Author Archives: SkOw4Liberty

04.25.13
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Live Science: Why Boston Marathon Bombings Ignited Conspiracies

Like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Sandy Hook massacre and other tragedies, the recent Boston Marathon bombing has spawned several conspiracy theories. Some of the more cynical conspiracy theorists do it simply for attention and ratings, or to promote their books, DVDs and seminars promising to reveal the truth that no one else would dare.

These days most conspiracy theories are promoted by one or two (relatively) high-profile people. A man named Alex Jones was at the forefront of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Sandy Hook school attack last year — including the claim that the shooting didn’t really happen. This time around, former Fox News host Glenn Beck is among those leading the charge that a conspiracy is afoot in the Boston bombing case that left several dead and one suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in the hospital.

Beck is apparently not denying that the Boston bombings took place — the thousands of eyewitnesses, countless videos and forensic evidence is too overwhelming to be dismissed. No, instead the conspiracy seems to center around what Beck believes is the suspicious government handling of a Saudi national named Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, who was supposedly investigated (and cleared) of some connection to the Boston attack, but whose student visa had expired, and who may or may not be in the process of being deported back to Saudi Arabia.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.livescience.com/29038-why-boston-bombings-ignited-conpsiracies.html

04.25.13
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CBS News: Newtown, Conn. residents reject budget with extra school security

A child gazes from a school bus as it passes by the St. Rose of Lima Catholic church while mourners gathered for a funeral service for shooting victim Jessica Rekos, 6, on December 18, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.
Residents have rejected a budget that included money for extra school security in the wake of the December school shootings, with town leaders suggesting the spending and required tax increases were a hard sell.Voters on Tuesday turned down the $72 million school budget by 482 votes and rejected the $39 million town government budget by 62 votes. Nearly 4,500 residents voted on the plans, which would have represented an increase of more than 5 percent next fiscal year.

First Selectwoman Patricia Llodra said the killings of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School had an impact on the vote, the first since the massacre.

“We’re very fragile as a community,” she said. “We’ve lost some of our confidence.”

Officials had put an extra $770,000 in the school and town budgets to hire extra police officers and unarmed security guards in each of Newtown’s public and private schools. The plan was spurred by the Dec. 14 shootings.

Jeff Capeci, chairman of the Legislative Council, said the higher school budget also would have expanded half-day kindergarten to full-day and allowed for the hiring of a new high school administrator and for capital spending and technology.

“I thought it was an incredibly high increase for this economy,” Capeci said. “At the end of the day, Newtown voters thought it was too much of an increase.”

Llodra called the spending increases substantial.

“It’s just beyond the ability of our community to grapple with,” she said.

In contrast, the current budget is up by a fraction of 1 percent over the previous year.

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Some may find it interesting that people would be willing to throw away the most sublime constitution ever written by man in the history of the world and sacrifice their liberty for the sake of security……yet they don’t want a local tax hike to pay for school security.  Click below for the full article.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57581137/newtown-conn-residents-reject-budget-with-extra-school-security/

04.25.13
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Forbes: Big Brother Has A New Face, And It’s Your Boss

Recently, the CVS Caremark Corporation began requiring employees to disclose personal health information (including weight, blood pressure, and body fat levels) or else pay an annual $600 fine. Workers must make this information available to the company’s employee “Wellness Program” and sign a form stating that they’re doing so voluntarily.

CVS argues this will help workers “take more responsibility for improving their health.” At one level, this makes a certain sense. Because the company is paying for their employees’ health insurance, they naturally prefer healthier workers. But at a deeper level, CVS’ action demonstrates a growing problem with our current system of employer-provided health insurance. If our bosses must pay for our health care, they will inevitably seek greater control over our lifestyles.

Although most Americans take it for granted that they receive health insurance through the workplace, this is an artifact of federal tax rules from World War II. When the U.S. government imposed wartime wage controls, employers could no longer compete for workers by offering higher salaries. Instead, they competed by offering more generous fringe benefits such as health insurance. In 1943, the IRS ruled that employees did not have to pay tax on health benefits provided by employers; in 1954, the IRS made this permanent.

The federal government thus distorted the health insurance market in favor of employer-based plans. If a company paid $100 for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, the employee enjoyed the full benefit. But if the employee received that $100 as salary, he could only purchase $50-70 of insurance after taxes. Over time, this tax disparity helped employer-based health insurance dominate the private insurance market. In 2008, over 90% of non-elderly Americans with private insurance received it through their workplace.

Hence, government policy artificially injects the employer into the relationship between a patient and the health insurance system. Normally, what a worker ate or whether he smoked at home would be of no concern to his boss (unless it affected job performance). But U.S. government policy makes it the employer’s business.

To make matters worse, ObamaCare reinforces this status quo. ObamaCare requires large employers to offer health insurance to workers (or else pay a penalty). As a result, more people are discussing how best to link employment to healthy behavior. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently featured a pair of high-profile editorials debating the merits of allowing companies to discriminate against smokers, “for their own good.”

Furthermore, ObamaCare pays government grants to encourage companies to implement these “wellness programs.” Hence, employers who wouldn’t otherwise concern themselves with workers’ lifestyles now have an incentive to do so in order to collect federal funds.

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This is very well written and informative article.  For those that wonder why employers are involved in health insurance (and not home owners insurance, car insurance, etc.) it was simply because of government intervention.  Salary freezes caused the creation of “benefit packages.”

What do you think about government intervention like price freezes and the constitutionality of them?  Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2013/04/25/big-brother-has-a-new-face-and-its-your-boss/

04.24.13
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Truthout: Ex-Bush Official Willing to Testify Bush, Cheney Knew Gitmo Prisoners Innocent

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once declared that individuals captured by the US military in the aftermath of 9/11 and shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison facility represented the “worst of the worst.”

During a radio interview in June 2005, Rumsfeld said the detainees at Guantanamo, “all of whom were captured on a battlefield,” are “terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama Bin Laden’s] body guards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th hijacker, 9/11 hijacker.”

But Rumsfeld knowingly lied, according to a former top Bush administration official.

And so did then Vice President Dick Cheney when he said, also in 2002 and in dozens of public statements thereafter, that Guantanamo prisoners “are the worst of a very bad lot” and “dangerous” and “devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort.”

Now, in a sworn declaration obtained exclusively by Truthout, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush’s first term in office, said Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld knew the “vast majority” of prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror were innocent and the administration refused to set them free once those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued.

“By late August 2002, I found that of the initial 742 detainees that had arrived at Guantanamo, the majority of them had never seen a US soldier in the process of their initial detention and their captivity had not been subjected to any meaningful review,” Wilkerson’s declaration says. “Secretary Powell was also trying to bring pressure to bear regarding a number of specific detentions because children as young as 12 and 13 and elderly as old as 92 or 93 had been shipped to Guantanamo. By that time, I also understood that the deliberate choice to send detainees to Guantanamo was an attempt to place them outside the jurisdiction of the US legal system.”

He added that it became “more and more clear many of the men were innocent, or at a minimum their guilt was impossible to determine let alone prove in any court of law, civilian or military.”

For Cheney and Rumsfeld, and “others,” Wilkerson said, “the primary issue was to gain more intelligence as quickly as possible, both on Al Qaeda and its current and future plans and operations but increasingly also, in 2002-2003, on contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s intelligence and secret police forces in Iraq.”

“Their view was that innocent people languishing in Guantanamo for years was justified by the broader war on terror and the capture of the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks, or other acts of terrorism,” Wilkerson added. “Moreover, their detention was deemed acceptable if it led to a more complete and satisfactory intelligence picture with regard to Iraq, thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.truth-out.org/article/item/713:exbush-official-willing-to-testify-bush-cheney-knew-gitmo-prisoners-innocent

 

04.24.13
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Daily Ticker: The Economic Argument Is Over — And Paul Krugman Won (Big Surprise, Some Keynesian Claims Victory)

For the past five years, a fierce war of words and policies has been fought in America and other economically challenged countries around the world.

On one side were economists and politicians who wanted to increase government spending to offset weakness in the private sector. This “stimulus” spending, economists like Paul Krugman argued, would help reduce unemployment and prop up economic growth until the private sector healed itself and began to spend again.

On the other side were economists and politicians who wanted to cut spending to reduce deficits and “restore confidence.” Government stimulus, these folks argued, would only increase debt loads, which were already alarmingly high. If governments did not cut spending, countries would soon cross a deadly debt-to-GDP threshold, after which growth would be permanently impaired. The countries would also be beset by hyper-inflation, as bond investors suddenly freaked out and demanded higher interest rates. Once government spending was cut, this theory went, deficits would shrink and “confidence” would return.

This debate has not just been academic.

Those in favor of economic stimulus won a brief victory in the depths of the financial crisis, with countries like the U.S. implementing stimulus packages. But the so-called “Austerians” fought back. And in the past several years, government policies in Europe and the U.S. have been shaped by the belief that governments had to cut spending or risk collapsing under the weight of staggering debts.

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Of course Keynesians are claiming victory.  When the bill comes due on the national debt, inflation goes wild, and a dollar crisis happens, what will they claim then?  What do you think about this writers victory claim?

Click below for the full article.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/economic-argument-over-paul-krugman-won-150247189.html

04.24.13
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Marketwatch: Modified mortgages show ‘alarming’ default trend

Troubled homeowners who received modified mortgages through a federal program are seeing high default rates, a troubling trend that officials inadequately understand, according to an investigator’s report released Wednesday.

The oldest permanent modifications made through the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which launched in 2009, were redefaulting at a rate of 46.1% as of March 31, according to the report from the special inspector general overseeing the Treasury Department’s efforts to shore up the U.S. financial system. HAMP’s permanent modifications from 2010 have redefault rates ranging from 28.9% to 37.6%.

“The number of homeowners who have redefaulted on a HAMP permanent mortgage modification is increasing at an alarming rate,” the report said. “Treasury’s data shows that the longer a homeowner remains in HAMP, the more likely he or she is to redefault out of the program.”

Unfortunately, Treasury officials have an insufficient understanding of factors behind failures, according to the report.

“Better knowledge of the characteristics of the loan, the homeowners, the servicer, or the modification, more prone to redefault will increase Treasury’s understanding of the underlying problems that cause redefaults and provide Treasury an opportunity to address these issues proactively,” the inspector general said.

HAMP mortgages are modified to lower monthly payments by cutting interest rates and extending terms, among other actions. Servicers and borrowers receive incentive payments through the program.

Unsuccessful modifications have a “devastating effect,” according to the report.

“Redefaulted HAMP modifications on already struggling homeowners when any amounts previously modified suddenly come due,” according to the report. “When the homeowner cannot pay it, they lose their home to foreclosure.”

When Treasury launched HAMP, officials said the program could help 3 million to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure. However, as of March 31, only about 2 million HAMP modifications had been started, and 54% of these have been cancelled, according to the report.

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Click below for the full article.

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/04/24/modified-mortgages-show-alarming-default-trend/

04.24.13
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The Week: As his library opens, Was George W. Bush the worst president ever?

George W. Bush holds one of his last news conferences in January 2009.

 

The dedication of the George W. Bush library gives loyalists of the former president a chance to highlight what they see as the positive legacy of his eight years in office.

But even among supporters there is a sense he’ll never be given historical vindication.

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleisher told NBC News: “I’m increasingly doubtful, just because I think the lens of history is not changing. A lot of us used to say President Bush will look good and he’ll be vindicated in the public eye. But realistically speaking, I don’t see a lot of the people who write history all of a sudden changing their mind about George W. Bush.”

As Jill Lawrence points out, the polling of historians seems to back this up.

Nearly 60 percent of the historians and political scientists in a 2006 Siena College survey rated Bush’s presidency a failure and two-thirds said he did not have a realistic chance of improving his standing.

A 2010 Siena ranking of presidential scholars rated Bush as one of the nation’s five worst presidents. A similar 2009 C-SPAN ranking put Bush in the bottom eight.

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Click below for the full article.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243205/was-george-w-bush-the-worst-president-ever

04.24.13
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Washington Post: Governments may push workers out of employer health care and into health exchange

In a quest to save money, political leaders in Washington state are exploring a proposal that would shift some government workers out of their current health plans and onto the insurance exchange developed under President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Lawmakers believe the change, which could affect thousands of part-time state employees and education workers, would save the state $120 million over the next two years. It would consequently push more health care costs onto the federal government because many of the low-income workers would likely qualify for federal subsidies.

Washington state appears to be the first major government to seriously explore the possibility of pushing public employees into the exchange, but it probably won’t be the last. Rick Johnson, who advises state and local governments on health care policy at the New York-based consulting firm Segal Company, said he expects it will be an option some state and local governments will explore in the years to come.

“I can see that as one of the solutions out there,” Johnson said.

A spokeswoman with the Department of Health and Human Services declined comment.

Because the federal law requires employers to provide coverage for those working at least 30 hours a week, states are exploring various ways to manage their part-time employees.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/governments-may-push-workers-out-of-employer-health-care-and-into-health-exchange/2013/04/24/fed10f26-acb4-11e2-9493-2ff3bf26c4b4_story.html