The technology manufacturing giant, Foxconn has been given permission to drain 7 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan to use for free in their factory.
The post Gov’t Just Gave Foxconn License to Drain 7 Million Gallons a DAY from Lake Michigan to Make iPhones appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
Back in January we reported that president Trump was planning the roll out of a new US weapons sales policy, which could result in a massive uptick in arms proliferation and conflict escalation around the world. What Reuters described then – as part of a new “Buy American” plan – would involve US diplomats and military attaches stationed across the globe essentially playing the role of middle men for American arms contractors and US defense sales, while also encouraging embassy staff to aggressively promote weapons purchases abroad and allowing for much greater leeway in terms of which foreign entities the US does business with.
Though it sounds like the plot from the movie War Dogs – itself based on true events involving Pentagon contractors’ black market East European private gun running scheme – this plan could involve the mainstreaming of just the type of weapons trade previously considered sketchy and illegal, existing at the peripheries legally ambiguous covert ops and off the books contract deals. The plan would take the seedy underbelly of the international arms trade into the light of day as official US policy, and would further deputize American diplomats as at the forefront of arms deals.
There was one problem: it appears that plan did not yield the desired surge in weapons sales by the world’s biggest arms dealer: Uncle Sam. So fast forward to today when Reuters – again – reports that in an attempt to further streamline and fast-track Trump’s plan to “buy American” weapons, the US is rolling out yet another policy aimed at increasing arms sales to US allies, and Trump himself will take an active part in ongoing negotiations, to “close the deal” so to speak.
As Reuters details, in a previously undisclosed phone call with the emir of Kuwait in January, President Trump pressed the Gulf monarch to move forward on a $10 billion fighter jet deal that had been stalled for more than a year.
Trump was acting on behalf of Boeing Co, America’s second-largest defense contractor, which had become frustrated that a long-delayed sale critical to its military aircraft division was going nowhere, several people familiar with the matter said.
In personally working on behalf of a private company, “Trump did something unusual for a U.S. president – he personally helped to close a major arms deal.” In fact, in private phone calls and public appearances with world leaders, Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors to act as a salesman for the U.S. defense industry, analysts said.
It appears Trump has finally found a niche for himself in the White House: calling US “allies” in the hope of selling weapons while promoting war, chaos and death.
Trump’s efforts will be bolstered by the full weight of the U.S. government when Trump’s administration rolls out a new “Buy American” initiative as soon as this week aimed at allowing more countries to buy more and even bigger weapons. It will loosen U.S. export rules on equipment ranging from fighter jets and drones to warships and artillery, the officials said.
Some more details on the new weapons sales policy:
Reuters has learned that the initiative will provide guidelines that could allow more countries to be granted faster deal approvals, possibly trimming back to months what has often taken years to finalize. The strategy will call for members of Trump’s cabinet to sometimes act as “closers” to help seal major arms deals, according to people familiar with the matter. More top government officials will also be sent to promote U.S. weapons at international air shows and arms bazaars.
While human rights and arms control advocates are warning that the proliferation of a broader range of advanced weaponry to more foreign governments could increase the risk of arms being diverted into the wrong hands and fueling violence in regions such as the Middle East and South Asia, this is of little import to an administration obsessed with closing the US trade deficit, even it means closing it by selling nukes to the highest bidder.
The Trump administration stresses that the main aims are to help American defense firms compete better against increasingly aggressive Russian and Chinese manufacturers and give greater weight than before to economic benefits of arms sales to create more jobs at home.
“This policy seeks to mobilize the full resources of the United States government behind arms transfers that are in the U.S. national and economic security interest,” a White House official said, responding to a request for comment on the story.
“We recognize that arms transfers may have important human rights consequences,” the official said. “Nothing in this policy changes existing legal or regulatory requirements in this regard.”
It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone that the main architects of the new policy has been economist Peter Navarro, a China trade skeptic ascendant in Trump’s inner circle. His effort to boost arms exports has drawn little resistance within the White House, Reuters officials said.
It will also not draw opposition from the military-industrial complex. News of the streamlined policy promptly sent the stock of “defense” companies surging, allowing them to forget the disappointment over the recent improvement in relations with Russia, and the containment of a possible all-out war in the middle east.
Meanwhile, Trump is set to become what Reuters had dubbed “salesman in chief”
While many presidents have helped promote the U.S. defense industry, none is known to have done so as unabashedly as Trump, a former real estate developer who seems sometimes at his most comfortable when he is promoting U.S. goods. Trump regularly discusses specific arms sales with foreign leaders in meetings and on the phone, according to White House statements. And on a trip to Japan last November, he publicly urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to buy more American weapons.
More recently, at an Oval Office meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month, Trump held up posters with pictures of U.S. jets, ships and helicopters and other armaments sold to Saudi Arabia. “We make the best military product in the world,” he boasted to reporters as the prince sat smiling beside him.
Other presidents, including Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush stressed the need to strengthen the defense industrial base, but they did it more subtly, said William Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy, a non-partisan think tank.
“Nobody’s been as blatant about it as Trump,” he added. “Nobody has yelled it from the rooftops.”
Former President Barack Obama would sometimes talk to allied leaders about weapons systems that he felt suited their security needs, but aides said he preferred to keep weapons salesmanship at arm’s length.
The Trump administration’s plan to overhaul the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, the framework for evaluating foreign sales, goes well beyond Obama’s relaxation of rules in 2014 that enabled U.S. arms contractors to sell more overseas than ever before. Obama drew a clear line, however, requiring each sale to meet strict human rights standards – though he was criticized at times for allowing some controversial sales.
Trump has already gone ahead with several deals that Obama blocked, including the sale of $7 billion in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia despite human rights groups’ concerns they have contributed to civilian deaths in the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen’s civil war.
The bottom line is that these weapons will be not only sold, but also used, which also means that many regional conflicts and wars are coming. Which also explains the bitcoin-esque chart of Boeing in the last few years as America doubles down as the world’s biggest arms dealer.
Amazon, by all definitions is the poster child for crony-capitalism, corporatism, and corruption, but because Trump picked a fight with Jeff Bezos, the mainstream left has embraced their antithesis.
The post The Left’s Embrace of Amazon’s Corporatism Proves Haunting Power of Two-Party Paradigm appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
This article was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com
Are You Infuriated Yet?
by Chris Martenson
More and more, I’m encountering people who are simply infuriated with how our “leaders” are running (or to put it more accurately, ruining) things right now. And I share that fury.
It’s perfectly normal human response to be infuriated when an outside agent hurts you, especially if the pain seems unnecessary, illogical or random.
Imagine if your neighbor enjoyed setting off loud explosives at all hours of the day and night. Or if he had a habit of tailgating and brake-checking you every time he saw your car on the road. You’d been well within your rights to be infuriated.
Or to use a much more common example from the real world : When your politicians repeatedly pass laws that hurt you in favor of large corporations — that, too, is infuriating. Especially if those actions run directly counter to their campaign promises.
There’s a lot of be infuriated about in the world today, so go ahead and embrace your rage. By doing so, you’ll be in a better mindset to understand things like Brexit, Catalonia, and Trump, each of which is a reflection of the fury of your fellow citizens, who are finally waking up to the fact that they’ve been victims for too long.
An easy prediction to make is that this simmering anger of the populace is going to start boiling over more violently in the coming years. Welcome to the Age of Fury.
‘Over The Top’ Dumb
Do you ever get the sense that, as a society, we’re being dangerously reckless? Perhaps so dumb that we might not recover from the repercussions of our stupidity for many generations, if ever?
There are economic and financial idiocies in motion that are, by themselves, unsolvable predicaments without a peaceful solution. But when combined with resource depletion and declining net energy, they’re positively intractable.
Take for example the hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of underfunded entitlement and pension promises. Those promises cannot be kept and they cannot be paid. Everybody with a basic comprehension of math can conclude as such.
Yet we continue to operate as if the opposite were true. We comfort ourselves that, somehow, all the promised future payouts will be made in full — even though the funds are insolvent, their returns are much lower than the actuarial projections require, and payout demand mercilessly rises each year.
Spoiler alert: This isn’t some future disaster lying in wait. It’s unfolding right now.
Take these headlines spanning the past several years:
When it comes to broken retirement promises, the future is now. It will be with us for a very long time.
Why? Because the math simply doesn’t work. It’s broken, it’s been broken for a long time. You can’t put too little in the piggy bank at the start, then raid it over time, and still expect to have enough at the end.
And yet we, as a society, have preferred to pretend as if that weren’t the case. Which, it turns out, was a terrible “strategy.”
But if you think that’s bad, you’re going to positively hate this chart:
The pension liabilities now blowing up are contained within the thin green smear in the middle of this chart. Think on the nation’s inability to handle that single crisis, and now reflect on how overwhelmed it’s going to be by the far larger predicaments that lie elsewhere on the chart.
The Infuriating Plunder-fest That Is Health Care
The Medicare liabilities (the orange and largest band on the above chart) are immense, and will only become more so as our largest demographic, the baby boomers, further ages. But they become especially infuriating when seen in the larger context of the racketeering that drives the health care system in the United States.
Instead of doing anything constructive about the high number of IOUs building up within Medicare, Washington DC politicians are sidestepping the most obvious elements that contribute the most to the problem. Enormously wasteful, the “healthcare” system is entirely out of control and spiraling deeper into an abyss that threatens to literally destroy the most productive segment of the US social structure: the middle and upper middle classes.
That should be a topic of serious discussion in the halls of power. But none is being had.
Literally each day brings worse news on the skyrocketing costs of healthcare. But, as with most topics, the media mostly focuses on the symptoms (prices) rather than the causes of the issue.
The real culprits here are the insurance cartel and a hospital system that has the most unfair, incomprehensible, and inhumane billing process ever devised. One easy to grasp feature of both the insurance companies and conspire to pay the executives far more than they actually deserve or are truly worth.
Health care premiums for 2018 set to go up by as much as 50 percent
Oct 5, 2017
Several states have announced rates for health insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchanges for 2018. Topping the list is Georgia, with rates that are 57 percent higher than last year, while Florida said some premiums will be 45 percent higher.
Among the reasons for these increases is the uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal and replace the health care law, which was passed under his predecessor President Barack Obama.
Insurers are raising premiums in the face of repeated threats from President Trump to stop funding so-called cost-sharing reductions, payments to insurers that cover out-of-pocket costs for some low-income consumers. Trump previously referred to these payments as “bailouts” for insurance companies and threatened to stop making the payments so as to “let Obamacare implode”. (Source)
That’s the story the health insurers are going with: they have to raise rates because they’re uncertain whether they will get AS MUCH LOOT under the new rules being considered as they did under the utterly disastrous Obamacare provisions.
How much loot are we talking about? Look at this chart of the stock price of United Healthcare (UNH) since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare):
If this chart showing massive near-4x gains in just 5 years, coupled with your steep annual premium increases, doesn’t infuriate you, you are just not getting it.
Even if your employer pays for your health care (somewhat obscuring the true impact of premium increases), the cost to you is fewer and lower pay increases, as well as steady yearly reductions in covered services along with higher co-pays and deductible amounts.
Still not infuriated? Ok, maybe this will do the trick. Here how much executive compensation at the major insurers was last year:
(Source)
The average family health care insurance premium in 2016 was $18,764, meaning that Mark Bertolini from Aetna alone required 100% of the premiums from more than 2,200 families just to pay him in 2016. Of course, the “C-suite” of these health care insurers are loaded with other high-paid parasites who are just as busy gouging the young and old alike.
This is a complete travesty and joke. Congress and the Senate, sitting on their deservedly low approval ratings, pretend they cannot do anything about it. Too complicated they say. Bullshit I say. Go after the obscene pay packages and profits of the insurance industry as a first matter of business. Then make it a crime for hospitals to bill people differently for the exact same services.
That’s a no-brainer. Can you imagine if your mechanic had a secret pricing formula for every customer that was, literally, based on their maximum ability to pay? Nobody would stand for it, it’s disgusting that we tolerate this when it comes to something as vital and necessary as our health and even lives.
Fury, not tolerance, is what’s needed now.
Conclusion (to Part 1)
The future has arrived. The pension losses are here and just getting started and the future will have a lot more of those sorts of broken promises.
The health care insurance crisis has been with us for 20 years or so now and Obamacare just put some extra accelerant on that fire, which is now consuming middle class households by the tens of thousands.
Both the pension and health care crises are infuriating and self-inflicted wounds. We could have avoided them by making wiser choices in the past. We didn’t. We could limit their damage by making better choices today. We almost assuredly won’t.
Current conversations and proposals are thinly disguised sleight-of-hand movements whose purpose is to deflect attention from the thefts underway. Anybody who studies the system and its math comes to the same conclusion: the corporations have all the power and they are misusing it for private gain.
Why there aren’t more politicians willing to call a spade a spade and actually protect their constituents is a real mystery. But the next wave of populist candidates certainly won’t be. People are sick and tired of being asked to give more and more while corporations and wealthy elites keep taking more and more.
It’s simply infuriating.
But that’s not the worst of it. The mistakes we are making right now in terms of energy policy and ecological destruction are far more dangerous to your personal health, liberty and future prospects than a simple market crash.
In Part 2: It’s Time For Action, we uncover the hidden downside risks in today’s financial markets and explain how, as destructive as a coming market crash will be, the longer-term damage to society and risks to your well-being are rooted in the potential breakdown of the systems we depend on to live.
As with pensions and health care, we are pursuing similar dangerously misguided policies in our farming & food systems, extraction of industrial resources, and ecological management — to name just a few.
There’s an appropriate time for fury. And that time is now — provided we use the anger to spur us into constructive action. Get your fury on.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
Globalism is just like the mafia, but with lot more complexity and respectability. If you have watched mob films such as The Godfather, you can understand how the world works. For example, in Godfather II, a bunch of mobsters get together in Havana, Cuba, to celebrate Hyman Roth’s birthday. As the birthday cake is symbolically cut into pieces and distributed, Roth tells the group how Cuba will be split up amongst the guests. Extrapolate this scene to the world, you can visualize how the world works.
Corporations to Central Banks
The power structure of global elites is like nested Russian dolls made up of corporations. How many people realize that KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are owned by the same corporation? Or that HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network all report to the same boss? Or that whether you drink Budweiser, Corona, Stella, Busch or Michelob (and dozens of others), you end up paying one giant corporation?
Who controls these corporations? It’s not the CEO, as most people believe. The real control lies in the hands of the largest shareholders and/or the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors of all giant corporations are linked to each other by one or two degrees of separation. Some elites even sit on multiple boards at the same time. For example, Rochelle Lazarus sits on the boards of Merck, GE and Blackstone; Jon Huntsman sits on the boards of Hilton, Ford, Caterpillar and Chevron; and Timothy P. Flynn is a director at JP Morgan Chase, Wal-Mart, Alcoa and United Healthcare. Think for a moment how all these corporations would seem totally unrelated to a regular person.
Below is an image that show how the Boards at Netflix and Procter & Gamble are linked to some other popular corporations. (Note: this is a partial list of connections).
For these people, it doesn’t matter if you buy Pepsi or Coke; cars from GM or Ford or Toyota; or produce from Walmart or Safeway. It also doesn’t matter to them if you watch ABC or NBC or Fox. Your money goes to the same place.
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
I have written many times in the past about the singular conflict at the core of most human crises and disasters, a conflict that sabotages human endeavor and retards critical thought. This conflict not only stems from social interaction, it also exists within the psyche of the average individual. It is an inherent contradiction of the human experience that at times can fuel great accomplishment, but usually leads to great tragedy. I am of course talking about the conflict between our inborn need for self determination versus our inborn desire for community and group effort — sovereignty versus collectivism.
In my view, the source of the problem is that most people wrongly assume that "collectivism" is somehow the same as community. This is entirely false, and those who make this claim are poorly educated on what collectivism actually means. It is important to make a distinction here; the grouping of people is not necessarily or automatically collectivism unless that group seeks to subjugate the individuality of its participants. Collectivism cannot exist where individual freedom is valued. People can still group together voluntarily for mutual benefit and retain respect for the independence of members (i.e. community, rather than collectivism).
This distinction matters because there is a contingent of political and financial elites that would like us to believe that there is no middle ground between the pursuits of society and the liberties of individuals. That is to say, we are supposed to assume that all our productive energies and our safety and security belong to society. Either that, or we are extremely selfish and self serving "individualists" that are incapable of "seeing the bigger picture." The mainstream discussion almost always revolves around these two extremes. We never hear the concept that society exists to serve individual freedom and innovation and that a community of individuals is the strongest possible environment for the security and future of humanity as a whole.
Thus, the mainstream argument becomes a kabuki theater between the "ignorantly destructive" populists/nationalists/individualists versus the more "reasonable" and supposedly forward thinking socialists/globalists/multiculturalists. The truth is, sovereignty champions can be pro-individual liberty and also pro-community or pro-nation, as long as that community is voluntary.
Collectivists will have none of this, however, and despite their intellectual and "rational" facade, they will often turn to brutality in order to disrupt any movement to decentralize power.
The civil unrest in the Spanish region of Catalonia is an interesting example of the tyranny of the collectivist ideology. According to mainstream doctrine, Spain is supposed to be a "decentralized unitary state" made up of "autonomous communities," all with their own statutes and self governing bodies "loosely" regulated by the Spanish constitution of 1978. Catalonia, along with a couple other regions and cities in Spain, has long fought for true autonomy from the central government in Madrid. This separatist culture was crushed under the heel of Francisco Franco"s dictatorial regime after the Spanish Civil War which started in 1936.
After Franco"s death in 1975, Spain began its "transition to democracy" (democracy being the tyranny of the majority rather than tyranny by military regime). Once again, Catalonia"s push for independence returned.
The reasons for a Catalan secession are multitude and are of course noble or nefarious depending on which side you talk to. From my research, it would seem the primary drive for Catalonia is economic. Spain is one of the more indebted member states in the European Union with a national debt near 100% of GDP. The "great recession" starting in 2008 struck Spain particularly hard, with around 21% of the general population officially in poverty and over 40% of all children officially in poverty. Unemployment according to government statistics hovers near 18%.
Catalonia is the most prosperous region in Spain"s economy, accounting for nearly 20% of total GDP. Catalans also assert that taxation in their region is a primary pillar for the Spanish government, which has not returned the favor with sufficient investment in infrastructure in the region. In essence, there is a "taxation without representation" feel to the conflict, and Americans in particular know very well how that kind of situation can end.
On the other side of the debate, it is clear that if Catalonia leaves the Spanish system on negative terms, then Spain"s already crumbling economy will be destroyed. The motivation for Spain to keep control of Catalonia is high just on the grounds of economic disaster.
Beyond the economic issue, another interesting side note on Spain is its intense social justice (cultural Marxism) programs. While Europeans often suggest Spain as being a "conservative" government, in policy and action this is simply not true. Spain is notorious for being one of the most militantly feminist governments in the EU aside from Sweden, and this is saying something given the socialist nature of the EU. Gender laws and divorce laws in the country offer some of the most draconian double standards against men I have ever witnessed. Perhaps this will give you a kind of litmus test for the sort of culture we are dealing with here, and maybe it accounts for some discontent in certain portions of the Spanish population.
Catalonia itself is often cited as being "more liberal" in its political orientation in comparison to the rest of Spain. Of course, the term "liberal" can mean many different things in Europe depending on the nation, and American definitions do not necessarily apply. Just as Europeans tend to have no understanding whatsoever of what "conservatism" means in the U.S., Americans have a hard time understanding all the intricacies of the various levels of "liberalism" in Europe.
That said, what side of the political spectrum Catalonia sits on is irrelevant to greater discussion.
What I actually enjoy pointing out here is the fact that whether you look at the Franco era of nationalist totalitarianism, or the "semi" socialist and hyper-cultural Marxist era of today, the Spanish government STILL acts the same in its despotism against Catalan separation or independence. It is not as if the socialists set out to right the wrongs of the Franco regime once it fell. Not at all. Instead, they merely perpetuated the same attitude of centralization while wearing a smiling face. Once again, we see that there is very little difference between fascism and communism/socialism when we get down to core behaviors and policies.
Collectivists, regardless of what other labels they use to identify themselves, have certain rules that they consistently follow in order to maintain power. One of those rules is that the collective is indivisible. They might pontificate endlessly about their superior democratic ideals, but when some people vote to leave en masse, either in polling booths or with their feet, the mask of benevolence always comes off and the true monster behind collectivism is revealed.
As we have seen in Catalonia, this monstrous behavior is undeniable. The Spanish government has set out to prevent not just separation, it has sought to prevent the very act of voting on separation using police and military force. In essence, martial law was been declared in Catalonia in order to stop the people from enacting the very democratic ideals the Spanish government claims it enshrines.
Despite the vicious measures of interference, reports suggest that the vote was still successful, with 90% of the citizenry in support of independence. What happens now is unclear, but I can tell you two things are relatively certain.
First, a 90% vote in favor will result in a militarized response from the Spanish government. If the vote was less overwhelming, the government might attempt to pit one side of the population against the other, causing internal strife and disrupting secession. This strategy is unrealistic given the mass movement for independence. So, the only other option for the government is full blown martial law.
Second, such a crackdown will result in a violent counter-response. This happened in the 1970s in Catalonia and I see no reason why it would not happen again. When you have almost an entire population in agreement on separation and you use force to stop them from attaining it, they will become violent. Civil war is inevitable if martial law is declared.
It is vital that we examine the root ideological catalyst in this scenario.
The most rational solution would be for the Spanish government to accept the Catalan vote (if they believe in "democracy" as they claim, then they have to accept it, otherwise they appear extraordinarily hypocritical). This could result in a more harmonious economic relationship and less drastic damage to Spain"s fiscal structure. However, this is not going to happen. Instead, Spain is going to use the age old collectivist tactics of intimidation and carnage to oppress the Catalan"s and subsume their economic production (as socialist governments always do). When civil war erupts, and it will, production in Catalonia will grind to a standstill and Spain STILL loses 20% of its GDP.
You see, this is a lose/lose scenario for Spain, all because the collectivist doctrine demands a jackbooted reaction to any movement for decentralization. Collectivist systems are parasitic in nature; they see the citizenry as food, as units of production for the state that cannot be allowed to leave, for the "greater good of the greater number." Collectivists rationalize their behavior as essential to the well being of the society at large, but this is dishonest, for their behavior more often harms society by crushing individual innovation and instigating wars that might not have ever happened in the first place.
There is at the same time the matter of sovereignty movements across Europe. The only people who benefit from stopping these movements are globalists/collectivists. They may also benefit by sabotaging these movements after the fact, making an example of them and holding them up to the rest of the world as symbols of the "failures of populism."
It is important to point out here that Catalonia is not necessarily seeking independence from the EU, only Spain. Some might argue that this makes the Catalan vote irrelevant. I disagree.
Some people might also argue that if secession happened in the U.S., the response would be the same. I would argue that just because it might happen the same way, this does not mean it is right. If leftist Californians, for example, followed through with their latest threats to secede from the U.S. and a massive shift of leftists and cultural Marxists move to the state, frankly I would be ecstatic. Let these people separate and congregate. Let them fail or succeed on the merits of their own ideas and ethics. If they are allowed to organize without interference and they fail, then this is simply more proof that their ideology was unsound and impractical. California"s large percentage of U.S. GDP would simply transfer to other states if in fact the productive people there are not leftists and they migrate away, leaving the separatists to wallow in their naive ideology.
If Catalonia separates without interference and succeeds economically and socially, then perhaps it is not for Spain to try to subvert or destroy the region, but to emulate their model and learn from them. If people wish to walk away from a community, they should be allowed to do so. This is very simple. Self determination is not dependent on political expediency or mutual benefit. It is an inherent human right. Communities and borders should be based on principles that the population stands by and every system should remain voluntary. If they do not stand by said principles and they work to thwart voluntarism, then those communities are worthless and should not exist at all.
When a collective acts to stop people from leaving, all they are doing is exposing the fact that their reasons for existing are inadequate and unconvincing. This goes for Spain, it goes for the EU and it goes for the rest of the world. Globalists and collectivists should take note decentralization is the true model for the future.
In the long run, forcing people into participation in the system is a losing battle.
And the unknown trade deal that cost the US a hundred thousand jobs
This isn’t one of the big trade deals everybody knows about.
This one was launched during the glorious Obama years:
The (South) Korea Free Trade Agreement.
Signed, sealed, and delivered by Obama in 2011 with his assurance that it would create 70,000 American jobs.
His assurance was on the level of his promise that, under Obamacare, you would be able to choose your own doctor.
Four years later, in 2016, this was the outcome of the Globalist Korea Free Trade Agreement, as reported by Public Citizen:
“…the loss of more than 102,554 American jobs.”
Oops. Slight miscalculation.
“U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 10 percent, or $4.5 billion…”
Sorry about that.
“U.S. imports of goods from Korea have increased 18 percent, or $10.8 billion…”
Sorry about that, too.
How could this have happened? I’ll tell you how. It’s simple. Despite claims, these trade deals are written and calculated to torpedo economies. That’s what Globalists do.
Why?
Because an ultimate top-down takeover of populations is easier that way.
Here’s another example: NAFTA. Remember that trade treaty? It enabled, among other consequences, the export of very cheap corn—massive amounts—from the US to Mexico. Result? 1.5 million Mexican corn farmers were thrown out of business. Boom. Many of them decided to come across the border to the US.
Does that sound like an all-around economy-building scenario?
Globalism: the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
No more countries—only elite corporations in control, making markets wherever they can find them…
There’s just one problem. As these corporations and their Globalist leaders play economic game with countries and their people, the net effect is decreasing the number of customers who can afford to buy the corporations’ products.
You can’t just shift the beneficiaries of trade deals from one nation to another, in an unending shuffle and reshuffle of the deck. Sooner or later, you wind up with more sellers than buyers.
By Aaron Kesel
As this writer previously wrote, the new book The Chickenshit Club by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jesse Eisinger remakes the DOJ into a bunch of “Chickenshit” actors who are far too gracious to the cabal of bankers; therefore, labeling them too big to fail and too big to jail.
This reporter has researched the evidence documenting that agents of justice would rather aid and abet Wall Street fraud, rather than investigate and prosecute Wall Street executives visible financial misdeeds.
One of these cases is known as The Learning Company merger.
In an era where POTUS wannabes seek to claim “retroactive” retirement, it would serve justice well, to take a step back in time where Goldman Sachs & Bain Capital appear to have become partners in unjust enrichment.
Wall Street executives partake in crony capitalism practices and organized illegalities, sometimes brazenly defrauding their own clients by all sorts of Machiavellian dirty tactics.
In 1997, Goldman Sachs aided Thomas Lee Partners, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, to get involved with “The Learning Company” through a private equity firm.
Two years later in May 1999, the MNAT law firm (working for Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital in various deals) assisted “The Learning Co” to merge with Mattel toys.
Instant, catastrophic losses, in the billions, transpired in what is known to be one of the worst corporate mergers of all time. As Andrew Cave of the Telegraph reported,
The 3.6 billion acquisition of The Learning Company, an educational software firm, by Mattel took its place yesterday as one of the worst takeovers in recent history when the toymaker sold on the company for less than one-tenth of the purchase price.
[…]
Learning Company began losing money as soon as it was acquired and the resulting 59pc slump in Mattel’s shares has wiped out $3.1 billion of market capitalisation. Yesterday, Robert Eckert, Mattel’s new chief executive, announced 350 job losses, a $250m restructuring charge and a dividend cut from 9 cents a quarter to 5 cents a year with the aim of saving $200m a year.
It appears that Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital cooked the books and sold the skeleton for a bloated price which ultimately cost Mattel billions. Then covered their tracks by hiring US Attorneys.
Suspiciously, Colm Connolly who was the DE Assistant U.S. Attorney at the time of the case, for seven years, “switched sides” to become a partner of the MNAT law firm.
There appears to be no federal investigation into who scammed whom by cooked books (could anyone seriously genuinely argue Mattel’s inside and outside auditors are really that incompetent?).
Stay tuned as I continue to document these “revolving doors” incidences of federal agents and Wall Street executives or lawyers obstructing justice. Any attentive reader will see that calling these rackets “Chickenshit” is being incredibly soft on conspiracy to commit mass fraud that used to be prosecuted under RICO laws.
Visibly, racketeering enterprise has infected federal agencies to the point where betrayals of the public’s trust has become the rule, instead of the exception…
This is only part 2 in this series that documents financial misdeeds; I’m kicked back sipping my lemonade waiting for the proper authorities to do something rather than act like this doesn’t exist, and I will continue to release evidence.
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post and is Director of Content for Coinivore. Follow Aaron at Twitter and Steemit. This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution.
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Image Credit: Anthony Freda
By Aaron Kesel
As this writer previously wrote, the new book The Chickenshit Club by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jesse Eisinger remakes the DOJ into a bunch of “Chickenshit” actors far too gracious to the cabal of bankers, therefore labeling them too big to fail and too big to jail.
This reporter has researched the evidence documenting that agents of justice would rather aid and abet Wall Street fraud, rather than investigate and prosecute Wall Street executives visible financial misdeeds.
One of these cases is known as The Learning Company merger.
In an era where POTUS wannabes seek to claim “retroactive” retirement, it would serve justice well, to take a step back in time where Goldman Sachs & Bain Capital appear to have become partners in unjust enrichment.
Wall Street executives partake in crony capitalism practices and organized illegalities, sometimes brazenly defrauding their own clients by all sorts of Machiavellian dirty tactics.
In 1997, Goldman Sachs aided Thomas Lee Partners, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, to get involved with “The Learning Company” through a private equity firm.
Two years later in May 1999, the MNAT law firm (working for Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital in various deals) assisted “The Learning Co” to merge with Mattel toys.
Instant, catastrophic losses, in the billions, transpired in what is known to be one of the worst corporate mergers of all time. As Andrew Cave of the Telegraph reported,
The 3.6 billion acquisition of The Learning Company, an educational software firm, by Mattel took its place yesterday as one of the worst takeovers in recent history when the toymaker sold on the company for less than one-tenth of the purchase price.
[…]
Learning Company began losing money as soon as it was acquired and the resulting 59pc slump in Mattel’s shares has wiped out $3.1 billion of market capitalisation. Yesterday, Robert Eckert, Mattel’s new chief executive, announced 350 job losses, a $250m restructuring charge and a dividend cut from 9 cents a quarter to 5 cents a year with the aim of saving $200m a year.
It appears that Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital cooked the books and sold the skeleton for a bloated price which ultimately cost Mattel billions. Then covered their tracks by hiring US Attorneys.
Suspiciously, Colm Connolly who was the DE Assistant U.S. Attorney at the time of the case, for seven years, “switched sides” to become a partner of the MNAT law firm.
There appears to be no federal investigation into who scammed whom by cooked books (could anyone seriously genuinely argue Mattel’s inside and outside auditors are really that incompetent?).
Stay tuned as I continue to document these “revolving doors” incidences of federal agents and Wall Street executives or lawyers obstructing justice. Any attentive reader will see that calling these rackets “Chickenshit” is being incredibly soft on conspiracy to commit mass fraud that used to be prosecuted under RICO laws.
Visibly, racketeering enterprise has infected federal agencies to the point where betrayals of the public’s trust has become the rule, instead of the exception…
This is only part 2 in this series that documents financial misdeeds; I’m kicked back sipping my lemonade waiting for the proper authorities to do something rather than act like this doesn’t exist, and I will continue to release evidence.
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post and is Director of Content for Coinivore. Follow Aaron at Twitter and Steemit. This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution.
Like Activist Post on Facebook, subscribe on YouTube, follow on Twitter and at Steemit.
Image Credit: Anthony Freda
There is little doubt that America"s bastions of higher indoctrination (a.k.a. "Universities") have become nothing more than training grounds for future generations of social justice warriors. The war for America"s college campuses has become so heated that liberal administrators, the same people who used to pride themselves on challenging their students to step outside their comfort zone and open themselves up to dissenting opinions, have taken to shutting down free speech when it doesn"t perfectly align with their "enlightened" world view.
That said, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California Los Angeles, a publicly funded institution mind you, seems to be stepping things up a notch with their recently released "Resistance" handbook for America"s snowflakes. Among other things, the handbook specifically defines "Trumpism" as a movement that "consolidates power through white supremacy, misogyny, nationalism, xenophobia, corporatism, and militarism."
"This resource guide outlines the first steps the UCLA Abolitionist Planning Group has taken to understand Trumpism as a moment in United States politics. Building on long-standing exclusions, Trumpism consolidates power through white supremacy, misogyny, nationalism, xenophobia, corporatism, and militarism. Committed to a philosophy of abolitionism, the Abolitionist Planning Group seeks to understand how urban planning, as discipline and professional practice, can analyze and address the systematic oppressions expanded and institutionalized by the new administration."
The organization calls on urban planners to abide by 4 simple rules:
1. “Refuse to design, plan, or build systems that divide and oppress communities, including the proposed wall between the US and Mexico."
2. "Declare [your] spaces ‘sanctuaries’ to undocumented immigrants, while planning sanctuaries for all victims of injustice.”
3. “Commit to abolishing mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex, while expanding ‘abolition’ to all systems that promote racial and social exclusion."
4. "Reflect critically and historically on the political economy of planning to understand and resist our complicity in systems of racial capitalism and patriarchy.”
But, as the Daily Caller points out, the organization"s goals go well beyond setting up snowflake-inspired urban centers. They"re also extremely triggered by bathroom bills and will not stop until Facebook appoints a poor, minority woman as it"s CEO...because anything less is simply racist and sexist.
UCLA insists that the Trump administration’s “harmful and divisive rhetoric” “is fueling an open war of bigotry and hate towards nonwhite populations, mainly targeting people from Latin American and Muslim-majority countries.” The school cites President Donald Trump’s wall, executive order on immigration, and mass deportations as examples of such a war.
The institute proceeds to bash “corporate feminism,” which it sees comprising Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and TV/magazine writer Neil Scovell’s book “Lean In.” Instead, UCLA advocates “collective social action,” which it implies supports minority and poor women.
“[Bathroom bills] seek to limit the public mobility of transgender individuals and institutionalize efforts to exclude trans, gender non-conforming, or genderqueer individuals from public view,” says UCLA in another section of the pamphlet.
Elsewhere, the institute describes its conception of “the Sanctuary City,” a city which, moving beyond protection for illegal immigrants, also provides a guarantee of federal employment, a living wage, unionization of day and domestic laborers, and protection against climate change.
“We call on our fellow students, planners, and city dwellers to build this new Sanctuary City with us,” said the institute. “We can begin by calling hateful ideologies by their proper names and working to delegitimize and eliminate them.”
American tax dollars hard at work...
The full Resistance guide can be read here:
