MBS-M=BS

I’m cutting to the chase.  This is no time to bury the lead.

There are no mortgages to back Mortgage Backed Securities.  Investors are holding pools of unsecured debt. This debt is not backed by liens against real property. 

What does that mean?

For investors – pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, towns in Norway – it means you have been swindled.  The investment products you purchased (Special Purpose Vehicles, converted to Trusts and later Bonds) don’t exist.  And it looks like they never did.

For homeowners – it means that your largest asset is worth far less than market value. If you had a securitized mortgage at any time – the chain of title was broken. Your home has clouded title. It doesn’t matter what the terms of your mortgage were – conventional, ARM – how responsible or irresponsible you were. All those issues are irrelevant. In the future, you will only be able to sell your home to a cash buyer, because title companies will refuse to insure your property.

There’s also a very high probability that you are not paying your true creditor each month. You’ve kept your end of the bargain, honored your contract. But the lender is not going to honor their contract with you by providing you with clear title at the end of the schedule. They can’t.

How did this happen?

The creation and sale of Mortgage Backed Securities is governed by New York State Security Law. It is a very stringent and tough set of laws intended to protect investors from fraud. Only it didn’t protect investors.

Why?

President Clinton’s ramp up of The Community Reinvestment Act is partially to blame. It destroyed a banks’ incentive to write a quality mortgage that it would keep on the books for 30 years and replaced it with the incentive to write bad loans and move them off balance sheet as soon as possible.

I say CRA is partially to blame, because it created an environment for people in financial services and GSE’s to commit fraud. The executives at investment banks and the fly-by-night originators did not have to adhere to CRA regulations. Their behavior was clearly motived by unrelenting, enormous greed. The government did not force these individuals and organizations to commit massive control fraud. They made a conscious decision to plunder homeowners and investors all by their lonesome.

CRA set the table for a ramp up in issuance and sale of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). These products have been around since 1977 and were considered sound investments. The problems arose when the sheer volume of MBS increased after CRA regulations kicked in.

Bond indentures have basic representations and warranties that must be honored. They weren’t.  NY Security Law protects investors against fraud by requiring the banks to return all of their clients’ money if it was discovered that one loan in the pool did not follow the terms of the agreement.

Well, have you noticed an avalanche of lawsuits in the last three years? Every day, a new lawsuit is filed, charging Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Deutch, UBS, et al with security fraud. One of the largest was the Blackrock lawsuit against Bank of America. A judge just scuttled the $8.5 billion settlement.

The headline MBS-M=BS is missing. They bury the lede.

Numerous government agencies have sued and settled security fraud cases too.

The truth is hiding in plain sight. It’s high time we acknowledge that global investors have been bamboozled. Yes, the smartest, most sophisticated investment professionals in the world were fleeced.  William K Black, the economist and criminologist says it was an $11 trillion heist.

You would see more lawsuits against the banks and financial firms that created, packaged, rated, and sold MBS if the managers who invested in MBS on behalf of their clients had a scintilla of integrity. But they don’t. So they won’t.  

If they reveal the fraud to their senior managers, stock-holders and customers they will be fired. They would not collect that nice seven figure bonus they rely on to make their nut. So, they pretend and extend. They kick the can down the road. MBS fraud? “Nothing to see here people, move along…”

Why are there no mortgages to back MBS?

The NY Security Law requires that the original Mortgage/Deed (lien on the property) and the Promissory Note (promise to pay) be deposited into the Trust within 90 days of the loan origination. This is a very strict guideline. The 90 day window was to ensure that the trust held no assets that could be ‘clawed back’ if one of the contributing parties (like the originator) filed for bankruptcy. No exceptions allowed.

In addition, state property law often requires that the Note and the Mortgage/Deed travel together. When these two documents are separated, many state and Federal judges rule the chain of title has been broken, there is an imperfect lien. Clouded title is the outcome.

What’s the problem?

I mean, how hard can it be to keep the original Mortgage and Note together and lock the documents down into the Trust before the 90-day deadline expires? Apparently, it was very hard. In fact, we’re learning through discovery and analysis of loans, that it was downright impossible.

The parties who originated the loans, created the MBS, and/or ‘purchased’ the loans on the secondary market, kept the mortgages. They didn’t submit them into the Trust.

Why would they hold onto the mortgages?

We believe, and it is conjecture and opinion, that they made a conscious decision to hold the mortgage which is the lien on the property, to redeem in the future. You see, they expected that the MBS would be paid off and closed in 7-10 years, given normal rates of housing turn-over. Why not hold onto the mortgage, and when/if the home-owner defaults, seize the property?

What about the Promissory Note?

Unlike the Mortgage/Deed, the Promissory Note has real immediate value and can be sold to many parties over an extended period of time.  So it was.  They often scanned the Note, filed it in their electronic internal database and sold the original Note over and over and over again.

That’s why home-owners are often unable to secure their original Promissory Note. The real deal would reveal the identities and number of parties who purchased it. That would provide evidence to the home-owner that their contract was broken and fraud was committed. When the original Note does appear, it is covered in black boxes that redact its trail.

The sale of the Note is the reason why attorneys for ‘lenders’ submitted Lost Note Affidavits to the court in foreclosure proceedings. It’s why they paid a firm called DOCX to ‘recreate’ lost Notes and entire files for a fee, of course. The original Notes reveal the fraud. Can’t have that, now can we? Better option is to commit fraud upon the court and suborn perjury.

It begs the question – why on earth would officers of the court and banking executives risk criminal prosecutions and disbarment by proffering fraudulent documents upon the court? Why would they recreate evidence that supports their claim of loan ownership?

The answer is simple. They created evidence because they didn’t possess evidence that proves they are the true creditors. Why don’t they have evidence? Answer – because they are not the true creditors.

The fraud is revealed in foreclosure, when the need to produce documents authenticating true creditor status and legal standing is required. We don’t have a foreclosure crisis. We have an MBS fraud and property title crisis.

How prevalent was the practice of separating the Note and the Deed?

It was standard operating procedure which became glaringly apparent when the number of foreclosures sky-rocketed and homeowners could not locate their original closing documents. The Note and Deed were separated after origination when the property was recorded on MERS.

MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (which deserves a stand-alone post) separated the Note from the Mortgage/Deed, immediately clouding title on 60-100 million properties. MERS business model violates 400 years of settled state property law and the Federal Uniform Commercial Code.

MERS is billed as a joint venture between banks, title companies and GSE’s. But we’ve uncovered evidence that Fannie, Freddie, ands Ginnie leaned heavily on banks to adopt MERS as its primary recording system. All parties are implicated. However, blame for the creation of MERS rests squarely on the Federal Government.

So we have ample evidence the Note was separated from the Mortgage/Deed, and never submitted into the Trust. NY Security Laws were violated. Investors were defrauded. Title was clouded on 60-100 million homes. Four million homes were seized in illegal foreclosures. Four hundred years of state property laws were trashed.

Is that it?

Nope. There’s more – lots more.

Evidence is mounting that fraud was committed through-out the securitization chain.

The scheme resembles the plot of “The Producers.”

We believe that the salesmen for the MBS went to the investor community with an offer they couldn’t refuse. They promised an existing pool full of mortgages from Ozzy and Harriett homeowners who always paid on time and would provide steady income stream for institutional investors. The salesmen took the investors’ money.

Then they went to the originators and told them to go out into the market and find the Ozzy and Harriett homeowners they promised to the investor. The originators ‘found’ customers, closed the loans and collected the fees.  All parties in the chain had 90 days to find the promised customer, close the loan and process it through the securitization channel.  On Wall Street, 90 days is an eternity. They’d make the deadline – no sweat.

When the MBS market hit full stride and serious money started flowing in, the pace picked up and they were unable to even provide the appearance of following the law. So they didn’t even try. They just took the money.

We believe that once Attorneys General like NY’s Eric Schneiderman, or Delaware’s Beau Biden dig into discovery, they will uncover evidence that substantiates our theory. But right now it is just a theory.

What we do know is, the regulators didn’t regulate. The investigators didn’t investigate. They chose not to protect the public from the malfeasance.  Instead, they accepted lucrative job offers from banks and their white shoe law firms. They just took the money.

Investors and homeowners have been defrauded. Investors have the resources to protect themselves.

Homeowners don’t. They need government’s protection.

Beating home-owners into submission with the moral hazard club must end. It’s time to set the record straight.

The global credit markets did not collapse in September 2008 because homeowners bought too much house, or insisted on granite counter-tops and walk-in closets they didn’t deserve.

The crisis erupted when it became public knowledge among elites in global banking and government that there were no mortgages to back Mortgage Backed Securities. Zip, zero, nada.

When the s@#$ hit the fan, the crony capitalists did what crony capitalists always do…they covered up the crime – which was committed by their peer group – and facilitated a billionaire bail-out of epic proportions in the US and around the globe.

How do I know this? Why should you believe me?

In September 2008, when the world as we know it almost ended and the credit crisis was in full swing, I honestly did not understand how sub-prime loans could bring down the global economy. I mean they were calling many of these dubious products, liar’s loans for years, weren’t they? Clearly everyone knew about the risk. How could it be that investment banks like Lehman and Bear Stearns could make bets against the pooled loans – and not have been regulated or sanctioned for their risky behavior? What exactly constitutes ‘bad paper’? Why was the US government buying it? What exactly will TARP accomplish?

So I started to investigate. IBD readers know William O’Neil’s advice was to follow the Big Money. So I did. I logged on and attended their conferences. I read their chat room and message board posts. I studied their white papers and analyzed their investment advice.

I was shocked at what I learned.

 In 2008 and early 2009, the institutional investors, fund managers and banking elites were openly saying, “There were no mortgages to back Mortgage Backed Securities.” They called it the Black Swann. Many worried that people would start rioting in the streets once they learned the truth.

Did these financial gurus bother to tell you what they knew?

Hell, no.

Instead, they recommended their clients purchase gold and farmland in developing nations.

I poured over mainstream financial news sites and publications. There was nary a word – not a peep – on MBS fraud. Nobody was covering the story or telling the whole truth.

So I started to dig and began a 3+-year odyssey studying MBS. I read original documents, Congressional testimony, case law, academic white papers, and more. It took me two years to fully comprehend what I had learned. It took another six months for me to be able to explain it to other people.

In December 2010, I outlined the elements of the MBS fraud to a trusted friend who works in the capital markets. He was incredulous at the news and said, “We assumed in the end that there were crappy loans in the MBS, (that’s why we got out early) but nobody thinks that there are no mortgages at all. Let me check it out with senior level executives whose opinion I trust. I’ll get back to you.”

 He studied my research, spoke with his contacts and confirmed the story. There are no mortgages to back Mortgage Backed Securities.

In the ensuing months, we have had conversations with many people who work in finance, law, government and media. Nobody has told us we are wrong.

Our primary focus is to educate homeowners about the MBS fraud and help them understand how it impacts them.  We are volunteering our time and energy because homeowners have been severely damaged and nobody in power is helping them.

We’re not anarchists, or anti-business zealots. We’re ordinary people who have worked in business for over 30 years. We are capitalists – not crony capitalists. We believe in free markets, small efficient government and most of all, the Rule of Law.

It is not our intention to collapse the system. We don’t think people who haven’t paid their mortgages should get a free house. We do believe that homeowners have the right to know the identity of their true creditor.  In America, no one’s home should be seized and sold by a party that has no legal standing to foreclose.

Due Process is not reserved for Americans with FICO scores of 750+.

The Founding Fathers didn’t grant property rights just for those who pay their bills on time.

At its core, the MBS fraud represents a breakdown in the Rule of Law.

A number of us on TBP lament that America is no longer a nation of laws, but of men.

That is true today, but it doesn’t mean that it will be true tomorrow. We can fix this – it is not too late.

Everyday Americans need to learn the elements of MBS fraud and demand that the elites in Big Government and Big Business who committed these crimes face criminal prosecutions.

It is hard, tedious, frustrating work. Learning the details of the fraud will make your head explode and your heart break.

Securing our freedom and property rights is a burden. In my humble opinion, it is a burden we all must share. Blanket cries of ‘arrest the bankers’ will not do. We need to be specific. It is imperative that we name names, list specific crimes and present actionable intelligence to the public and law enforcement agencies.

I believed that a narrative of MBS fraud that everyday people can understand was needed. So I wrote one. The glaring headline, “There are No Mortgages to Back Mortgage-Backed Securities” was missing – so I supplied it.

It is a beginning – a broad template that can be filled in with corresponding facts and evidence obtained from public records, case law and depositions/discovery.

The details of the fraud are very intricate and tend to bog down the narrative, so I am providing you with access to my library of documentation that will help you gain a deeper understanding of the fraud. The document dump can be accessed at: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=0aa1f8ea3d902284&Bsrc=EMSHGM&Bpub=SN.Notifications&id=AA1F8EA3D902284%21103

I will focus on MERS, destruction of property title and county land records, illegal foreclosures, CRA – inflated property appraisals and more in future posts.

In the meantime, if you have gained value from this post, please make a contribution to The Burning Platform. We believe in free markets here at TBP, so feel free to hit the contribute button with abandon.

OCCUPY PISSES OFF EVERYONE

The editorial below was in my paper yesterday. It really grabbed my attention. It was from Dale McFeatters of the Scripps News Service. They are a liberal leaning organization. Their editorials skew to the left. They are sick and tired of Occupy Wall Street. They say it is time to go home and work through the existing establishment rules, regulations and captured party system.

Mayor Bloomberg is an Independent. He is sick and tired of Occupy Wall Street. He destroyed their encampment site yesterday and is fed up with their tactics. He also happens to be a multi-billionaire whose wealth was created from selling his product to Wall Street.

The Mayor of Phila is an ultra-liberal who just won re-election in this bastion of Democratic politics with 75% of the vote. He went on TV this week and said he is fed up with Occupy Phila and their refusal to move when his City Hall construction project begins.

The Mayor of Oakland makes the Mayor of Phila look like a conservative. She ordered an all out attack on the Occupy Oakland encampment.

Fox News and the Wall Street Journal despise the Occupy Wall Street movement and spew lies and misinformation about the movement 24 hours per day. They are the mouthpiece of right wing neo-con Rupert Murdoch, a multi-billionaire. The NY Daily News has been highly critical of the movement and is owned by left leaning Mort Zuckerman.

The narrow minded people who are easily led by the MSM buy into the various storylines spun by a media that does not want this movement to gain traction. They are distracted by minutia when the big picture is so disgusting. They applaud as young people brave enough to fight the elements and make a stand against corruption are bludgeoned and imprisoned for exercising their right to free speech and public assembly, while remaining silent as Wall Street bankers committed the crime of the century – absconding with trillions of American middle class wealth.

Step back for a moment and think. Who is the enemy? Is it really the thousands of young people just starting their lives and lashing out against a system that is designed to benefit Wall Street bankers, Mega Corporations and politicians of both parties in Washington DC?

The enemy is clear to me. The entire financial/corporate/political establishment is corrupt, dysfunctional, and benefits only the ruling oligarchy of this country. The nation’s lifeblood has been sucked dry by these vampires. The entire system has been hijacked by the few. You can call it crony capitalism or corporate fascism, but the bottom line is that the average American is getting screwed and the people getting the most screwed are the Millenial generation that is being left with an un-payable debt burden, no jobs, and no hope for a better tomorrow. This is why they are enraged. This is why they are protesting.

The self righteous Boomer generation leaders who control the levers of power in Washington DC, Wall Street and the corporate boardrooms do not want the system to change. They like the system just fine. Therefore, they hate a movement that threatens their wealth, power, and status. Both parties are frightened by the Occupy movement. The left and the right have their talking points and the existing system works just fine as they both get enriched as the country plunges deeper into debt by $4 billion per day.

The non-thinking and willfully ignorant people of this country need to snap out of their daze and think for themselves. The endless propaganda spewed at them day after day has dulled their sense of right and wrong. The Occupiers have begun to open the eyes of some people. They have forced a discussion of issues the establishment wants to keep buried. Neither Bush or Obama has attempted to go after the criminals on Wall Street. That is the tell. Both parties are captured. The Dodd-Frank bill was a toothless 700 page waste of time written by bank lobbyists.

When I see people and pundits declare the Occupy Movement irrelevant, I laugh at their utter stupidity. Would hundreds of billions been transferred from the criminal Wall Street banks to credit unions without the Occupy Movement spurring this effort? Would the $5 per month debit card fee inflicted on Americans by the criminal Wall Street banks been withdrawn without the rage and anger of the Occupy Movement? The answer is NO. Wall Street hates having the Eye of Mordor focused on their criminal and immoral activities.

This movement will not die because police thugs kick them out of parks using their 100,000 rules, regulations, ordanances, laws, and curfews. A society that depends on so many laws to “protect” its citizens has descended into a moral cesspool. I don’t need laws to tell me right from wrong and moral from immoral. The heart of these protests is a system that is broken. There will be many different solutions offered by those that are angry, but the BIG PICTURE is that the system must be brought down. It will not fix itself. Tinkering on the edges will not fix it.

We are in the midst of a Fourth Turning. It is a chaotic and confusing time. Anger, misery and bloodshed are a given. The existing social order will be swept away. That is guaranteed. What replaces it will be up to us. I’ll support any movement that spits in the eye of the establishment. I’ll support people like Ron Paul that want to tear down the established order. Everyone will need to choose sides. There is no fence sitting during the Fourth Turning. I hope you are pissed off. I know I am. 

Editorial: Occupy protesters have made their point. Now go home

Submitted by SHNS on Mon, 11/14/2011 – 15:20

In 1981, a group of demonstrators set up camp outside a British air base to protest the government’s decision to allow U.S. nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to be based there.

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp initially generated a great deal of publicity, inspired imitators in other countries, sporadically tried to block access to the air base, and perhaps reached its zenith in 1983 when as many as 70,000 people turned out for one of their demonstrations.

The women survived several attempts by police to evict them, and eventually the authorities left their tent cities alone, as long as the women, and they were almost all women, confined themselves to picketing, leafleting and chanting.

In 1991, thanks to a nuclear-arms treaty with the Soviet Union, the last of the cruise missiles were removed, taking with them, one would have thought, the reason for the camp. But the women stayed on for nine more years, expressing an increasingly vague and inchoate commitment to “peace.” Many of the Greenham women cited a sense of unity, sisterhood, shared purpose and, when pressed, little desire to return to the humdrum routine of their former lives.

One senses that, in accelerated fashion, the Occupy Wall Street movement has arrived at that point. On Wall Street and in cities across the country, the protesters have effectively made their point about income inequality — the 1 percent versus the 99 percent; lopsided tax breaks given to hedge-fund managers and the proclivity of Wall Streeters to lavishly reward themselves regardless of whether their performance merits it. And, yes, economically the great middle class has been stagnant for a decade or more.

As the Occupy movement drags on — the first encampment went up Sept. 17 — the issues that inspired it are receding in the public consciousness and the issue has increasingly become the encampments themselves.

There have been problems of noise, sanitation, isolated incidents of crime and violence and the inevitable run-ins with police, but generally the Occupy movement has been a benign one. But its time in the public square is over. Public space meant for the enjoyment of the many should not be arrogated to advance the interests of the few.

Go home. Find political candidates who share your views and go to work for them. Raise money. Man phone banks. Knock on doors. Help the poor and minorities and those with limited English get government IDs in states that have passed voter-suppression laws.

And don’t forget to vote yourself. It really works in this country. Always has.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

TIME TO PARTY! DEFICIT IS NOW $15 TRILLION!

Yes, folks, it’s official. The deficit went over $15 trillion today ($15,033,607,255,920 trillion to be exact)

Lest you forget, the reworked debt ceiling is $15.194 trillion. At $4 billion deficit spending per day, it won’t be long till the democrats are demanding we increase it again.

Too sad for commentary, but here is some math: total US debt has increased by 41.5%, or $4.4 trillion, from $10,626,877,048,913 on January 20, to $15,033,607,255,920, under Obama as president (from ZH).

When is this going to end? What is going to happen when it ends? Maybe Smokey has some extra room in his bunker. It’s going to get ugly much faster than people realize.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/its-official-total-us-debt-passes-15-trillion

(Admin’s deficit counter is only off by $222 billion, close enough for government work)

OCCUPY WALL STREET CAMP DESTROYED BY NYPD

Things are about to get interesting. November 17 now takes on more significance. The establishment is getting rattled because this movement hasn’t dissipated after two months.

 

NYPD IS RAIDING OCCUPY WALL STREET

Posted 6 hours ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 1:20 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park), home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months and birthplace of the 99% movement that has spread across the country and around the world, is presently being evicted by a large police force in full riot gear.

We will reoccupy!

Updates
3:36 a.m. Kitchen tent reported teargassed. Police moving in with zip cuffs.
3:33 a.m. Bulldozers moving in
3:16 a.m. Occupiers linking arms around riot police
3:15 a.m. NYPD destroying personal items. Occupiers prevented from leaving with their possessions.
3:13 a.m. NYPD deploying sound cannon
3:08 a.m. heard on livestream: “they’re bringing in the hoses.”
3:05 a.m. NYPD cutting down trees in Liberty Square

2:55 a.m. NYC council-member Ydanis Rodríguez arrested and bleeding from head.

2:44 a.m. Defiant occupiers barricaded Liberty Square kitchen
2:44 a.m. NYPD destroys OWS Library. 5,000 donated books in dumpster.
2:42 a.m. Brooklyn Bridge confirmed closed
2:38 a.m. 400-500 marching north to Foley Square
2:32 a.m. All subways but R shut down
2:29 a.m. Press helicopters evicted from airspace. NYTimes reporter arrested.
2:22 a.m. Frontpage coverage from New York Times
2:15 a.m. Occupiers who have been dispersed are regrouping at Foley Square
2:10 a.m. Press barred from entering Liberty Square
2:07 a.m. Pepper spray deployed — reports of at least one reporter sprayed

2:03 a.m. Massive Police Presence at Canal and Broadway

1:43 a.m. Helicopters overhead.
1:38 a.m. Unconfirmed reports of snipers on rooftops.
1:34 a.m. CBS News Helicopter Livestream
1:27 a.m. Unconfirmed reports that police are planning to sweep everyone.
1:20 a.m. Subway stops are closed.
1:20 a.m. Brooklyn bridge is closed.
1:20 a.m. Occupiers chanting “This is what a police state looks like.”
1:20 a.m. Police are in riot gear.
1:20 a.m. Police are bringing in bulldozers.

OWS vs TEA PARTY

Fascinating info-graphic that reveals much about these two movements. Hysterically, 70% of the OWS have jobs, while only 56% of the Tea Party has jobs. The left wing OWS storyline is blown out of the water by the fact that 70% of the members are registered Independent. It seems the Tea Party is clearly a Republican Party tool. The OWS is also willing to fight the establishment, while the Tea Party is content to elect more Republicans into the corrupt system.

Occupy Wall Street vs. Tea Party | Accelerated-Degree.com

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE – THE BIG LIE

 

 PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL 1978 – $14.00

“We are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process, rebuild the unity and confidence of America.” – President Jimmy Carter, 1979

“We have it in our power to act right here, right now. I propose $6 billion in tax cuts and research and developments to encourage innovation, renewable energy, fuel-efficient cars, and energy-efficient homes.” – President Bill Clinton, 1998

“I think that in ten years, we can reduce our dependence so that we no longer have to import oil from the Middle East or Venezuela. I think that’s about a realistic time frame…That’s why I’ve focused on putting resources into solar, wind, biodiesel, geothermal. These have been priorities of mine since I got to the Senate, and it is absolutely critical that we develop a high fuel efficient car that’s built not in Japan and not in South Korea, but built here in the United States of America.” – President Barack Obama, 2008

“We don’t have to wait on OPEC anymore. We don’t have to let them hold us hostage. America’s got the energy. Let’s have American energy independence.”- Rick Perry, CNN Debate, October 18

“We must become independent from foreign sources of oil. This will mean a combination of efforts related to conservation and efficiency measures, developing alternative sources of energy like biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear, and coal gasification, and finding more domestic sources of oil such as in ANWR or the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).” – Mitt Romney  

PRICE OF A BARREL OF BRENT OIL 2011 – $114.00

 

It is too bad that our 255 million cars can’t run on hot air. American presidents have propagated the Big Lie of energy independence for the last three decades. The Democrats have lied about green energy solutions and the Republicans have lied about domestic sources saving the day. These deceitful politicians put the country at risk as they misinform and mislead the non-thinking American public. They have been declaring our energy independence for 30 years, but we import three times as much oil today as we did in the early 1980’s. The CPI has gone up 350% since 1978, but the price of a barrel of oil has risen 800% over the same time frame. Today, I hear the same mindless fabrications from politicians and pundits about our ability to become energy independent. Any critical thinking analysis of the hard facts reveals that the United States will grow increasingly dependent upon other countries to supply our energy needs from a dwindling and harder to access supply of oil and natural gas. The fantasy world of plug in cars, corn driven vehicles and solar energy running our manufacturing plants is a castle in the sky flight of imagination. The linear thinking academic crowd believes a technological miracle will save us, when it is evident technology fails without infinite quantities of cheap oil.

I know the chart below requires some time to grasp, but I’m sure the average American can take five minutes away from watching Jersey Shore, Dancing with the Stars, or the latest update of the Kardashian saga to understand why the propaganda about energy independence is nothing but falsehoods. You have U.S. energy demand by sector on the right and the energy source by fuel on the left. Total U.S. energy use is nearly 100 quadrillion Btu. In physical energy terms, 1 quad represents 172 million barrels of oil (8 to 9 days of U.S. oil use), 50 million tons of coal (enough to generate about 2% of annual U.S. electricity use), or 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (about 4% of annual U.S. natural gas use).  

Please note that 37% of our energy source is petroleum, which supplies 95% of the energy for our transportation sector. That means your car and the millions of 18 wheelers that deliver your food to your grocery stores and electronic gadgets to your Best Buy. You can’t fill up your SUV with coal, natural gas, nuclear energy or sunshine. Without the 7 billion barrels of oil we use every year, our just in time mall centric suburban sprawl society would come to a grinding halt. There is no substitute for cheap plentiful oil anywhere in sight. The government sponsored ethanol boondoggle has already driven food prices higher, while requiring more energy to produce than it generates. Only a government “solution” could raise food prices, reduce gas mileage, and bankrupt hundreds of companies in an effort to reduce our dependence on oil. Natural gas as a transportation fuel supplies 2% of our needs. The cost to retro-fit 160,000 service stations across the country to supply natural gas as a fuel for the non-existent natural gas automobiles would be a fool’s errand and take at least a decade to implement.   

    

The green energy Nazis despise coal and nuclear power, which account for 31% of our energy supply. They want to phase coal out. They aren’t too fond of fracking either, so there goes another 23% of our supply. You might be able to make out that itsy bitsy green circle with the 7% of our supply from renewable energy. And more than half of that energy is supplied by hydro power. Less than 2% of our energy needs are met by solar and wind. For some perspective, we need to use the equivalent of 17 billion barrels of oil per year to run our society and solar and wind supplies the equivalent energy of about 300 million barrels of that total. I think our green energy dreams will come up just a smidgen short of meeting our demands. Nothing can replace oil as the lifeblood of our culture and there is no domestic supply source which will eliminate or even reduce our dependence upon the 10 million barrels per day we import from foreign countries. There are some hard truths that are purposefully ignored by those who want to mislead the public about the grim consequences of peak cheap oil:

  • The earth is finite. The amount of oil within the crust of the earth is finite. As we drain 32 billion barrels of oil from the earth every year, there is less remaining within the earth. We have drained the cheapest and easiest to reach 1.4 trillion barrels from the earth since the mid 1800s. The remaining recoverable 1.4 trillion barrels will be expensive and hard to reach.
  • The United States has about 2% of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves, but consumes 22% of the world’s oil production and 27% of the world’s natural gas production.
  • Demand for oil will continue to rise no matter what the United States does, as the developing world consumption far outstrips U.S. consumption. Oil is fungible and will be sold to the highest bidder.
  • The concept of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) is beyond the grasp of politicians and drill, drill, drill pundits. EROEI is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. When the EROEI of a resource is less than or equal to one, that energy source becomes an “energy sink”, and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy. Once it requires 1.1 barrels of oil to obtain a barrel of oil, the gig is up.
  • There is a negative feedback loop that revolves around oil supply, oil price and economic growth. As demand continues to rise and supply is more difficult to access, prices will rise. Since oil is an essential ingredient in every aspect of our lives, once the price reaches $120 to $150 a barrel economic growth goes into reverse. Demand crashes and investment in new sources of energy dries up. Rinse and repeat.

Finite World

World oil production peaked in 2005 has been flat since then, despite a continuous stream of promises from Saudi Arabia that they are on the verge of increasing production. The chart below from the U.S. Energy Information Administration propagates the standard fabrications about energy supplies. Even though worldwide oil production has clearly peaked, the oil industry PR whores and government agencies continue to project substantial production growth in the future. The mainstream media trots out Daniel Yergin whenever it wants to calm the masses, despite his track record of being 100% wrong 100% of the time. The brilliance of his July, 2005 Op-Ed shines through:

“Prices around $60 a barrel, driven by high demand growth, are fueling the fear of imminent shortage — that the world is going to begin running out of oil in five or 10 years. This shortage, it is argued, will be amplified by the substantial and growing demand from two giants: China and India. There will be a large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years. Between 2004 and 2010, capacity to produce oil (not actual production) could grow by 16 million barrels a day — from 85 million barrels per day to 101 million barrels a day — a 20 percent increase. Such growth over the next few years would relieve the current pressure on supply and demand.”

Oil production capacity has not grown by one barrel since Yergin wrote this propaganda piece. This is despite the fact that prices have almost doubled, which should have spurred production. The current energy independence false storyline – the Bakken Formation – has gone from production of 10,000 barrels per day in 2003 to 400,000 barrels per day now, while the hundreds of millions invested in developing the Canadian tar sands have increased production by 50% since 2005. Despite these substantial increases in output, worldwide production has remained flat as existing wells deplete at the same rate that new production is brought online.

 

The facts are there is approximately 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable oil left in the crust of the earth. We currently suck 32 billion barrels per year out of the earth. This means we have 44 years of oil left, at current consumption levels. But we know demand is growing from the developing world. Taking this fact into consideration, we have between 35 and 40 years worth of recoverable oil left on the planet. That is not a long time. Additionally, the last 1.4 trillion barrels will much more difficult and costly to extract than the first 1.4 trillion barrels. The remaining oil is miles under the ocean floor, trapped in shale and tar sands, and in the arctic. Despite these hard facts, governmental agencies and politicians continue to paint a rosy picture about our energy future. I watched in stunned amazement last week as five bozos on the McLaughlin Group news program unanimously proclaimed the U.S. would become a net exporter of oil in the coming decade. Do these supposedly intelligent people not understand the basic economics of supply, demand and price?  

It seems the governmental organizations always paint the future in the most optimistic terms, despite all facts pointing to a contrary outcome. The EIA predicts with a straight face that oil production will rise to 110 million barrels per day, while the price of a barrel of oil remains in the current $100 to $125 per barrel range. Non-OPEC production has been in decline since 2004, but the EIA miraculously predicts a 15% increase in production over the next 25 years. OPEC production has been flat since 2005, but the EIA is confident their 50 year old oil fields will ramp up production by 25% in the next 25 years. Does the EIA consider whether OPEC even wants to increase production? It would appear that constrained supply and higher prices would be quite beneficial to the OPEC countries. And then of course there is the unconventional oil that is supposed to increase from 4 million barrels per day to 13 million barrels per day, a mere 325% increase with no upward impact on prices. These guys would make a BLS government drone blush with the utter ridiculousness of their predictions.

 

The picture below is an excellent representation of how the easy to access oil and gas of the earth have been tapped. They were close to the surface. The remaining oil and gas is deeper and trapped within shale and sand. The new technology for extracting gas from shale has concerns regarding whether fracking and disposal of waste water can be done safely, especially near highly populated areas. The relationship between fracking and earthquakes could also prove to be problematic. The wells also have rapid decline rates. Add a mile of ocean to the picture below and you have some really expensive to access oil and potential for disaster, as witnessed with the Deep Water Horizon.

 

The EIA projects natural gas supply to grow by 10% between now and 2035 due to a 300% increase in shale gas supply. It seems the EIA believes the fantasy of 8 Saudi Arabia’s in the Bakken formation of North Dakota and decades of gas within the Marcellus Shale. These fantasies have been peddled by the natural gas industry in order to get support for their fracking efforts. This false storyline is damaging to the long-term planning that should be taking place now to alleviate the energy scarcity that is our future. In 2006 the EIA reported the possibility of 500 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken formation, based on guesswork. The U.S. Geological Survey has since scaled this back ever so slightly to 3.65 billion barrels, which is six months of U.S. consumption. The deceptions peddled regarding Marcellus shale are also colliding with reality. The U.S. Geological Survey recently produced an estimate of Marcellus Shale resources, which will cause the EIA to reduce its estimate of shale gas reserves for the Marcellus Shale by 80%. The price of natural gas is currently $3.54 MMBtu, down from $13 a few years ago. Extracting natural gas from shale has high capital costs of land, drilling and completion. It is not economically feasible below $6 MMBtu.

 

Based on the known facts and a realistic view of the future, there will be less supply of oil and natural gas as time goes on. We can already see the impact of these facts today. Even though Europe and the U.S. are in recession, the price of oil continues to rise. The developing world continues to demand more oil and the supply is stagnant. Stunts like withdrawing oil from the Strategic Reserve are foolish and politically motivated. Is the world then running out of oil then? No, but any increase in future global oil production will be modestly incremental and production could be thrown off course by any number of possible events, from an Israeli attack on Iran to (another, but successful this time) al Qaida attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil refinery. Any forecast regarding future oil production and prices isn’t worth the paper it is written on unless consideration to wars, revolutions and terrorism are factored into the equation.

We Don’t Matter

Americans like to think we are the center of the universe. Those who propagate the misinformation about U.S. energy independence are clearly math challenged. The total proven oil reserves in the world total 1.4 trillion barrels and the United States has 22 billion barrels of that total, or 1.6% of the world’s oil. The U.S. burns 7 billion barrels per year, so we have enough oil to survive for three whole years. The U.S. consumes 22% of the world’s oil despite having 4.5% of the world’s population and less than 2% of the world’s oil. Do these facts lead you to the conclusion the United States will be exporting oil in the near future?

 

When you hear the pundits breathtakingly describe our vast natural gas resources you would think we are the dominant player in this market. Not quite. The United States has 4% of the world’s natural gas reserves. Predictably we consume 22% of the world’s natural gas. Russia controls 25% of the world’s natural gas reserves, with the Middle East countries controlling 40% of the world’s reserves. The pundits can hype our “vast” supplies of natural gas, but the facts clearly reveal it is nothing but hype.

  

The U.S. is consuming less oil than it was in 2005. U.S. consumption is not the crucial factor in determining the price of oil today and our consumption will matter even less in the future. Emerging market countries, led by China and India, will be the driving force in oil demand in the coming decades. According to the IEA, “Non-OECD [emerging markets] account for 90% of population growth, 70% of the increase in economic output and 90% of energy demand growth over the period from 2010 to 2035.”

 

This demand is being driven by the growth in vehicles in emerging markets. The U.S. market has reached a saturation point, but China, India and the rest of the world are just beginning their love affairs with the automobile. The accumulation of facts regarding both supply and demand should even convince the most brainless CNBC talking head that the price of oil will continue to rise. The 2008 peak price of $145 per barrel will not hold. The tried and true American method of ignoring problems until they reach crisis proportions will bite us in the ass once again.

 

Slippery Road Ahead

The concept of EROI is incomprehensible to the peak oil deniers. When Larry Kudlow or one of the other drill, drill, drill morons proclaims the vast amount of oil in North Dakota shale and in Alberta, Canada tar sands, they completely ignore the concept of EROI. Some estimates conclude there are 5 trillion barrels of oil left in the earth. But, only 1.4 trillion barrels are considered recoverable. This is because the other 3.6 trillion barrels would require the expenditure of more energy to retrieve than they can deliver. Therefore, it is not practical to extract. When oil was originally discovered, it took on average one barrel of oil to find, extract, and process about 100 barrels of oil. That ratio has declined steadily over the last century to about three barrels gained for one barrel used up in the U.S. and about ten for one in Saudi Arabia.

The chart below clearly shows the sources of energy which have the highest energy return for energy invested. I don’t think I’ve heard Obama or the Republican candidates calling for a national investment in hydro-power even though it is hugely efficient. The dreams of the green energy crowd are shattered by the fact that biodiesel, ethanol and solar require as much energy to create as they produce. Tar sands and shale oil aren’t much more energy efficient. It’s too bad Obama and his minions hate dirty coal, because has the best return on energy invested among all the practical sources.   

 File:EROI - Ratio of Energy Returned on Energy Invested - USA.svg

Worse than the peak oil deniers are those who pretend that oil isn’t really that important to our society. They declare that technology will save the day, when in reality technology can’t function without oil. Without plentiful cheap oil our technologically driven civilization crashes. We are addicted to oil. Americans consume petroleum products at a rate of three-and-a-half gallons of oil and more than 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day each.  You might be interested in a partial list of products that require petroleum to be produced.

Solvents Diesel fuel Motor Oil Bearing Grease
Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats
Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides
Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures
Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes
Cassettes Dishwasher parts Tool Boxes Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape
CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline
Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap
Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines Purses Shoes
Dashboards Cortisone Deodorant Footballs
Putty Dyes Panty Hose Refrigerant
Percolators Life Jackets Rubbing Alcohol Linings
Skis TV Cabinets Shag Rugs Electrician’s Tape
Tool Racks Car Battery Cases Epoxy Paint
Mops Slacks Insect Repellent Oil Filters
Umbrellas Yarn Fertilizers Hair Coloring
Roofing Toilet Seats Fishing Rods Lipstick
Denture Adhesive Linoleum Ice Cube Trays Synthetic Rubber
Speakers Plastic Wood Electric Blankets Glycerin
Tennis Rackets Rubber Cement Fishing Boots Dice
Nylon Rope Candles Trash Bags House Paint
Water Pipes Hand Lotion Roller Skates Surf Boards
Shampoo Wheels Paint Rollers Shower Curtains
Guitar Strings Luggage Aspirin Safety Glasses
Antifreeze Football Helmets Awnings Eyeglasses
Clothes Toothbrushes Ice Chests Footballs
Combs CD’s & DVD’s Paint Brushes Detergents
Vaporizers Balloons Sun Glasses Tents
Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Telephones
Enamel Pillows Dishes Cameras
Anesthetics Artificial Turf Artificial limbs Bandages
Dentures Model Cars Folding Doors Hair Curlers
Cold cream Movie film Soft Contact lenses Drinking Cups
Fan Belts Car Enamel Shaving Cream Ammonia
Refrigerators Golf Balls Toothpaste Gasoline

 

The propaganda blared at the impressionable willfully ignorant American public has worked wonders. The vast majority of Americans have no clue they have entered a world of energy scarcity, a world where the average person is poorer and barely able to afford the basic necessities of life. This is borne out in the vehicles sales statistics reported every month. There have been 10.5 million passenger vehicles sold through the first 10 months of 2011. In addition to the fact they are “purchased” using 95% debt and financed over seven years, the vast majority are low mileage vehicles getting less than 20 mpg. Only 1.8 million small energy efficient vehicles have been sold versus 6.1 million SUVs, pickup trucks and large luxury automobiles. Americans have the freedom to buy any vehicle they choose. They also have the freedom to not think and ignore the facts about the certainty of higher prices at the pump. By choosing a 20 mpg vehicle over a 40 mpg vehicle, they’ve sealed their fate. How could the average soccer mom get by without a Yukon or Excursion to shuttle Biff and Buffy to their games? Have you ever tried to navigate a soccer field parking lot in a hybrid? The horror!

The American public has been lulled back into a sense of security as gas prices have receded from $4.00 a gallon back to $3.40 a gallon. This lull will be short lived. Oil prices have surged by 15% in the last two months, even as the world economy heads into recession. The link between high oil prices and economic growth are undeniable, even though the deceitful pundits on CNBC will tell you otherwise. Ten out of eleven recessions since World War II were associated with oil price spikes. Gail Tverberg sums up the dilemma of energy scarcity for the average American:

“High-priced oil tends to choke economies because high oil prices are associated with high food prices (because oil products are used in food growing and transport), and people’s salaries do not rise to offset this rise in food and oil prices. People have to eat and to commute to their jobs, so they cut back on other expenditures. This leads to recession. Recession leads to lower oil consumption, since people without jobs can’t buy very much of anything, oil products included. In some sense, the reduction in oil extraction is due to reduced demand, because citizens cannot afford the high-priced oil that is available.”

But don’t worry. The rising oil and food prices will only impact the 99% in the U.S. and the poorest dregs across the globe that spend 70% of their income on food. The 1% will be just fine as they will bet on higher oil prices, therefore further enriching themselves while the peasants starve. The market for caviar, champagne, NYC penthouses, and summer mansions in the Hamptons will remain robust.

There is no escape from the ravages of higher priced oil. There is plenty of oil left in the ground. But, the remaining oil is difficult, slow and expensive to extract. Oil prices will rise because they have to. Without higher prices, who would make the huge capital investment required to extract the remaining oil? Once oil prices reach the $120 to $150 per barrel range our economy chokes and heads into recession. We are trapped in an endless feedback loop of doom. The false storyline of renewable energy saving the day is put to rest by Gail Tverberg:

“Renewables such as wind, solar PV, cellulosic ethanol, and biogas could more accurately be called “fossil fuel extenders” because they cannot exist apart from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are required to make wind turbines and other devices, to transport the equipment, to make needed repairs, and to maintain the transport and electrical systems used by these fuels (such as maintaining transmission lines, running-back up power plants, and paving roads). If we lose fossil fuels, we can expect to lose the use of renewables, with a few exceptions, such as trees cut down locally, and burned for heat, and solar thermal used to heat hot water in containers on roofs.”

Predictably, the politicians and intellectual elite do the exact opposite of what needs to be done. We need to prepare our society to become more local. Without cheap plentiful oil our transportation system breaks down. Our 3.9 million miles of road networks will become a monument to stupidity as Obama and Congress want to spend hundreds of billions on road infrastructure that will slowly become obsolete. The crumbling infrastructure is already the result of government failure, as the money that should have been spent maintaining our roads, bridges and water systems was spent on train museums, turtle crossings, teaching South African men how to wash their genitalia, studies on the mating habits of ferrets, and thousands of other worthless Keynesian pork programs. If our society acted in a far sighted manner, we would be creating communities that could sustain themselves with local produce, local merchants, bike paths, walkable destinations, local light rail commuting, and local energy sources. The most logical energy source for the U.S. in an oil scarce scenario is electricity, since we have a substantial supply of coal and natural gas for the foreseeable future and the ability to build small nuclear power plants. The Fukushima disaster is likely to kill nuclear as an option until it is too late. The electrical grid should be the number one priority of our leaders, as it would be our only hope in an oil scarce world. Instead, our leaders will plow borrowed money into ethanol, solar, and shale oil drilling, guaranteeing a disastrous scenario for our country.

The United States is a country built upon the four C’s: Crude, Cars, Credit, and Consumption. They are intertwined and can’t exist without crude as the crucial ingredient. As the amount of crude available declines and the price rises, the other three C’s will breakdown. Our warped consumer driven economy collapses without the input of cheap plentiful oil. Those at the top levels of government realize this fact. It is not a coincidence that the War on Terror is the current cover story to keep our troops in the Middle East. It is not a coincidence the uncooperative rulers (Hussein, Gaddafi) of the countries with the 5th and 9th largest oil reserves on the planet have been dispatched. It is not a coincidence the saber rattling grows louder regarding the Iranian regime, as they sit atop 155 billion barrels of oil, the 4th largest reserves in the world. It should also be noted the troops leaving Iraq immediately began occupying Kuwait, owner of the 6th largest oil reserves on the planet. Oil under the South China Sea and in the arctic is being hotly pursued by the major world players. China and Russia are supporting Iran in their showdown with Israel and the U.S. As the world depletes the remaining oil, conflict and war are inevitable. The term Energy Independence will carry a different meaning than the one spouted by mindless politicians as the oil runs low.

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention

Nothing but Flowers – The Talking Heads 

EVIL

 

“Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. From its ether of manifestation that is garlanded in perpetual darkness, it not only influences and seeks the ruination and destruction of everything that resides in our universe, but rushes to embrace its own oblivion as well.

To accomplish this, however, it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain. For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate. This then becomes the condition of evil’s existence: the baneful ideologies of those who wantonly chose to ignore the needs and rights of others, inducing oppression, fear, pain, and even death throughout the cosmos. And by these means, evil seeks to supplant the balance of the universe with its perverse nature.

And once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself. And within that terrible instant of unimaginable exploding quantum fury, it will burn brighter than a trillion galaxies to herald its moment of ultimate triumph. But a moment is all that it shall be. And a micro-second later when the last amber burns and flickers out to the demise of dissolving ash, evil will leave its legacy of a totally devoid universe as its everlasting monument to eternal death.”
― Adam Turquine – from sequel to Beyond Mars Crimson Fleet

I WAS WRONG

For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, you may have picked up on the signal that Admin and I generally get along well. We have very little of substance on which we disagree. So we pick on inconsequential subjects, such as his love of that stupid and insipid band Green Day, and throw nerf darts at each other. Fun. No harm, no foul. Until Joe Paterno.

I will not bore the reader on the details of our disageement on Paterno, save for the fact that I defended Paterno, while Admin did not. It was all based on what happened in a locker room incident that happened in 2002 involving Paterno’s former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky. Subsequently, I learned that there was another similar incident in 1998 involving Sandusky, who resigned in 1999, but was allowed access to the Penn State athletic facilities, where he continued to sexually assault little boys. THAT changed my mind. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Paterno knew about the first and second incident and said “I wish I had done more.” Yes, Joe Pa, you should have.

 

SILENCE

  

10 YEAR OLD BOYS

THE HANGMAN

By Maurice Ogden

    Into our town the hangman came,
    smelling of gold and blood and flame.
    He paced our bricks with a different air,
    and built his frame on the courthouse square.The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
    only as wide as the door was wide
    with a frame as tall, or a little more,
    than the capping sill of the courthouse door.And we wondered whenever we had the time,
    Who the criminal? What the crime?
    The hangman judged with the yellow twist
    of knotted hemp in his busy fist.And innocent though we were with dread,
    we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
    Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,
    for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”

    Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
    and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
    “He who serves me best,” said he
    “Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”

    And he stepped down and laid his hand
    on a man who came from another land.
    And we breathed again, for anothers grief
    at the hangmans hand, was our relief.

    And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
    by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
    So we gave him way and no one spoke
    out of respect for his hangmans cloak.

    The next day’s sun looked mildly down
    on roof and street in our quiet town;
    and stark and black in the morning air
    the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

    And the hangman stood at his usual stand
    with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
    With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
    and his air so knowing and business-like.

    And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,
    yesterday with the alien one?”
    Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
    “Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”

    He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
    “Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,
    To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.
    To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”

    Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”
    and into our midst the hangman came;
    to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,
    “With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”

    He laid his hand on that one’s arm
    and we shrank back in quick alarm.
    We gave him way, and no one spoke,
    out of fear of the hangmans cloak.

    That night we saw with dread surprise
    the hangmans scaffold had grown in size.
    Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
    the gallows-tree had taken root.

    Now as wide, or a little more
    than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
    As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
    half way up on the courthouse wall.

    The third he took, we had all heard tell,
    was a usurer…, an infidel.
    And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do
    with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”

    And we cried out, “Is this one he
    who has served you well and faithfully?”
    The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme
    to try the strength of the gallows beam.”

    The fourth man’s dark accusing song
    had scratched our comfort hard and long.
    “And what concern,” he gave us back,
    “Have you … for the doomed and black?”

    The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
    “Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”
    “It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know
    for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”

    And so we ceased and asked now more
    as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
    And sun by sun, and night by night
    the gallows grew to monstrous height.

    The wings of the scaffold opened wide
    until they covered the square from side to side.
    And the monster cross beam looking down,
    cast its shadow across the town.

    Then through the town the hangman came
    and called through the empy streets…my name.
    I looked at the gallows soaring tall
    and thought … there’s no one left at all

    for hanging … and so he called to me
    to help take down the gallows-tree.
    And I went out with right good hope
    to the hangmans tree and the hangmans rope.

    He smiled at me as I came down
    to the courthouse square…through the silent town.
    Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
    was the yellow twist of hempen strand.

    He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
    and it sprang down with a ready snap.
    Then with a smile of awful command,
    He laid his hand upon my hand.

    “You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,
    “That your scaffold was built for other men,
    and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.
    “You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”

    Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
    “Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…
    for I answered straight and told you true.
    The scaffold was raised for none but you.”

    “For who has served more faithfully?
    With your coward’s hope.” said He,
    “And where are the others that might have stood
    side by your side, in the common good?”

    “Dead!” I answered, and amiably
    “Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.
    “First the alien … then the Jew.
    I did no more than you let me do.”

    Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
    none before stood so alone as I.
    The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there
    to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.

PATERNO FIRED!!!!

Finally someone did the right thing. Too late for the victims.

Paterno fired over Penn St. child abuse scandal

CBS/AP) 

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who preached success with honor for half a century but whose legend was shattered by a child sex abuse scandal, was fired Wednesday by the school’s board of trustees.

Paterno had offered to retire at season’s end earlier in the day, saying he was “absolutely devastated” by the case, in which his onetime heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with molesting eight boys in 15 years, including at the Penn State football complex.

 He had said he hoped the team could finish its season with “dignity and determination.”

One emeritus trustee who was on a conference call with the board Tuesday told CBS News, “The tone of last night’s call was of concern for all the people involved, including the children, the coach and the reputation of the school.”

Paterno had said earlier that said the trustees, who had been considering his fate, should “not spend a single minute discussing my status” and have more important matters to address.

The 84-year-old Paterno has been engulfed by outrage that he did not take more action after a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, came to him in 2002 and reported seeing Sandusky in the Penn State showers with a 10-year-old boy. Paterno notified the athletic director, Tim Curley, and a vice president, Gary Schultz.

Penn St. scandal dwarfs others in college sports

Curley and Schultz have since been charged with failing to report the incident to the authorities. Paterno hasn’t been accused of legal wrongdoing. But he has been assailed, in what the state police commissioner called a lapse of “moral responsibility,” for not doing more to stop Sandusky.

The U.S. Department of Education said late Wednesday that it was launching an investigation into Penn State’s handling of the abuse.

“This is a tragedy,” Paterno said in a statement. “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

 

Paterno met with his coaching staff and players in the football building at Penn State for about 10-15 minutes Wednesday in what was described as a very emotional session. Standing at a podium, Paterno told them he was leaving and broke down in tears.

Players gave him a standing ovation when he walked out.

Junior quarterback Stephon Morris said some players also were nearly in tears as Paterno spoke.

“I still can’t believe it,” Morris said. “I’ve never seen Coach Paterno like that in my life.”

Asked what was the main message of Paterno’s talk, Morris said: “Beat Nebraska.”

The decision to retire by the man affectionately known as “Joe Pa” brings to an end one of the most storied coaching careers, not just in college football but in all of sports. Paterno won 409 games, a record for major college football, and is in the middle of his 46th year as coach.

His figure patrolling the sideline — thick-rimmed glasses and windbreaker, tie and khaki pants — was as unmistakable at Penn State as its classic blue and white uniforms and the name Happy Valley, a place where no one came close to Paterno’s stature.

The retirement announcement came three days before Penn State hosts Nebraska in its final home game of the season, a day set aside to honor seniors on the team.

Penn State has bounced back from a mediocre 2010 season to go 8-1 this year, with its only loss to powerhouse Alabama. The Nittany Lions are No. 12 in the AP college football poll.

After 19th-ranked Nebraska, Penn State plays at Ohio State and at No. 16 Wisconsin, both Big Ten rivals. It has a chance to play in the Big Ten championship game Dec. 3, with a Rose Bowl bid on the line.

In the statement, Paterno said: “I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief.”

He went on: “I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today.”

A day earlier, Paterno had showed up for practice and adoring crowds rallied outside his modest home into the night, chanting his name.

But Paterno, whose football program bore the motto “Success with Honor,” could not withstand the backlash from a scandal that goes well beyond the everyday stories of corruption in college sports.

“If this is true, we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families,” Paterno said in a statement Sunday. “They are in our prayers.”

Sandusky, who retired from Penn State in June 1999, maintained his innocence through his lawyer.

Paterno has defended his decision to take the news to Curley and Schultz. Paterno said it was obvious that the graduate student, since identified as McQueary, was “distraught,” but said he was not told about the “very specific actions” of the sexual assault in the grand jury report.

After Paterno reported the incident to Curley, Sandusky was told to stay away from the school. But critics say Paterno should have done more.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

GRAND JURY TESTIMONY OF Mike McQueary:

 On March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant (“graduate assistant:) who was then 28 years old, entered the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus on a Friday night near the beginning of Spring Break.

     The graduate assistant, who was familiar with Sandusky, was going to put some newly purchased sneakers in his locker and get some recruiting tapes to watch. It was about 9:30 p.m. As the graduate assistant entered the locker room doors, he was surprised to find the lights and showers on. He then heard  slapping sounds.He believed the sounds to be those of sexual activity. As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the shower. He saw a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked but noticed that both Victim 2 and Sandusky saw him. The graduate assistant left immediately, distraught.

    The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. His father told the graduate assistant to leave the building and come to his home. The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno (“Paterno”), head football coach of Penn State. The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno’s home, where he reported what he had seen.

   Joseph V. Paterno testified to receiving the graduate assistant’s report at his home on a Saturday morning. Paterno testified that the graduate assistant was very upset. Paterno called Tim Curley (“Curley”), Penn State Athletic Director and Paterno’s immediate superior, to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the graduate assistant had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.

    Approximately one and a half weeks later, the graduate assistant was called to a meeting with Penn State Athletic Director Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz (“Schultz”). The graduate assistant reported to Curley and Schultz that he had witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers. Curley and Schultz assured the graduate assistant that they would look into it and determine what further action they would take. Paterno was not present for this meeting.

   The graduate assistant heard back from Curley a couple of weeks later. He was told that Sandusky’s keys to the locker room were taken away and that the incident had been reported to The Second Mile. The graduate assistant was never questioned by University Police and no other entity conducted an investigation until he testified in Grand Jury in December, 2010. The Grand Jury finds the graduate assistant’s testimony to be extremely credible.

OK. Pretend you are Joe Paterno on a Saturday morning in 2002 in your house. A 28 year assistant tells you that your best friend and right hand man for 30 years was seen having anal sex with a 10 year old boy in the shower of your locker room. I think a multiple choice test will help you decide what to do:

A.    Ask Mike whether he wants some bacon and eggs with orange juice.

B.    Say that Jerry was just teaching the boy the proper technique for making an anal block on a blitzing cock.

C.    Immediately pick up the phone and call the police because a 28 year old man says he saw an absolutely horrific crime being committed against a child.

D.    Ask McQueary whether he would like to be an assistant coach some day if he would just not make any waves about this unfortunate incident.

E.   Wait until the next day to meet the Athletic Director, report that Sandusky was seen having sex with a 10 year old boy, wipe your hands of the situation, and prepare for next week’s game with Purdue. You never follow-up to see why no charges or investigation has taken place regarding the most horrific crime known to mankind, but at least Sandusky’s keys to the locker room were taken away so he’ll have to fuck little boys elsewhere.

WHICH CHOICE WOULD YOU MAKE?

 

IS IT REALLY A TOUGH CHOICE?

 

PATERNO IS NOT A VICTIM

Poor Joe Pa. He is playing the victim card. The King of Happy Valley doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Ask the mothers of the defenseless little boys whether they think Paterno did anything wrong. Put yourself into their shoes as the parent of one of these boys. What would you say to Joe Paterno? Would you tell him he was innocent until proven guilty? Or would you punch him in the mouth and curse him for thinking of his beloved football team over the lives of little boys?

Mothers of two of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged victims lash out at Penn State officials’ handling of scandal

He was the last victim, that we know of, to come forward.

But in many ways, he was the first.

He was one of the first with enough courage to say something. To stick around for three years while police and a grand jury talked to dozens of people and combed through thousands of documents.

To hang on emotionally.

To take a stand against a Goliath. A legend. A man that some saw as a god.

He was the first to be believed. Authorities even call him Victim One.

The mother of the Clinton County boy is telling her family story. It’s a story that launched a three-year grand jury investigation that resulted in sexual assault charges against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, allegedly involving eight boys.

“I’m very proud of him,” the mother said of her son, on the brink of adulthood and at the heart of what some are calling the biggest scandal in college sports.

“He’s a brave kid,” she said. “And his major concern in the whole thing was for anybody else. That was his big thing. He said, ‘I just don’t want this to happen to anybody else.’”

And now he knows that he’s not alone.

Ten years before he came forward, another child, now 24, had also spoken up. He wasn’t believed. Allegations he made against Sandusky about touching during a shared shower at Penn State in 1998 never resulted in charges.

Sandusky, through his attorney, denies all the charges. Attorney Joe Amendola, said Sandusky attributes the allegations to troubled kids who are acting out.

“I’m so upset,” said the mom of the 24-year-old, who authorities are calling Victim Six. “My son is extremely distraught, and now to see how we were betrayed, words cannot tell you. To see that Graham Spanier is putting his unconditional support behind Curley and Shultz when he should be putting his support behind the victims, it just makes them victims all over again.”

She’s talking about the perjury and failure-to-report charges filed against former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and resigned Vice President of Business and Finance Gary Schultz.

Prosecutors allege the administrators ignored a 2002 report from a graduate assistant — identified by sources as Mike McQueary — that he saw Sandusky having sex with a young boy in a shower.

McQueary, now an assistant coach for the Nittany Lions football team, went to his father first, then to coach Joe Paterno.

“I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” said the mom of Victim Six. “[McQueary] was a grown man, and he saw a boy being sodomized … He ran and called his daddy?”

As media from around the country descended on Happy Valley on Monday to dig into the allegations and the details of a possible cover-up, the two mothers decided to talk to The Patriot-News.

Both said they don’t want their sons’ stories to get lost in the scandal.

Victim One

Victim One met Sandusky through the Second Mile — a charity for needy children that Sandusky started — and quickly got drawn into his world of big-time college football: gifts, trips, sporting events, and hanging out with a guy who seemed to be loved by everyone.

But his mother said it came at a price.

The Patriot-News will not identify either women or their sons in keeping with our policy not to name victims of sexual assault. The mother of Victim One specifically asked that other media respect her request for no more interviews.

She brought the psychologist who has been helping her son cope with the trauma to the interview.

Almost from day one, psychologist Michael Gillum has met regularly with the boy and counseled him through the protracted police investigation.

A few weeks before her son broke down and confessed to a principal at Central Mountain High School in Clinton County that he was being molested by Jerry Sandusky — a volunteer football coach at his high school — his mother began to suspect something was wrong.

First, it was because her son was acting out. When she grounded him, she said Sandusky demanded he be able to “take care of it.”

“I said, ‘No way, he’s my kid,’” she said.

Then, her son began asking her about an online database for “sex weirdos.”

“You don’t want to just accuse people of that,” the mother said. “I called the school principal and the guidance counselor and said, if nothing else, he’s taking my son out of classes. He’s leaving the school with him. … So I asked them to call him into the office and ask [my son] how he felt.

“They did call him to the office that day and I remember [the principal] was in tears and she said, ‘You need to come here right away.’”

Her son, then 15, broke down and told them what happened.

“They told me to go home and think about what I wanted to do, and I was not happy,” she said. “They said I needed to think about how that would impact my son if I said something like that. I went home and got [my son] and we came to [Children and Youth Services] immediately.”

Officials at Central Mountain High School have said they immediately reported the abuse, and Attorney General Linda Kelly praised them for doing the right thing.

The boy’s story would evolve over the next few weeks as he was interviewed by police. That’s not atypical for sex cases involving teens, Gillum said.

“It’s essentially peeling back the layers of an onion,” Gillum said. “Because it’s so humiliating. It’s so much mental anguish. … They typically want you to know something inappropriate happened, then there was a progression where boundaries were violated.”

But sometimes it takes time for the victim to get it all out.

That’s something Sandusky’s attorney Joe Amendola points to in defense.

He said it appears someone coaxed this victim into embellishing his story because it changed from groping to more graphic sex acts.

Gillum called it a typical defense tactic.

“They will imply … that I must have led the witness,” he said. “But when you’re specialized in children and adolescent child abuse, you’re trained to make sure you wouldn’t compromise the evidence.”

Victim Six

Victim Six cried when he read the 23-page grand jury presentment released Saturday, his mother said. And not for himself.

“He had no idea how bad it was,” she said. “He was lucky. He only had that one contact with him.”

It allegedly happened in May 1998, following a tour of the football locker rooms. Her son and another boy, both 11, shared a shower with Sandusky.

When he got home he said, ‘If you’re wondering why my hair is wet, we took a shower together,’ and ran into his room, his mom recalls.

She called police.

But after a six-week investigation that included the mother confronting Sandusky in her home as police listened in the other room, Sandusky was cleared.

Then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar decided there wasn’t enough evidence.

“And you’re going to tell me that Spanier and Paterno weren’t informed of something that was that huge that Ray Gricar was in on it but Spanier was kept in the dark?” she said. “I’m just not that stupid. I’m so upset I just can’t believe it.”

Paterno’s son, Scott, has said that lawyers for Penn State assured him his father was never told about the 1998 report — investigated by university police.

It’s unclear from the presentment if Spanier knew. However, Schultz, who was in charge of the police force, acknowledged knowing about it.

When the mother confronted Sandusky, he said: “I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead,” according the presentment from the grand jury.

An investigator for Children and Youth Services broke the news to the mother: It was all a big mistake, the mother said she was told. The police officer who investigated won’t comment. Neither will the former police chief.

“Jerry Sandusky admitted to my face, he admitted it,” the mother said. “He admitted that he lathered up my son they were naked and he bear-hugged him. If they would have done something about it in 1998, and then again in 2002 — there was two chances they dropped the ball and I think they should all be held accountable.”

Her son, she said, can’t stop thinking about Victim One.

“That poor child,” she said. “My heart is like breaking for this boy and his family. And what about all the boys we don’t know about? They could have all been saved.”

The only semblance of comfort their family has had in the last three days is from community support.

“At last, my family and I are believed,” she said. “Because they tried to make my son and the other boy out to be liars.”

Every day was a struggle
Finding the courage to come forward was supposed to be the hardest part.

“We expected you just arrest people who do stuff like that,” Victim One’s mom said. “We didn’t realize it was going to be this difficult and take this long.”

The three-year investigation eventually ended with a grand jury finding that Sandusky had eight victims — two of them had long-term relationships with Sandusky and six involved shared showers in Lasch Building at Penn State, which houses the football program.

“I am upset that it took this long, but I also realize that the more people they find, the less impact it’s going to have on my son … and it’s only going to help everybody else,” the mom said.

Hearing that he wasn’t alone was a challenge of emotions for her son.

“He wasn’t happy that it happened to somebody else,” she said.

But in a way, there was some relief: more chance that he would be believed.

It was very hard to keep their cool, to keep the allegations a secret, and not talk to anyone. But they did it.

When the arrests were announced Saturday, and the family learned that two Penn State officials had known about a prior incident and didn’t report it to police, she flipped out.

“I’m infuriated that people would not report something like that,” she said. “I still can’t believe it. I’m appalled. I’m shocked. I’m stunned. There’s so many words. I’m very mad. They could have prevented this from happening.”

Her son has accused Sandusky of four years of abuse, and it started not long after Curley and Schultz were notified of a abuse report in 2002.

The attorney general has said their inaction allowed Sandusky to molest this boy.

His mom said he knows that.

“He’s very angry,” she said. “I just can’t fathom how anybody could do that. When I read the indictment, I was very shocked that there was so many people that didn’t do anything … and there had to be more people covering it up, I think, for him to get away with it for this long.”

When her son first came forward, every day was a struggle. There was this overwhelming feeling of deception. Sandusky was supposed to be a role model.

“In the beginning, it was extremely upsetting. I was so shocked. It got so bad we didn’t know what to do,” she said. “[He] is really, really afraid of Jerry. He told me numerous times when he started backing away from him, you just can’t tell him no. I said, why not?”

Her son replied, “You just don’t do that.”

“His attorney was saying how these disadvantaged children, you can’t trust them … because they come from low income. I don’t think that has any bearing on anything,” she said. “I was warned that is what this basically would be about, because kids in The Second Mile are basically disadvantaged.”

In the first page of their presentment, grand jurors noted that, too. They accused Sandusky of using the charity to find his victims, “many of whom were vulnerable due to their social situations.”

“Obviously it’s a price that the brave victim pays,” Gillum said.

Unemployment by Major – Some Degrees Pay While Others Leave YOU Paying

A few months back, I wrote an article that didn’t go over too well.  It was titled, “A Question for all you Communications Majors“.  The article was initially meant to focus on how kids are going to college, taking on massive debt and graduating with majors that leave them unable to pay it down given their prospects upon graduation.  And for whatever reason, I went off on a tangent about Communications degrees, renamed the article as such and well, that’s history.  I wrote it, I own it now.  So, after being toasted all over the web for that one (primarily by bloggers who majored in Communications), here’s the actual data that matters.  This comprehensive report from the Wall Street Journal shows what the unemployment rate is by major based on 2010 Census data.  While I picked on Communications majors for whatever reason, there are several degrees that fare much worse (Communications actually fared relatively well compared to my preconceived notions).  Rather than make you sift through the 10 page slide decks at HuffPo and other outlets that picked up this story, here are the screen shots of the data that I thought were interesting – sorted by Highest Unemployment Rate by Major and Highest Salary by Major with a focus on the 75th percentile.

Continue Reading to See the Data and Analysis for Unemployment by Major

PATERNO MUST GO TO JAIL

This is very simple. Anyone who has read this blog for the last couple years knows how I feel about the Catholic Church and their cover-up of priests fucking little boys. My unequivical position has been and continues to be that anyone within the Catholic Church heirarchy, up to and including the Pope, that knew about children being molested and fucked by predator priests and did not report it to the police is as guilty as the predator and should spend the rest of their lives in the general population of a prison.

Joe Paterno and the President of Penn State University were told that Sandusky molested a young boy in the showers of their lockeroom, 9 years ago. They did not report it to the police. Sandusky then went on to molest and fuck many young boys over the following years. Paterno & the President of Penn State are as guilty as Sandusky and should go to jail. They knowingly chose to protect the “reputation” of Penn State at the expense of innocent children whose lives have been ruined by this monster. They made the wrong fucking choice and they deserve to go to jail.

THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND HERE!!!!!

Powerful football coaches and powerful cardinals and bishops have done the exact same thing. They have protected their power and reputations by allowing innocent boys to have their lives ruined. They deserve to burn in the deepest depths of hell.  

NATION: Paterno’s illustrious career faces tarnished end

Published: Tuesday, November 08, 2011

By Dan K. Thomasson
[email protected]

Few things are quite as pathetic as a revered hero who stays around too long and suddenly becomes embroiled in a scandal that threatens to undo the saintly image most everyone expected he would take to his grave.

But that is exactly what octogenarian Joe Paterno faces only a few short weeks after becoming the coach with the most victories in college football history.

It turns out that the longtime mastermind of the Pennsylvania State University’s elite gridiron program reportedly knew for nine years or so but did nothing about the degrading sexual activities of one of his most trusted assistants, his former defensive coordinator who was arrested over the weekend on charges of abusing eight boys over 15 years. Jerry Sandusky had been running a foundation to help needy children.

What in the world was Paterno thinking?

I must confess here that I never have been a fan of his. I thought among other things that he didn’t have the grace to give the proper credit for his team’s successes to those who for most of the last years actually have been running things.

But my real antipathy toward him stems from an incident involving my youngest son, who as a budding player was invited to Paterno’s elite summer camp and came back angry and dismayed to report being snubbed when he and other attendees approached the great man to say hello.

If the Pennsylvania Aattorney General’s report can be believed, and there is no reason not to, Paterno was informed in 2002 by a graduate assistant who said he saw the defensive leader, Sandusky, abusing a 10-year-old boy in the locker room.

Paterno informed the athletic director but no one told the proper authorities. It seems obvious the school was more concerned about the potential damage to its program than the welfare of the youngsters. They reportedly just told him not to bring anymore kids around the football program.

That callous disregard can be expected to cost the university big time. Two of the officials, the vice president for finance and the athletic director, allegedly have been charged with perjury and failing to report a crime. Meanwhile, the university’s president foolishly issued a statement supporting the two officials.

Paterno has not been charged, but the impact of this is nearly as bad for him as if he had been, considering the depravity of the situation and his failure to personally take the case to law enforcement officials.

I couldn’t help but compare this to a widely reported case involving a 26-year-old man convicted in Florida the other day of having pornographic images of children on his computer. It was his first arrest, he had no record of any kind, and there was no evidence that he had ever been accused of molesting any one, child or adult. He was given life imprisonment without parole solely on the basis of having downloading the images.

He had turned down an offer to plead guilty in exchange for a 20-year term. So the prosecutor filed more serious charges. His sentence was exactly the same as is expected for a murderer recently convicted in an unbelievably brutal slaying of a yoga-store employee here.

If he had abused or molested a child, the young man would have been given a much lighter sentence. The judge’s startling ruling, based on the argument that anyone downloading these images is guilty of furthering the depraved child porn industry, is being appealed.

In the Penn State case, Sandusky faces a long time in prison if convicted. It may be a life sentence, given that he is 67. He is out on $100,000 bond. I would have made it $1 million.

But the troubling question remains as to the responsibility, morally and legally, of those who aided and abetted his despicable actions by remaining silent.

No mitigating explanation of any kind would be acceptable from any of them. There might be a tendency to excuse Paterno because of his age. But if his mental faculties are good enough to run a major college football program, they’re good enough to know right from wrong.

How sad for the coach who has stayed around too long.

Email Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at [email protected].

LLPOH: Things I Believe

During my life, I have gradually developed a set of things that I believe. As a young person, I received very little in the way of help in developing these beliefs. In general, as a young person I never considered these things to be important. But somewhere along the line, I determined that what I wanted to be was an educated man, and that I wanted to make things, and be successful in business, and to have a happy, healthy, emotionally sound family. As a result, I gradually began to develop things I believe in. Following is a very truncated list of things I believe in. I add and subtract from things I believe in all of the time, and alter it based on things I learn and experience. The reason I have put this list forward is that these beliefs form the basis for my position on most issues. At the moment I am struggling to understand why some people take the positions that they do, as it seems to indicate that their belief set is extremely dissimilar to mine, and so I am confused. I welcome your comments and additions to this list.

I believe:

– in the general decency of the American people
– in the US form of government
– in the resilience of the American people
– in the obligation to conduct business honestly and with integrity
– that if one of my employees has the courage to ask me the question I need to have the courage to respond honestly
– in education
– in education for its own sake
– that the country needs to improve its education in the sciences, math, and engineering
– that governments should not fund college educations in the arts, but should funnel the money into science, math, and engineering
– that the general decency of the American people is being eroded by a growing welfare state
– that each person must be responsible for their own actions
– that each person should be responsible for meeting the costs of their retirement and old age
– in family
– in telling my children and my wife that I love them every day
– in becoming a better person each day
– in acting within the law
– in personal financial responsibility
– in spending less than you earn
– in paying your debts
– in staying debt free, except for financing an education and buying a home
– that building things is a noble pursuit
– in writing my representatives demanding change
– in books
– in reading every day
– in learning something every day
– in peaceful, lawful protest
– in protecting the weak
– in respecting the aged
– in loyalty to one’s family and friends
– in charity
– in being kind to animals
– in leaving a positive future for my children
– that making a profit is a good thing
– in capitalism
– in being polite to those providing me service
– that being rich is not a sin
– that being poor is not a sin
– in buying American-made
– that unions suck
– that everyone should have to pay taxes
– that we pay too much tax
– that the government spends too much
– that we should not be policing the world
– that we should secure our borders
– a man’s word is his bond
– in hard-work
– in no excuses
– in good planning
– in living life so that when I look back I will have no regrets

And this list goes on and on. Thanks for reading.