Obama Lied, Healthcare Coverage Died

By Matthew Vadum On October 30, 2013

Although federal officials have known for at least three years that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage, that didn’t stop President Obama from lying repeatedly, reassuring voters the law would not adversely impact their existing coverage.
In an uncharacteristically media-savvy move aimed at capitalizing on current affairs, Republicans compiled a list of 13 Democrats –including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)– who deceived voters by obediently repeating Obama’s lies.
Providing another ground for impeachment to pile on to the growing list of Obama’s high crimes and misdemeanors, NBC News reported that four sources “deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act” said that

“50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.”

Many of those required to buy more expensive new policies will experience “sticker shock,” the sources said.
The administration generated an estimate in July 2010 that stated “that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them,” according to NBC.
But President Obama, who said the year before, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still promising in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
For years President Obama has told the public over and over again that after Obamacare took effect, those who were satisfied with their current health coverage would be able to keep it. Obama’s constant reassurances anesthetized skeptical voters, downplaying the government takeover of the healthcare system. The president told Americans their health care premiums would fall $2,500 per year and they would retain their choice of medical providers. Many Americans, especially on the Left, projected their own fantasies onto Obamacare, and are only now beginning to realize that Obamacare isn’t actually a cost-free program that causes free health care to fall from the sky.
The 2010 estimate demonstrates that “when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said consultant Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. He says 80 percent of those in the individual market will be forced out of current policies and be compelled to purchase insurance that complies with the Obamacare statute, which mandates expensive benefits.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the company of First Lady Michelle Obama’s college friend received a no-bid contract to construct the malfunctioning Obamacare website. As the Daily Caller reports,

“Toni Townes-Whitley, who worked alongside her classmate Michelle Obama in multiple Princeton University student groups, became senior vice president of CGI Federal in May 2010. CGI was the only eligible company considered for the contract to build the disastrous HealthCare.Gov Obamacare enrollment site … Townes-Whitley maintained her relationship with the first couple after joining CGI, even enjoying ‘Christmas with the Obamas’ at the White House in 2010.”

CGI Federal Inc., the primary contractor on the joke of a website, also screwed up a Canadian-taxpayer funded project, a federal gun registry. The Canadian government canceled the company’s contract in 2007 after that country’s Auditor General determined that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was “significantly over budget” and was repeatedly delayed.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration won’t say how many people have actually enrolled in the exchanges.
The administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Marilyn Tavenner, repeatedly refused to give a straight answer to a congressional committee about how many Americans have signed up with the exchanges.
“We’ll have that information available for you in mid-November,” Tavenner said under questioning from House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.). Tavenner confirmed that CMS is aiming for 7 million enrollees by March 31 next year.
The bungled roll-out lends some credibility to the theory that Obamacare was designed to fail in order to clear the way for what the Left really wants: a one-size-fits-all single payer scheme that feeds the insatiable leftist fetish of equality — equally bad healthcare for all.
CMS’s Tavenner and Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies, instead of the true culprit, government policy, for the recent nationwide tsunami of Obamacare-related insurance policy cancellations.
Left-wingers are becoming downright kooky in their desperate efforts to explain away the Obama administration’s roll-out failures.
Washington Post conspiracy theorist Ezra Klein, the creator of the “Journolist” propaganda machine, blames Republicans for participating in a make-believe campaign to do “everything possible to sabotage” Obamacare. The GOP’s “plan to undermine the law worked too well,” Klein pontificates.
Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) flew out of his chair yesterday during a congressional hearing about the Affordable Care Act’s bungled launch. Pascrell accused Republicans of making up problems with Obamacare in order to justify repealing it.
Sixties civil rights protester John Lewis, now an undistinguished garden-variety socialist Democrat serving in the House of Representatives, played the racism card. Comfortably ensconced in a safe Atlanta, Ga., congressional district that would elect and reelect until the end of time anyone with a “D” after his or her name, Lewis said yesterday that Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare remind him

“of another period in our history. Not so long ago during the 50s, many Southern senators signed a Southern Manifesto after the [Brown v. Board of Education] Supreme Court decision of 1954. And those senators — along with many Southern governors — subscribed to the doctrine of interposition and notification and some even massive resistance.”
“That’s what we saw on the part of the Republican members of the House and some of the Republicans in the Senate,” he said of GOP attempts to strip away funding for Obamacare. Lewis conveniently ignored the fact that the 1956 manifesto of which he spoke, a document that opposed the racial integration that the high court cleared the way for, was signed by 99 politicians, 97 of whom were Democrats.

Of course, Lewis likes to lie in order to advance causes he supports. In March 2010 Lewis and Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind.) falsely claimed Tea Party supporters hurled the N-word at them as they walked past an anti-Obamacare rally outside the U.S. Capitol in March 2010. (Carson, a black Muslim who wants U.S. schools turned into Islamic madrassas, also told a black audience that Tea Party supporters wanted to see “you and me hanging on a tree.”)
The intellectually mediocre Clarence Page embraces Obama’s self-serving explanation that the problems surfacing with Obamacare are the products of mere technological glitches rather than terrifying foreshadowings of the amply documented lethality of government-run healthcare.
The economically illiterate columnist shrugs that Obamacare may not be to blame for recent increases in insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-payments. “[A]fter decades of rising rates and reduced benefits, as well as rising health care costs, it’s hard to tell how much of the increase would have happened anyway.”
Even though the exchanges are artificial government-created cartels that have nothing to do with free markets, Page deludes himself into believing that Obamacare “opens up competition that … will reduce the increases in cost.” As the Jan. 1 deadline approaches for Obamacare coverage to take effect, “the law, like the federal website, needs more work,” he writes. No matter how awful the rollout may be, Obamacare is still “worth the effort,” according to the Obama lapdog.
No failure, no mountains of evidence, no body count, will ever be enough to convince left-wing true believers like Clarence Page that socialist healthcare is a bad idea.
The Left will continue rationalizing away the failures of Obama and Obamacare no matter how damning the evidence that emerges.
And Barack Obama will continue to be a saintly figure in their eyes as he gets away with murder.

Can We Finally Stop Pretending?

By Jeffrey T. Brown

Every day, it seems, more people who have been screaming their hatred for those who predicted all we see coming true are admitting what we have known all along. The president is incapable of telling a truth, and what conservatives have been predicting for three years about ObamaCare has been entirely correct. Indeed, we haven't seen anything close to the worst of what is to come, since the system hasn't even begun to function in its utmost state of disarray and confusion. We've seen a website and estimates of premium and deductible figures which have been panic-inducing all on their own. There is not one single fact about this monstrosity that has been truly presented by the president, and his law, its destruction of lives and fortunes, and the pattern of fraud that have accompanied it rest solely and squarely on the Democratic Party. They did this to the United States of America and they did it on purpose.
The left has fought the factual arguments of their opponents with screaming accusations, smears, slanders, and character assassination, with the hysterical label of "racist" trumping all others. It has become reflexive, and thus almost meaningless in its lack of substance, but not entirely so. It bespeaks a psychosis that infects every response of the left to facts, experience, knowledge, and hard-earned wisdom. The finger pointing has been calculated and malicious. And it has been sadly effective with the indoctrinated. Many on the left actually believe that reasoned, factual opposition to policies founded on lies is motivated by racism, rather than what such policies have done and are doing to those who have the courage to speak out against them.
In truth, conservatives care little about race, other than in its use as a weapon by the left. Conservatives embraced Dr. King's message from the outset, at the same time that liberals were setting up a grievance system designed to pollute and exploit it. Conservatives care about policies, not skin color. Opposition to ObamaCare was never about bigotry or hatred. It was about logic, and foresight, and reaching self-evident conclusions. It was about the truth. So mentally conditioned to acceptance of the smear has the left become, however, that they are entirely unprepared to coherently explain what is now unfolding before their eyes.
For those on the left who seem befuddled by the train wreck that is ObamaCare, perhaps some introspection is in order. The political lynching of conservatives for the last five years has been an unmitigated lie. Everything conservatives predicted is coming to pass. Every truth they told is playing out publicly. The serial prevaricator who is our president has finally been exposed in ways that even his staunchest spinners cannot spin. The crashed $643 million dollar website, the skyrocketing premiums, the job losses, the dropping of plans by insurers, all of it is out there now regardless of the president's skin color, which was never the issue except to the extent that it has protected him from responsibility for what he has purposefully done, even to his supporters.
So, can we finally stop pretending that the left has a positive plan for the United States? Can we stop pretending that the president meant to do anything other than destroy a system he has hated since his socialist-influenced youth? Can we dispense with the unhinged rants about dog whistles and face up to the fact that conservatives have been right about this all along? Can we finally openly discuss that the left's own hatred and bigotry are largely to blame for where we are now, not just regarding ObamaCare? They have protected, helped and worshiped an illusion, with pure malice toward those who have loved and fought for this country, and are entirely complicit in the damage now being done to every fiber of our nation. They have intentionally derailed reasoned opposition to purposefully detrimental policies, and have exploited hatred and bigotry to do it. Their own hatred, now so clearly shown to be unfounded, doesn't just inform the left with regard to health care, or opposition thereto. It informs everything the left does, every position they take, every feeling they have. It is their malignant security blanket.
For decades, every time we have faced serious issues as a country, the outcome has had more to do with liberals' hatred of their opponents and traditional American values than with solving problems constructively. Before so immediate and punitive a mess as has been the implementation of ObamaCare, we have been without a single, irrefutable teaching device with which to demonstrate the utter malice that is all of progressivism and liberalism, or what it portends for the future of every citizen of our country. We can argue reasoned predictions and logic until the cows come home, but nothing is as personal as a direct assault on those who have loyally bought and perpetuated the lies through their well-conditioned hatred and bigotry of those who, shockingly, were actually correct.
We now have a teachable moment. A window has opened for many who have been lifelong Democrats to see what they have been suckered into doing to themselves and their fellow citizens, and for whom. Perhaps they possess enough remnants of objectivity, and a long enough memory, to recognize in hindsight the purposeful falsity of the vicious and very personal attacks they saw, and possibly cheered, from their own party representatives during the recent government shutdown, and for years before that. Maybe there is enough intellectual honesty left in some of them to finally understand the extent to which they are misled, misinformed, manipulated, and misrepresented by those who pretend to stand for anything constructive or beneficial to their country or its future. The very same people angrily uttering those lies proudly voted to impose ObamaCare upon them, along with financial hardship and the loss of health insurance. Pathological liars are not especially selective. They lie about everything to everyone.
Can we finally stop pretending that they are not also lying to us about everything else? Can we stop pretending they are not lying to us about guns, and abortion, and voter fraud, and voter ID laws, and taxes, and the economy, and the environment, and education, and energy, and job creation, and national security, and international relations, and Islam, and their assault on Christianity, and amnesty, and entitlements, and stimulus, and recovery, and Fast and Furious, and Benghazi, and the IRS scandal, and a war on women, and our borders, and domestic surveillance, and weakening us militarily, and their supposed loyalty as Americans, and their phony patriotism, and American Exceptionalism, and our history, and our national character, and the historical good our country has done, and what they really have planned for us, and what we will achieve when we are out from under the heel of burgeoning socialism and despotism?
And yes, can we finally stop pretending that we are a racist country? Can we stop pretending that perceived racial problems don't derive from Americans who profit from oppressing and discouraging other Americans, and that the profiteers don't share the same party affiliation, and often the same skin color, as the "oppressed"? Can we stop pretending that the American left is not irrationally bound and determined to remake our country into a cesspool of misery and failure allegedly out of some demented sense of fairness, to be ruled over by those who seek only to control, rather than improve the lot of the people they are supposed to raise up?
When that light finally comes on, let us not miss the opportunity to drive home what conservatives have always known. We cannot emerge from this darkness and achieve our full potential as a nation until we stop pretending that everything we are told by the left is not a lie.

US #1 in Oil: So Why Isn’t Gasoline $0.80 Per Gallon?

Submitted by Marin Katusa via Casey Research,

While the White House spied on Frau Merkel and Obamacare developed into a slow-moving train wreck, while Syria was saved from all-out war by the Russian bell and the Republicrats fought bitterly about the debt ceiling… something monumental happened that went unnoticed by most of the globe.

The US quietly surpassed Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer in the world.

You read that correctly: "The jump in output from shale plays has led to the second biggest oil boom in history," stated Reuters on October 15. "U.S. output, which includes natural gas liquids and biofuels, has swelled 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2009, the fastest expansion in production over a four-year period since a surge in Saudi Arabia's output from 1970-1974."

After the initial moment of awe, pragmatic readers will surely wonder: Then why isn't gasoline dirt-cheap in the US?

There's indeed a good explanation why most Americans don't drive up to the gas pump whistling a happy tune (and it has nothing to do with evil speculators). Let's start with the demand side of this equation.

Crude oil consists of very long chains of carbon atoms. The refineries take the crude and essentially "crack" those long chains of carbon atoms into shorter chains of carbon atoms to make various petroleum products. Some of the products that are made from petroleum may surprise you.

Top 10 Things You Didn't Know Use Compounds Made from Crude Oil Golf balls Toothpaste Soap Aspirin Life jackets Louis Vuitton knock-offs Guitar strings Shoes Soccer balls Pantyhose

The United States has the largest refining capacity in the world and is still by far the largest consumer of oil in the world (though China is beginning to catch up), and its refineries require 15 million barrels of oil a day. That means even though, due to the shale revolution, domestic production has dramatically increased to about 8 million barrels, the US still has to import between 7 and 8 million barrels of expensive foreign oil a day.

Let's take a look at who the US buys the imported oil from. (Now that I finally figured out my way around the new Windows 8—which, by the way, really sucks—I can even add some color to my tables.)

Country	Millions of barrels exported to US per day
Canada	2.5–3
Saudi Arabia	1.2–1.5
Mexico	0.8–1.0
Venezuela	0.8
Kuwait	0.3–0.5

Canada is blue because it is not only friendly with the US, but also has the ability to increase oil production. The other countries are red because they either have decreasing oil production, or the country is not on good terms with the US government, or the production may be at risk for various reasons. The "red countries" all sell oil to the US at higher prices than does Canada.

As I said, the US imports about 7 million barrels of oil a day, and our top 5 exporters make up between 5.6 and 6.8 million barrels while the rest is split among other countries.

This means that even though the US has significantly increased its oil production in the past five years, a good chunk of oil has to be imported at much higher prices. And higher crude oil prices for refineries means higher prices at the gas pump.

But that's not the only issue: The "new oil" produced from the shale oil fields in the Bakken and Eagle Ford formations isn't cheap. Both the Bakken and Eagle Ford have been hugely successful, and an average well in either region can produce over 400 barrels of oil per day.

That may sound like a lot, but drilling thousands of meters into the ground (both vertically and horizontally), then casing and fracking the well, costs millions of dollars. And the trouble doesn't end once the well has been drilled: oil and gas production can drop as much as 50% in the first year.

Think of it as running on a treadmill—but the incline gets steeper and steeper the longer you run. That's the current reality of America's oil production.

Now, these areas also have to deal with declining legacy oil production ("legacy" meaning older oil wells that produced before fracking became popular) due to depletion rates. Freeze-offs, and even hurricane season can affect the legacy oil wells' production decline.

As the old wells begin to deplete, they need to be replaced by unconventional wells with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Even though these new wells provide an initial burst of production, they decline very quickly. That means you need to drill even more wells just to keep up—and the vicious cycle continues.

The costs, as you can imagine, are forbiddingly high. Even in known oil-rich regions like the Bakken and Eagle Ford, the all-in cost of extracting a barrel of oil from the ground can cost as much as US$75 per barrel (for comparison, Saudi Arabia can produce oil for as low as US$1 per barrel). To put it in simple terms: cheap oil in North America is a thing of the past.

So, the US produces expensive oil and relies on imports of even more expensive oil. And since the refiners need to make money as well, this means higher prices at the pumps. Who loses? The US consumer, of course.

What would help lower gas prices? Building more pipelines to deliver cheaper Canadian oil to refineries in the US and decreasing the refineries' dependence on expensive foreign oil. Until these new and much safer pipelines are built, rail has to pick up the slack. Almost 400,000 railcars full of oil are expected to be shipped in 2013, compared with just 9,500 railcars in 2008, a whopping 41-fold increase.

But rail is not the answer. In fact, transporting oil by rail is much more dangerous than transporting it by pipeline. Just last week, we wrote about two recent accidents, one of which claimed 47 lives.

Federal and state taxes at every step of the gasoline-making progress make the pain at the pump even worse. The US government already takes more than 60% of the divisible income from every barrel of oil produced… and another 50 cents per gallon at the pump.

Then there's the matter of Obama's supposed "Green Revolution" and how America would be saved through the use of alternative energies. Obama wrote massive checks to different renewable energy firms that went belly-up, the most famous of them all being solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, whose bankruptcy cost American taxpayers more than $500 million. Obama is also a heavy supporter of ethanol (his home state of Illinois, after all, is the third-largest ethanol-producing state) and has increased the targets for the use of ethanol in transportation.

Someone has to pay for all of these subsidies, so why not get the dirty, evil oil companies to pay for them? Keep in mind, though, that the oil companies have enough lobbyists and lawyers to keep the government at bay—so the higher prices will be passed on to the consumers.

To sum up why the price of gasoline is so high even though the US is producing so much more oil than before:

1. The high cost of American oil production
2. Even higher costs due to imported (non-Canadian) oil
3. Obama not allowing cheaper Canadian oil to flow to the refineries via pipelines such as the Keystone XL
4. The taxes on crude are used to fund Obama's green dream—his green-energy "legacy"—and his love for ethanol and the taxes at the pump will not decrease

Doug Casey and I are convinced that new technologies applied in the Old World will bring huge New World profits. But don't take my word for it—I challenge you to try out my research. Click here to take me up on my 100% money-back guarantee.

Two Types of Individualism

Saturday, October 26, 2013 by Friedrich A. Hayek

Editor’s Note: This selection is from F.A. Hayek’s Individualism and Economic Order, now available as an ebook in the Mises Store. In this selection, Hayek contrasts two types of individualism: one that leads to freedom and spontaneous order, and the other that leads to collectivism and controlled economies.
Before I explain what I mean by true individualism, it may be useful if I give some indication of the intellectual tradition to which it belongs. The true individualism which I shall try to defend began its modern development with John Locke, and particularly with Bernard Mandeville and David Hume, and achieved full stature for the first time in the work of Josiah Tucker, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith and in that of their great contemporary, Edmund Burke — the man whom Smith described as the only person he ever knew who thought on economic subjects exactly as he did without any previous communication having passed between them.
In the nineteenth century I find it represented most perfectly in the work of two of its greatest historians and political philosophers: Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Acton. These two men seem to me to have more successfully developed what was best in the political philosophy of the Scottish philosophers, Burke, and the English Whigs than any other writers I know; while the classical economists of the nineteenth century, or at least the Benthamites or philosophical radicals among them, came increasingly under the influence of another kind of individualism of different origin.
This second and altogether different strand of thought, also known as individualism, is represented mainly by French and other Continental writers — a fact due, I believe, to the dominant role which Cartesian rationalism plays in its composition. The outstanding representatives of this tradition are the Encyclopedists, Rousseau, and the physiocrats; and, for reasons we shall presently consider, this rationalistic individualism always tends to develop into the opposite of individualism, namely, socialism or collectivism. It is because only the first kind of individualism is consistent that I claim for it the name of true individualism, while the second kind must probably be regarded as a source of modern socialism as important as the properly collectivist theories.
I can give no better illustration of the prevailing confusion about the meaning of individualism than the fact that the man who to me seems to be one of the greatest representatives of true individualism, Edmund Burke, is commonly (and rightly) represented as the main opponent of the so-called“individualism” of Rousseau, whose theories he feared would rapidly dissolve the commonwealth “into the dust and powder of individuality,” and that the term “individualism” itself was first introduced into the English language through the translation of one of the works of another of the great representatives of true individualism, de Tocqueville, who uses it in his Democracy in America to describe an attitude which he deplores and rejects. Yet there can no doubt that both Burke and de Tocqueville stand in all essentials close to Adam Smith, to whom nobody will deny the title of individualist, and that the “individualism” to which they are opposed is something altogether different from that of Smith ...

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The next step in the individualistic analysis of society, however, is directed against the rationalistic pseudo-individualism which also leads to practical collectivism. It is the contention that, by tracing the combined effects of individual actions, we discover that many of the institutions on which human achievements rest have arisen and are functioning without a designing and directing mind; that, as Adam Ferguson expressed it, “nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action but not the result of human design”; and that the spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend. This is the great theme of Josiah Tucker and Adam Smith, of Adam Ferguson and Edmund Burke ...
The difference between this view, which accounts for most of the order which we find in human affairs as the unforeseen result of individual actions, and the view which traces all discoverable order to deliberate design is the first great contrast between the true individualism of the British thinkers of the eighteenth century and the so-called “individualism” of the Cartesian School. But it is merely one aspect of an even wider difference between a view which in general rates rather low the place which reason plays in human affairs, which contends that man has achieved what he has in spite of the fact that he is only partly guided by reason, and that his individual reason is very limited and imperfect, and a view which assumes that Reason, with a capital R, is always fully and equally available to all humans and that everything which man achieves is the direct result of, and therefore subject to, the control of individual reason.
The antirationalistic approach, which regards man not as a highly rational and intelligent but as a very irrational and fallible being, whose individual errors are corrected only in the course of a social process, and which aims at making the best of a very imperfect material, is probably the most characteristic feature of English individualism ...
So let me return, in conclusion, to what I said in the beginning: that the fundamental attitude of true individualism is one of humility toward the processes by which mankind has achieved things which have not been designed or understood by any individual and are indeed greater than individual minds. The great question at this moment is whether man’s mind will be allowed to continue to grow as part of this process or whether human reason is to place itself in chains of its own making. What individualism teaches us is that society is greater than the individual only in so far as it is free. In so far as it is controlled or directed, it is limited to the powers of the individual minds which control or direct it. If the presumption of the modern mind, which will not respect anything that is not consciously controlled by individual reason, does not learn in time where to stop, we may, as Edmund Burke warned us,“be well assured that everything about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds.”

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America Held Hostage On The Edge Of Constant Crisis

by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,

Torture, or what our government calls “enhanced interrogation”, is not a tactic so much as a darkly artistic process. The subject of this process has something that the torturer wants; it might be information, or a forced confession to a crime the subject did not commit, but most often, torture is designed to gain nothing more than psychological compliance.

The goal is to manipulate the subject into believing that submission is the only possible future, and that such submission is inevitable regardless of the will of the victim. The torturer often builds himself up as a kind of parent figure for the subject – becoming the only entity that can supply shelter, water, food, and comfort. The torturer is taskmaster and abuser, but also caregiver in the twisted relationship dynamic. A schizophrenic balance is struck in which the subject longs for the outside world and a return to the pleasures of the past (making him desperate and malleable), but he also partially accepts his prison walls as home (giving him a false faith that compliance will lead to a safer and more predictable tomorrow).

Until this compliance is achieved, the subject is exposed to endless and erratic crisis events in which his body is damaged, his mind is deprived of sense, perception, and sleep, and his life is overtly threatened. He may receive brief moments of rest, but these are designed only to make the next torture session even more raw and painful. If the subject does not understand how the process works, or if he doesn't have a strong sense of his own identity, then he will quickly lose track of reality. Every moment becomes a waking nightmare, a warped and gruesome carnival, and life becomes nothing more than an absurd and obscure experiment barely worth living.

It is my belief based on substantial evidence that America, as a nation and a culture, is now being held hostage and tortured into submission on a grand scale using economic terror by the elitist establishment which dominates BOTH major political parties. The goal? To push our society to conform completely with the concepts of globalization, bureaucratic micro-management, and greatly reduced living standards. We are being conditioned to accept defeat and failure, and like children, to cry out for a parental authority to save us in our state of helplessness and fear, even if that authority was the cause of our fear from the very beginning.

The Thin Thread Of The American Economic Fantasy

In the past three months the U.S. has flirted with total fiscal collapse three times. The first event came in August with market rumors that the Federal Reserve was nearing a “consensus” on plans to cut QE stimulus measures, causing panic amongst investors who now realize that the ONLY pillar still holding our fiscal edifice together is endless fiat currency creation by the Fed. Markets began a paradigm which is now the “new normal”; plummeting whenever good economic news hits the mainstream on the fear that the central bank will tighten policy, and skyrocketing when bad economic news hits the mainstream on the assumption that the Fed will continue printing. It is official - lackluster employment reports are something to cheer, and overall systemic crisis is good for stocks:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-usa-economy-idUSBRE99L04G20131022

The possibility of a Fed taper has shown us clearly that any action by the private bank to reduce or remove quantitative easing will result in a market panic and implosion. If the globalists within the Fed apparatus decide one day soon that they want to bring the U.S. to its knees, destroy the dollar, and introduce a new world reserve currency, they can do it with little more than a word proclaiming QE over, or unsuccessful. So far, they keep the life support machine running...

The second event came with the drive by the Obama Administration to turn their covert war in Syria into a full blown invasion. Despite presumptions by many naysayers that Russia and China wouldn't lift a finger to aid the Assad regime, both nations staunchly opposed action by the U.S. in the region and tensions neared critical mass. Make no mistake, a WWIII level event could have easily erupted, and some Americans seem to remain oblivious to the danger.

China and Russia maintain vast influence in global markets. The EU, for instance, is utterly dependent on Russian natural gas exports for their energy needs. The U.S. economy could be annihilated within weeks by an announcement by China to dump their treasury holdings or the dollar as the world reserve currency. This is just a taste of the financial risks associated with a new war in the Middle East, and military risks add even more potential calamity. Anyone who believes that Chinese or Russian views on American political or military behavior “do not matter” is living in a deluded cartoon-land.

The third event came with the recent debt ceiling debate and government shutdown. One-third of the U.S. population is disturbingly dependent on scraps from the government's table, and any mention of cuts to entitlement programs (or social security, which government treats exactly like an entitlement program) causes immediate and militant finger pointing. Democrats have been especially vicious in their accusations and rhetoric, consistently referring to Constitutional conservatives and “Tea Party” legislators as “extremists”, “traitors”, and even “domestic enemies”:



I happen to take a slightly different view to a majority of independent analysts in that I believe the establishment is just as likely to push America into deliberate default as it is to push America into infinite debt and inflationary collapse. The end result will be exactly the same regardless of the path taken, and we have yet another opportunity to dance on the edge of oblivion coming in three to four months when the debt debate starts all over again.

The point is, our financial system has become so unbalanced and internally diseased that if ANY event follows through to culmination, whether political, economic, or international, the economy WILL shatter. The past three month are a resounding testament to this fact.

The “De-Americanization' Of The Global Economy

In my article 'How The Dollar Will Be Replaced', published in 2012, I summarized the Catch-22 nature of America's debt problem which I have been warning about since 2006, and how this will eventually end in the abandonment of the dollar as the world reserve currency. To this day, and in the face of overwhelming evidence that the dollar is doomed, some people still refuse to grasp reality.

In the midst of the latest debt debate China has made clear it's intentions through state run media to end its relationship with the greenback, not just to form a Chinese-centric reserve currency system, but a global currency system centered on a “new world order”:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2013-10/13/c_132794246.htm

Last year China surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest importer and exporter, making its currency, the Yuan, more desirable than the greenback as a reserve in the long term. Since 2010, China has been quietly but quickly establishing multiple bilateral trade agreements with numerous countries dropping the dollar as the primary purchasing mechanism. China has accumulated massive gold stores and is set to become the world's largest holder of gold in the next two years. In the past year, China has also surpassed the U.S. as the number one importer of oil, making it a more valued market for the Middle East and causing many to question the dollar's relevance as the petro-currency:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/China-is-Now-the-Worlds-Largest-Importer-of-OilWhat-Next.html

Saudi Arabia, America's primary ally and foothold in the global oil market, is now openly calling for an end to traditional agreements and a separation from the U.S. because of the lack of military action in Syria. This too does not bode well for the dollar's petro-status. Like a chess maneuver, it would seem we have been cornered by the globalists on oil. If we invade Syria or Iran we risk losing petro-status. If we do not invade Syria or Iran, we still risk losing petro-status:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-saudi-usa-idUSBRE99L0K12013...

In response to the dismal debt ceiling extension and the uncertainty underlying the new debate coming in the next few months, China's ratings agency, Dagong, has downgraded U.S. treasury bonds yet again:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/17/news/economy/debt-ceiling-deal-china/

U.S. Treasuries are now witnessing the lowest foreign demand since 2001:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-20/treasuries-losing-cachet-with-weakest-foreign-demand-since-2001.html?cmpid=yhoo

Three near-crisis events in only three months have signaled a severe acceleration in what the Chinese call the “de-Americanization” of the global economy. All of the financial shifts taking place since the derivatives implosion of 2008, as well as those rushing like white-water rapids through the global system in the wake of the debt ceiling debate, are gravitating towards ONE outcome – the destruction of the dollar, and the introduction of a new global currency (the SDR) controlled the the IMF.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the dollar:

http://archive.is/SJhB

China has called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the dollar:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7168919

Elitists within the U.S. have called for a global currency run by the IMF to replace the Dollar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBO34qcnoqM

Hell, even the Vatican has called for a global currency run by a “global public authority” to replace the dollar:

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pontifical-council-for-justice-and-peace-on-the-global-economy

There is a world-wide strategy in motion to end the dollar, and with it, America as we know it today. The only question is, how many more near-disasters will we have to experience before the trigger event takes place?

The Torture Continues

With so many near misses culminating so close together, it may be wise to consider what could happen in the the next three months while we wait for debt debate theater part deux. Like a prisoner in Abu Ghraib, America is trapped, waiting for the next humiliation, the next degradation, or the next session of pain. Are we merely being acclimated to the idea of incessant crisis? Are we learning to become apathetic at the edge of the chasm? Or, are we being driven to madness, mass-madness, by a concert of elitist interrogators seeking our acquiescence?

Again, the central purpose of torture is to acquire consent. Not just extorted consent, but voluntary consent. It is not enough for the torturer to force the subject to obey, he wants the subject to EMBRACE his servitude. To gladly abandon all hope. To see his captor as his only salvation.

The globalist establishment wants us to beg them to save us from the tortures they create. If we never give them this, they will never win.

The Coming Food Stamp Riots

By Michael Snyder

It may not happen this month, or even this year, but food stamp riots are coming to America. In fact, we got a small preview of the coming food stamp riots this past weekend when a "temporary system failure" caused food stamp cards to stop working in 17 U.S. states. Within hours, there were "mini-riots" at Wal-Marts and other retailers that rely heavily on food stamp users. So what would happen if food stamp benefits were cut off or reduced for an extended period of time? As you will see below, if Congress had not pushed through a "deal", the USDA would have started cutting off food stamp benefits on November 1st. Considering the fact that 47 million Americans are on food stamps and more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government, that could have sparked massive rioting. So the good news is that the coming food stamp riots will probably not happen in November. The bad news is that the "deal" in Congress only delays the political fighting until after Christmas. In just a few months we will be dealing with a potential "government shutdown" and a debt ceiling deadline once again.
Most Americans have no idea what almost just happened. According to Reuters, the state of North Carolina had already cut off some welfare benefits for the month of November...

North Carolina has become the first state to cut off welfare benefits to poor residents in the wake of the partial federal government shutdown, ordering a halt to processing November applications until a deal is reached to end the federal standstill.
More than 20,000 people - most of them children - receive monthly benefits aimed at helping them buy food and other basic supplies through North Carolina's welfare program, called Work First, which is fully funded by the federal government. Recipients must reapply each month.

And as Mac Slavo recently detailed, the USDA was already planning to cut off food stamp assistance to millions of Americans on November 1st...

We say next month because the USDA, which oversees the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), has just issued an order to SNAP agency directors calling for their respective States to implement an emergency contingency program because of government funding issues. In a letter obtained by the Crossroads Urban Center food pantry, the USDA is directing state agencies to, “delay their November issuance files and delay transmission to State Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) vendors until further notice.”
What this means is that should Congress fail to increase the debt ceiling this week, come November there will literally be millions of people in the United States who will have exactly zero dollars transferred to their EBT cards.
What will happen to the nearly 50 million people who depend on these benefits to survive?

In fact, there have been quite a few news reports that have confirmed this...

In Utah, Fox News 13 in Salt Lake City reported that a local provider recently received a letter from the USDA sticking to the November 1 cut-off date.
“This is going to create a huge hardship for the people we serve here in our food pantry,” Bill Tibbits, Associate Director at Crossroads Urban Center, told Fox News 13.
“What this means [is] if there’s not a deal, if Congress doesn’t reach a deal to get federal government back up and running, in Utah about 100,000 families won’t get food stamp benefit,” added Tibbits.
The USDA letter says in part, “in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are directing states to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to state electronic benefit transfer vendors until further notice.”

So what would have happened if tens of millions of Americans suddenly had their food stamp benefits cut off without warning?
Well, what happened last weekend can give us a few clues. Just check out what happened at one Wal-Mart in Mississippi...

Customers staged a disturbance then walked out of a Mississippi Walmart store with groceries that hadn’t been paid for Saturday night after a computer glitch left them unable to use their food stamp cards.
People in 17 states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a temporary system failure.
Shortly after the mini-riot, managers decided to temporarily close the store, citing customer safety.

Due to this technical glitch, many parents were left wondering how they were going to feed their families. If this is the kind of anger that is unleashed over a single failed trip to the grocery store, what would we see if this kind of thing went on for an extended period of time?
At some Wal-Mart stores down in Louisiana, EBT cards were not showing any limits on Saturday night, and within two hours many store shelves in the grocery section were completely cleared of merchandise...

Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.
The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended.
Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says Walmart was so packed, "It was worse than any black Friday" that he's ever seen.

Sadly, this was only a very small preview of the massive food stamp riots that are eventually coming to America. I like how Mike Adams explained what we are likely to see in the future...

Why does any of this matter? Because this is exactly the same way these people will behave when the federal government goes into default and nearly 50 million EBT cards stop working nationwide.
Fifty million. Consider that for a moment. Most of those 50 million people live in high-density cities. Many are proud owners of Obama phones, Obama food stamps, Obama unemployment checks and Obama subsidized housing. They have absolutely no clue that the government upon which they wholly depend to put food on the table is teetering on the verge of permanent collapse. (Seriously, they cannot conceive of the idea of government "running out of money" because they do not understand where money comes from.) Because of this distorted belief, they do not prepare for any future events other than more Obama handouts. Their entire "preparedness" plan is to vote for Democrats, because that's who they know will give them the most handouts. And they will always win the popular vote, too, because any politician promising to restore responsible fiscal spending to the government by cutting programs will be viciously accused of being "mean" or involved in "hating poor people." So the government handouts will only ratchet higher and higher, ensnaring more and more people, until the entire system is unsustainable and collapses under its own weight.
When that system of dependence fails, those who depend on it will panic in mere hours. As proof of this, consider the fact that this mass looting of Wal-Mart stores happened in less than three hours after the Saturday EBT card glitch struck. Police had to be called in to prevent the situation from getting completely out of control, and it was offline for only part of one day.
Now imagine what will happen when EBT cards go offline for 24, 48 or even 72 hours. And imagine it happening in every U.S. city simultaneously.

Of course not all Americans would go wild when food stamp benefits are cut off.
Other Americans express their desperation in other ways. According to Bloomberg, an increasing number of people are starting to sell hair, breast milk and their own eggs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet...

Hair, breast milk and eggs are doubling as automated teller machines for some cash-strapped Americans such as April Hare.
Out of work for more than two years and facing eviction from her home, Hare recalled Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century novel and took to her computer.
“I was just trying to find ways to make money, and I remembered Jo from ‘Little Women,’ and she sold her hair,” the 35-year-old from Atlanta said. “I’ve always had lots of hair, but this is the first time I’ve actually had the idea to sell it because I’m in a really tight jam right now.”
The mother of two posted pictures of her 18-inch auburn mane on www.buyandsellhair.com, asking at least $1,000 and receiving responses within hours. Hare, who also considered selling her breast milk, joins others exploring unconventional ways to make ends meet as the four-year-old economic expansion struggles to invigorate the labor market and stimulate incomes.

We have moved into a time when things are becoming increasingly unstable and when people are becoming increasingly desperate.
In an attempt to keep order, the authorities will become increasingly forceful in the years ahead. At this point, many law enforcement officers already believe that there is very little that they cannot do to exert their "authority" over the rest of us. Just check out video of a drunk off-duty police officer "arresting" a woman that refused to go out on a date with him right here. Sadly, this type of behavior is becoming way too common these days.
And it looks like major financial institutions are getting ready for the chaos that is eventually coming as well. In fact, according to an article by Paul Joseph Watson, Chase Bank is now placing a limit on cash withdrawals and is banning business customers from sending wire transfers out of the country...

Chase Bank has moved to limit cash withdrawals while banning business customers from sending international wire transfers from November 17 onwards, prompting speculation that the bank is preparing for a looming financial crisis in the United States by imposing capital controls.
Numerous business customers with Chase BusinessSelect Checking and Chase BusinessClassic accounts have received letters over the past week informing them that cash activity (both deposits and withdrawals) will be limited to a $50,000 total per statement cycle from November 17 onwards.

Fortunately, the chaos that would have been unleashed if Congress had not made a deal has now been delayed for a few months.
But by kicking the can down the road, our politicians continue to make our long-term problems even worse. Either we are going to have tremendous pain now, or we are going to have even worse pain later. Peter Schiff explained the choice that we are facing this way...

If Republicans were to inexplicably prevail, and the federal government were to cut spending so that its expenditures matched its tax revenues (a truly radical idea) the country's financial mess would be laid bare. The government would have to weigh the relative costs and benefits of making interest payments on Treasury debt (primarily to foreign creditors) or to trim entitlements promised to U.S. citizens. But those are choices we will have to make sooner or later anyway. In fact we should have dealt with these issues years ago. But generations of mechanistic debt ceiling increases have allowed us to perpetually kick the can down the road. What could possibly be gained by doing it again, particularly if it is done with no commitment to change course?
The Democrats' argument that America needs to pay its bills is just hollow rhetoric. Paying off one's Visa bill with a new and bigger MasterCard bill can't be considered a legitimate payment of debt. At best it is a transfer. But in the government's case, it doesn't even qualify as that. Treasury debt is primarily bought by the Fed, foreign central banks, and major financial institutions. None of that will change with a debt ceiling increase. We will just go to the same people for greater quantities. So it's like paying off your Visa card with a bigger Visa card.

We are living on borrowed time that has been purchased by stealing money from future generations.
We are literally destroying the future in order to make the present more palatable.
But whether it is this year, or next year or the year after that, at some point we are going to experience the pain that results from decades of incredibly foolish decisions.
I hope that you are getting ready.

What To Expect When You're Expecting... Default

Submitted by Tyler Durden

As markets twiddle their thumbs waiting on Washington to come up with a political solution to the Federal Debt Limit/budget debate, ConvergEx's Nick Colas decided it would be a good time to review the academic literature on how markets discount expectations in the first place. The thinking on this topic has evolved substantially over the years.

The initial thought, first developed in the 1960s, proposed that markets generally "Expected" the outcomes which subsequently occurred. Since then, of course, Colas points out numerous market dislocations have forced a rethink. Behavioral finance posits that human nature skews perceptions of risk and return, causing everything from irrational risk aversion to asset price bubbles. Against this current backdrop of theoretical uncertainty, measures like the VIX are currently somnambulant.

So, using the modern vernacular, WTF? The bottom line, Colas explains, is that Wall Street thinks it has the current "Crisis" all figured out: a last minute deal with no Treasury default. And just as we haven’t sold off materially during this drama, don’t expect a huge (+5%) lift afterwards.

Despite all this over-confidence, investors are backing away from T-Bills en masse as David Tepper is balls to the wall for a disingenuous rise in market multiples taking stocks higher... His proclamation that stocks will revert to their old normal of 18-20x P/E multiples is, however, entirely disingenuous (as @Not_Jim_Cramer points out below)...



Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,

In light of Eugene Fama winning the Nobel Prize for Economics today, I would like to share my one personal intersection with the great man himself. When I was an MBA student at the University of Chicago, Professor Fama taught a class in Corporation Finance/Capital Markets which was a required part of the curriculum for Ph.D. students and a popular Pass/Fail elective for the rest of us.

At the end of the first class, the following exchange occurred between Dr. Fama and a doctoral student:

Student: Professor, this may be a stupid question, but how do we really know… (Insert highly technical finance question here. I didn’t understand it, but it sounded pretty smart.)

Professor Fama: Your initial assumption was correct. Next question, please. (There were no further questions, and he dismissed class.)

I didn’t take the class, even Pass/Fail. To be fair, Gene Fama had the world by the tail when this brief conversation took place. He had published a wide range of papers supporting the notion that markets were generally efficient and very hard to systematically beat. His work found favor in classroom and the boardrooms of Wall Street. Even now, his work on everything from the agency problem between shareholders and managers to risk and return in capital markets is widely cited in academic literature, to the tune of thousands of citations for scores of his papers.

The intellectual bedrock for Fama’s work that “Markets know best” actually predates him by several decades. In the 1961 John Muth of Carnegie Mellon published “Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements” which proposed that “The economy does not waste information.” Muth’s paper centered on how businesses forecast demand, but the general principle could easily apply to investors in capital markets as well. Markets of all kinds process information efficiently, discounting probabilities and potential outcomes, all without wasting a drop.

As with Mom’s old saying “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” economists and market observers had to change their tune after the tech stock and housing bubbles in the 1990s and 2000s. That’s where Robert Shiller’s co-win for the Nobel today comes in, for his 1980 paper “Do Stock Prices Move too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?” and other work refutes the notion that markets tend to correctly anticipate future economic and fundamental outcomes. His bestselling book, published in 2000, “Irrational Exuberance” isn’t just a nod to Alan Greenspan’s famous observation in 1996; it is also a challenge to Muth’s “Rational” expectations theory from 1961.

As a third axis to the discussion of market rationality/irrational exuberance, you have the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, with their work on “Prospect Theory”. Yep, another Nobel for this one too, back in 2002. Their research essentially showed that humans are lousy at working out what is statistically best for them. One easy example: would you rather have $100 or flip a coin for a payoff of either $250 or nothing, depending on whether you correctly called “Heads” or “tails”? The rational person would choose the coin flip, since the expected value is $125 and therefore greater than the $100 sure thing. In reality, most people choose the $100 because the chance for a loss weighs more heavily on their decision than the potential for greater upside.

In short, how well markets “Expect” – or “discount”, if you prefer – future events is a topic which shifts with time and tide. During strong bull markets, it is natural to think that capital markets are accurately reflecting the intelligence and wisdom of the people who invest in them and the corporate management which generates the business returns which drives stock prices. When you get bubbles such as the dot com craze in the late 1990s or the U.S. residential housing market in the 2000s, another narrative takes hold. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, to quote Shakespeare.

The ongoing threat of a U.S. Treasury default is a useful case study on this point. A few points here:

U.S. stocks are riding a multi-year wave of positive performance and the S&P 500 is finally higher than the two prior peaks in 2000 and 2007. Money flows are starting to return to U.S. equity mutual funds, and exchange traded funds continue to gain assets in products dedicated to domestic stocks.

At the same time, the wounds of 2007-2008 are still fresh in investors’ minds. Remember the lesson of Prospect Theory: losses feel worse than gains feel good.

Capital markets are therefore in a bit of a no-man’s land with respect to whether current prices appropriately reflect the risk of a U.S. Treasury default. The pessimist will say that investors have been lured into a sense of complacency by the strong returns for U.S. equities over the last four years. The optimist will point out that we’ve had a whole slew of rolling crises, from the 2007-2008 market meltdowns to several iterations of European banking system worries to the Fukushima nuclear disaster to constant handwringing over the true state of the Chinese economy. Yes, the Federal Reserve has been in our corner, but the negative case for stocks is well understood. And investors have, for the most part, rejected it.

This is no academic discussion. The price action in U.S. stocks has been uniformly good throughout the partial shutdown of the U.S. government and the threats of a default on U.S. sovereign debt later this week. The CBOE VIX Index sits comfortably below 20, its long run average. What expectations are built into asset prices is a critical question.

The bottom line is clear: U.S. stocks believe there is a zero percent chance of a Treasury default. Not 1%, not even 0.1%. No chance. You can get to this conclusion any number of ways, using any decade’s predominant market narrative.

Rational Expectations/Efficient Markets (Muth/Fama): if there were even a 1% chance of a Treasury default, the VIX would be over 20 and stocks would be retreating, not advancing. Too much of the world’s financial system is predicated on Treasuries as 100% reliable collateral to believe anything else. Russian roulette with a 100 chamber revolver is still too dangerous a game.
Prospect theory (Kahneman/Tversky): Event the remote chance of a loss due to a default would have outsized effects on risk assets like stocks, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Remember that humans fear loss more than they celebrate the chance of an equivalent gain.
Robert Shiller’s long run P/E ratio for U.S. equities does show that stocks are overvalued (see here: http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/). You would think that the threat of a U.S. Treasury default would be just the kind of catalyst that could cause a pullback in an overvalued asset class. So far, no pullback, of course.

Two final points here.

First, since stocks currently discount no chance of a Treasury default, don’t look for a 10% pop on news of a deal. A few percent, yes, but not much more.

Second, if Congress and the President cannot come to an agreement by Friday, look out below. Even a one-day “Technical” default simply isn’t reflected in stocks. Under those circumstances, a 10% decline over a day or two would be a logical expectation, regardless of which decade’s philosophy you follow.

OBAMA SECRETLY SIGNING AWAY U.S. SOVEREIGNTY. Shock plan regulates food, medicine, financial markers, Internet freedom

By Aaron Klein
Despite the government shutdown, the Obama administration has continued secret negotiations to complete what is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.
The expansive plan is a proposed free-trade agreement between the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The agreement would create new guidelines for everything from food safety to fracking, financial markets, medical prices, copyright rules and Internet freedom.
The TPP negotiations have been criticized by politicians and advocacy groups alike for their secrecy. The few aspects of the partnership leaked to the public indicate an expansive agenda with highly limited congressional oversight.
A New York Times opinion piece previously called the deal the “most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995.”
Last week, the White House website released a joint statement with the other proposed TPP signatories affirming “our countries are on track to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.”
“Ministers and negotiators have made significant progress in recent months on all the legal texts and annexes on access to our respective goods, services, investment, financial services, government procurement, and temporary entry markets,” the White House said.
The statement did not divulge details of the partnership other than to suggest a final TPP agreement “must reflect our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation model for addressing both new and traditional trade and investment issues, supporting the creation and retention of jobs and promoting economic development in our countries.”
Secrecy
In February, the Open the Government organization sent a letter to Obama blasting the lack of transparency surrounding the TPP talks, stating the negotiations have been “conducted in unprecedented secrecy.”
“Despite the fact the deal may significantly affect the way we live our lives by limiting our public protections, there has been no public access to even the most fundamental draft agreement texts and other documents,” read the letter.
The missive was signed by advocacy groups such as OpenTheGovernment.org, Project On Government Oversight, ARTICLE 19 and the Global Campaign for Freedom of Expression and Information.
The groups warned issues being secretly negotiated include “patent and copyright, land use, food and product standards, natural resources, professional licensing, government procurement, financial practices, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, and other service sector regulations.”
Lack of oversight
Normally free -trade agreements must be authorized by a majority of the House and Senate, usually in lengthy proceedings.
However, the White House is seeking what is known as “trade promotion authority” which would fast track approval of the TPP by requiring Congress to vote on the likely lengthy trade agreement within 90 days and without any amendments.
The authority also allows Obama to sign the agreement before Congress even has a chance to vote on it, with lawmakers getting only a quick post-facto vote.
A number of lawmakers have been speaking out about the secret TPP talks.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., recently proposed legislation requiring the White House to disclose all TPP documents to members of Congress.
“The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement,” said Wyden.
However, Obama has so far refused to give Congress a copy of the draft agreement.
Regulates food, Internet, medicine, commerce
The TPP is “more than just a trade deal,” wrote Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in a New York Times op-ed last June.
“Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose parameters on nontrade policies. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports.”
Wallach and Beachy spotlighted several leaks in the proposed TPP text, including one that would regulate the price of medicine.
“Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.”
Amnesty International USA warned draft TPP provisions related to patents for pharmaceuticals “risk stifling the development and production of generic medicines, by strengthening and deepening monopoly protections.”
Another leak revealed the TPP would grant more incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore, Wallach and Beachy related.
Jim Hightower, a progressive activist, wrote the TPP incorporates elements similar to the Stop Online Piracy Act.
Hightower wrote the deal would “transform Internet service providers into a private, Big Brother police force, empowered to monitor our ‘user activity,’ arbitrarily take down our content and cut off our access to the Internet.”
Indeed, Internet freedom advocacy groups have been protesting the TPP, taking specific issue with leaked proposals that would enact strict intellectual property restraints that would effectively change U.S. copyright law.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued the TPP would “restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector.”
In a petition signed by over 30 Internet freedom organizations, the group warned the TPP would “rewrite global rules on intellectual property enforcement.”
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.

47 Bodies Left in the Wake of Hillary Clinton: Victims #1 to #10

Author: Tami Jackson

Hillary Clinton is circling the wagons and salivating over a presidential run in 2016: Hillary accrued power and her life-long dream of being POTUS is nearing.

But not so fast Hillary. Take a look at the bodies mysteriously left in Clinton’s wake!
*************************************

1 – James McDougal

Convicted Whitewater partner of the Clintons who died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr’s investigation.
The Baltimore Sun’s Carl M. Cannon wrote on March 9,1998:

James B. McDougal, a former Clinton business partner who had been cooperating with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr in the Whitewater investigation, died yesterday in a federal prison hospital in Texas. He was 58.
McDougal was serving a 3 1/2 -year sentence after Starr’s office successfully prosecuted him on fraud charges stemming from the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a McDougal-owned Arkansas thrift that cost taxpayers $60 million when it failed.
His death appears to reduce the legal risks to President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was a clear setback to Starr and his prosecutors, who huddled in their offices last night after McDougal’s death was announced.
McDougal, who suffered from heart disease and blocked arteries, died of cardiac arrest, the Justice Department said. He had often predicted that his health wouldn’t hold out long enough for him ever to be free again.
At the White House, the president issued a statement referring to the early years of his friendship with McDougal.
“I am saddened to learn about Jim McDougal’s death today,” Clinton said. “I have good memories of the years we worked together in Arkansas, and I extend my condolences to his family.”
The key accusation against Clinton in the Whitewater land deal phase of Starr’s investigation centers on a claim by former municipal judge David Hale, who maintains Clinton urged him in 1986 to seek a fraudulent $300,0000 government-backed loan.
The money was never repaid, and prosecutors alleged that some of it was used to prop up the Whitewater Development Corp., a firm co-owned by McDougal, his then-wife, Susan, and the Clintons.

As noted by Star-Telegram Staff Writer Jack Douglas Jr. and WND:

When Jim McDougal was taken out of solitary, instead of attempting to defibrillate his heart with equipment on hand at the facility, he was driven over to John Peter Smith hospital. Not the closest hospital to the Fort Worth Federal Medical Center, John Peter Smith hospital is a welfare hospital, where (in the words of one local) ,”They let interns practice on deadbeats”.

2 – Mary Mahoney

A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown (Washington, D. C.). The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment by Clinton in the White House.
Reported by the Western Journalism Center:

White House intern Died July 1997 An attractive 25-year-old woman, Mahoney was a former White House intern for Bill Clinton working as the assistant manager at a Starbuck’s Coffee shop in Georgetown.
Gunmen entered the Starbuck’s while the crew was cleaning up after closing. Mahoney’s two associates, Aaron Goodrich, 18 and Emory Evans, 25, were taken to a room and shot.
Mary herself had five bullets in her, from at least two different guns, most likely with silencers. A total of 10 shots were fired; none of them heard by neighbors in the densely populated Georgetown section.
Mahoney was shot in the chest, her face, and in the back of the head.
Even though more than $4,000 remained in the store, the police have categorized the triple murder as a robbery, even as they acknowledge the “execution style” killings.
There was no sign of forced entry. One report said the cafe was still locked when the bodies were found the next morning. George Stephanopoulos, Monica Lewinsky and Chelsea Clinton were all regulars at the Starbuck’s.

3 – Vince Foster

Former White House Councilor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide. (He was about to testify against Hillary related to the records she refused to turn over to congress.) Was reported to have been having an affair with Hillary.
Daily Mail’s Sally Bedell Smith reported:

On a Monday night in July 1993, a 48-year-old lawyer called Vince Foster was found dead in a park near Washington DC.
He had died from a gunshot wound to the mouth and his father’s .38-calibre revolver, dating from 1913, was at his side.
It was the same method of suicide used by a Marine officer in the film A Few Good Men – which Foster was known recently to have watched.
In the movie, the officer had killed himself because he was distraught about testifying against his commanding officer.
In real life, Vince Foster was distraught at the prospect of being grilled about the shady affairs of Hillary Clinton.
A clear case of suicide, then. Or was it? As the months passed, wild rumours began to grow that a hitman had murdered him because he knew too much.
Tall and handsome, Vince Foster was one of Hillary’s closest colleagues and best friends.

4 – Ron Brown

Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown’s skull resembling a gunshot wound.
At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors. The rest of the people on the plane also died. A few days later the Air Traffic controller committed suicide.
Jack Cashill wrote:

When I first heard of the Ron Brown plane crash in 1996, I presumed it was just that – a crash, an accident. It was not until the revelation of the hole in Brown’s head in late 1997 that I began to question the simplicity of the earlier explanation.
In exploring Ron Brown’s life, however, I came to see just how desperate were his circumstances, especially at the end. I also came to see how deeply – and willfully – flawed was the investigation into his death.
What finally convinced me that talk of “murder” was not irresponsible was the official 22-volume Air Force report. To secure it, I had to go through the Freedom of Information Act.
Contained deep within the report are some astonishing revelations, none of which had ever been revealed in the media.
The Air Force report also revealed the Enron connection. Even if the plane crash were accidental, Brown and 34 others died for no higher purpose than to secure a sweetheart deal between a fascist dictator and a notoriously corrupt American company.
This was the “very important challenge of his time” that inspired President Clinton to compare Brown to Martin Luther King. Again, there is much more than can be revealed here.
In the book, the reader can explore the evidence as to who benefited from Brown’s death and, if he were murdered, who might have executed him and how.

5 – C. Victor Raiser, II

Raiser, a major player in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.
As reported in the Chicago Tribune:

C. Victor Raiser II, finance co-chairman of Gov. Bill Clinton`s presidential campaign, was killed Thursday when a small plane carrying him on a fishing vacation crashed in Alaska. He was 52 and lived in Washington.
The aircraft, a De Havilland Beaver floatplane, went down near the town of Dillingham, 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, killing Mr. Raiser and his 22-year-old son, R. Montgomery Raiser, along with three other passengers. A sixth passenger and the pilot were injured.

The New York Times wrote:

C. Victor Raiser 2d, finance co-chairman of Gov. Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaign, was killed Thursday when a small plane carrying him on a fishing vacation crashed in Alaska. He was 52 years old and lived in Washington.
The aircraft, a de Havilland Beaver floatplane, went down near the town of Dillingham, 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, killing Mr. Raiser as well as his 22-year-old son, R. Montgomery Raiser, and three other passengers. A sixth passenger and the pilot were injured.
Mr. Raiser (pronounced RAY-zer), a lawyer, business executive and former finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was the Clinton campaign’s finance chairman for the Middle Atlantic States and one of its 12 national finance co-chairmen. On learning Friday of his death, the campaign’s press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, described him as “a major player” in the Clinton organization.
Mr. Raiser was born in Indianapolis and earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1962 and a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1965.

6 – Paul Tulley

Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock on September 1992. Described by Clinton as a “dear friend and trusted advisor”.
The New York Times wrote:

Paul Tully, the political director of the Democratic National Committee and one of his party’s pre-eminent strategists, was found dead in Little Rock, Ark., today. He was 48 years old.
Coroner Steve Nawojczyk of Pulaski County said Mr. Tully’s body was found about 3 P.M. today by a maid at the hotel where he was living in Little Rock. Pending results of an autopsy, the coroner said Mr. Tully appeared to have died of natural causes.
Mr. Tully was among the most impassioned and intense of a generation of Democratic political professionals who devoted much of their lives to regaining the White House. He worked in every Presidential election since 1968.
He had moved to Little Rock this fall to aid in Gov. Bill Clinton’s drive for the White House. Ronald H. Brown, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement tonight: “There will be only one Paul Tully. Pacing, driven, and full of joy, Paul’s commitment to our party and, more importantly, to making this great nation even greater was a fire that burned bright and long.”

7 – Ed Willey

Clinton fundraiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.
Willey’s wife, Kathleen asserted in an interview:

In a new book alleging a campaign of slander and intimidation orchestrated chiefly by Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Willey points a finger of suspicion at the former first couple for the death of her husband, who was believed to have killed himself.
Willey, who claims she was groped by President Clinton in the White House, acknowledged in an interview with WND today that she stands by the speculation she poses about her husband’s demise in “Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Asked if she suspects her husband Ed, a lawyer and son of a prominent Virginia lawmaker, was murdered, Willey replied, “Most definitely.”
“I’m having someone with a forensics background look at this, and I intend to pursue this further, now that these questions have been raised,” she told WND, pointing to alleged discrepancies in the autopsy report.
Does she believe the Clintons were involved?
“I do have suspicions,” Willey said, “yes.”

8 – Jerry Parks

Head of Clinton’s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock .. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock . Park’s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton . He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.
KATV Channel 7 reports:

It’s a tragic story with many twists and turns that leaves a Little Rock woman with little information about her father’s murder.
“Shortly before 7:00 Sunday night, police found the bullet-riddled body of a middle-aged Roland man lying outside his car near the intersection of Chenal Parkway and Highway 10 in west Little Rock,” Channel 7′s Geoff Morrell reported in a KATV news broadcast on September 26, 1993.
It was a day that Denise Hickman can recall like it was yesterday.
“I remember getting a phone call from my dad’s widow saying that my father had been hurt. And I asked her what happened and she told me that he was dead. And then I just dropped the phone,” said Hickman.
Someone in a white Chevy pulled up to Jerry Parks car and just started shooting.
“The occupant of the Chevrolet then fired approximately ten shots based upon the evidence we found at the scene,” said Doc Holladay in 1993, back then as a spokesperson for the Little Rock Police Department.
Hickman’s dad was a private investigator and owner of a security company. He would have been turning 67 years old July 3. She was 26 when he was murdered.

Read this 1997 account of events by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

“I’M A DEAD MAN,” whispered Jerry Parks, pale with shock, as he looked up at the television screen. It was a news bulletin on the local station in Little Rock. Vincent Foster, a childhood friend of the President, had been found dead in a park outside Washington. Apparent suicide.
He never explained to his son Gary what he meant by that remark, but for the next two months the beefy 6′ 3″ security executive was in a state of permanent fear. He would pack a pistol to fetch the mail. On the way to his offices at American Contract Services in Little Rock he would double back or take strange routes to “dry-clean” the cars that he thought were following him.
At night he kept tearing anxiously at his eyebrows, and raiding the valium pills of his wife, Jane, who was battling multiple sclerosis. Once he muttered darkly that Bill Clinton’s people were “cleaning house,” and he was “next on the list.”
Two months later, in September 1993, Jerry and Jane went on a Caribbean cruise. He seemed calmer. At one of the islands he went to take care of some business at a bank. She believed it was Grand Cayman. They returned to their home in the rural suburbs of Little Rock on September 25. The next day Jane was in one of her “down” periods, so Jerry went off on his own for the regular Sunday afternoon supper at El Chico Mexican Restaurant.
On the way back, at about 6:30 PM, a white Chevrolet Caprice pulled up beside him on the Chenal Parkway. Before Parks had time to reach for his .38 caliber “detective special” that he kept tucked between the seats, an assassin let off a volley of semi-automatic fire into his hulking 320 pound frame.
Parks skidded to a halt in the intersection of Highway 10. The stocky middle-aged killer jumped out and finished him off with a 9 mm handgun–two more shots into the chest at point blank range. Several witnesses watched with astonishment as the nonchalant gunman joined his accomplice in the waiting car and sped away.
It was another three months before news of the murder of Jerry Luther Parks reached me in Washington. The U.S. national media were largely unaware of the story, which surprised me because Parks had been in charge of security at the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign headquarters in Little Rock.

9 – James Bunch

An influential Texan. Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a “Black Book” of people which contained names of influential people who visited Prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas

10 – John Wilson

Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to the Clintons ‘ Whitewater deals.
As written by the Washington City Paper:

On May 19, 1993, the D.C. government lost one of its early Home Rule-era leaders and most accomplished legislators. D.C. Council Chairman John A. Wilson was found dead in the basement laundry room of his Southwest home by his wife, Bonnie, and chauffeur.
His death, ruled a suicide by the Metropolitan Police Department, sent shock waves through the D.C. political scene, of which Wilson was a 20-year veteran. The longtime Ward 2 council member, who assumed the council chairmanship in 1991, was known for his own brand of brazen politics.