Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
More Young Americans Live With Their Parents Than At Any Time Since The Great Depression
As we've reported, while millennials continue to earn less and drown in debt, they have resorted to living at home in order to cut costs and save money.
The trend of millennials returning home to live with their parents has even gotten to the point where one out of six home buyers have or plan to have a grown child at home, and home builders are building to accommodate that fact.
As a matter of fact, the trend of kids living at home with their parents has gotten so strong that home builders are now designing homes with just that in mind. "One out of six buyers have or plan to have a grown child at home" said Richard Bridges, Chicago division sales manager at David Weekly Homes. For a mere $35,000-plus, Richard says the plan can include a bedroom/bathroom suite in a finished basement to accommodate the kids who inevitably will be returning home to live.
Chicago area builder PulteGroup says in their new models, kids can enjoy a bedroom/bathroom suite with a kitchenette and separate living space. "Our NexGen option is the greatest in housing since indoor plumbing." said Jeff Roos, western regional president at Lennar Corp.
Stunningly, according to new Pew Research Center analysis, 32.1% of all millennials are living with their parents now, which is more than any other time since the great depression!
Interestingly, as Pew also points out, it's not just the United States facing this issue. While in the US 32.1% of millennials are living at home, that number spikes to a mind-boggling 48.1%across the European Union's 28 member nations.
Hey millennials, welcome to the recovery.
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Court Throws Out Jury Verdict to Punish Bank of America for Role in 2008 Crisis
Claire Bernish | ANTIMEDIA
United States — In a reversal of the smidgen of accountability forced on Bank of America for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, a U.S. appeals court threw out a jury’s verdict — and with it, the $1.27 billion fine BoA would have paid for mortgage fraud.
Though the Department of Justice had alleged Countrywide Financial Corp., which was purchased by Bank of America in 2008, had sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thousands of bad loans through its “Hustle” mortgage program, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found insufficient evidence to back charges of fraud.
“The trial evidence fails to demonstrate the contemporaneous fraudulent intent necessary to prove a scheme to defraud through contractual promises,” wrote Circuit Judge Richard Wesley on the court’s unanimous decision, as Reuters reported.
Originally, the DOJ claimed Countrywide’s “High Speed Swim Lane” (HSSL, also called Hustle) program “rewarded staff for generating more mortgages and emphasizing speed over quality, and resulted in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being lied to about the quality of loans they bought,” Reuters explained.
Though the court confirmed the jury’s findings that the shoddy loans might represent an “intentional breach of contract,” it didn’t agree the breach could be considered actual fraud.
Wall Street cleared a major obstacle in the court’s reversal, as repercussions from the judgment will make proving fraud against corporations like the Big Banks far more strenuous for the DOJ — particularly since precious few cases surrounding the crisis have even made it to trial.
In using an old law, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) — enacted in the 1980s after the savings and loan crisis — the government attempted to “civilly prosecute fraud affecting federally insured financial institutions,” as Fannie and Freddie were, the Wall Street Journal explained.
It’s possible the ruling will trigger a domino effect as the Big Banks may now feel emboldened to fight charges rather than pay settlements.
Rebecca Mairone, a midlevel Countrywide executive, had been ordered to pay $1 million in civil penalties in the same original ruling from 2014 by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff — but that ruling was also tossed out on Monday. Mairone’s attorney, Joshua Rosenkranz, said the ruling shows “this case was a massive government overreach from inception,” and prosecutors “tried to take an allegation of garden variety breach of contract and turn it into a fraud [case] with crushing and career-ending penalties.”
Countrywide’s rather atrocious loan scheme allowed employees to tell superiors why mortgages rejected by corporate auditors would still be loan-worthy — without having to provide evidence of customers’ ability to repay.
Countrywide has served as a de facto poster child of the 2008 financial crisis because its Hustle program almost exclusively favored speed and profiteering over due diligence and caution.
Former Countrywide executive, Ed O’Connell, became a prime witness for the government for his testimony that he had been ignored by superiors after alerting them to the quantity of problematic loans being issued. As theWall Street Journal reported, O’Connell did not receive money from this case since the time it was appealed, but previously received $58 million from Bank of America in the matter.
Both the Dept. of Justice and the U.S. attorney’s office reportedly declined to comment, though the option remains open for the government to pursue the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.
An unidentified Bank of America spokesman said the company was “pleased with the appellate court’s decision.”
Though the original $1.27 billion penalty could have been considered paltry compared to the estimated over $3 trillion lost to the financial meltdown, it had at least been symbolic. With this ruling, the Big Banks unsurprisingly receive yet another layer of defense against responsibility for wrecking the global economy.
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Monday, May 23, 2016
Putin is Taking a Bold Step against Biotech Giant Monsanto
Russia’s Vladimir Putin is taking a bold step against biotech giant Monsanto and genetically modified seeds at large. In a new address to the Russian Parliament Thursday, Putin proudly outlined his plan to make Russia the world’s ‘leading exporter’ of…
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Cops Arrest, Attack Mom Who Let 11-Year-Old Son Drive Golf Cart
A North Carolina mom who let her 11-year-old son drive a golf cart on a vacation island for about 30 seconds was arrested, wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, and frog-marched onto a ferry to the police station, where she was jailed in leg irons and charged with child abuse.
The mom, Julie Mall, was on vacation with her husband, son, 9-year-old daughter, 22-year-old niece, and their golden retriever, staying at a $1000/night cottage on Bald Head Island. On the evening in question, last July 26, they were riding on a paved path at dusk when the cart was pulled over by an officer.
According to Mark Washburn in The Charlotte Observer, "Mall says there is no question she was wrong." No one is allowed to drive a golf cart without a drivers' license. But what happened next is in dispute.
The police department report says that after Officer James Hunter pulled over the cart, he identified himself to the Malls and "immediately observed them both to be intoxicated"—a fact the Malls dispute. The police did not conduct any intoxication tests.
The report added that Julie Mall was "agitated and loud" and "interfering with street and pedestrian traffic." The officer said that when he ordered Mall to move off the path, she refused. And then:
“In attempting to secure the custody of the female, same dropped to the ground and began screaming and flailing around, refusing to surrender her hands or obey officer commands,” Hunter wrote.
“Same was physically assaultive and required me to initiate ground control to secure her custody.”
Julie Mall recalls the incident differently. After Officer Hunt pulled them over:
“Immediately he started berating us,” she says. “He was saying ‘How old is this kid?’ ‘Are you guys drunk?’ ‘I could write you up for child abuse.’ ”
Mall says she had no more than a single glass of wine with dinner hours earlier, and no one was intoxicated.
As the officer’s tirade continued, she says, her son burst into tears. She asked her niece to take the children back to the cottage.
Until now, it should be noted, Mall's only encounter with the police was a 2007 traffic ticket:
Mall says after the sobbing children left, she told the officer she was angry that he had upset them unnecessarily. “I said, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ and I stuck my finger in his face.”
She says the officer didn’t have a citation book with him, so he radioed for someone to bring him one. A second police vehicle arrived, and later a third.
Four or five officers were conferring there when she asked her husband to drive their golf cart back to the cottage to get mosquito repellent, leaving her alone in the dark with the police.
Four or five officers? What if elsewhere on the island some desperado was picking flowers from a public park? The story continues:
Mall says she was standing on the median of the path tapping away on her cell phone when the officer came over and told her she was blocking traffic and she needed to return to her golf cart – which no longer was there.
Mall says she was standing off the roadway at the time and the police vehicles had the road blocked.
“He said, ‘You need to go back to your golf cart or I’m going to cuff you,’ ” she says. “He lunged across at me, twisting my arm behind my back. I’m hysterical. I’ve never been that scared of anything in my life.”
Scott Mall returned and managed to videotape what came next: His hysterical wife sobbing and screaming on the ground, with the officer's knee in her back. She was then driven to the local station house (where a gaggle of officers were watching Naked and Afraid). From there:
Hunter and another officer took her to the ferry, where about 30 passengers were waiting for the next boat.
When it arrived, she says she was led aboard barefoot – she lost her flip-flops in the struggle – for the trip to Southport. Waiting passengers were told they would have to wait for the next boat because a prisoner was being transported.
Like she's Son of Sam.
On the mainland she was driven to the police office in Bolivia, NC. There she was charged with resisting a public officer, intoxicated and disruptive behavior, and misdemeanor child abuse.
When her handcuffs were removed so she could be fingerprinted, her ankles were shackled instead, and she was put into a jail cell. Bond was set at $1,000. Her husband arrived, paid the bond and she was released.
She returned for her trial on Aug. 20, but Officer Hunter did not appear. The trial was rescheduled for Oct. 2, and again Hunter did not appear. "Without a witness, the state dismissed the case," according to the Observer.
If I were that officer, I'd be AWOL, too.
Elsewhere in the article, the reporter noted that "Bald Head Village has about 25 officers in its Public Safety Department. With a year-round population of 168, the municipality has the enviable ratio of one officer for every seven residents."
Just how enviable it is to have one cop for every seven residents is up for debate.
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In The Shadow Of JM Keynes——–A Concise History Of The Scourge Of Keynesianism
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Mad About Rigged Elections? Mainstream Media Says "You" Are The Problem
Authored by Claire Bernish, Op-Ed via TheAntiMedia.org,
Mainstream headlines constantly decry Bernie Sanders supporters for disrupting events in outrage, as if their protests and demonstrations somehow illustrate the devolution of the elections. But that focus by the corporate media utterly negates the consistent and continual reports of fraud and disenfranchisement fueling their ire.
And it’s getting ridiculous.
Newsweek, though far from alone, offered a prime example of the obfuscation of the election fraud and questionable campaign tactics by Hillary Clinton in its skewering of Sanders’ supporters.
“Get Control, Senator Sanders, or Get Out,” Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald titled his op-ed — which thoroughly blasts the Vermont senator — as if he were somehow responsible for both the electoral chaos and the actions of an irate voting public.
“So, Senator Sanders,” Eichenwald writes [with emphasis added], “either get control of what is becoming your increasingly unhinged cult, or get out of the race. Whatever respect sane liberals had for you is rapidly dwindling, and the damage being inflicted on your reputation may be unfixable. If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name, you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country.”
Really?
Because what Eichenwald obviates most readily in his attack is the inability to understand why those protests might be occurring in the first place. Judging by the timing of his article, it’s likely Eichenwald wrote it after chaos broke out at the Nevada Democratic Convention on Saturday — chaos that transpired after the party took it upon itself to ignore thousands who rightly believed Sanders delegates had been excluded unfairly from the caucus proceedings.
Despite the call for a recount, party officials refused to follow necessary procedure and abruptly adjourned the convention, leaving thousands of voters in the lurch — and hotel security and local law enforcement to deal with the aftermath. When things seem suspicious, apparently Eichenwald feels voters should not only have no recourse, they should be happy about it.
“Sanders has increasingly signaled that he is in this race for Sanders,” he continues, “and day after day shows himself to be a whining crybaby with little interest in a broader movement.”
It would be nice if Eichenwald’s hit piece were as much a joke as it comes across, but clearly he’s missed the point — and the vast movement supporting not only Sanders, but electoral justice. Worse, he didn’t stop there:
“Signs are emerging that the Sanders campaign is transmogrifying into the type of movement through which tyrants are born.
“The ugly was on display” at the aforementioned Nevada convention, Eichenwald adds, “where Hillary Clinton won more delegates than Sanders.”
No kidding. That would be precisely the issue that “cult” expressed fury about — Clinton managed to put yet another state under her belt under highly questionable circumstances. In fact, suspect happenings at nearly every primary and caucus so far oddly favor the former secretary of state — and Nevada stood as further testament to why voters are practically up in arms over what appears to be electoral favoritism.
But Eichenwald wasn’t alone in overlooking those concerns — or in blatantly mischaracterizing both that bias and its consequential thwarting of the wishes of a hefty segment of the voting public.
In the New York Times, Alan Rappeport also took the chance to strike at Sanders’ followers by citing Roberta Lange, Nevada State Democratic Party Chairwoman, who adjourned the convention early — earning the wrath of Nevada’s voters.
“‘It’s been vile,’ said Ms. Lange, who riled Sanders supporters by refusing their requests for rule changes at the event in Las Vegas,” Rappeport notes, adding, “The vicious response comes as millions of new voters, many of whom felt excluded by establishment politicians, have flocked to the insurgent campaigns of Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump.”
Though he at least presented that aspect of the elections fairly, his description of what Lange actually did in Nevada misses the mark — that rules change had originally occurred prior to the convention, and Lange’s hasty and subjective decision on a contentious voice vote to permanently install the change arguably created the eruption of anger. But a number of Times staff have contributed sizeable amounts to Hillary’s campaign — and a Clinton family organization also donated $100,000 to the Times’ charitable organization the same year it endorsed her. Funny how bias thus peppers its reporting.
But the media roasting of Sanders and his supporters also appeared in the Sacramento Bee — where the editorial board also called the senator to task for the Nevada incident in lieu of calling out the controversial elections. According to the Bee,
“The episode had the reek of Trump rallies, where threats, insults, and sucker punches to defend the presumptive Republican nominee have been common. Yet looking back at the hundreds of Sanders supporters who descended on a Clinton rally in East Los Angeles earlier this month to intimidate her supporters, making one little girl cry, it now seems inevitable that the same kind of violent eruption would afflict those ‘feeling the Bern.’”
Seriously?
While the protest in L.A. certainly rattled Clinton supporters, violence didn’t pepper the event. One Sanders supporter — sporting a Free Hugs tee-shirt, no less — even assisted Clinton-supporting families with teary-eyed children in tow navigate through the crowd. While reports that someone ripped apart a young girl’s pro-Hillary sign might be valid, it would stand as the exception to what amounted to a boisterous demonstration over justifiable grievances. And, again, this obfuscation forgets entirely the need for demonstrations, which Hillary Clinton — in repeated lies, controversial policy proposals, and a campaign replete with fraud complaints — has clearly helped create.
Perhaps corporate, mainstream media — instead of targeting the symptom — should attempt to report its root cause.
Perhaps enormous swaths of voters being dropped from the rolls in New York; Clinton’s inexplicably astronomical luck in coin tosses in Iowa; inexcusably untrained elections volunteers and their equally inexcusable tendency allowing Clinton supporters to participate in caucuses without first being registered; or any number of other examples from the mountain of ever-growing evidence the elections are, indeed, rigged, are infinitely more deserving of headlines than hit pieces against those protesting such affronts to the American electoral process.
Or perhaps we should all just do as Eichenwald suggests — swallow our pride and our desire for a less corrupt and fairer system — and turn tail.
Or not. Because this system is rigged — and the corporate media helps pull the strings. But as long as independent media reports what the mainstream refuses, and as long as fraud inundates the 2016 election, there will be protests — regardless of whether or not Newsweek and the Times and the rest of their ilk ever grasp accuracy in reporting.
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Sunday, May 22, 2016
What Parents Need to Know About Homeschooling - The Stand - Michael Esch
The last couple weeks the local public school has had 5 bomb threats. Four of them were at the high school and one was at the middle school. Two students were found to be the culprits and were sentenced to 45 days in juvenile detention. These type of violent threats mixed with the school shootings, the poor education standards, and increased standardized testing is causing many parents to consider homeschooling. In my local community, my wife and I are known as the homeschool family and known for having resources. My wife and I both have degrees in education. We were also homeschooled for several years and are homeschooling our two children. Homeschooling is a great step towards enriching your child's education. Even if you are planning on homeschooling for a few years, the lessons that the child will learn over those years will stick with them for the rest of their lives. They will learn to teach themselves. Homeschooling tends to…
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Noam Chomsky Reveals The Hypocrisies of Capitalism in the Financial Capital of the World
Noam Chomsky and Yanis Varoufakis spoke at the New York Public Library about the hypocrisies of the finance and tech industries - and what neoliberalism really means.
Watch:
Full transcript below:
NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the paradoxes of neoliberalism is that it’s not new and it’s not liberal. (applause)
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Exactly. Exactly.
NOAM CHOMSKY: If you look at what you describe is a form of hypocrisy but the same is true of saying that we should not support tax-funded institutions. The financial sector is basically tax-funded.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Of course.
NOAM CHOMSKY: You recall the IMF study of the leading American banks, which determined that virtually all their profits come from their implicit government insurance policy, cheap credit, access to higher credit ratings, incentives to take risky transactions which are profitable but then if it’s problematic, you guys pay for it, or just take the basis of the contemporary economy, which actually I’ve been privileged to see developing in government-subsidized laboratories for decades. MIT, where I’ve been since the 1950s, is one of the institutions where the government, the funnel in the early days was the Pentagon, was pouring in money to create the basis for the high-tech economy of the future and the profitmaking of the institutions that are regarded as private enterprises. It was decades of work under public funding with a very anticapitalist ideology. So according to capitalist principles, if someone invests in a risky enterprise over a long period and thirty years later it makes some profit, they’re supposed to get part of the profit, but it doesn’t work like that here. It was the taxpayer who invested for decades. The profit goes to Apple and Microsoft, not to the taxpayer.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Indeed, indeed. If you take an iPhone apart, every single technology in it was developed by some government grant, every single one.
NOAM CHOMSKY: And for long periods.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: And some of them by government grants from other countries, like WiFi from the Australian Commonwealth.
NOAM CHOMSKY: And it’s—you see an interesting picture of it from a place like MIT, or other major research institutions. So if you walked around the building where I work fifty years ago, you would have seen electronic firms, Raytheon, ITech, others, IBM, there to essentially rob the technology that’s being developed at public expense and seeing if they can turn it into something applicable for profits. You walk around the institution today, you see different buildings, you see Novartis, Pfizer, other pharmaceutical, big pharmaceutical corporations. Why? Because the cutting edge of the economy has shifted from electronics based to biology based, so therefore the predators in the so-called private sector are there to see what they can pick up from the taxpayer-funded research in the fundamental biological sciences, and that’s called free enterprise and a free-market system. So speak of hypocrisy, it’s pretty hard to go beyond that.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Quite right. This hypocrisy is fundamental to the whole enterprise culture of capitalism from 250 years ago.
NOAM CHOMSKY: From the beginning.
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