Muddy Waters" founder Carson Block unveiled his latest short play Wednesday morning. And instead of being another obviously fraudulent Chinese company, Block"s target is OSI Systems, an American firm that manufactures security equipment x-ray machines and metal detectors. The company is best known as the owner of Rapiscan Systems - a division that manufacturers scanning machines used at airports.
In a 13-minute video, Block lays out his research, explaining how he suspects OSI’s executives are guilty of multiple violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for paying kickbacks to local officials who in turn rewarded it lucrative contracts. But as if corruption weren"t enough, Block explains how roughly half of the company’s EBITDA is tied to turnkey contract in Mexico that could disappear as soon as next month.
The company is "rotten to the core" warns Block, "we have smoking gun evidence" as the importance of the contract to the company’s bottom line has been obscured by the fact that it represents only 15% of total revenues.
Tracing the threads of corruption led Block to Albania, Mexico and Puerto Rico, three locations where OSI has won lucrative concessions by offering kickbacks to local government officials - kickbacks that were readily accepted.
“I know this will sound crazy - but Albania is a pretty corrupt place," Block says, before explaining that it was practically "an open secret" that OSI benefited from bribing local officials.
For one of OSI’s concessions in Albania, the company turned over half of the contract to a local shell company for roughly $4.50, according to official documents.
As is typical when Block announces a short, OSI - which has a market cap of about $1.3 billion - was down about 15%.
In a statement provided to Zero Hedge, Block said he’s short OSI because he feels it’s “rotten to the core."
“We are short OSI Systems, Inc. because we think it is rotten to the core. We believe it obtained a major turnkey contract in Albania through corruption. It is likely that OSIS’s accounts are misstated as a result.
We believe the pricing of its Mexico turnkey contract does not stand up to scrutiny. This contract is up for renewal in 2018, and we estimate that it accounted for more than 50% of OSIS’s FY2017 EBITDA.
Non-renewal or a material reduction in pricing of the Mexico contract would seemingly have a significant impact on OSIS’s profits. Former employees’ statements support our view that OSIS is rotting from the inside."
Block’s latest bet comes on the heels of a stunning victory for his firm. Last month, Huishan Dairy entered provisional liquidation, validating Block’s call - made about 10 months earlier - that the company’s shares would go to zero.
A recent article in the Washington Post described how the current US tax-‘reform’ bill is being shaped; and it describes, basically (at least as far as tax-law changes are concerned), the operation of a US dictatorship by the super-rich.
First of all, however: there is no longer any realistic question as regards whether the US in recent decades has been a dictatorship, or instead a democracy. According to the only scientific analysis of the relevant data, that has been done in order to determine whether the US is a dictatorship or a democracy, the US is definitely a dictatorship that’s perpetrated by the extremely richest, against the public-at-large; in other words: the US Government functions as an aristocracy, otherwise referred-to as an oligarchy, or a plutocracy, or a kleptocracy; but, in any case, and by whatever name, it’s ruled by a tiny number of the extremely wealthiest and their agents, on behalf of those few super-rich, against the concerns and interests and needs of the public (everyone else). So: instead of being rule by the public (the “demos” is the Greek term for it), it’s rule on behalf of a tiny dictatorial class, of extreme wealth — by whatever name we might happen to label this ruling class.
That study, by professors Gilens and Page, explained that it examined “1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question about a proposed policy change,” and it compared those public-policy preferences, by the public, versus the public-policy preferences regarding those same issues, by the super-wealthiest; and, it found that only the public-policy preferences by the super-wealthiest and their paid agents, made any discernible difference, at all, in the likelihood that a given public policy ultimately became enacted into law, in the United States. Whereas the public-policy preferences of the wealthiest do, at far higher than mere random chances, become enacted into laws, the public-policy preferences of the public are (except in political rhetoric and promises — frauds perpetrated to deceive the public) ignored, in the United States.
Here is an excellent six-minute video describing the methodology and findings in that landmark study...
And here is a commentary by former US President Jimmy Carter, in which he says that he knows it’s true.
He said this not on the basis of examining thousands of cases and doing the statistical analysis of the data, like Gilens and Page had done, but just on the basis of his observations of how the US federal government has been functioning in recent decades. And, of course, the scientific study is vastly more reliable than is any individual’s mere opinion about the matter.
Furthermore, there exists evidence that even in some local or state governments in the United States, considerable corruption exists, and therefore an extreme slant prevails in favor of the rich. During June 2016, I headlined about this, “Here Is How Corrupt America Is”, and opened:
The best reporting on the depth of America’s dictatorship is probably that being done by Atlanta Georgia’s NBC-affiliated, Gannett-owned, TV Channel “11 Alive,” WXIA television, its “The Investigators” series of local investigative news reports, which show, up close and at a cellularly detailed level, the way things actually work in today’s America. Although it’s only local, it displays what meets the legal standards of the US federal government in actually any state in the union; so, it exposes the character of the US government, such that what’s shown to be true here, meets America’s standard for ‘democracy’, or else the federal government isn’t enforcing federal laws against it (which is the same thing as its meeting the federal government’s standards).
What was exemplified in this reporting by that excellent investigative team could be called “corporate organized-gangsterism,” and this gangsterism was being led by an operation, “ALEC,” that was founded by politicians whose careers are funded by the Koch brothers and some other US billionaires.
Furthermore, as was mentioned briefly at the opening here, a recent issue of the Washington Post’s “PowerPost” section was titled "The Finance 202: Tax overhaul"s big test comes now”, and it described in detail what was shaping the Trump Administration’s tax-overhaul bill. This article reported that the lobbyists were shaping it 100%. It’s a superb nitty-gritty, down among the weeds, description, of the monetary deals, the horse-trading, that were being made, not only for corporations, but for the wealthiest non-business lobbies, including ‘nonprofit’ ones, but almost all of these lobbies, too, depend overwhelmingly upon billionaires for their funding. What’s being carved-up and served, is being carved-up from governments, and being served to the super-rich. (After all: conservatives say “Government bad, business good,” and Republicans are the conservative Party; so, it’s taking from government, and going to business.)
So: is it any wonder why Gilens and Page found what they did? They found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” (By “mass-based groups” was being referenced what the left often calls “movements” or “grass-roots” organizations. After all, what happened from “Occupy Wall Street”? Nothing. It was a big waste of time and effort. Authentic movements get marginalized, because the billionaires’ ‘news’media despise them. Fake ones, such as the Kochs’ “The Tea Party ‘movement’,” get weaponized, because the billionaires’ ‘news’media treat them extensively, and often grant them respect. Top-down’s the way, in any dictatorship. That includes in America.)
Here is another excellent video - this one 10 minutes long - summarizing the Gilens and Page study...
The only major difference between Republican politicians and Democratic ones, then, is that, whereas Republican ones don’t even need to pretend that they oppose limitless greed (since limitless greed that’s carried out by frauds instead of by outright physical violence — which latter type of coercion is the type that’s employed more by lower-class crooks, anyway, and those are the type of crooks who fill our prisons, not the type who fill our boardrooms — is, essentially, supported by Republicans’ ideology, as ‘being entrepreneurial’ and ‘competitive spirit’), Democratic politicians do need to make that pretense (since their voters are liberals, and liberals don’t share the conservatives’ “Greed is good” libertarian faith). But the outcomes, even when Democrats are in power, are vastly more helpful to the billionaires, than to the public.
Does this mean that Democratic (or liberal) politicians are necessarily more hypocritical than Republican ones are? No. Whereas Democrats pretend to be opposed to the system’s favoring the super-rich, Republicans pretend to be opposed to “sins” and other religious-based shiboleths. Both Parties can win and retain power only by deceiving (defrauding) the public, and serving the billionaires, though in different ways — some conservative, and some liberal. Virtually everything else than that service to billionaires (and to centi-millionaires) is just frauds by politicians, because, at least after around 1970, only the richest 1% or (usually far) less are actually being served by the US federal Government. It’s not the billionaires that are defrauded by politicians; it is clearly the public that is being defrauded by them.
The public are served only to the extent that the public’s interests are the same as the billionaires’ interests. And the Gilens and Page study found that the public’s policy-preferences are simply ignored — not ignored in the political rhetoric, but ignored in the political outcomes.
The US Government, thus, is of a few people (the policymakers), by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. And that’s just an established fact.
Update (8:40 pm ET): The FBI informant who helped the Justice Department secure a conviction against the top official from the US subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, but was blocked by the Obama Justice Department from testifying about Russian efforts to bribe and extort their way into possession of North American uranium assets – a process which was cleared by both Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Robert Mueller’s FBI – has as of moments ago been cleared to testify, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday evening.
#breaking : DOJ allows FBI informant to provide information to Congress on alleged corruption or bribery in transactions for #UraniumOne
The informant, who has yet to be named – perhaps out of concerns about his or her life – is being represented by Victoria Toensing, a former Reagan Justice Department official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Toensing joined Grassley in urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Uranium One deal, which was approved in 2011 by a committee on which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat. Around the time the deal was approved, Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee from a bank with ties to the Russian government, as well as millions more in “charitable contributions” to the Clinton Foundation from entities with ties to the Russian government. Russia’s Tenex nuclear sales arm also secured billions in new American nuclear fuel contracts around the same time.
The Obama administration said at the time they saw no national security reasons to block the deals, one of which gave Vladimir Putin control of 20 percent of America’s uranium stockpile. But last week a series of stories published in The Hill disclosed that before those decisions were made, the FBI had gathered extensive evidence that Vadim Mikerin. Tenex’s chief executive inside the United States, was directing a massive bribery scheme that compromised an American trucking company that shipped uranium for Russia.
The evidence was first gathered in 2009 but charges weren’t brought until 2014. Mikerin pled guilt a year later to a money laundering charge and is currently in prison.
But key members of Congress said they weren’t alerted to the case at the time and are now deeply concerned the Obama administration had a good security reason not to approve the deals given the corruption was uncovered.
Now, finally, we are about to hear the full story.
* * *
“This cries out for a special counsel,” Toensing said on Fox News’ “Hannity” Tuesday night. “Congressional committees are fine, but this is a criminal investigation and Jeff Sessions isn’t ever going to feel comfortable appointing that, and Rod Rosenstein is recused because he was the U.S. attorney.”
Toensing added that while Sessions can technically appoint a special counsel, he likely was “not going to be comfortable doing it.”
“He ought to get somebody in here and get this off their hands,” Toensing said.
According to the Hill, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed the informant had been cleared to speak with Congress for the first time, nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI. Two House committees, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee, are investigating the deal. And the informant will now probably testify before one, or perhaps all, of the committees.
“As of tonight, the Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” she said.
Earlier, Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., threatened to use his subpoena power to get access to the informant, who had signed an NDA with the FBI and was unable to speak publicly about Uranium One.
NY Rep. Peter King during an appearance on Fox News accused the FBI of stonewalling Congress.
Rep. Pete King: "Very suspicious" that FBI is stonewalling on Trump-dossier investigation. pic.twitter.com/pX2ex31uda
The committees are keen to learn what the informant knows about any Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton, to win Obama administration approval for Moscow’s purchase of large uranium assets in the United States or to secure billions in new contracts uranium sales contracts with American utilities.
“The FBI has informed me that they are releasing my client from his NDA so that he can testify to Congress about his work uncovering the Russian nuclear bribery case and the efforts he witnessed by Moscow to gain influence with the Clintons in hopes of winning favorable uranium decisions from the Obama administration,” Toensing said.
“He is now able and willing to talk with the confessional committees seeking his testimony though I will be working with all parties to ensure his identity remains confidential to ensure his safety,” she added.
* * *
Hillary Clinton is back in the crosshairs of Congressional investigators after two House committees launched investigations into the circumstances surrounding the Obama-era Uranium One deal more than a year after suspicions of a quid-pro-quo were first raised by Peter Schweizer in his infamous “Clinton Cash” expose.
The Hill breathed new life into those allegations last week when it reported on an FBI investigation into attempts by Russian nuclear industry officials at the US-based subsidiary of Rosatom (the Russian nuclear agency) to bribe and extort their way into control of Canada-based Uranium One – and by extension, the 20% of US uranium assets it controls.
And now that the Uranium One story has found its way back into mainstream consciousness, Chuck Grassley, the widely respected head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is calling for the DOJ to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the deal. The thinking is, presumably, if Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein felt comfortable appointing a prosecutor to dig into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, he should be equally comfortable appointing a prosecutor to investigate these serious allegations from the Obama era. “Whoever in DOJ is capable” of launching an investigation into Uranium One should go ahead and do so, Grassley tweeted.
Whoever in DOJ is capable w authority to appoint a special counsel shld do so to investigate Uranium One "whoever" means if u aren"t recused
Earlier this month, Grassley’s committee became the first to launch a probe into the Uranium One deal. Last night, it was joined by two House committees after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said House Intel and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committees would be seeking to learn whether there was in fact an official FBI investigation into the Uranium One deal, and if so, why Congress wasn’t informed.
In addition, the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees yesterday announced a joint investigation into the FBI’s handling of a probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server after emails showed earlier this month that former FBI Director James Comey drafted a letter exonerating Clinton before the investigation had been officially completed.
Looking ahead, we wonder if Grassley will be joined by Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on Grassley’s committee who has previously expressed support for an investigation into Clinton’s campaign-era conduct (specifically whether the Clinton’s improperly colluded with former AG Loretta Lynch) or perhaps some other Democrat.
The lack of prosecution of US bankers responsible for the great financial crisis has been a much debated topic over the years, leading to the coinage of such terms as "Too Big To Prosecute", the termination of at least one corrupt DOJ official, the revelation that Eric Holder is the most useless Attorney General in history, and of course billions in cash kickbacks between Wall Street and D.C. And, naturally, the lack of incentives that punish cheating and fraud, is one of the main reasons why such fraud will not only continue but get bigger until once again, the entire system crashes under the weight of accumulated theft, corruption and Fed-driven malinvestment. But what can be done? In this case, Vietnam may have just shown the way - sentence embezzling bankers to death. Because if one wants to promptly stop an end to all financial crime, few things motivate as efficiently as a firing squad.
According to the BBC, the former head of a major Vietnamese bank has been sentenced to death for his role in a fraud case involving some 800 billion dong (which sounds like a lot of dong, but equals roughly $35 million) of illegal loans. Nguyen Xuan Son, who served as general director of OceanBank, was convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power and economic mismanagement. Bank founder, tycoon Ha Van Tham, and dozens of other banking officials are also on trial, accused of lending violations.
Nguyen Xuan Son was sentenced to death at the People"s Court in Hanoi
Meanwhile, dozens of former employees also received lengthy prison sentences in the major corruption trial. Because OceanBank is partially-state owned, Son"s crime of mishandling state money was thought to be particularly serious. After leaving the bank, he rose to be head of state oil giant PetroVietnam. As Reuters reported previously, PetroVietnam and Vietnam’s banking sector are at the heart of a sweeping corruption crackdown in the communist state.
The four officials are accused of intentional breaches of state rules over a loss-making investment in Ocean Group’s banking unit, police said in an online statement.
Investigations into PetroVietnam made global headlines last month when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former official of a PetroVietnam unit, from a park in Berlin and forcing him home to face charges of financial mismanagement.
A Politburo member who was a former PetroVietnam chairman and a vice trade minister have also been sacked from their positions as part of the crackdown -- unusual moves in a country where such senior officials are rarely dismissed.
To be sure, Vietnam is one of the world"s biggest executioners, according to Amnesty International, but this is said to be the first time in years that the death penalty has been given to such a high-flying former official. Back in 2013, another former banker, Vu Quoc Hao, the former general director of Agribank Financial Leasing Co, was also sentenced to death by lethal injection for embezzling $25 million (or what Goldman would call "weekend lunch money") a case which however was relatively low profile and received little international attention.
Earlier in the day, OceanBank"s ex-chairman Ha Van Tham, once one of the richest people in Vietnam, was jailed for life on the same charges, and for violating lending rules. Judge Truong Viet Toan said: "Tham and Son"s behaviour is very serious, infringing on the management of state assets and causing public grievances, which requires strict punishment."
The bank"s ex-chairman Ha Van Tham was jailed for life
More details from BBC:
In total, 51 officials and bankers stood trial, accused of mismanagement leading to losses of $69m (£50m).
The case comes amid a massive anti-corruption crackdown in Vietnam, which is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in Asia. It is ranked 113th out of 176 countries on Transparency International"s corruption perceptions index.
The government has vowed to tackle the issue in order to boost the country"s economic growth. In May, a top Vietnamese official was sacked for "serious violations" while running PetroVietnam.
And yet, while one could be left with the impression that this is a case of justice finally being done, even today"s sentences appears to have an element of corruption to them: according to BBC, the blitz, while tackling corruption, has mainly targeted opponents of Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.
Still, no matter the circumstances, an outcome such as this in the US remains impossible: after all it is America"s very own embezzling bankers that control the legislative and judicial branches, and most recently, the executive not to mention the central bank, which is why deterrence of any substantial scale will never take place in the US and small, medium and large-scale theft will continue unabated, with the occasional slaps on the wrist, until there is nothing left to steal.
Former US President Jimmy Carter repeated his assertion that the US works more like an "oligarchy than a democracy," while also lambasting Trump"s "hopeless" approach to the increasing tensions with North Korea.
The former president was speaking at a ‘Conversation with the Carters’ event at his Carter Center in Atlanta on Tuesday. AP reports that he said money in politics is what makes the US more like an oligarchy – run by a small group of rich people – rather than a democracy, repeating an allegation he has vociferously uttered for a few years.
“[Money in politics] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system.
Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for President or being elected President. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members.
So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over."
Carter was referring to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling to allow corporations to give unlimited campaign donations to political candidates, which he has previously said was “the most stupid decision” the court had made.
But then the former President went to town on Trump and North Korea...
Carter said,
“The first thing I would do is treat the North Koreans with respect.”
“I know what the North Koreans want,” he said.
“What they want is a firm treaty guaranteeing North Korea that the US will not attack them or hurt them in any way, unless they attack one of their neighbors.” Carter said,
“But the United States has refused to do that.”
Carter said he would send his top person to Pyongyang immediately, adding:
“If I didn’t go myself.” The former president visited North Korea three times between 1994 and 2011.
"Until we"re willing to talk to them and treat them with respect as human beings, which they are, then I don"t think we"ll make any progress," he said.
American democracy has a problem - a voting problem.
According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It"s a troubling fact that puts our nation"s future in peril.
The data come from Judicial Watch"s Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau"s American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.
As reported by the National Review"s Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America"s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."
Murdock counted Judicial Watch"s state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That"s 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don"t have that many people.
Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don"t have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.
California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.
Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation"s most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That"s a huge number of possible votes in an election.
But, Murdock notes, "California"s San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138% registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters."
State by state, this is an enormous problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. Having so many bogus voters out there is a temptation to voter fraud. In California, where Hillary Clinton racked up a massive majority over Trump, it would have made little difference.
But in other states, and in smaller elections, voter fraud could easily turn elections. A hundred votes here, a hundred votes there, and things could be very different. As a Wikipedia list of close elections shows, since just 2000 there have been literally dozens of elections at the state, local and federal level decided by 100 votes or fewer.
And, in at least two nationally important elections in recent memory, the outcome was decided by a paper-thin margin:
In 2000, President Bush beat environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore by just 538 votes.
Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, won his seat by beating incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008. Coleman was initially declared the winner the day after the election, with a 726-vote lead over Franken. But after a controversial series of recounts and ballot disqualifications, Franken emerged weeks later with a 225-seat victory.
Franken"s win was enormous, since it gave Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate. So, yes, small vote totals matter.
We"re not saying here that Franken cheated, nor, for that matter, that Bush did. But small numbers can have an enormous impact on our nation"s governance. The 3.5 million possible fraudulent ballots that exist are a problem that deserves serious immediate attention. Nothing really hinges on it, of course, except the integrity and honesty of our democratic elections.
Jackson, KY – Most people may see nothing wrong with a town councilman becoming a police offer, but what if that councilman cop also owns an ambulance company, and begins pulling over competing ambulances—then does he have too much power?
The answer is still “No” in the city of Jackson, Kentucky, despite the fact that the taxpayer-funded Kentucky Association of Counties is now paying a $26,000 settlement to Emergency Medical Technician Jason Crigger.
Crigger filed a lawsuit against Breathitt County Special Deputy and Councilman Steve McIntosh, claiming that McIntosh had no legitimate reason to pull over the ambulance he was driving in June 2016.
“Never gave me a reason that he pulled me over….Never accused me of any traffic violations or anything of the sort. It appeared to me he just pulled me over to try to threaten and intimidate us,” Crigger said.
This accusation is just the latest in a series of alleged conflicts of interest Crigger claims McIntosh has in his official positions as an officer of the law, a businessman and a town councilman.
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Mountain News WYMT reported that when one of its reporters attempted to talk to the Jackson city councilman, he refused to be recorded on camera. He did reportedly say that he had good reasons for pulling Crigger over—but refused to say what those reasons were.
Jay Arrowood, owner of Arrow-Med Ambulance, Inc. told reporters he believes that the city needs to “jerk this guy’s badge.”
The two competing ambulance companies have been locked in a series of legal battles. McIntosh is suing Arrow-Med in another lawsuit that alleges the company had defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of more than $1 million.
READ MORE:Cop Involved in Quadruple Murder and Cocaine Conspiracy Kills Himself as Feds Try to Arrest Him
At the time McIntosh pulled Crigger over, there was a patient riding as a passenger who had just undergone dialysis and was being transported back home. Arrowood didn’t appreciate the officer’s actions and remarked:
“Mr. McIntosh needs to work on improving his own service versus trying to put our service out of business,” Arrowood said. “If you’ll pull an ambulance over for no reason, hindering patient care, there’s nothing that you won’t do.”
Crigger is suing for damages related to his “humiliation and suffering, punitive damages against McIntosh and an injunction preventing anyone acting in concert with McIntosh to stop interfering with Arrow-Med,” according to Mountain News.
Predictably, Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons told Mountain News he was not aware of any wrongdoing on behalf of his deputy. However, Arrowood says the harassment has been going on for years.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, altercations between police officers, EMTS, and even fireman are nothing new. In 2009, Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Daniel Martin pulled over ambulance drive Maurice White, choked him, and proceed to arrest him.
White objected to being pulled over while transporting a passenger in need of emergency medical care. But that didn’t stop Martin, and his superiors took his side. Not only was Martin allowed to keep his job with the OKHP, but he was later involved in another scandal where he showed an inappropriate photo to another officer.
Having a police officer who is also a town councilman is a conflict of interest enough for a sheriff who’s worth his weight in salt to deny employment. But having an officer who owns a competing ambulance company, who then pulls over his competition is a blaring display of both police corruption and political corruption. If Sheriff Clemons is truly concerned with maintaining the public’s trust, he may need to revisit his decision to keep such an officer on the force.
READ MORE:VIDEO: Cyclist Unlawfully Accosted & Charged by a Tyrant Cop -- But He Fought Back and Won!
In the case of Jackson, Kentucky, while Crigger will receive a $26,000 settlement, the burden to pay the bill is on the taxpayers—not McIntosh, who still remains in his capacity as a sheriff’s deputy.
Shortly after moving into the White House, President Trump promised a "major investigation into VOTER FRAUD" and vowed that any evidence of wrongdoing would be used to strengthen voting procedures. The following tweets undoubtedly "triggered" millions of liberals across the country as visions of "racist" voter ID laws danced in their heads.
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....
The Commission shall, consistent with applicable law, study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections. The Commission shall be solely advisory and shall submit a report to the President that identifies the following:
(a) those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that enhance the American people"s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections;
(b) those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that undermine the American people"s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections; and
(c) those vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for Federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting.
And, since no one would possibly argue in favor of more voter fraud rather than less, you might assume this particular Executive Order enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support across the country...of course, you could think that, but you would be incredibly wrong.
Enter New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Apparently Mr. Cuomo is so certain that voter fraud is nothing more than a right-wing "myth" that"s he unwilling to even comply with a data request to make sure. We"re sure he"s just trying to save Vice President Pence from wasting his time.
NY refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not comply with this request.https://t.co/eQC6ORV0v1
Of course, Cuomo"s position is somewhat curious in light of the fact that New York City"s own Commissioner of the Board of Elections, Alan Schulkin (Democrat), was caught on a secret video by Project Veritas openly admitting that"there is a lot of voter fraud." At one point, Schulkin even admits that campaign officials bus minorities from "poll site to poll site" so they can vote multiple times.
“He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything. But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card."
"It’s absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud . . . This is why I get more conservative as I get older.”
“Voters? Yeah, they should ask for your ID. I think there is a lot of voter fraud. You know, I don’t think it’s too much to ask somebody to show some kind of an ID . . . You go into a building, you have to show them your ID."
“They bus people around to vote . . . They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.” Asked which neighborhoods, Schulkin said, “I don’t want to say.” When the undercover mentions black and Hispanic neighborhoods, Schulkin responded, “Yeah . . . and Chinese, too.”
Alas, we assume that video is also just a "myth"...
Of course, New York wasn"t the only snowflake state to opt out of Trump"s voter fraud data request. Apparently California is also quite confident that all of their illegal immigrants are voting legally...or something like that.
Secretary Padilla"s response to the Election Commission"s request for personal data of CA voters: pic.twitter.com/UdUt55HSim
As The Hill notes, a total of 5 states have refused to turn over any voter data whatsoever while another 9 have said they"ll only hand over publicly available data.
As of Friday afternoon, officials in New York, California, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Virginia had said they would not turn over any of their voter data to the voter fraud commission.
Other officials in Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, Utah, North Carolina, Indiana and Iowa said they would only turn over public information on voter rolls, but wouldn"t share private information.
Wisconsin announced it would turn over public information but would charge the commission $12,500 to buy the voter roll data.
Of course, at the end of the day, you only really need to examine a couple of critical swing states to get a sense for how rampant voter fraud might be. And, since we don"t see Florida or Ohio on the lists above, we very much look forward to the data from those two states.
On June 9th, Gallup’s Editor-In-Chief, Frank Newport, headlined «Americans Want More Than Just Budget Cuts» and reported that, «Gallup"s latest update shows that 28% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the federal government, while 55% have an unfavorable opinion. That"s the lowest rating for any business or industry sector we tested». Here are the details on that net minus 27% (55% minus 28%) favorability-rating for «The federal government»:
Dr. Newport then points out that, the last time when Gallup had reported about Americans’ opinions of Congress, which was on 28 September 2015, «The More Americans Know Congress, the Worse They Rate It»; and, specifically, that, whereas only 7% of Americans who answered either 4 or 5 out of five questions about Congress correctly were rating Congress either «Excellent» or «Good», a far higher 27% of Americans who had answered none of the five questions correctly were rating Congress either «Excellent» or «Good». 29% of Americans who had answered zero questions correctly were rating Congress as either «Poor» or «Bad», but a far higher 66% of Americans who had answered either 4 or 5 of the questions correctly were rating Congress as «Poor» or «Bad». Consequently, «The Knowledgeable Are the Most Negative About Congress» according to Gallup’s latest available information, published there.
The basic point in Dr. Newport’s June 9th article is that the reason why Americans dislike «The federal government» isn’t that it’s ‘too big’ or ‘spends too much money’ or any of the other excuses that the (widely despised) Republican Party claims, but is instead that, «Americans think that Congress is corrupt and not focused on the interests of the people. They want their representatives to compromise rather than rigidly stick to principles».
By «principles» there, might be meant such things as ‘a balanced budget’ or ‘cutting spending’ (as Republicans would like to be hearing), but it might also mean ‘consideration and decent treatment of the poor’ (as Democrats would like to be hearing); and, so, in a survey such as this, it is really meaningless overall.
What is far more meaningful was Gallup’s survey about Americans’ perceptions about corruption in Congress: 52 % thought that «Most members» of Congress are corrupt, but only 32 % thought that their own particular member of Congress is corrupt. Obviously, if the perceptions on that matter had been correct nationwide, and 52% of Congress is corrupt, then 52% of the survey’s respondents should have been saying that their own Representative in Congress is corrupt. In other words: the U.S. public are widely deceived to believe that their own Representative is not corrupt but that a substantial majority (52% saying that Congress is «Corrupt», versus only 42 % saying it’s «Not corrupt») believe that «Congress» is corrupt.
Gallup’s 28 September 2015 report about perceptions of Congress made note, also, that there was an extraordinary jump in 2006 in the percentage saying that «Most members are corrupt», from 38 % saying that in 2005, up to 47 % saying that in 2006. After 2006, the percentages saying that, rose only slightly. Perhaps 2006 was a post-Iraq-invasion syndrome, in which increasing numbers of Americans came to distrust the U.S. government that had clearly lied and invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The Gallup Poll’s findings about Americans’ perceptions regarding the question »In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?» first peaked at 61% right before the invasion, in the poll taken on «3/3-5/03» or March 3-5 of 2003, then subsided a bit but finally rose even higher, to 62%, in the poll taken during «8/22-25/05» or August 22-15 of 2005, and then it stayed generally above that and briefly soared into the 80s during 2011, but is now in the high 60s, still slightly higher than the post-Iraq-invasion disillusionment period.
In any case, what seems clear is that Americans now strongly dislike ‘our’ federal government and generally consider it to be «corrupt» or not really «our» government, but instead to be somehow «their» government of »us». And, also obviously, if this long-term trend continues, then the American public will be heading into a pre-revolutionary condition, and, beyond that, into a revolutionary one. If the existing long-term trend continues, then the result will be either the overthrow of the U.S. federal government, or else a lock-down of first the Internet and then the public, at a time of already overcrowded prisons. Of course, when there is not space to accommodate additional prisoners, then military compounds become resorted to — and martial law.
No longer is it at all reasonable to characterize the United States as a stable democracy. It’s certainly not stable now; and, also, it’s certainly not a democracy. And the present long-term trend is in the wrong direction.
The United States is certainly a country that is currently heading into some kind of convulsive transition — but, certainly, also, an extremely unpleasant transition, even if, somehow, one that can reach a stability which is better, not worse, than that of the earlier post-WW-II era. And, of course, if it turns out to be a pre-WW-III transition, then the result will be catastrophic for the entire world.
The way that the U.S. federal government has responded to the current transition, up till now, is to continue the lies. But there is no certainty that that will continue to work, even for the people at the very top.
The interests of Washington and large corporations have merged so completely they are now inseparable.
America’s large corporations and its government have merged. Or was it an acquisition? If the latter, who acquired whom? Unfortunately, the labels affixed to purely corporate combinations lose their analytical usefulness here. While the two retain their own distinct legal structures and managements, so to speak, such a close community of interest has evolved that it’s no longer possible to separate them or delineate their individual contours. Political labels are no help; the ones most often used have become hopelessly imprecise. The Wikipedia definition of “fascism” is over 8,000 words, with 43 notes and 16 references.
However, the conjoined blob is so big, rapacious, and intrusive that akin to Justice Potter Stewart’s famous non-definition of obscenity, everybody knows it when they see or otherwise come into contact with it. This article will use the term “corporatocracy.” It’s less letters, dashes, and words to type than “the corporate-government-combination.” No serviceable understanding of either US history or current events is possible without close study of the corporatocracy. Unfortunately, such study, like entomology or cleaning septic tanks, requires a stout constitution. But take heart, entomologists grow to love their creepy crawly things, and septic tank cleaners say that after a few minutes you don’t even notice the smell.
A cherished delusion of naive liberals holds that big government is a counterweight, not a partner, to big business. Such a rationale is touted when the righteous demand new regulation, the public and media endorse it, the legislators pass it, and the president signs it into law. However, there are always unpaved stretches on the road to hell—once regulation is law, the righteous, public, media, legislators, and president, and their ostensibly good intentions, are on to the next cause.
In the quiet obscurity they relish, regulators and regulated get down to doing what they do best: bending the law to their joint benefit. Business, whose P&L’s can be powerfully affected by regulations, hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers in a never ending effort to tilt the playing field in their direction, and improve bottom lines, stock prices, and executive bonuses. The return on such investment is far higher than on old fashioned expenditures like research and development, plant and equipment, and job-creating expansion.
Not-so-naive liberals, professed conservatives, and apolitical opportunists work both sides of the street. The revolving door ensures that all concerned do well. Playing this game isn’t cheap, which serves as a barrier to entry to scrappy competitors who compete those old fashioned ways: innovation, hustle, and better products and services at lower prices. Regulation cartelizes industries; look, for instance, at banking and medicine. No surprise that regulatory barriers are one of Warren Buffett’s favorite “moats”: deep and hard-to-cross waterways that protect durable commercial advantages.
Washington doesn’t just fortify favored corporations’ business plans. A $4-plus-trillion-a-year enterprise, the government is the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services. Procuring those contracts employs more armies of lobbyists and lawyers, and has a powerful effect on policy. The shoddy premises supporting the welfare and warfare states, and their epic waste, are obvious to many of the taxpayers forced to underwrite them. They’ve decried them for decades, and voted for candidates promising to cut welfare, waste, war, and taxes. However, beyond voting, taxpayers can devote little time to stopping or slowing the gravy train. Their resources are infinitesimal compared to the resources its passengers expend to keep it running.
The modus operandi for Washington and big business have converged. Debt, its issuance and marketing, is the pillar of the financial nexus and revolving door between Washington and Wall Street. The government and its central bank artificially pump up the economy and hide its deterioration with debt and machinations: ultra low interest rates, quantitative easing, and debt monetization. Big businesses lever their balance sheets to pump up their stock prices or make acquisitions, machinations that do nothing to improve core businesses but often hide ongoing deterioration.
The history of any long-running government program is a catalogue of failures and expanding budgets. Washington cherishes failure, the fountainhead of larger appropriations and more power. Success would put bureaucrats out of work and give politicians less influence to peddle. Likewise in business, failure has become much more acceptable than it was during those bad old days of cutthroat capitalism. Marissa Mayer’s undistinguished five-year tenure at Yahoo, while perhaps not a complete failure, certainly can’t be termed a success. Nevertheless, she’s walking away from the company with at least $186 million for her middling endeavors. Given all that discrimination out there against women, one can only imagine what she would have made if she were a man.
Silicon Valley puts billions into companies like Uber, AirBnb, Snapchat, and Lyft that lose those billions and will continue to do so for the foreseeable—and probably the unforeseeable—future. Private equity shops load up companies with debt that gets paid out as special dividends to the private equity shops, leaving the indebted and enfeebled companies unable to compete and the rest of us wondering how such rape is legal in our rape-conscious age. This recipe for inevitable failure is now playing out in the beleaguered retail sector, which would be nowhere near as beleaguered if it wasn’t so beset with debt.
Tesla, a stock market darling and the quintessence of companies in which failure is the business plan, milks Wall Street for financing and Washington (and a bunch of state and local jurisdictions) for subsidies. It has lost billions during its ten years of existence, but its many admirers sing the praises of CEO Elon Musk, always using the term “consummate salesman”—perhaps it’s on his business card. Musk and fan club dream of “the next big thing” and engage in mutual masturbatory fantasies of transforming the world…and Mars. All this is harmless enough as fodder for dazzling audiovisual presentations and slick speeches, but downright dangerous when real billions, private and public, gets sucked in.
Meanwhile, the corporatocracy crucifies an old-line, profitable corporation, Volkswagen, that cheated on one of its hundreds of thousands of regulations. It undoubtedly wasn’t the cheating that got VW in trouble. Regulations are made to be cheated—it’s impossible to run a business without doing so—but the proper offerings must be made to the corporatocracy. If that were not the case, there would be Wall Street, Pharma, and Defense Contractor wings at federal penitentiaries. VW didn’t kowtow low enough or pay high enough to the bureaucrats and politicians, who retaliated, probably “nudged” by a VW competitor.
As a successful businessman, President Trump knows many of the corporatocracy’s skims, scams, and schemes. Perhaps that will enable him to keep his pledge and drain the swamp. However, it’s extensive, fetid, and teems with loathsome creatures, so a bet he’ll succeed involves exceedingly long odds. You’re probably better off buying Tesla stock.
When something no longer works, it goes away: it costs more to maintain than its output is worth.
The fragmentation of political consensus (i.e. the consent of the citizenry) is presented by the Powers That Be and their media servants as being a disaster. The implicit fear is real enough: how can we rule the entire nation-empire if it fragments?
As I noted the other day, fragmentation terrifies the Establishment of racketeers and insiders, for when the centrally-enforced rentier skims and scams collapse, those who own and control the rentier skims, scams and rackets will lose the source of their wealth and power.
To understand why fragmentation is the solution rather than the problem, we have to look at how power is leveraged in centralized government. Let"s take the recent increase in a common pinworm treatment from $3 to $600: Pinworm prescription jumps from $3 to up to $600 a pill (via J.F.).
In a top-down, centralized hierarchy of political power (i.e. the central state), the pharmaceutical company only needs to lobby a few authorities in the central state to impose its rentier skim/scam on the entire nation.
Lobbying/bribing a relative handful of federal officials and elected representatives is remarkably inexpensive: a financier or corporation only needs to focus on these few key players, and smoothing the PR pathway via a highly concentrated corporate media.
A mere $5 million spent in the right places guarantees $100 million in future profits-- profits earned not from open competition in a transparent market, but profits plundered as rentier skims: the product didn"t get any better or effective when the price leaped from $3 to $600, and competition was squelched by regulatory capture and high barriers to entry.
Now imagine if the pharmaceutical company had to lobby/bribe officials in each of America"s 3,142 counties to impose its rapacious rentier skim on the populace of each county. The lobbying/bribing effort will be orders of magnitude more costly and complex, and the national corporate media is less effective at the local level, where community groups and local media have some influence.
If we look at the source of the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown, we find that the centralization of capital and power were the primary enablers of the meltdown. If the financial system were composed of 1,200 local banks, each of which had to comply with local and state regulations instead of five behemoth banks that had the capital and klout to buy Washington D.C."s approval of their leverage and shady dealings, some hundreds of the smaller banks might have failed--but the system would have survived.
Those banks that played fast and loose with derivatives and subprime mortgages would have reaped what they had sown and been liquidated. Investors in those banks" bonds and stocks would have been wiped out. Losses would have been taken by those who had taken the risks, bad debts would have been written off and lessons would have been learned.
Instead, the five big banks and a handful of other monstrous financial entities were able to cry, "If you don"t save us, we"ll take the entire system down with us!" A system that prohibited the concentration of centralized capital and power would never have been in a position to be blackmailed by the Too Big To Fail predatory parasites.
We live in an incredibly diverse nation and world. Fragmentation serves this world better than centralized power, which as I explain in my short books Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform, is breeds corruption, self-serving bureaucracies, insider rackets, cronyism and rentier skims as the only possible output of the system.
If we want a resilient, flexible, low-cost system, we must replace the centralized system of enforced consent and artificial consensus with a fragmented, transparent one of smaller scaled, competing organizations of governance, capital and enterprise.
The intrinsic limits of a corrupt, inefficient and rigged-to-serve-the-few-at -the-expense- of-the-many centralized pyramid of power and wealth is why centralization is the problem rather than the solution:
Transparent fragmentation is the solution. Only those who will lose their share of the rentier skims, scams and rackets are afraid of history"s trajectory away from centralization. When something no longer works, it goes away: it costs more to maintain than its output is worth.
As its defenders tax the system to protect what no longer works (except for them, of course), the slide to oblivion accelerates as the system breaks down under the collective weight of all the skims, scams and rackets benefiting the few at the expense of the many.
I’m really grateful Angus Deaton was willing to come out and state the obvious.
That is, the fact this economy isn’t what we’ve been told. In reality, it’s largely a rent-seeking based system, in which a meaningful percentage of the people who earn the most money are not only not adding value to society, they’re in fact parasites feeding off the general public.
Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might, said Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton on Monday.
If an entrepreneur invents something on the order of another Facebook, Deaton said he has no problem with that person becoming wealthy.
“What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich,” Deaton said in a luncheon speech to the National Association for Business Economics.
Rent seekers lobby and persuade governments to give them special favors.
Bankers during the financial crisis, and much of the health-care system, are two prime examples, Deaton said.
Rent-seeking not only does not generate new product, it actually slows down economic growth, Deaton said.
“All that talent is devoted to stealing things, instead of making things,” he said.
Another prime example of rent-seeking is that the Medicaid is funding opioid prescriptions for low-income workers, Deaton said. The results are workers who are becoming addicted and overdosing while profits are going to the Sacker family which owns Purdue Pharma that makes OxyContin.
But Jeff Sessions swears it’s all the fault of the evil marijuana.
Deaton said he favors a single-payer health system only because our current part-private and part-public system is exquisitely designed to give opportunities for rent-seeking.
“So I, who do not believe in socialized health-care, would advocate a single-payment system…because it will get this monster that we’ve created out of the economy and allow the rest of capitalism to flourish without the awful things that healthcare is doing to us,” he said.
Raising taxes on the wealthy is not a good way to combat rent-seeking because it taxes the legitimate profits of entrepreneurs along with rent-seekers.
“The key is to somehow find a way of tackling rent-seeking, crony capitalism, and corruption legal and illegal and build fairer, more equal society without compromising innovation or entrepreneurship,” he said.
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We the citizens and voters have to stop being enablers of systemic corruption.
The overwhelming consensus of the punditry across the political spectrum is that "Nothing Good Can Come of This Election"--and that"s a very good thing. The handwringing goes like this: The country is deeply divided by schisms that cannot be bridged, every institution from the two parties to the mainstream media to the Department of Justice has been tarnished by cover-ups, collusion or worse; whomever wins the election will enter the presidency without a mandate, and so on.
Why is "nothing good can come of this" good? Because ridding the nation of its political corruption will require hitting bottom.
Just as an alcoholic or drug addict is incapable of making any truly positive changes until he/she hits absolute bottom, so it is with our tolerance of a corrupt political system that is poisoning the nation, one injection of corrupt cash, collusion and pay-to-play at a time.
If our rotten-to-the-core politics as usual is indeed flying off the cliff to complete destruction, that is an unalloyed good.
Just as alcoholics continue down their self-destructive path with the aid of enablers, so too has the corrupt political order expanded with the aid of the Mainstream Media, insiders in the Department of Justice, K Street lobbyists and a veritable army of well-paid lackeys, pundits, academics, apparatchiks and assorted toadies in the organs of governance and in the big-money private sector and philanthro-capitalist dynasties of pay-to-play foundations.
The only way anything will truly change in the political order is if every Establishment insider politico loses every election, from the presidency to dogcatcher. Nothing will change until the mere existence of a private foundation like the Clinton Foundation triggers a landslide loss for the politico with ties to such corruption.
Nothing will change until the collusion of the mainstream media (supplying the insider candidate with debate questions, etc.) alone causes the colluding candidate to lose by a landslide.
Nothing will change until candidates who refuse to accept any donation larger than $100 from anyone or any entity beat the Goldman Sachs/Saudi prince-funded insider candidates by a landslide.
Nothing will change until candidates who fund costly negative TV advertising campaigns with millions in pay-to-play "contributions" from Goldman Sachs et al. lose by a landslide.
You get the point: we the citizens and voters have to stop being enablers of systemic corruption. We have to stop being bamboozled by insiders with promises of "hope and change" and the usual negative TV blitzes funded by corrupt big money.
It"s easy to blame lax campaign laws or the corrupted candidates and their insider toadies, but ultimately we"re responsible for enabling corruption, collusion, pay-for-play and a political and financial Elite that"s above the law.
From the point of view of the corrupted, colluding insiders, MSM flunkies, Department of Justice lackeys and well-paid parrot-pundits, nothing good can come from this election because half the voters may actually cast off the shackles of the nation"s corrupt and corrupting political and financial Elites.
This mass rejection of the politics as usual of corrupt and corrupting political and financial Elites is the highest possible good--a public good that eludes the hand-wringing corrupt insiders, pundits and toadies who have sucked up fortunes from the trough of putrid systemic corruption.
