So, the FoB's (Friends of Bill) were first in line for the 10 billion in donations distributed by the U.S. State Department after the Haiti disaster?
Well, they do get credit for building two very nice shacks there.
And that's just the start of the story.
Max and Stacy have the evidence.
The US government is delegitimized, not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the eyes of most of the world. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their careers, their hopes, because corrupt bought-and-paid-for-Washington enabled Globalism to send the futures of the American people to China and India. Millions of Americans lost their homes, because the corrupt Federal Reserve came down on the side of five “banks too big to fail” at the expense of the American people. Millions of Americans along with much of the world know that the US government has been slaughtering millions of peoples in seven countries based on lies, wasting not only countries and the lives of millions of peoples, but trillions of American dollars that Americans needed for their welfare. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Assad did not use chemical weapons. Gaddafi was innocent of all the absurd charges that Washington used to destroy Libya, a country that had the most progressive social system on earth. Russia did not invade Ukraine. The Taliban had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Yet countries are in ruins because of Washington’s war crimes justified by transparent lies._ _ _ _ _ _ _
If the NY Times does not know this, the organization is too stupid to justify its existence. Of course the Times knows it. But the NY Times is no longer a newspaper. It is a cog in the Ministry of Propaganda that works to create a Matrix in which brainwashed Americans accept the dictates of the Oligarchs.
The purpose of the Times’ article is to discredit in advance criticism of an election that the ruling Oligarchs intend to steal. If the Times believed that Hillary would have a clear election victory, there would be no point to Fisher’s article.
. . . Trump says in the face of contrary ruling neoconservative opinion that he sees no point in conflict with Russia and no point in NATO’s continued existence a quarter century after the purpose of NATO collapsed with the Soviet Union. Trump might not be successful in appointing a government that serves his instincts, but at least he gives us hope of avoiding military conflict with Russia and China. With Hillary there is no hope whatsoever. My opinion is that the world would not survive Hillary’s first term. I have known the neoconservatives since the 1970s. They are crazed fanatics, and they hate Russia. Hillary is their agent.
. . . Leaked emails prove that the Trump-Putin connection was orchestrated as campaign talk to deflect attention from damaging content of Clinton’s released emails
(Throw a contribution into the PayPal cup for the Fall Fundraiser if you'd like to support this blog. I apologize for using PayPal, but as you've probably heard, all the rest are just as rightwing in origin and/or ownership and yet offer even higher fees to effect the transfer of money. **Anyone want to start a better donation site?**)
Over the course of its history, the New York Times has reported on many American elections that have been rigged or stolen or are suspected of having been being rigged or stolen. For example, as a supporter of the black civil rights movement, the NY Times has many stories in its archives of elections rigged by disenfranchisement of black voters.
But this was when the NY Times was an independent voice before it became a whore for the Oligarchs who rule America. When the NY Times reported that black Americans could have no confidence in the integrity of American elections, the NY Times did not denounce itself for delegitimizing American democracy.
The NY Times forgot all of this when it published Max Fisher’s article yesterday. Fisher fished up “scholars” among the Hillary advocates, and they obligingly told him that Trump’s questioning of the integrity of American elections were the tactics of a would-be dictator who is at work delegitimizing democracy so that he can take over.
What Fisher and his “scholars” overlook is that the US government is already delegitimized in the eyes of the American population, as well as foreign populations. If the US government was not already delegitimized, Donald Trump would not have been successful in what, despite Trump’s damnation by the presstitutes, was an easy sweep-aside of the Establishment’s candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.
The US government is delegitimized, not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the eyes of most of the world. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their careers, their hopes, because corrupt bought-and-paid-for-Washington enabled Globalism to send the futures of the American people to China and India. Millions of Americans lost their homes, because the corrupt Federal Reserve came down on the side of five “banks too big to fail” at the expense of the American people. Millions of Americans along with much of the world know that the US government has been slaughtering millions of peoples in seven countries based on lies, wasting not only countries and the lives of millions of peoples, but trillions of American dollars that Americans needed for their welfare. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Assad did not use chemical weapons. Gaddafi was innocent of all the absurd charges that Washington used to destroy Libya, a country that had the most progressive social system on earth. Russia did not invade Ukraine. The Taliban had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Yet countries are in ruins because of Washington’s war crimes justified by transparent lies.
If the NY Times does not know this, the organization is too stupid to justify its existence. Of course the Times knows it. But the NY Times is no longer a newspaper. It is a cog in the Ministry of Propaganda that works to create a Matrix in which brainwashed Americans accept the dictates of the Oligarchs.
The purpose of the Times’ article is to discredit in advance criticism of an election that the ruling Oligarchs intend to steal. If the Times believed that Hillary would have a clear election victory, there would be no point to Fisher’s article.
. . . Trump says in the face of contrary ruling neoconservative opinion that he sees no point in conflict with Russia and no point in NATO’s continued existence a quarter century after the purpose of NATO collapsed with the Soviet Union. Trump might not be successful in appointing a government that serves his instincts, but at least he gives us hope of avoiding military conflict with Russia and China. With Hillary there is no hope whatsoever. My opinion is that the world would not survive Hillary’s first term. I have known the neoconservatives since the 1970s. They are crazed fanatics, and they hate Russia. Hillary is their agent.
. . . Leaked emails prove that the Trump-Putin connection was orchestrated as campaign talk to deflect attention from damaging content of Clinton’s released emails.
. . . According to Shyla Nelson, the co-founder of Election Justice USA, US elections are manipulated in many ways, including «voter suppression, unauthorized registration purges, district gerrymandering, gross exit poll variances, the privatization of voting machinery, and the lack of transparency in ballot processing – our elections will continue to rank among the lowest in the world in integrity.
. . . US elections are so corrupt that the US has threatened Russian diplomats with arrest if they attempt to monitor the US November presidential election.
Read the entire essay here.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
It certainly looks rigged.
From the odd TV crowd coverage to the long lines and vanquished poll booths to the mystery of the health of both of the candidates (and the efforts to portray all other candidates as either ignorant, stupid or developmentally deficient).
Completely rigged.
And not in "our" favor.
We lost that favor during the media-saturated, poorly reported primaries.
The U.S. now seems to be in the downward spiral of overarching power getting its way as long as it can by any means it can utilize.
But the end is in sight.
If attacking the Russians seems like a sensible plan to power.
Remember the Romans.
And how every other civilization of note ended.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert always have some vital information about the developing economic situation which affects the political endemically. They cover the news that is ignored by the U.S. media. Funny (almost) how no one in the U.S. seems to take this seriously.
And not that anyone wants Trump to win . . . but . . . it's just too incredibly evil to pretend that all the rigging talk is addressing merely fictional circumstances.
Because everyone knows exactly how rigged it all is.
The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him for “discrediting American democracy” and for “breaking American tradition of accepting the people’s will.”
What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every level — state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s theft of the Chicago and, thereby, Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court’s theft of the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example. The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting machines that have no paper trails are also legendary.
So what’s the big deal about Trump’s suspicion of election rigging?
The black civil rights movement has fought vote rigging for decades. The rigging takes place in a number of ways. Blacks simply can’t get registered to vote. If they do get registered, there are few polling places in their districts. And so on. After decades of struggle it is impossible that there are any blacks who are not aware of how hard it can be for them to vote. Yet, I heard on the presstitute radio network, NPR, Hillary’s Uncle Toms saying how awful it was that Trump had cast aspersion on the credibility of American election results.
. . . The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging, because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of covering up the theft.
Rigging is so de rigeur that it's almost a surprise to find out that there are no copyright ownership rights being bragged about yet.
A Devil’s Advocate Rings in a Bad Night for Bankers
I don't want to step on too many nuggets, but Secretary of State Clinton stepped in to do the negotiations with UBS. She required UBS to disclose only 4,700 out of 19,000 illegal account holders. Birkenfeld's curious, as we all might be, as to who made the selection and how, and why the names were never made public. Why was the fine so inadequate compared to long-term profits, and why did DOJ so carelessly offer undeclared account holders anonymity and repeated amnesties?
Who are these titans of favoritism? Will the real masters of the universe please stand up?
It brings to mind proposals for excessively reduced corporate taxes for repatriating money sloshing around abroad, but I digress.
In Washington's small world of startling coincidence, before the negotiated deal UBS only contributed sixty grand to the Clinton Foundation. Afterwards, notes Birkenfeld, it went up by a factor of ten. UBS also partnered with the Foundation providing a low-interest thirty-two million dollar loan for a Foundation program. And President Clinton, the First, earned over a million and a half dollars "for a series of fireside chats with the bank's Wealth Management Chief Executive, Bob McCann...Bill Clinton's biggest payday since leaving the office of the Presidency."
I’m not a finance guy, but I’m getting better at the smell test. Ah,well, what's to worry? A legion of editorialists, commentators and spinners assures us there's no quid pro quo. The Trump gun at our temple is a curiosity killer.
In Washington, “pay it forward” is a concept not fully embraced.
Birkenfeld reckons Americans are on the hook for a trillion dollars escaping off-shore, so they ought be making demands.
The book balances entertaining asides and stark realities. One notable is how big players like UBS distribute business and retainers to put major law firms on the shelf as they avoid conflicts of interest. And the inescapable revolving door-- lubricated by so-called public servants sugaring up those they're supposed to ride herd on, while anticipating wildly better compensated employment elsewhere. Birkenfeld expresses particular fondness for DOJ prosecutors who shepherded him through his adventure in criminal prosecution. The lead prosecutor negotiated Birkenfeld’s plea and signed off on his motion for a sentence reduction. Then he sat quietly while a judge nailed Birkenfeld with a much longer sentence than Birkenfeld was led to expect.
Later, Birkenfeld discovered his lead prosecutor signed a secret non-prosecution agreement for the UBS kingpin who oversaw the 19,000 US accounts (including all of the North and South American offshore business), the show-runner for approximately $20 billion in assets. That banker was quietly allowed to go back to Switzerland two weeks later while the US Senate committee was on summer recess.
Birkenfeld's lead prosecutor then left DOJ to partner with a law firm that's now defending a Credit Suisse private banker who also handled US accounts (which Birkenfeld told the DOJ prosecutor about in 2007). The Credit Suisse banker is being prosecuted by another prosecutor, still at DOJ, that also dealt with Birkenfeld. Before leaving DOJ, Birkenfeld's lead prosecutor supervised the indictment of the Credit Suisse banker, which was signed by both prosecutors. The former prosecutor now with the law firm isn’t listed as attorney of record on the case. He’s merely a partner in the firm.
No word on the future plans of the prosecutor still lingering at DOJ.
Speaking generally, the revolving door is powered by contacts left behind in government.
His book might not be on the White House wish list, but on Oct. 1st Birkenfeld dispatched Lucifer to President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of State John Kerry. It went with this letter urging action and answers. All members of Congress can look forward to Lucifer coming their way.
Among the questions posed, why was a key UBS official allowed to return to Switzerland after he agreed to cooperate but instead pleaded the Fifth at a Congressional hearing? Why was what Birkenfeld characterizes as a sham prosecution conducted against another top UBS official, who was acquitted and returned home after DOJ refused to call Birkenfeld to testify?
That’s high contrast with the French, Greeks, Canadians and others now eager for Birkenfeld’s assistance, which he’s giving, in government actions against the bank.
Note that UBS US employees have long poured money throughout America’s political system, including considerable largess to President Obama since he was a US Senator.
There's been press on Birkenfeld before, much of it sympathetic, when he blew the whistle, when he went to the hoosegow in 2010 and on his record IRS whistleblower award. He's since had plenty of time to ponder life. His book weaves together new threads connecting what happened and why. The resulting fabric is a brilliant lesson on how the fix is in. Read more at Birkenfeld's site. Can a movie be far behind?
Back to Washington's small world of coincidence. The first Sunday after Birkenfeld was sentenced, President Obama went golfing at Martha's Vineyard. His golfing partner was Robert Wolf, Chairman of UBS Americas.
Cue the Church Lady.
. . . After reading Birkenfeld's book, and speaking with an FBI whistleblower at the launch party, I have to laugh at my quaint notion that government waits eager to ride to the rescue of the little guy, to champion even those dwelling far beneath potential headlines with political mileage. Nothing to do now but to try and tell the story. No payouts in cases like mine. But if Birkenfeld's book inspires the aggrieved to find voice, to tell their own stories of injustice at the ground level, they may awake others to the peril slack government places us in. That alone would make the book worth its ink.
But we're all gonna end up rich, right?
So don't go too hard on these poor guys.
They'll be running your next company (or bank).
How to Steal an Election (Again)
18 -- Step 5A -- Now that you, Mitt Romney, have plundered your way to make hundreds of millions of dollars (if not a billion or more) and have offshored thousands of jobs, have hid your true agenda from the "low information" voters and have been running for President for six years, it is time to buy a voting machine company, and you do so.
19 - Step 5B -- You, your wife, your son and your brother are owners of a Private Equity Fund (named Solamere) which, invests in H.I.G. Capital, which, in turn, holds majority share in Hart Intercivic, the nation's third-largest voting machine company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in many states, including swing state Ohio, on November 7. Since H.I.G. Capital holds three seats out of the five Board members of Hart Intercivic, and two of these are major Romney fundraisers, and a third of H.I.G. Capital's leadership worked at Bain Capital, you are in pretty good shape. But, to ensure control and access, you made it your mission to have invested $10 million in this Private Equity Fund that is majority shareholder of Hart Intercivic. So far, so good. ( http://truth-out.org/news/item/12204-does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote )
20 -- Step 5C -- Now that you have controlling ownership of Hart Intercivic, you, Mitt Romney, inventory what jurisdictions Hart Intercivic will count the votes for, and you come up with 17.7 million registered voters in 370 jurisdictions. Great! Lo and behold, one jurisdiction is Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes Cincinnati, a hotly contested battleground city which may determine whether the Democrats or the Republicans earn Ohio's electoral votes. Sweet, if you are the one counting the votes! ( http://truth-out.org/news/item/12130-will-hig-owned-e-voting-machines-give-romney-the-white-house )
21 -- Step 5D -- By serendipity (of course!!!), Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted just had "experimental" (uncertified and untested) software patches installed on vote counting tabulators in 39 Ohio counties! Couldn't be better!
October 20, 2016 Kansas City, MO
The New Democrats and their Republican counterparts’ economic policies have created a rigged system of crony capitalism. Crony capitalism produces devastating epidemics of elite fraud that have shrunk the overall economic “pie” and distributed the “pie” overwhelmingly in favor of corrupt corporate elites like Donald Trump and their political cronies like the Clintons. Wall Street has been open about being ecstatic about the rise of what Citigroup infamously labelled and celebrated — a “plutonomy.”
In a plutonomy there … are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.
Citigroup, in 2005, years before Occupy Wall Street, identified the tiny slice of Americans receiving this “gigantic slice of income and consumption.”
In early September [2005] we … introduced the idea that the U.S.is a Plutonomy – a concept that generated great interest from our clients.[T]he top 1% of households account for 40% of financial net worth, more than the bottom 95% of households put together.[These inequalities are] almost entirely driven by the fortunes of the top 0.1% (roughly 100,000 households).
Citigroup sounded a note of caution about the rise of the Imperial CEO, which it termed the new “Managerial Aristocracy.” Their depredations could only continue as long as shareholders and voters failed to reclaim control of their corporations and nations.
[This top group represents a] Managerial Aristocracy indulged by their shareholders.Society and governments need to be amenable to disproportionately allow/encourage the few to retain that fatter profit share. The Managerial Aristocracy, like in the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the thriving nineties, needs to commandeer a vast chunk of that rising profit share, either through capital income, or simply paying itself a lot.
Citigroup made clear that the New Democrat’s and their Republican counterparts’ embrace of policies that enhanced crony capitalism would cause the already obscene inequality to increase.
We project that the plutonomies … will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization.
Lest there be any doubt where Citigroup was coming from, they evoked Ayn Rand’s fantasy in Atlas Shrugged that the Managerial Aristocracy was akin to the stud on the cover of cheesy romance novels – “the muscular arms of … entrepreneur-plutocrats.”
The earth is being held up by the muscular arms of its entrepreneur-plutocrats, like it, or not.
Really? The data Citigroup cited said nothing about the plutocrats helping the overall economy much less the earth. The story that Atlas held up the earth was a myth. There is no “up” when it comes to earth and gravity is quite reliable in holding earth to paths that we can predict. The plutocrats despoil the earth and are the gravest threat to life on earth. Picturing the Managerial Aristocracy as muscular unpaid laborers selflessly protecting the earth is a farcical lie – but Citigroup was writing for the Managerial Aristocrats it hoped to attract to its “wealth” divisions and knew that the Trumps of the world demand abject sycophancy. Citigroup was honest about three key facts.
- Extreme inequality is fundamental to plutonomy
At the heart of plutonomy, is income inequality.
- Citigroup showed that it favored plutonomy
[A]n examination of what might disrupt Plutonomy – or worse, reverse it – falls to societal analysis….
- The key to whether plutonomy persists is not economics, but whether the public will summon the will to rise up to recover its Nation.
Societies that are willing to tolerate/endorse income inequality, are willing to tolerate/endorse plutonomy.
Citigroup also correctly framed the fundamental question that voters should have demanded each candidate answer with a resounding “No.”
[W]ill electorates continue to endorse [massive inequality], or will they end it, and why?
Citigroup warned the Managerial Aristocrats that the great risk to their rigging of the system was that workers might vote the Aristocrats’ political cronies out of office.
Comments:
Silly goose, we don’t “nominate” candidates, the political insiders give us a list to pick from based on which candidates are made viable by donors. The only exception being that someone such the Trumpl-down-trick-onomics candidate might slip through the gauntlet by having some money of his own, and some notoriety from being a celebrity of some sort.
Otherwise, we might have a choice of someone who doesn’t know where Aleppo might be. Or, of someone who seems to believe that the bailout total is $16 trillion. Or… there was Bernie who doesn’t realize that the NAFTA/CAFTADR and the WTO each have ISDS provisions, and that accordingly, ISDS provisions are here to stay whether the TPP passes or not. And this apparently applies to all of the candidates although HRC probably knows this but chooses not to seem too positive on the TPP. All things considered though, we have a choice now of someone uninformed, misinformed, lying about most everything, or just stupid. But the people have little if any say in the nominations in the first place.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _When I talk to a good number of Hillary Clinton supporters in the way Mr. Black did in his article, I get an eye roll, and sometimes the comment: “Another one of those Rothschild/Illuminati conspiracy kooks”. Then in the next breathe they sigh, “President Obama could have done more if it weren’t for the Republicans and their corporate backers blocking him”. Obviously, there is a blind spot in their rear view mirror while driving 100MPH in a heavy fog. Facts will not change their minds. They are just like the Trump supporters they are so fond of demeaning. Actually, on a gut level Trumpers get it on the economics, it’s just the other emotions released aren’t always pretty, and the solutions proposed downright terrifying. Neocons (Republicans) fight social change. Neolibs (New Democrats) are led by it. On everything else the difference is in the wording of their presentations. I’m starting to believe the Democratic Party is more dangerous as their presentation is so seductive to the Commoners. In the end who benefits from New Democrat/Republican policies – the very wealthy.
Just thought I'd run some informative comments about the Hillary Wiki leaks said to be "poisoning" from an interesting web site:
LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump is pointing to a stream of hacked emails as proof that Hillary Clinton would be a compromised president, but a surprising number of progressives are drawing similar conclusions — albeit for totally different reasons.
Some of the left’s most influential voices and groups are taking offense at the way they and their causes were discussed behind their backs by Clinton and some of her closest advisers in the emails, which swipe liberal heroes and causes as “puritanical,” “pompous”, “naive”, “radical” and “dumb,” calling some “freaks,” who need to “get a life.”
If polls hold and Clinton wins the presidency, she will need the support of the professional left to offset what’s expected to be vociferous Republican opposition to her legislative proposals and appointments.
But among progressive operatives, goodwill for Clinton — and confidence in key advisers featured in the emails including John Podesta, Neera Tanden and Jake Sullivan — is eroding as WikiLeaks continues to release a daily stream of thousands of emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account that is expected to continue until Election Day.
Liberal groups and activists are assembling opposition research-style dossiers of the most dismissive comments in the WikiLeaks emails about icons of their movement like Clinton’s Democratic primary rival Bernie Sanders, and their stances on trade, Wall Street reform, energy and climate change. And some liberal activists are vowing to use the email fodder to oppose Clinton policy proposals or appointments deemed insufficiently progressive.
Comments:
John Peebles
Wikileaks didn't poison anything! She did that all by herself.
I don't get the disconnect between her actions and the consequences of those actions. Why are the media - and people who should know better - always giving her a free pass?
Bad email security like that of Podesta and others is the reason she got caught. Interesting to see Wikleaks publish more.
The behavior towards supposed allies is atrocious. Disrespect poisons relationship, and her exposure is warranted.
Why educated (college-educated) people still believe in her, I have no idea. Is it their hate of Trump? I assure you you aren't alone in your utter disdain for the man. But does that excuse anything she does? Does it make it righter just because he's all wrong?
I'll take an honest bigot over a compulsive liar any day. I guess the difference is that he can't hide it, as he's not yet a politician. Quite clearly, HRC is better polished--or is it burnished?--but underneath the well honed image she's something else.
Chris topher
Hillary has poisoned her relationship with all of us, not Wikileaks. What has emerged there is just the tip of the iceberg. the thing that is really the most ugly is the agenda to take over the world and our future for corporations via FTAS that is still largely unknown. The 1995 GATS agreement and the additions made to it in 1998 have already led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or more likely millions of Americans from being denied healthcare, and trillions of dollars in losses caused by financial deregulation in GATS causing the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the 2008 crash.
Clinton is NOT Presidential material and the attempt to force her down our throats even if it succeeds, will cost the country its respect for and trust in government due to the witches brew of horrible changes (a string of irreversible insanely intrusive and disruptive trade deals, each worse than the previous one in stripping people of all they value) in the pipeline ready for her signature.
Maybe thats what they want. Instead of money in politics, Trade deals contain "ratchets" which effectuate an invisible and criminogenic ever-worstening hobbling of government so everything governments used to do that was good is turned into bad, by changes being limited to only those which are more profitable for corporations (and likely then against the peoples interests) so each new law and new politician will only make bad things even worse, leading to an end to democratic rule of law all around the world so that corporations can stop governing by proxy and assume direct control.
Mike Zimmer
Oh, would that be the "We came, we saw, he died!" cackling Clinton? Thought so. She is poison, so Wiki Leaks is just pointing out the obvious. It is tragic that far too many on the left still can not see this._ _ _ _ _ _ _
Posted on October 22, 2016 by Stacy Herbert
Max and Stacy in coastal Carolina with our commentary on the political conferences, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and more.
Download show here
One more excruciatingly interesting Max Keiser interview?
Sure, go ahead.
Knock them out.
Try to ignore the typos!