued an arrest warrant Friday for Jones’ alleged accomplice, Chancier McFarland, 19, of the 1400 block of North 23d Street in North Philadelphia.
The circumstances around Jones’ release remain unclear. Although Schulman on July 25 ordered him released to house arrest with electronic monitoring by the state, he did not leave the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility until Aug. 8.
On that date, Schulman e-mailed prison officials to release Jones “with instructions to report directly to state parole,” according to a city official who reviewed the e-mail.
Schulman’s e-mail order followed one from a Philadelphia prison system representative, said the official. That e-mail appeared to state that a monitoring system was being set up for Jones.
As a result, Jones walked out of prison that day unfettered, instructed only to report to his state probation officer. He apparently did report in the days after that, a source said, but there is no indication he was ever placed on electronic monitoring.
Jones’ grandmother Ada Banks said Friday afternoon that Jones’ probation officer contacted her before last month’s probation violation hearing, asking if Jones could come live with her.
Banks said she declined. Jones had been shot in the neighborhood earlier this year, she said Friday, and she worried that if he returned to her neighborhood, he would only find trouble.
“This is a house of peace,” she said, surrounded by some of her grandchildren, in front of her Bouvier Street home, just a block from the 22d District station, where the flag hangs at half-staff. “I didn’t need the drama.”
She said the probation officer was in a hurry and told her Jones could be released as soon as that day. Banks said she told the officer that Jones could live with his aunt in West Oak Lane. “He said, ‘I’m just going to tell the judge he’s being released to you, and when he comes to you send him to his aunt’s,” she said.
The probation officer said he would find Jones to get him fitted with the ankle bracelet, Banks said. That never happened, she said.
Banks was not at the July hearing, and her grandson did not stay with her again.
At the hearing, state parole agent Jose Rodriguez recommended that Jones be released on probation and put on electronic monitoring.
Rodriguez told the judge that officers are trained in fitting ankle bracelets and could outfit his home with equipment that would be monitored from Harrisburg – “We get either e-mail alerts, phone call alerts or – should he violate it, leave the house at an unauthorized time.”
But Rodriguez questioned whether Jones could live at his grandmother’s, based on the conversation with her.
Jones’ attorney, Rosemary Zeccardi, told the judge that Jones would be living with with his grandmother.
Neither Rodriguez nor Zeccardi could be reached for comment Friday. Schulman has declined to comment.
Based on the assurance in court, Schulman ordered that Jones serve six months’ house arrest at the grandmother’s home.
And she ordered Rodriguez to get police to detain Jones if he left the house for any reason other than looking for a job, completing his GED, or doing required community service work.
“There will be no other reasons for him to be out of the house,” she said. “None.”
Schulman, who in 2008 sentenced Jones to a four-year prison term for a gun conviction, noted Jones’ juvenile record and warned him that she was not impressed with his record since had finished his sentence in October.
Jones’ juvenile record goes back to age 12, when he was charged with throwing a rock through his mother’s front door. He was arrested at 15 for selling drugs and then caught in a stolen Jeep.
His first gun arrest was when he was 17, when officers said they caught him with a loaded .38-caliber revolver.
“To see that I am concerned about you would be an understatement,” Schulman told Jones.
Jeremy Brooks, Jones’ cousin, said he and Jones’ mother saw Jones hanging on the corner the night he was released.
“I pulled up and said, ‘It’s good to see you,’ ” Brooks said. “He said he was ‘laying back,’ trying to stay out of trouble.”
Jones’ family said the West Oak Lane home where he stayed did not have a phone line, a must for house arrest.
Sherry Tate, a state parole board spokeswoman, said even general information about how her department conducted house arrests and monitoring was confidential.
Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, asked about the apparent failures between the state probation and justice systems, said, “Right now our focus is simple – getting the second person in custody so we can wrap this up.”
About Jones, he said: “Thank God we got him and he won’t be able to harm anyone else, and this time perhaps the system will put him away for the rest of his miserable life.”
These two officers are five feet from this dude and manage to shoot nine other people. Christ Almighty the NYPD is a fucking disgrace.
Do you need any more proof that we’re doomed?
Have you heard Obama and his minions bursting with pride over their “successful” saving of GM? The storyline perpetuated by the MSM and political hacks is that General Motors has been reborn and his doing fantastic. After the taxpayers ate all of their debt in bankruptcy, these marketing geniuses are on track to make 35% less income on flat revenue in 2012 versus 2011. The stock is down 45% since January 2011. Has Obama and the big fans of government bailouts mentioned this on CNBC lately?
Not only are their financial results horrific, they’re also fraudulent and supported by government debt, with the future losses going to you. GM has been channel stuffing for the last two years. They record sales when they force their dealers to take delivery of their Volts. The dealers don’t have any demand for these piece of shit GM lemons, but GM keeps reporting “strong” sales. They’ve stuffed 67% more automobiles down the gullets of their dealers in a fraudulent effort to appear successful. The dealers have reached capacity. Maybe Obama can create a car lot on the White House grounds for his union pals at GM.
Who could ever forget our friends at GMAC/Ditech? They were the automobile and housing subprime loan specialists in the good old days of the 2003 – 2008. You bailed them out to the tune of $20 billion. They decided to change their name for some reason. They are known as Ally Bank and are still 85% owned by YOU/Obama. As you can witness in the mean streets of West Philly, any lowlife subprime dirtbag can get a loan from Ally Financial these days. If I was a non-trusting soul, I might think that Obama and his buddy Geithner have given a wink and a nod to Ally and the other Wall Street shyster banks to open the flood gates on loans to people who won’t pay YOU back.
So keep supporting the huge GM success story. I love fairy tales.
