Just Win, Baby, Get It Done; Voter Fraud in America

In the latest US election, Obama received millions fewer votes than he did in 2008. But the numbers fell his way on election night -- even in a number of borderline states where polls showed a clear advantage for Romney.

More than 4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states — many who were rare or first-time voters — to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College).

Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off forAmerica’s left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changedAmerica’s electorate — those who make the country’s decisions by showing up and voting. _Source

"New voter science" appears to be a euphemism for stealth voter fraud, flying beneath the radar of the skankstream and any other organisations with a will to enforce the nominal rules of elections. More than one Obama election official was caught red-handed teaching voters to vote at multiple polling sites. The "get out the vote" effort was particularly brisk and active this year, with many normally quiet polling sites being deluged with "rare voters."

The most often noted difference between American elections among the visitors was that in most U.S. states, voters need no identification. Voters can also vote by mail, sometimes online, and there's often no way to know if one person has voted several times under different names, unlike in some Arab countries, where voters ink their fingers when casting their ballots.

The international visitors also noted that there's no police at U.S. polling stations. In foreign countries, police at polling places are viewed as signs of security; in the United States they are sometimes seen as intimidating. _Source

In most other countries, the possibility of voter fraud is openly acknowledged, and active steps are taken to prevent it. In the US, the very real probability of voter fraud in large city precincts is denied by the skankstream. And so it takes place in the dark, spreading the rot of corruption unseen and un-noted.

...how did Romney lose a race that numerous reputable polls and pundits predicted would be an easy win, based on historical patterns? The most realistic explanation is voter fraud in a few swing states. According to the Columbus Dispatch, one out of every five registered voters in Ohio is ineligible to vote. In at least two counties in Ohio, the number of registered voters exceeded the number of eligible adults who are of voting age. In northwestern Ohio's Wood County, there are 109 registered voters for every 100 people eligible to vote. An additional 31 of Ohio's 88 counties have voter registration rates over 90%, which most voting experts regard as suspicious. Obama miraculously won 100% of the vote in 21 districts in Cleveland, and received over 99% of the vote where GOP inspectors were illegally removed.

The inflated numbers can't just reflect voters who have moved, because the average voting registration level nationwide is only 70%. The vast majority of voters over the 70% level are not voting because they want to, they are voting because someone is getting them to cast a vote, one way or another. Those 31 counties are most likely the largest counties in Ohio, representing a majority of Ohio voters. This means the number of votes cast above the 70% typical voter registration level easily tops 100,000, the margin Obama won Ohio by. _Source

Similar clearly fraudulent numbers were seen in several big city districts, across battlefield states such as Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, etc. -- as well as within usual suspects such as Chicago.

From PushBackNow (11/18/12) [DNC Granted Permission to Cheat by RNC Begining 1982 « PBN ...], we get specifics from Chuck Norris on how to eliminate fraud from occurring again. It makes good points on eliminating voter fraud in future elections.

This agreement gives a carte blanche to the DNC to commit vote fraud in every voting district across America per the Consent Decree, with a substantial proportion of ‘racial or ethnic populations’. _Source

There were a number of documented donations to the Obama campaign by overseas contributors, anonymous contributors, and fictitious contributors. These contributions were channeled directly to frontline "get out the 'vote' " efforts, as if they were legitimate contributions.

Fraudulent campaign contributions violations of campaign law

The only way to achieve an honest election is to reform the voting process to prevent fraud. But to do that, the courts must cooperate. In the US, the courts have already largely gone over to the dark side -- and are now doing so at a rapidly accelerating rate.

We are likely to see renewed efforts across the US to reform the voting process to prevent the large scale fraud which "advanced election science" allows to occur. It will have some limited effect. But the machine -- the Outfit -- is now rolling forward in high gear, with massive momentum, toward future US elections. It is not likely that honest US voters are aware enough or concerned enough about the problem to turn the massive forces aside.

When you combine this avalanche of corruption with the tsunami of debt and demographic decline, you begin to see a hint of the problem.

Good people will try to fight against the regression of the US to the third world mean, in terms of governmental corruption and despotism. Perhaps they can slow it down.

In the meantime, there is the Dark Enlightenment, and the imperatives which such an awakening will introduce.

More:

Here is one man's estimate of how voter fraud could have tipped the 2012 US elections:

BarackOFraudo Fraud Map _ via _ BarackOFraudo.com

Putting a Republican in the White House Would Be Like Electing a Protestant Pope

Of course, it might be interesting to have a Protestant pope once in a while, just to shake things up.

Visualising US Democracy

...look on the bright side. Your poor guy didn't get elected. You would have felt like a big winner, but putting a Republican in the White House is like electing a Protestant pope. An even bigger joke. A joke of such stupendous magnitude that perhaps it's not even funny at all. _Unqualified Reservations

Look at the 3D US election map above, and imagine how easy it would be to game an election, if you controlled most of the big city voting precincts. For most honest, hard-working people, it is difficult to imagine the machinations which ambitious politicians and their followers will resort to, with $trillions of other people's money on the line.

Here is one poll observer's experience:

I arrived at the polling place at approximately 5:40 a.m. I went into the polling place and showed my credentials to the Chief who showed me where to sit behind the poll workers who would be checking voters in to receive a voting certificate. All of the poll workers were either African American or Hispanic, with the only Caucasians being the Project ORCA watchers. The voters waited in a long line that went outside the building at all times during the day. At one point, probably around 11:00 a.m., I noted that the line was about 300 people long. The line did not break at any time during the day, and there was no time to take a break during the entire day from 6:00 a.m. until the final person voted at close to 8:00 p.m.

Throughout the day, I took note of many irregularities besides the abnormally long lines. The poll workers who regularly work the elections said that they had never seen turnout like what was present. I believe the lead worker said about three times as many people as usual turned out that day to vote and that it is usually a quiet, slow precinct. There were three parts to the voting process. First the voter waited in line to get to the point where I was standing and watching, which was the voter check in, where ID was checked and verified and voting certificates were given out to qualified voters. After receiving a voting card, the voters then stood in line to cast their votes at one of five voting machines. After voting, the voters stood in line to turn in their voting card. Each phase of the line was long and the lines all snaked around at all times.

I was only able to observe the check in phase. As people approached the station of four poll workers who were checking voters in, the voters presented one of the required forms of ID to the poll worker. The poll worker then stated the voter’s name, found them on the database, and then asked for the voter to state his/her name and address. Many, many people were unable to state their names and addresses without assistance. Many, many people said the name was incorrect on their ID due to them getting married or divorced. Many, many people said that the address on their IDs were incorrect due to them having moved recently. Many could not state either the address on their ID or their current address. Many, many people could not speak English and could not follow the directions of “state your name and address.” On the app from which I was checking names, the voter’s name and age appeared. Many, many times, I did not believe that the voter was the age stated on the app. Many, many times, when I went to check off the voter as having voted, the voter was already checked off as having voted. Several times, I would swear that I saw the same person voting twice or heard the same name voting twice, when the app stated that only one voter in the precinct had the stated name. Many times I saw a person who looked Hispanic answer to a name that he or she could barely pronounce that was obviously representative of some other ethnicity, such as Asian or Middle Eastern.

About half of the time that a person had a name or address conflict, that person was sent to the chief to have his/her credentials validated. Each time, that person was allowed to vote, as I saw no provisional ballots recorded throughout the day. About half of the time the person was allowed to verbally correct his/her name or address and was sent to the next phase of the line without having to go to the chief to be approved. I believe a good 10 to 15% of those who voted had questionable ID and qualifications. At one point in the day, an announcement was made that a complaint had been called in to the Board of Elections that handicapped people were not being allowed into the building to vote. The chief made this announcement and stated that it was an untrue allegation. I did not see any handicapped people going through the voting line. [...]

I believe that most people do not have three hours to wait in line to vote, and it is strange that all of these people with fishy IDs had hours to stand in line and vote. I found numerous blue Democrat ticket sheets showing people how to vote strewn around the polling place. With the lines being long and me not being able to talk to voters as a poll watcher, I had no recourse to accuse suspicious individuals of not being who their ID said they were. I did call to the Romney headquarters and report my suspicions several times, but I do not know what they could have done about the situation, as I could not pull suspicious people out of line. _Mencius Moldbug

And no, Romney's people could have done absolutely nothing about the very likely high level, organised fraud taking place across the country in large city precincts, almost exclusively controlled by Democratic Party functionaries and associates.

All of which leads to a slowly dawning recognition in the minds of the un-connected outsider majority: We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. We are in Chicago. And in Chicago, it is the Outfit that calls the shots, whatever it takes.

For outsiders -- for those unwilling to check their ability to reason independently at the door -- we are entering a new and somewhat dystopian age. Some are referring to it as "The Dark Enlightenment." This new form of enlightenment is in part a recognition that democracy is inevitably gamed by the smart players, who develop more and more effective ways to wrest power and control over assets and institutions from individuals and private interests.

The Dark Enlightenment involves an understanding that in a world where powerful groups rove in wolf packs, it is not safe to be a sheep grazing in an open pasture, without protection that you can count on. It involves an understanding of the broad and multi-facedted inequality of human individuals and breeding groups. It involves an instinctive mistrust of grand utopian ideals and movements.

More on the Dark Enlightenment from Dennis Mangan

One possible long range vector of the Dark Enlightenment

Full "Dark Enlightenment" series of essays by Nick Land

Another look at the Dark Enlightenment by Jim Donald

All 10 Nick Land Dark Enlightenment essays conveniently presented on one page for easy printout or download.

Global Warming Science Fails the Feynman Test

The late Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, was more famous as a skillful teacher and a razor sharp thinker, than for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Feynman did not tolerate foolish thinking -- particularly when it contaminated science.

A good scientist must be willing to be wrong. Such an inclination is liberating, for it allows him or her to investigate potential answers — however unlikely they may be — to the difficult questions inspired by this vast, wondrous universe. Not only that, a willingness to be wrong frees a scientist to pursue any avenue opened by evidence, even if that evidence doesn’t support his or her original hunch.

“The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away,” The great science communicator Carl Sagan wrote. “Don’t waste neurons on what doesn’t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data.” _Feynman's Science

When a science becomes corrupted by political or religious thinking, its proponents are unwilling to admit to being wrong. They lie, cheat, obfuscate, and ruin innocent lives in order to maintain a public credibility that allows them to continue to mislead.

Climategate (PDF) is an astonishing window into the perverse shenanigans of the principle academic leaders of the climate change movement. In an astonishing display of the will to dominate and mislead, principle IPCC authors are exposed by their own internal communications.

Here is what Richard Feynman said about proper science:

“I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law,” he said in his unvarnished Queens accent, referring to his work as a theoretical physicist.

Feynman walked over to the chalkboard and began to write. His oration continued, almost in a manner synced with his scribbling. “First we guess it… Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what it would imply. And then we compare those computation results… directly to observation to see if it works.”

Feynman paused, removed his left hand from his coat pocket, and strode back over to the lectern to briefly peruse some notes. He then launched right back into his sermon.

“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong,” he asserted, craning his neck forward and adroitly pointing his left hand at the chalkboard to accentuate the point. “In that simple statement, is the key to science.”

“It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is,” Feynman proclaimed, gesticulating in wide, circular, somewhat flamboyant motions. “It doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” _Feynman on Science

But if a scientist identifies so closely with a movement that his own position and well-being depends upon maintaining that movement's momentum, he may be willing to break with the rules of "ordinary science" and enter the realm of "post-normal" science -- where anything goes, including deception, and the hiding or altering of his data.

What are the lessons we should learn from Climategate? That in basic non-commercial science, everything must be kept out in the open and made publicly available, to allow other scientists to either refute or verify your findings. This includes all data and all computer code.

A diverse group of academic research scientists from across the U.S. have written a policy paper which has been published in the journal Science, suggesting that the time has come for all science journals to begin requiring computer source code be made available as a condition of publication. Currently, they say, only three of the top twenty journals do so.

The group argues that because computer programs are now an integral part of research in almost every scientific field, it has become critical that researchers provide the source code for custom written applications in order for work to be peer reviewed or duplicated by other researchers attempting to verify results.

Not providing source code, they say, is now akin to withholding parts of the procedural process, which results in a “black box” approach to science, which is of course, not tolerated in virtually every other area of research in which results are published. It’s difficult to imagine any other realm of scientific research getting such a pass and the fact that code is not published in an open source forum detracts from the credibility of any study upon which it is based. Articles based on computer simulations, for example, such as many of those written about astrophysics or environmental predictions, tend to become meaningless when they are offered without also offering the source code of the simulations on which they are based. _Lessons of Climategate

Climate science has become so politicised over the past 30 years that the science can no longer be separated from the politics. And underlying the politics is $trillions of redistribution funds that are at stake. The redistribution of these vast sums of money is to be overseen by UN agencies including the IPCC.

If you wonder why IPCC affiliated scientists would be willing to "go the extra mile" to promote their own viewpoints and discredit and deny opposing viewpoints, an exercise in "following the money" might make things more clear.

As corrupt politics proceeds to stain more and more aspects of modern life, it is worthwhile to remember the admonitions of Richard Feynman, from that Cornell lecture in 1964.

Climate alarmism of the carbon hysteria variety -- whether in science or in politics -- is simply a clever cover for something deeper and more sinister. Don't let yourself be bamboozled by the jive turkey con men of climate.

More: Moral Logic vs Scientific Accuracy

A general strategy for creating a CAGW apocalypse in the minds of the public

Obama's Margin of Victory

Focus on precincts in swing states that your party controls -- cities where millions of people live and potentially vote. Make sure votes are counted for your candidate in numbers high enough to make a difference. Do whatever is necessary to "get out the vote." Be as tricksy as you need to be. $Trillions in payoffs, kickbacks, and power plays are at stake. Get it done.

Florida: 73,858
Ohio: 103,481
Virginia: 115,910
Colorado: 113,099

Those four states, with a collective margin of, 406,348 for Obama, add up to 69 electoral votes. Had Romney won 407,000 or so additional votes in the right proportion in those states, he would have 275 electoral votes.

Obama’s margin in some other key states:

Nevada: 66,379
Iowa: 88,501
New Hampshire: 40,659

At this hour, 120,556, 279 votes for Obama and Romney have been counted nationwide.

---Source

"The Death of White America?" That's Not Why Romney Lost

This article is adapted from an article published on abu al-fin


Probably the best piece so far on "The Death of White America" was published recently in the UK Daily Mail.

For Republicans struggling to understand their defeat at the polls, the most chilling statistic in this week’s presidential election was this: Mitt Romney won the biggest share of the white vote that any Republican White House contender ever has — and he still lost.

In an election battle that was defined as much as anything by race, Mitt Romney won the support of 59 per cent of whites, but just 27 per cent of Latinos, 26 per cent of Asian-Americans and 6 per cent of African-Americans.

Thirty years ago, being unpopular with ethnic minorities would hardly have stopped a white establishment candidate like Romney from trouncing Barack Obama. But back then, whites accounted for almost 90 per cent of voters. Now they make up just 72 per cent of the electorate, and that figure is shrinking by the year. _DailyMail

Much more at the link.

In the future -- if demographic trends continue -- it will be impossible for white candidates to win election in most areas of North America, without large numbers of votes from blacks, hispanics, and other ethnic "minorities." But in 2012, that is not necessarily the case. It may be a bit early in the demographic evolution of the US to proclaim "the death of white America."

Only about 54% of eligible voters actually voted. And of the white voters who did vote, almost 40% voted for Obama -- and against their own economic future. It is one thing to proclaim "the death of white America" when white voters voted in large numbers and for their own future benefit -- and still lost. But that was not the case in 2012, when large numbers of white voters did not vote, or even voted against the futures of themselves and their progeny.

We should also not overlook voter fraud, which played a very large part in the final vote tallies brought in by Democratic Party controlled precincts. If you look at large Democrat controlled cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, etc etc it is clear that more votes were tallied than were actually cast in a valid manner.

Obama lost the states with photo ID laws

Military absentee votes delivered too late to count: could have changed entire election results

More interesting (and imaginative) speculation here

A short list of election day shenanigans

Strong photo ID voting laws favoured by strong majority of Americans

There are many reasons that Obama will be able to continue his corrupt and destructive reign over the US government for another 4 years. But it would be best not to draw exaggerated or premature conclusions from the election results.

For the near future, a better use of the time of US conservatives, centrists, and libertarians, would be to toughen up election laws to prevent future election fraud as much as possible.

BTW, giving up too early is one of the signs of self-defeating behaviours. Rather than giving up and proclaiming "The Death of White America," wouldn't it be better to think about how you could use your brain to guarantee a better future for yourself and your loved ones -- at least a better future than the one that Obama and his cronies have planned for you?

Focus on what you can do.

Now All of America Can Be More Like Chicago

The US economy is still missing about 4 million jobs from before Obama took office, and the country seems to be slipping into a new recession -- before it ever truly escaped the last one, in any meaningful sense. The nation is 4 years older and $6 billion deeper in debt -- and already owes its soul to the company store holders of US government debt.

And yet, the next Obama term as US president is likely to see nationwide corruption financed by deficit spending at an unprecedented scale. Expect to see massive federal bailouts and handouts for groups, industries, activist organisations, and profligate state and local governments. The common denominator of the recipients of the coming repeat explosion of deficit spending largesse is that they will all have supported Obama's re-election in a big way.

Voters as a Necessary Evil

President Obama’s re-election... marks the massive endorsement of an expanding crony capitalism that ultimately could reshape the already troubled American economic system beyond recognition.

...The federal government and its expanding bureaucracy — another big winner tonight — seems likely to issue Draconian edicts on greenhouse gas, now that the election is over. The whole coal industry is about to get savaged by new regulations and pressure is mounting to regulate fracking as well. Destroying the competition may be the one way to bail out the “green” crony capitalists.

Other crony capitalists could also benefit form the new regulatory assault: the rise essentially of national zoning. Backed by EPA and HUD, urban land speculators could see their suburban competitors regulated — as is already the case in California — into oblivion. Regions could find themselves obliged to built often expensive, and in some cases, wildly inappropriate transit system. This will benefit not only unions, who will build and operate these systems, but companies like Siemens who push for greater rail expansions at the expense of maintaining and improving such critical infrastructure as roads.

Ultimately the biggest winners may be those who finance municipal and state debt. Owing his election to the fiscal failures of New York, Illinois and California, Obama could have to use his executive power to forestall looming bankruptcies at the local and even state level. Ironically the biggest winner here in the crony capitalist sweepstakes will be firms like Goldman Sachs, who turned so vehemently against Obama, but have historically made much of their money on financing government operations. _NewGeography

Now that Obama doesn't need to worry about re-election, he can pull out all the stops to make sure he and his cronies never have to worry about money again -- all at taxpayer's expense.

A great scam if you are a true and complete scum.

Obama Continues to Boost US Gun Sales

Sales of guns and ammunition continue to spike to unprecedented levels, as US citizens confront a number of possibilities over the next weeks, months, and years.

Sturm Ruger Quarterly Sales

Angry tweeters have been threatening violent insurrection and assassination, should Romney win the US presidential election next week. And now media celebrities such as Bill Maher, and Richard Belzer are speaking for America's blacks -- warning voters not to vote for Romney "or else."

The pro-Obama movement has always been emotional in nature, without significant reasoning or rationale. And we see in the only Obama election that has been closely contested, the true emotional colours of Obama and his supporters coming out in full display.

Obama recently assured his supporters that "voting is the best revenge." But revenge for what? Having the audacity to run against or vote against someone who has been arguably the worst US President in history?

Voting machines in a number of swing states have been caught changing votes which were originally cast for Romney into votes for Obama. Military ballots for overseas US servicemen have been "lost" or "disqualified" in a number of Democratic Party controlled precincts.

Obama campaign and Democratic Party campaign workers have been caught advising voters how to vote multiple times for Obama -- even in multiple states! In one Houston precinct, NAACP campaign workers took over a polling station, guiding voters through the process with the implicit consent of the poll judges. And why do Democratic Party legislators and activists work so hard to eliminate all identity check safeguards at polling places?

These are things one would expect to see in a Chicago election, of course. But in a national US presidential election, a neutral observer could be excused for thinking that things may have gotten a bit out of hand. And they would be right about that. But do not expect any significant coverage of these election issues from the skankstream media. "Speak no evil of Obama or of those who act in his name," is the media watchword.

In light of the above irregularities, and others likely to emerge in the coming days and weeks, one might also begin to understand recent trends in gun sales across the US.

Americans are divided between persons who produce -- farmers, engineers, technologists, physicians, scientists, accountants, construction workers, etc -- and those who mainly consume, carp, and agitate on the public dole, in other words "moochers". The latter group is overwhelmingly in the Obama camp, while members of the former group often do not have enough time away from primary responsibilities to keep a close eye on the shenanigans that the parasite classes are up to.

Things could become very interesting if large groups of people decide that "their candidate" had been cheated out of winning the election by dirty tricks. Even if a more dispassionate reality suggests that "their candidate" lost the election because his dirty tricks were not quite dirty enough.

America's Haute Noblesse: Living Well on Other People's Money

Haute Noblesse to Citizens:  Back in the soup line, little people!

The following article is adapted from a piece first published on abu al-fin

The US is a nation struggling with economic uncertainty and cultural decline. While real unemployment is well above 10% and underemployment approaches 25%, America's new political nobility provides itself a lavish lifestyle in which previous president's and their families never thought to indulge.

President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives... current and former government officials said the documents obtained by The Examiner point to an unprecedented upsurge in White House spending on such events.

...A knowledgeable government official who made the documents available to The Examiner said the extravagant spending seemed unfair with so many Americans out of work.

"It just kind of takes your breath away to see the expenditure of money that has occurred since 2009," the official said.

Gary Walters, who ran presidential household operations for 21 years during Democratic and Republican administrations, before retiring in 2007, told The Examiner the costs reflected in the documents were "excessive. They are high." _Examiner

Not surprisingly, the government agency responsible for paying for these extravaganzas of the haute noblesse, is run by a US State Department official who also happens to be a business partner of the man who caters these exorbitantly costly events.

Of course, that is but one side of the story. The very costly vacations taken by the nouveau haute noblesse would make a billionaire blush -- if his vacations were taken at taxpayer's expense.

But to the nouveau haute noblesse, such costly pleasures are considered minimal perquisites, for the many duties required of them as official and unofficial figures of state. "If you cannot live well on other people's money, what good is becoming involved in government?" they are likely to ask.

And America drifts backward toward the autocratic rule which the founders of the original republic had tried to hard -- at such a high cost -- to escape. Welcome to the Idiocracy.

More: The following is just a partial list of some of the pleasures taken by the haute noblesse at the expense of other people, while the citizens were struggling to get by --

– March 19, 2012, The elder daughter, is spending her springbreak in Mexican city of Oaxaca in the company of 12 friends, Malia Ann Obama, are staying at a downtown hotel in this city famous for its colonial architecture and well-preserved native American traditions. Malia and her friend are guarded by 25 US Secret Service agents as well as Mexican police.
– President’s Day 2012, Michelle and the first daughters in Aspen, Colorado to ski. Michelle Obama and her daughters are on a ski trip to Aspen, Colo., the White House confirmed to POLITICO. The first lady and the Obama daughters are on a private family trip to Colorado.
– Christmas 2011, the first family in Hawaii for an extended vacation. The Obamas celebrated the holiday by attending a Christmas service at the Kaneohe Bay Chapel on Marine Corps Base Hawaii, followed by a visit with military families at Anderson Hall.
– Summer 2011, in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., for the annual beach break. the first family, their Vineyard haven is taking on the flavor of a summer White House. President Obama, for the third straight year, is planning to return to Martha’s Vineyard for vacation this summer, according to a White House official. The Obamas are scheduled to spend seven to 10 days on the island in mid- to late August, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
– June 2011, the first lady, her mother and daughters traveled to South Africa and Botswana. Michelle Obama, her family and her staff to South Africa and Botswana. Judicial Watch received mission expense records and passenger manifests for the Africa trip that described costs of $424,142 for the flight and crew alone. Other expenses, such as off-flight food, transportation, security, etc. were not included.”
In the past two weeks, we have:
-$800,000 for the GSA’s lavish Las Vegas vacation
-$470,000 for Michelle Obama’s Spanish getaway
-95+ Rounds of golf played by Barack…during a recession.
-$850,000 for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s $32,000 round trip tickets home to see his family.
-Secret Service Agents involving themselves with prostitution
-Barack Obama seen in a video telling a crowd part of his job is to scout out vacation spots for Michelle
– President’s Day 2011, the first lady and first daughters travel to Vail to ski. Michelle Obama and her two daughters are spending the Presidents Day weekend on the ski slopes in Aspen, Colo., a newspaper reports. Obama arrived Friday.
– Christmas 2010, in Hawaii. The Obama’s go back to Hawaii for what is expected to be a 17-day vacation. The total cost for a 17-day round trip vacation to Hawaii for the President and his family and staff and security is estimated at around $4,113,038.. Obama’s $4 million Hawaii Christmas vacation,
– August 2010, the first family traveled to Panama City Beach, Fla., for some sun and fun at the beach.
– August 2010, Obama spent the weekend alone in Chicago for his 49th birthday bash. Barack Obama is coming home to celebrate his 49th birthday. Obama will be in Chicago on his birthday– August 4. The White House said he is looking forward to spending the night in his family’s home in Hyde Park on the city’s’ South Side and gathering with friends.
– August 2010, the first lady and daughter Sasha traveled to Spain for a mother-daughter vacation. Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha, 9, are vacationing at a lavish resort in Spain. The first lady and her entourage landed at Malaga, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, at 10:30 a.m.
– August 2010, summer vacation again at Martha’s Vineyard. Obama and his family arrived August 19 for a 10-day visit. The President and Me, we invite you to post photographs of your encounters with the first family, whether you’re dining with the leader of the free world, swimming or golfing with him, playing a game of Horse, or just offering advice.
– July 2010, the first family went to Mount Desert Island, Maine. President Obama and his family are arriving Friday for the weekend. The summer playground of the Astors, the Rockefellers and the Morgans – as well as newer social titans like Martha Stewart.
–May 2010, the first family had a four-day trip to Chicago. Obama in Chicago working out Sunday morning. Obama Secret Service agents in Chicago in sort of “standoff” with Farrakhan’s Fruit of Islam guards
– March 2010, first lady and daughter spend Spring Break in New York City. Obamas arrived in New York on Saturday, when they visited Dylan’s Candy Bar and caught a performance of Blue Man Group. Before seeing “Memphis” on Sunday, they ate brunch at Mesa Grill. After the show, they got a private tour of the Empire State Building, devoured cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery in the West Village and ate at the Russian Tea Room.
– Christmas 2009, Hawaii again for the annual break. The president, first lady and their daughters came to the island of Oahu for a more-than-weeklong vacation away from Washington. The Obamas have no public schedule and are expected to celebrate the holidays in private at a rented compound in Kailua.
– August 2009, at Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon for a short vacation. the president, First Lady Michelle and the kids are heading west on Aug. 14 for a long weekend to visit Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National parks. Just days later, the First Family travels to Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. On Friday, Aug. 14, the First Family will visit the Bozeman, Mont., area. On Aug. 15 they will travel to Yellowstone, Wyo., and Grand Junction, Colo. They will then travel to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix, Ariz., on Aug. 16, and return to Washington, D.C., on Monday, Aug. 17. The First Family’s visit to the national parks occurs during a free weekend for our national parks. Mrs. Obama and her daughters have already made two overseas trips this summer.
– August 2009, their first summer vacation as first family at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. The 28.5-acre Martha’s Vineyard estate where President Obama, his family and, of course, the Secret Service will spend part of the president’s summer vacation. Caroline Taylor, another Martha’s Vineyard realtor, estimated that the property would go for $35,000 to $50,000 a week. The Obamas will pay for at least a portion of the rental, but taxpayer funds will be used to pay for Secret Service and staff housing on the property.
_EmptySuit

American politicians often become very wealthy either while in office, or soon after leaving office -- regardless of the prior state of their finances. Is it corruption? Hush! That kind of talk is for the little people, softly and behind closed doors.

La haute noblesse to the little people: Apres nous, le deluge!

Socialism in Venezuela vs. Cronyism in Russia vs. ...

Hugo Chavez' socialist revolution has been championed by many Americans, who would like to see Chavez' experiment repeated in the US. Here is more about Chavez' revolutionary success in Venezuela:

It is clear that the Chávez regime has been squeezing every last penny out of the oil sector...the money hasn’t just been used for social programs, but also to fund Venezuela’s expensive foreign policy, as well as its efforts to cover up the results of poor policy, rampant cronyism, and the general mismanagement of the public sector. When things go wrong, Venezuelan citizens are the ones who pay the price for the state’s poor choices.

Three things seem likely at this juncture: first, no one will be able to trust whatever “investigation” the Chavez government undertakes. It will be an obvious whitewash. Second, conditions for oil workers are unlikely to improve. Third, the usual crew of Chavez defenders in the United States, desperate after all these decades of misery and failure to point to some place some where, where authoritarian socialism isn’t a dreary charnel house and economic failure zone, will struggle to convince themselves that things are just fine in Bolivarian Venezuela. _Walter Russell Mead

Chavez' is up for re-election, but with the total control he has seized over every aspect of Venezuela's government, elections in Venezuela may not mean the same thing as they mean in an actual democratic country.

Meanwhile in Russia, cronyism is alive and well, with the Pussy Riot safely locked up and no longer a threat to the state. Oil prices are high, and the Russia's crony classes are living well for now. But Russia and its cronies have many other problems that must be concealed from the public eye:

A recent government crackdown on Russian media, particularly online information portals specialising in health tips and harm reduction methods for drug users, has sparked widespread public opposition, with critics claiming that the 'draconian silencing' of public health advocates could worsen an already perilous health situation in the country. _Russia-Health

Besides suffering from a sub-par system of medical care and public health, Russia's men are being poisoned.

Largely due to cronyistic suppression of opportunity in Russia, the men of Russia have sunk to such a pathetic state that more and more Russian women have given up on finding a suitable mate.

"...Russian women simply have no interest in marrying Russian men,” says Irina Zhuravleva, the head of Russia’s census department at the Federal Statistics Service. A single woman herself, Zhuravleva says she “never had any interest in marrying a drunk...

The dating prospects are so grim, in fact, that Shpakova and many other Russian women of her generation are consciously deciding to stay single. Moscow alone boasts more than 3 million single women between the ages of 25 and 50, out of a population of 11.1 million (that’s three times the number of single Muscovite men). In Russia as a whole, there are 11 million more women than men, due in part to a century of bloody revolutions, gulags, and wars that drained the country’s male population. Add to that the fact that male life expectancy is particularly grim in Russia—on average, 59 years, as opposed to a woman’s 73 years, the largest gap of any country in the world—and you’ve got a serious demographic imbalance. _Simply Beastly

Russian males barely live long enough to claim a pension, on average.

Meanwhile, crony Russia is looking westward to socially democratic Europe, hoping to squeeze some wealth from the continent before the tight oil & gas revolution reaches European shores. But in the land of the ubiquitous welfare state and ongoing demographic collapse, poverty is returning to claim its due. In the land which China is counting on to re-start its moribund exporting enterprise, recession is setting in, and Euro leaders are doubling down on the foolish policies which led them to this state of affairs.

And in the US -- the only country that is actually capable of turning the global economy away from the abyss -- voters cannot decide. They cannot seem to choose between a failed US president who is leading their country more deeply into debt, despair, and demographic decline . . . and a former Massachusetts governor who was also successful in the private sector -- a man who -- unlike his opponent -- is bold enough to lay out a broad array of tangible plans for the nation's future.

We are seeing a world that is growing more unstable, with a dumbing down of electorates in the advanced world, and the ascendancy of corruption in Russia, China, India, in several failing states of Europe, and in Obama's America.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Oregon State University Center of Political Corruption Scandal

More 8March2011: Jerry Pournelle looks at this issue and concludes that something is very rotten in the state of Oregon. (h/t Instapundit)

Specific members of the Oregon State University administration and fraculty have apparently joined with US Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) in what appears to be an act of blatant political payback against DeFazio's opponent in the November 2010 election for US Congress in Oregon's 4th District, Dr. Art Robinson.

Inconceivably -- in an unprecedented act of vindictiveness -- the DeFazio loyalists at OSU appear to have targeted the children of Dr. Robinson -- students in the OSU graduate school -- for prejudicial treatment, including dismissal without cause from their programs, and appropriation of their work without credit or attribution.

Political corruption and ideological bias within state-run educational systems may be widespread, but this level of blatant vindictiveness against children of a political opponent is almost certainly unprecedented. Here is more from Dr. Robinson:

OSU administrators think they can violate ethical academic standards of professional conduct, break formal OSU rules and regulations, and even violate U.S. laws with impunity because, in any resulting litigation, they would be defended by lawyers from the Oregon Department of Justice, assuring that only students with huge sums of money and many years to invest in litigation can oppose them. The Robinsons do not have those huge sums of money, and, moreover, they want to complete their education – not receive money in exchange for the destruction of their education and opportunities.

...As things stand today, Jack Higginbotham and his students and staff, along with Joshua Robinson are in immediate danger. Bethany Robinson is slated for dismissal soon after and without the Ph.D. that she has nearly completed. The dismissal of Matthew Robinson may not be far behind. And the danger to Professor Higginbotham's other students is likewise very high.

Please don't let this happen!

Please notify OSU of your interest in this matter and urge the university to stop its destructive actions against Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson and against Professor Jack Higginbotham, the remarkable president of the OSU faculty senate who has risked his career to help them!

Contact information for the OSU nuclear engineering department is:

Phone: 541-737-2343
Fax: 541-737-4678
mailto:joan.stueve@oregonstate.edu

Mailing address:
116 Radiation Center,
Corvallis, OR 97331-5902

Please also contact the president of OSU, Edward Ray:

Phone: 541-737-4133
Fax: 541-737-3033
mailto:pres.office@oregonstate.edu

Mailing address:
600 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128

Here is the e-mail address of the OSU vice president for university relations and marketing, Todd Simmons mailto:todd.simmons@oregonstate.edu.

For more information or to take further action, please visit OregonStateOutrage.com. _ArtRobinson_via_GreenHell

When members of a particular ideology occupy faculty and administrative offices in such overwhelming proportions, the temptation to go beyond the academic mandate -- to exercise greater power than has been authorised by their position -- can become overwhelming. At first glance, this is what seems to have happened to the over-zealous OSU faculty and staff, in their efforts to please Congressman DeFazio -- who helps to determine their budgets and remuneration -- by punishing the children of DeFazio's opponent.

Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

Housing Bubble Collapse: ACORN @ Eye of the Storm

Barack Obama's favourite corrupt government contractor -- ACORN -- sits squarely at the center of causation of the great 2009 Obama depression and economic collapse. It makes for an interesting story, but one that you will never hear from today's White House, or its extended public relations department -- the mainstream media.

The problem started in 1977 with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act.  Then in the 90s, Congress empowered more loose-lending practises via the 1992 GSE, and further rule-loosening via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Finally, Bill Clinton open the floodgates of loose lending, via executive order, near the end of his last term.  By the time George W. Bush heard the ticking of the home lending time bomb, it was too late to stop the train wreck. [ Bush tried to stop it in 2003, but Bush only had bicameral majorities four out of his eight years, and never had control of Congress in the overwhelming numbers that Obama does.]

From the WSJ:

All agree that the bursting of the housing bubble caused the financial collapse of 2008. Most agree that the housing bubble started in 1997. Less well understood is that this bubble was the result of government policies that lowered mortgage-lending standards to increase home ownership. One of the key players was the controversial liberal advocacy group, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

ACORN was deputized to help write the statutory regulations that set mandates for affordable housing. ACORN further lobbied its congressional heavyweights sitting on banking and finance committees to put pressure on banks, to force them to accept unsound loans.

...As a result of congressional and regulatory actions, the percentage of conventional first mortgages (not guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration or the Veteran's Administration) used to purchase a home with the borrower putting 5% or less down tripled from 9% in 1991 to 27% in 1995, eventually reaching 29% in 2007.
Fannie and Freddie acquired $1.2 trillion of loans from banks and other lenders from 1993 to 2007. This amounted to 62% of all such conventional home purchase loans with a down payment of 5% or less that were originated nationwide over the same period.

Fannie and Freddie also acquired $2.2 trillion in subprime loans and private securities backed by subprime loans from 1997 to 2007. Acorn and the other advocacy groups succeeded at getting Congress to mandate "innovative and flexible" lending practices such as higher debt ratios and creative definitions of income. And the serious delinquency rate on Fannie and Freddie's $1.5 trillion in high-risk loans was 10.3% as of Sept. 30, 2009.

This is about seven times the delinquency rate on the GSEs' traditional loans. Fifty percent of the high-risk loans are estimated to be CRA loans, with much of the remainder useful to the GSEs in meeting their affordable-housing goals.

The flood of CRA and affordable-housing loans with loosened underwriting standards, combined with declining mortgage interest rates—to 5% in 2003 from 10% in early 1991—resulted in a massive increase in borrowing capacity and fueled a house price bubble of unprecedented magnitude over the period 1997-2006.

Now this history may repeat itself as many of the same community groups are pushing Congress to expand CRA to cover all mortgage lenders, credit unions, insurance companies and others financial industry segments. Are we about to set the stage for another catastrophe? _WSJ

It is not a question of "if", but of "when" history will repeat itself. Most of the same idiots are sitting on the same banking committees, in positions of even more power to force the banks to do their will -- now that they have "bailed out" the banks once.

President Obama has long and close ties to ACORN. ACORN helped put Obama in the White House, so he will find it difficult to deny the quasi-criminal organisation anything it asks for.

If that means being complicit in blowing up another housing bubble-within-a-bubble, and initiating yet another economic crisis, well, there's still a former president who can be blamed. The current clown president's core constituency will believe anything the green rookie says. If he tells them __it is peanut butter, they will gobble it right up.

Revolution in Higher Ed? What Road Success?

Here are some interesting articles about the problem of high college tuition, and alternative ways of delivering higher education to students. Software modules are teaching math mastery better than most teachers at Virginia Tech University, and more universities are simply putting entire courses online for public access.

Inside Higher Ed: Changing the Tuition Discussion Why skyrocketing tuition charges are causing some universities to re-think the basic structure of higher education.

Transformation 101: Why is tuition going up when better and cheaper ways of teaching are sprouting up? Discusses the math module approach to math mastery at VTU and other large universities. Also discusses some forays into online teaching by large schools.

eLearners.com offers comprehensive loan forgiveness programs Many workers choose to go back to school--online-- to learn a new career. Discusses how some will pay for the education.

The medieval style of "modern universities" has largely camouflaged the "bait and switch" at many schools. Instead of providing solid preparation for future careers, and essential thinking tools useful in any career, many universities are instead filling their curricula with "rubbish" classes that waste a students' and the family's money. Indoctrination, half-shod remediation, and expensive baby-sitting too often substitute for the education that was promised. As a result, a student can graduate, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, with nothing to show but a useless wall ornament.

The recent recessionary trends in the US and Europe, and the collapse of many venerable financial institutions, calls into question some of the traditional roads to success. It is getting to the point that the only real job security out there is working for the government. Everybody else seems to be laying people off. And with the government you can get better benefits, retire earlier, and get more generous pensions, than for comparable private sector employment.

The State of California is going deeply into debt--largely due to generous salaries, benefits, and pensions to its state employees. That at a time when private sector employers are shutting down or moving out of state due to oppressive state taxes and regulations. What does California do? It demands a federal bailout!

Very much the same way, General Motors' profligate union contracts make it impossible for GM to break even. Instead of GM getting tough in contract talks, or taking advantage of bankruptcy protection to re-negotiate contracts, the company and the union comes begging to Obama and Pelosi for a bailout. Just what US taxpayers need.

What is a young person setting out for college to learn from all of this hypocrisy, corruption, and union/governmental heavy-handedness? Nothing good or sustainable. Obama wanted to make the US more like Europe, and in the sense of destroying the strong backbone that made America prosperous and resilient, he just may succeed.

Nations do not grow stronger by growing their governments at the expense of private enterprise. Yet this is what states such as Michigan, California, and New York are trying to do. It is also the path Obama promises to follow.

Climbing back up out of the hole that Obamanation digs for taxpayers will be the more difficult for how completely unnecessary it will have been.

Oynklent Green Weighs Congress w/ Rasmussen

A recent Rasmussen poll has found that almost 60% of Americans want to replace the entire US Congress with new bodies. What would we do with the old bodies? Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] has a good answer to that question. But first, about that Congress:

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again....Only half (49%) believe that the current Congress is better than individuals selected at random from the phone book....Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republicans would vote to throw out the entire Congress as would 62% of unaffiliated voters. Only 43% of Democrats go along. Still, just 25% of those in Barack Obama’s party would vote to keep the entire Congress even though it’s controlled by Democrats.

...When the Constitution was written, the nation’s founders expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms). For well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.

In the twentieth century, turnover began to decline. As power and prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer and fewer Members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, Congressional turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever and it has remained very low ever since. _Source

A majority of American voters would like to see that turnover rate return to 50%--even higher! Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] would like to help Americans reach their goals. OYNK is all about energy--clean renewable bioenergy. OYNK is at the forefront of research in garbage to energy, refuse to energy, and pork/turkey offal to energy processes. OYNK has learned, through careful covert research, that the pork/turkey offal to energy process can be easily and efficiently converted to a "corrupt politician to energy" process with very little retooling. OYNK can help with that "turnover problem" currently being experienced in the US Congress.

Remember the corrupt and pork-filled $700 billion bailout your grandchildren were recently obligated to finance, by the hogs and sows in Congress? Such things would not happen, with a 50+% turnover in Congress. The corrupt porkers would not have time to set up their political extortion rackets. They would also be worried about how they would be seen by law enforcement, if they did not have the mob protection status of membership in the US Congress.

At one time it might have been enough to pass term limits, congressional pay cuts, cuts in pensions and benefits, etc. It is too late for all that. Extreme measures are called for. It is time to call OYNK, and solve two problems at once.

Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton Share Blame for Subprime Mortgage Recession, Government Overshoot

The current Wall Street quakes have their origins in the Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s, and the "affirmative action" banking laws Carter instigated. Bill Clinton only made things worse by adding more muscle to affirmative action banking enforcement.

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.

Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans.

Lenders who refused would find themselves castigated publicly as racists. As noted this week in an IBD editorial, no fewer than four federal bank regulators scrutinized financial firms' books to make sure they were in compliance.

Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was.

It was economic hardball.

"We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible," Clinton's comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, told the Senate Banking Committee in 1993.

And they meant it.

In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market.

That's how the contagion began.

With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008. _IBD

Once government institutes such economically destructive laws in perpetutity, the destructive snowballing begins. Of course, given the 15 second average attention span of most voters, Democrats such as Pelosi and Frank are safe in their dishonest double speak and outright deceptions. The media will certainly never hold their feet to the fire. The king of "affirmative action" politicians, Barak "Hollow Man" Obama, has a much better chance of being elected if voters do not understand that he will accelerate the entire process exponentially.

Of course, computer models are also to blame--the rule of GIGO allowing wall street investment bankers and Fannie Mae kleptocrats that the risk was but slight. Even global warming's Al Gore, James Hansen, and carbon trading all come in for their fair share of the blame--at least for Lehman Bros. collapse. A sucker born every minute.

But the fact is, President Bush in 2003 tried desperately to stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from metastasizing into the problem they have since become.

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003: "The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago."

Bush tried to act. Who stopped him? Congress, especially Democrats with their deep financial and patronage ties to the two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie.

"These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Rep. Barney Frank, then ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

It's pretty clear who was on the right side of that debate.

As for presidential contender John McCain, just two years after Bush's plan, McCain also called for badly needed reforms to prevent a crisis like the one we're now in.

"If Congress does not act," McCain said in 2005, "American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole."

Sounds like McCain was spot on. _IBD

Thanks, Jimmy Carter. Thanks, Bill Clinton. Thanks in advance, Barak "Rezko's Boy" Obama. We really owe you all, big time. And the media, yes indeed, the media.

Some interesting perspective on the problem at Hall of Record blog (scroll down)

State Capitalism and Poisoned Counterfeits

Faddish financial analysts tend to laud the "State Capitalism" of China for its successes, and for its supposed future dominance of world markets and world politics. Unfortunately for these analysts, state capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. We are seeing some of these destructive seeds bearing fruit in China and other similarly modeled state economies.

State capitalism fosters corruption, allowing smaller circles of state-connected elites to control more wealth. In China, state dominance has meant that "princelings," relatives of leading Communist Party members, have gained control of some of the nation's most powerful companies. Even one Chinese government study of 3,000 of the nation's richest businesspeople admitted that a significant majority are related to top officials.

In Venezuela, growing state control has made the national oil firm less productive and more opaque, one reason why the country now ranks near the bottom on Transparency International's index of the world's most corrupt nations....despite the national resources that can be poured into business growth, in the long term, state mega-companies are likely to suffer from competition on the global stage. Without exposure to domestic competition, their managers never get enough experience to compete on an open market. They also have no pressure to adopt real corporate governance and oversight measures.___BostonGlobe

State capitalism based upon natural resources such as oil and gas--as in Russia and Venezuela--and state capitalism based upon technology theft and transfer--as in China--necessarily are living on borrowed time.

The CCP led Chinese seem particularly willing to cut corners to make a quick buck, which has led to the poisoning of China's rivers, soil, and air, as well as to poisoning of many exports to the outside world. Counterfeit Chinese drugs are now taking an increasing human toll outside of China.

"It is unacceptable that Americans have died and been seriously injured by what appears to be deliberate tampering," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who chairs a panel that oversees the FDA, said in a statement. "Whether this contaminant was introduced intentionally or by accident, the full force of the law must be brought to bear to bring those responsible to justice...."This is not a new problem," said England, who now advises foreign companies on how to comply with U.S. regulations. "This is a close cousin of problems that have presented themselves before."

The level of the contaminant ranged from 2% to 50% in lots of heparin tested by the FDA. An agency official said the contaminant was cheaper to produce than heparin, which is refined through a laborious process from a substance in pigs' intestines....."If I had to guess, I would say this is a lot like the pet food case," said Larry D. Sasich, chairman of pharmacy practice at the LECOM School of Pharmacy in Erie, Pa. "This sounds like somebody in China figured out a way to make the active ingredient look or test like heparin when it was not."
___LATimes

Whether poisoned drugs, toys, toothpaste--or counterfeit aircraft and automobile parts that lead to fatal accidents--the problem of Chinese corruption is a rapidly growing problem for the entire world.

Up until now, it has been relatively easy for the Chinese companies and government to bribe US bureaucrats and elected officials, to look the other way. Should the American public ever learn the true extent of the underlying problem within the Chinese system of production, the complacency of current official US attitudes toward the China trade might be shaken at the polls. Information is the greatest enemy of corrupt state capitalist enterprises such as China's. Because in the US--unlike in China and Tibet--information still wants to be free.

Teachers' Unions At Work! Mind the Slaughter

No matter how many millions of young brains are destroyed by teachers' unions, they have ironclad protection. Legislators have been bought and paid for by the teachers' unions, which makes the unions untouchable--they have the license to kill brains. The brains of your children.

Steve Jobs was quite correct when he blamed the teachers' unions for the abysmal state of K-12 education in the US.

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

Source

It is the truth that all intelligent people know, but few are courageous enough to state out loud: every generation of students that is destroyed by the teachers' union cabal is a generation that cannot solve the old problems--much less the new problems. So the problems accumulate and collect interest. The more money that is thrown to the education machine, the worse the performance.

When school board representatives sit down with union officials to negotiate a labor contract, neither party is under pressure to pay attention to worker productivity or the system's overall competitiveness: if the contract allows some teachers to be paid for hardly working at all, and others to perform incompetently without penalty, there is no real economic danger for either side. After all, most of the monopoly's customers, the schoolchildren, have nowhere else to go. Historically, tax revenues have continued to flow into the schools no matter how poorly they perform. Newark's public schools, for instance, have performed worse and worse in recent years, but per-pupil annual expenditure there is now almost $10,000, 50 percent above the U.S. average.

Source

Some may think that vouchers, charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling combined with visas for overseas professional workers, provide enough of a bypass relief system to allow North American culture to survive. Every means of avoiding the brain-killing educational/political machine helps a little.

But what is needed is a massive re-construction of the North American educational system--in such a way that the corrupt and destructive teachers' unions are left out of the loop. They have destroyed many millions of young minds, and continue their mind-rape and murder virtually unhindered--thanks to their friends in elected offices and in government agencies.

What is needed is a new system of learning, such as that described in this Da Vinci Institute report.

There is enough time. Barely enough time.

Third World Russia--Like Dinosaurs, Sinking Into the Tar Pits

Nationalisation of industries--such as oil and gas--is a sign of the impending decline of a nation's economic production. It happened in Iraq under Saddam, it is happening in Venezuela under Chavez, and now it is happening in Russia under Putin. Nationalisation leads to decline in infrastructure investment, with inevitable declines in production as the infrastructure crumbles.

The Russian government has had opportunities to rise above its medieval third world authoritarianism and dictatorial economic control. Yes, more than ample opportunities for an enlightened people. Unfortunately, the Russians have never had the opportunity to grow up--out of the choking grasp of a Tsar, a Communist dictatorship, or a corrupt Mafiocratic oligarchy.

The Russian pipelines are not only short of what’s needed, they are also old. Two miles in three were laid over 20 years ago. Breakdowns and leaks are becoming increasingly common. Last year’s survey of the 1960s-era “Druzhba” (Friendship) pipeline, which carries 1.2 million barrels a day to Eastern and Central Europe, found almost 500 “damaged points.”[7] Last July, 11,000 gallons of crude leaked from the Druzhba near Russia’s border with Belarus, briefly shutting down the route and sending world oil markets up to about $75 a barrel.

Source.

Russia's oil woes stem from the decision to join the worldwide trend toward the nationalisation of all oil and gas production and transport. Nationalised oil companies now control the easiest to obtain petro-resources, leaving the more difficult and expensive resources for the more technologically competent multi-nationals.

This means that a large part of the world's easily available oil and gas reserves will either lie untouched, be diverted to the black market, or will leak out and be wasted--due to the general corruption and incompetence of the national oil and gas industries. That creates a mild artificial "peak oil" that will likely continue for the next few decades. Rather than an abrupt mega-shock peak oil from resource depletion, we have instead a slow political peak oil with much of the reserves remaining in the ground.

For non-ideological students of economics, this is a recurring pattern: third world nations invite multi-nationals in to help develop their resources. Then when most of the research and development funds have been spent, the third world governments move to nationalise the developed production facilities. Next, the inevitable corruption and breakdown of technological infrastructure occurs, which eventually leads to a change in government. Then the new government invites the multinationals in for their technological expertise, and the cycle repeats.

The sad reality is that Putin and his cronies, by grabbing all private assets and facilities and placing them under state control, are driving Russia down the same road of decline and corruption as the oil dictators in the middle east, Africa, and Latin America.

Idiocracy: Some Peeples Thinks It's A Jook

If a population has a mean IQ below 90, it is unable to maintain a modern high tech infrastructure. Why? Because a mean IQ below 90 means that there are insufficient numbers of people high enough on the Bell Curve to be knowledgeable and competent physicians, engineers, nurses, accountants, teachers, attorneys, judges, scientists, etc. etc. The mean IQ of the world population currently stands at 90, but is projected to drop to 84 over the next several decades.

As mean IQ goes down, societal competency goes down, and corruption goes way up (Russia being a major outlier). It becomes impossible to maintain the machinery of society, until the entire world looks like Zimbabwe or Nicaragua.

Our friend Kevin McGrew of Intelligence Testing blog offers the above educational slideshow for background information on what may be rapidly growing numbers of the Forrest Gump segment of society.

Visual Correlations: Poverty, Corruption, Infant Mortality, IQ, etc.

Corruption

Fertility Rate

Literacy Rate

IQ with GDP

Human Stupidity Leads to Poverty--Smarter People Needed

Oscar Wilde said "there is no sin except stupidity." Voltaire said “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity." Einstein said, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” Source.

Poverty and stupidity--like hand and glove. Some countries experience widespread poverty temporarily--postwar Germany, Japan, and South Korea come to mind--then rebound out of poverty when conditions improve. Other countries such as Haiti are always impoverished, regardless of external conditions, opportunities, and internal resources. Then there are countries such as Zimbabwe which were once much better off, but now are among the most impoverished nations on earth. Then there is China, which improved its material circumstances by backing away from its communist command economy.

International investors would be happy to take advantage of low worker wages in these perennially impoverished nations if they could expect a reasonable return on investment. Investors dealing with poor countries expect a certain degree of corruption and graft in dealing with government officials. There will also be problems with political instability, and the ever-present threat of nationalisation of the industry, as occurred recently in Bolivia to the natural gas fields. This type of government behaviour virtually guarantees that investors will stay away.

If, in addition, there is a shortage of trainable workers--if there are not enough people in the potential workforce intelligent enough to learn the skills and technologies involved in the industry--the situation is hopeless. A technological society requires an average population IQ of at least 90 (with 100 being the internationally standardised mean) to maintain itself. If the population average (mean) IQ is less than 90, all attempts to bring the nation as a whole into the modern technological world, are doomed. Consider that a hypothesis, that can be disproved by the presentation of contradictory examples. . . . . . .? . . . . . .?.......

The book IQ and the Wealth of Nations discusses this issue, and makes comparisons of average IQ between different nations. The authors admit that political and economic factors can artificially hold down a nation's wealth, even in the presence of high average IQ. Conversely, in a nation of relatively low average population IQ, an enlightened market economy can raise the nation's wealth above what it would be if the economy were more centrally commanded. Likewise, oppressive and/or unstable political regimes will depress a nation's wealth, even where the population average IQ is average or above.

I consider IQ and the Wealth of Nations to be a starting point for discussion, rather than an authoritative reference and documentary. For example, what happens when maternal and childhood nutrition is improved in an impoverished nation? The average IQ should improve, and in the presence of an enlightened political structure and economy, the wealth of the nation should also improve. This is a worthy goal.

What if after optimising nutrition for mothers and children, significant population IQ average differences remain between nations? Then if it is clear that the nations with lower population average IQs are suffering because of it, the reasons for the differences should be determined and steps taken to improve the intelligence of those nations on the lower end.

Of course, once you go beyond nutritional optimisation in trying to improve intelligence, it is likely that most nations will want to participate in the improving of their citizen's IQ--even those nations that already have average or above average population IQs. In that case, it is more than likely that your intervention will result in even greater inequality of average IQs than were present originally.

You see the problem. An IQ "central command" would be very much like an economic "central command." The unintended consequences might be worse than what you started with. The alternative--a "market approach" to increasing IQ, would result in wealthier nations that already have higher average IQs gaining access to intelligence augmenting technologies before poorer nations, with the technology "trickling down" at a rate slow enough to make most people unhappy. An interesting problem. The consequences from doing nothing may be severe.

I will discuss more on this subject later.