Archive for January, 2009

Poaching on the King’s land

January 31st, 2009

A 23-year old homeless man sentenced to 10 days in County Jail for catching and cooking a federally protected steelhead trout.
Victor Manuel Silva was convicted of illegally taking and possessing wildlife. Officials said the poaching was a blow to the species because the fish was an egg-carrying female.
When warden Teri Hickey responded to a tip, she found a group of three or four homeless men camped out beneath a bridge, cooking a large fish over a fire and getting ready to eat it.
– San Luis Obispo Tribue CA
In this land of elites and serfs, the government tanks our economy then jails hungry people hunting/fishing on vast federal lands; remember the laws against poaching on the king’s land in medieval England?
Yes loss of species is a complex problem. It’s all the more complex as desperate people try to survive in an economy ruined by fraud, greed, political corruption, and the impossible dream that a huge centralized bureaucracy can have the wisdom to make thousands of rules for every detail of people’s lives. Citizens need to step up in cities, counties, and states to take back power for local control and oversights.

Speaking of Eating
Have you ever tried dusting kale with sea salt, herbs, spices, and dehydrating it for delicious kale chips? This can be done with foraged wild greens too. And get busy planting food, in all gardens and public grounds. Don’t pin your hope on the stimulus package, grow food locally now! –thanks to The Granger for the recipe

Speaking of Elites
Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal Opinion

I think there is an illness called Goldmansachs Head. When you have Goldmansachs Head, the party’s never over. You take private planes to ask for bailout money, entertain customers at high-end spas, yolu take and give huge bonuses as the company tanks. Goldmansachs Head is the delusion that the old days continue and you can just keep rolling in Abundance.
You don’t have to be on Wall Street to have GSH. Congress has it too. That’s what the stimulus bill was about — not knowing the old pork-barrel, group-greasing ways are over, embarrassing.

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Posted in food freedom

Just salute and vote “yes”

January 30th, 2009

No fair

ABC’s Charles Gibson huffs, “Turning a cold shoulder to the President’s appeal for bipartisan support, NOT ONE Republican voted for (Obama’s stimulus bill.)” .
“So much for the President’s charm offensive, today it was all partisan rancor,” scolds Jonathan Karl.
CBS’s Katie Couric chides, “The President went up to the Hill to personally appeal to Republicans, so what more can he do?”
Karl sums it up: “But Democarats are in charge now, and the Senate is expected to pass its own more costly version of this bill next week.”

So that’s it: 627 pages long, $1.18 billion for every single page in the bill, but our enlightened media don’t think we should quibble — just salute and vote yes. Dem/Repub bickering and turf wars aside, the engine’s in full throttle, few are asking real questions.

BigMedia reports a thin slice of news with no room for people who challenge the establishment. TVMedia constantly tell us, “No one saw the economic crisis coming.” Not true: analysts shouting ‘danger’ were called kooks and ignored. The “experts” who created the crisis get unlimited bailout budgets to throw taxpayer’s money around hoping it will sprout somewhere, somehow.

Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, proclaimed the stability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just days before they went belly-up. Today he cheerleads more bailouts for shaky government schemes. Goldman Sachs ex-CEO Hank Paulsen, who helped engineer the debt economy, is in charge of passing out trillions to his financial cronies.

One of the experts we don’t hear on TV: Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com. As Obama’s stimulus package zips through Congress, Raimondo suggests cutting “the single largest federal expenditure down to a manageable size: the US military.
“Larger than all other ‘defense’ budgets in the world combined…consuming nearly half of all government spending…operating military bases in dozens of countries on every continent…the Pentagon is the bigest landowner on earth…Militarism distorts the economy, but also the progress of science, channeled in directions wholly destructive, not productive.”
Daily headlines from AntiWar.com can be sent to your email, with links to read articles of most interest.

For Americans traumatized by dashed expectations, voices with new solutions are a lifeline. In days ahead, more people with real ideas for change will be featured on this site.

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Posted in Economic Wake Up, Media Malpractice

Tracking Bailout Dollars

January 29th, 2009

Adding up the Bailout dollars – ‘Nuff Said.

December 2007 Bailout:Term Auction Facility Allocated: $2 trillion Spent $2 trillion
February 2008 Economic Stimulus Act 2008 $168 billion $168 billion
March 2008 Bear Stearns bailout $29 billion $29 billion
March 2008 Discount window n/a $99.8billion
May 2008 Student loan guarantees $9 billion $unknown
September 2008 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac $200 billion $13.8billion
September 2008 Foreign exchange dollar swaps Unlimited n/a
October 2008 FHA housing rescue $320 billion unknown
October 2008 Auto industry energy efficiency loans $25 billion $0 October 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program $700 billion $276.3billion
October 2008 Bank capital invesments $250 billion $192.3 billion
October 2008 Money market guarantees $659 billion unknown
October 2008 Commercial Paper Funding $1.4 trillion $334.7 billion
November 2008 AIG capital investment $40 billion $40 billion
November 2008 AIG unspecified by source $152.5 billion $125.9 billion
November 2008 Citigroup capital investment $20 billion $20 billion November2008 Citigroup loan loss backstop $5 billion $0 November 2008 TALF loss provisions $20 billion $0
November 2008 Unemployment benefit extensions $8 billion $8 billion
November 2008 Treasury capital investment $40 billion $40billion
November 2008 Bridge loan $60 billion $39.1 billion
November 2008 Collateralized debt obligation $30 billion $27.9 billion
November 2008 Mortgage-backed securities $22.5 billion $19.8 billion
November 2008 Comercial paper purchase $20.9 billion unknown
November 2008 Citigroup loan-loss backstop $301 billion $0
November 2008 Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan $200 billion $0
November 2008 GSE mortgage-backed securities $500 billion $5.6 billion
November 2008 GSE debt purchases $100 billion $24.2 billion
November 2008 FDIC Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Unlimited $220 billion
November 2008 FDIC bank takeovers $16.7 billion $16.7 billion
December 2008 General Motors bailout $13.4 billion $4 billion
December 2008 Chrysler bailout $4 billion $4 billion
December 2008 GMAC/GM $6 billion $6 billion
December 2008 Auto industry bailout $23.4 billion $14 billion
January 2009 Bank of America capital investment $20 billion $0
January 2008 Bank of America loan-loss backstop $118 billion $0
TOTAL $7.8 trillion

SOURCES: Federal Reserve, Treasury, FDIC; Figures as of Jan. 16, 2009; CNN, Jim Puzzanghera and Jessica Guynn


Smells fishy.
In October, Google was only hours from being sued by the Justice Department on charges of Web-search monopoly. Today the Internet giant is poised to capitalize on its backing of President Obama after its executives and employees overwhelmingly supported his candidacy, contributing more moneyt than al but three companies or universities.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt campaigned for Obama and was one of four Googlers on his transition team. With Google’s newfound political ties the company could play better defense against strong competitors trying to curb its influence.
Obama’s echnology agenda calls for expanding broadband Internet access to rural areas and appointing the first government-wide chief technology officer. (Schmidt has been mentioned for the position but said he was not interested.)
At an economic forum in Florida two weeks before the presidential election, Obama praised Google as “a cutting-edge innovator.” On stage with him was Schmidt, who had publicly endorsed Obama days before. –Los Angeles Times Business

World Economic Crisis Brings down Iceland Government

Iceland’s Minister of Business Affairs, Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, resigned three months after the collapse of several of the country’s leading banks and its stock market. He said the government had failed to restore confidence following the crisis. He dismissed the head of the country’s financial supervisory authority and requested resignations of the entire board of the agency.


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Posted in Economic Wake Up