Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and the GOP’s radical financial terrorist attack against America


Radical financial terrorism is running rampant across the globe.  The banking cartels who lavish wealth on politicians who serve them are the biggest threat to humanity.  U.S. President Donald Trump was elected to hold these financial terrorists in check and restore fairness and good governance to America.  But politicians like Ryan and Pence are where they are because they preserve the financial terrorism, not because they are a threat to it. 

December 12, 2000 the American government was overthrown by GOP congress members along with Zionist Democrats Chuck Schumer, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy.  Since the congressional cabal completed the repeal of Glass Steagall and the deregulation of the banking and insurance industry, the banking cartels have ravaged countries across the world.  Country after country the financial terrorist banking cartels have murdered through illegal wars, coups against elected officials and crushing austerity programs. 

Trillions have been stolen by the financial terrorist banking cartels and lavished on the “elected” politicians who serve them.  In 2008 Barack Obama was selected to succeed W. Bush and continue the banking cartels global financial terror.  When Donald Trump won the GOP primary he wasn’t allowed to choose his running mate; right-wing extremist Mike Pence was chosen by Paul Ryan and the GOP.  With Pence as Vice President the GOP was able to fill Trump’s cabinet with the most extreme Koch Brothers caucus members to complete the financial Armageddon set in motion during the Bush/Obama regimes.


Once the chessmen are in their place and ready to deconstruct America, Trump will be impeached and the New World Order will be complete.  It will be the death of our Republic.  From State of the Nation:

Excerpt:

The Death of the Republic

The deep state’s decision in ancient Rome—dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, much like the United States of 2017—to strangle the vain and idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire.

Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like President Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for Commodus, as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism, hedonism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices so the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin could orchestrate a vast kleptocracy…

Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored democracy in Rome. Our republic is dead.

Societies that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey for the enemies of democracy. These demagogues pay deference to the patriotic ideals, rituals, practices and forms of the old democratic political system while dismantling it…  Thomas Paine wrote that despotic government is a fungus that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to these older democracies. It is what happened to us.

Our constitutional rights—due process, habeas corpus, privacy, a fair trial, freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent—have been taken from us by judicial fiat… 

Corporations, cannibalizing the federal budget, legally empower themselves to exploit and pillage. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries can hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Those burdened by student loans can never wipe out the debt by declaring bankruptcy…

Companies have orchestrated free trade deals that destroy small farmers and businesses and deindustrialize the country. Labor unions and government agencies designed to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from usurious creditors and lenders have been defanged…

Much of the press, owned by large corporations, is an echo chamber for the elites. State and city enterprises and utilities are sold to corporations that hike rates and deny services to the poor. The educational system is being slowly privatized and turned into a species of vocational training.  Wages are stagnant or have declined. Unemployment and underemployment—masked by falsified statistics—have thrust half the country into chronic poverty. Social services are abolished in the name of austerity. 

The outward forms of democratic participation—voting, competing political parties, judicial oversight and legislation—are meaningless theater…  The relationship between the state and the citizen who is watched constantly is one of master and slave. And the shackles will not be removed if Trump disappears.

Ah yes, such is the state of the nation.  President Trump did not bring this to America and he may be the only person that can stand in the way of this unholy juggernaut.  But Ryan and Pence’s man Mick Mulvaney has put forth a budget that is a culmination of the financial terror attacks already begun under Bush/Obama.  From Newsweek:

Excerpt:

NEIL BUCHANAN: TRUMP’S HEARTLESS, VICIOUS, RICH MAN’S BUDGET

Before this year, the few of us who had heard of Mick Mulvaney knew only that he was one of the Republican Party’s most extreme anti-government ideologues, a leading Tea Partier who helped to force out John Boehner as Speaker of the House and who was willing to hold the debt ceiling hostage as a means to advance his reactionary agenda.

Now, Mulvaney has been installed as Donald Trump’s budget director and his job is to try to explain to the American people why Trump’s proposed deep cuts in small-but-crucial social programs are the path to economic nirvana and social justice. It is not going well.

This should not be surprising, because the proposed cuts are indefensible, both as a question of economic policy and as a matter of simple morality. What is especially interesting about Mulvaney’s approach so far, however, is that he has decided to try to convince people that he is being “compassionate” even as he proposes to stop feeding hungry people and take away programs on which the most vulnerable Americans rely.

In fact, Mulvaney has turned out to be what we might think of as an even less impressive version of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has been trying for years to dress up harsh cuts to the least fortunate among us as freedom-enhancing, empowering opportunities that will allow people to throw off the shackles of dependency…  Ryan at least has the ability to feign concern while talking about his victims, but Mulvaney has not yet figured out how to furrow his brow and look sincere.

In a recent press conference, Mulvaney tried to defend his proposed budget cuts for such essential programs as Meals on Wheels (a nutritional program for elderly citizens who cannot leave their homes) and subsidized school lunches for poor children. Under questioning about how he could be so lacking in compassion, Mulvaney was unmoved.

Yes the GOP only has compassion for the superrich who fund their campaigns and fill their personal coffers.  But this is nothing new, this started in the 1980’s under St. Ronnie of Reagan.  From Op Ed News:

Excerpt:

The Trump Budget: cuts to the poor fund tax cuts for the rich: neoliberalism on steroids

In the 80's, the Chicago boys and Hayek all traveled to Chile to create the neoliberal model, using brutal force (with thousands killed and disappeared) in the hands of the bloody dictator Pinochet to impose "free market reforms." The result: a human rights catastrophe accompanied by economic collapse and nearly half the population reduced to poverty...and the creation of an instant class of millionaires. The same process was followed in Russia when the drunken dictator Yeltsin brought in conservative, free-market Harvard economists to administer shock therapy.

The result? The creation thru "privatization" or the selling off of public assets at pennies on the dollar to create an instant class of million and billionaires. This was the shortcut to the capital accumulation that is the goal of capitalism. The other result was economic collapse, as Yeltsin shelled Parliament with tanks, banned political parties and critical media, and the GDP fell by 40% and the per capita income fell to a level lower than under Communism, at $2K per year. (Today, after 16 years of Putin's rule, the per capita income is $14K and Russia has bought back many of the assets given away by Yeltsin).

As I am writing this essay, here is the headline from the Washington Post:

"Trump advisers call for privatizing some public assets to build new infrastructure

The Trump administration, determined to overhaul and modernize the nation's infrastructure, is drafting plans to privatize some public assets such as airports, bridges, highway rest stops and other facilities, according to top officials and advisers.

In his proposed budget released Tuesday, President Trump called for spending $200 billion over 10 years to "incentivize" private, state and local spending on infrastructure…

Trump advisers said that to entice state and local governments to sell some of their assets, the administration is considering paying them a bonus."

Almost all roads, bridges and airports are owned by the government, from cities to the Federal government, and airports, for instance, are a source of government revenue which helps keep taxes down. Speaking of keeping taxes down, in the same breath that privatization is being proposed, Trump's economic advisors are considering raising the Federal gasoline tax. The one dollar day tax cuts a median wage earner will get from the Trump tax plan (Trump will get millions) will be eaten up by such tax hikes…

Neolibealism: tax cuts for the rich, cuts in services to the poor, deregulation of banks and corporations, selling of public revenue producing assets to private profit-seeking corporations. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer as public funds are transferred to private pockets.

The Ryan/Pence budget is a prelude to Trump’s impeachment.  The Deep State will not stop until Trump is removed from office, dead or alive.  The Russia investigation is just another step in the process.  From State of the Nation:

Excerpt:

Soft Coup in the Works: Deep State Setting Up Trump for Impeachment

There can be no doubt that Deep State has been using the Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Democratic Party to overthrow the Trump administration since January 20th of 2017.

The agents of Deep State have also been employing all of the worst RINO’s in Congress (e.g. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham) to assist in the unfolding conspiracy to impeach President Donald Trump.  Not a week has passed since Election Day that the MSM hasn’t taken advantage of every opportunity to publish fake news about Trump and/or his key advisors and appointees. 

Truly, no one has ever seen anything like the super-sensational circus that is being staged Inside the Beltway by Deep State—24/7.   Nonetheless, this whole political melodrama is deadly serious … from beginning to end…

There are actually two schemes being executed at once.

The impeachment set-up is quite obvious.  The other much more complex and convoluted conspiracy to inexorably bend the will of the POTUS to the commands of Deep State is far less apparent.  Nevertheless, this is the much “bigger story” which has the potential to send the American Republic into an unprecedented political, social and economic cataclysm…

Every politician has always been at the mercy of the MSM…while the MSM has always been completely controlled by Deep State.  Each and every pol is made or broken with the support or disapproval, respectively, of their local (and worldwide) media.

What Donald Trump has been experiencing is an all-out weekly attack on his presidency, his entire administration and the patriot movement which put him in the White House. Each day brings a new onslaught of false accusations and barrage of fake news.  With each daily news cycle the MSM concocts more false allegations against the president and his surrogates–with seemingly absolute impunity…

Not only has the swamp never seen such a politically unpredictable creature, every swamp monster in Washington and beyond now faces grave danger.

Political death by a thousand cuts

Deep State will not rest until Trump is either completely taken over or overthrown.  The intelligence community has already attempted to take control of him by proxies within his family and inner circle.  Nevertheless, Trump has still quite deftly utilized his wrecking ball to expose (and destroy) the entire political establishment.

Israel’s House of Kushner Now Runs the Trump Administration for the NWO Globalists

Deep State’s response to Trump’s incessant tweeting has been to encourage leaking throughout the West Wing.  In this way TPTB (The Powers That Be) are sending a message: the Executive Branch is literally owned and operated by the U.S. Government, Inc.  The POTUS is merely the CEO and President who serves at the pleasure of the secret (and unaccountable) board of directors…

Ultimately the saboteurs hope for Trump’s political death from within and without… There is no one in his administration who has not already been or who cannot be quickly compromised.  After a critical mass of fabricated trust-busting events takes place, Trump’s political capital will then be expended, even with his base.  This is their plan.

Key Point: The unlawful missile attack against Syria was a stealthily planned war crime that was ordered by President Trump but deliberately engineered by National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster.  Lieutenant General McMaster is not only an active U.S. Army service-member, he is also a longstanding employee of the Military-Industrial Complex.  In that capacity, he is an agent of Deep State who has absolutely no loyalty to Trump, but remains committed to his true masters whose primary objective is maintaining the perpetual war economy…

The much larger issue here is that Deep State is literally everywhere, and, therefore, unbeatable…  Trump has already taken his trusty wrecking ball to once venerated institutions and political brands within Deep State with extraordinary effect.  As follows:

Why did The Powers That Be (TPTB) decide to derisively dump the Clinton crime family, after ignominiously dethroning the Bush political dynasty, during the 2016 campaign season? Even the Obama legacy has been irreparably tainted by WiretapGate, Emailgate and Syriagate, all of which were blown wide open by The Donald.

Additionally, Candidate Trump was permitted to forever wreck and ruin the credibility of the Mainstream Media (MSM) with the searingly accurate label of “fake news”. He also took his wrecking ball to both the Republican Party establishment and the Soros-hijacked Democratic Party. By exposing them both as thoroughly fraudulent institutions that do not work for the American people, he completely wrecked both political brands.

The NWO globalists now work overtime to scuttle Trump’s “Titanic” before it hits the Deep State iceberg.  The globalists know that, with Trump at the helm of the ship of state, the USS Titanic luxury ocean liner might just be an icebreaker in disguise.  And everyone knows that the Russians make the world’s best icebreakers!

Paul Ryan and Mike Pence are agents of the Deep State who are already preparing for the transition after they get rid of Donald Trump.  Nothing is left to chance.  From The Intrepid Report:

Excerpt:

Pence begins presidential campaign unofficially

On Wednesday, May 17, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has built his political career as both a fundamentalist Christian, and a client of the libertarian Koch brothers’ extensive fundraising network, made his unofficial but starting bid to become the U.S. president: he formed an organization to raise funds from billionaires and centi-millionaires, in order for Pence to be able to distribute those wealthy investors’ funds to Republican politicians (especially to ones in the U.S. Senate and House) whom Pence favors, and who might reasonably then be expected to return that favor by their supporting a Pence bid to become the U.S. president…

This type of organization is called a “leadership PAC,” and the donors to it are thereby entrusting to the politician who has formed it that politician’s ability and power to serve as the given donor’s agent to select other politicians to become agents of that given donor—Pence is thus becoming a financial middle-man, to control the distribution of those donors’ cash.

While President Donald Trump’s White House grapples with the fallout from his firing of the former FBI director, Vice President Mike Pence has taken steps to begin building his own political war chest...  There are only two ways in which Pence can replace the current U.S. president, Donald Trump, while Trump is serving his four-year elected term in that office:

The well-known method is by the sitting president’s becoming impeached by 50%+1 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and then actually removed from office by a subsequent two-thirds vote of the members of the U.S. Senate. Of course, Mr. Pence would be helped in this method if some of those members of Congress are partially relying upon Mr. Pence in order to be financially able to retain, or else to become advanced from—such as to become a Cabinet member in a President Pence’s administration—their current office.

The less well-known method is yet more subject to being influenced by the existing holder of the office of the U.S. Vice President; and this is Section 4 of The 25th Amendment, which starts with:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments [i.e., the Cabinet members] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Bingo!  Trump’s entire cabinet was selected by Koch Brothers’ tool Mike Pence who is Vice President.  Pence is already funneling money into Koch loyal congressional members so that when Trump’s cabinet declares he is unable to “discharge of powers and duties of his office” the Koch caucus in congress will, out of loyalty to the Kochs stand with the Vice President.  Game, set, match. 

In other words, the Tea Party’s Mulvaney’s budget is just the beginning of the Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and the GOP’s radical financial terrorist attack against America.  They just need to remove the impediment placed in their way by the American people.  The Trump wrecking ball.



By Patricia Baeten

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The Dominos begin to fall, who’s the real threat Russia or American Intelligence Apparatus?


There comes a time when one must ask, who is a bigger threat to Democracy, Russia or the America intelligence apparatus?  Our out of control spooks need to be reined in.  Russia has for some time now been the only voice of reason over the insane neocon, neoliberal warfare governments that have taken over the West.  The banking cartel lunatics that have seized control over western governments must be stopped.  With the firing of the Deep State’s point man, James Comey the Dominos are beginning to fall and the desperation is setting in.




The CIA’s media whores are peddling lies like they did during the Bush/Obama era with their “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” logic.  To date there has been no evidence of Russian election tampering or of President Trump passing on highly classified information to the Russian ambassador.  The American government is starting to look like a bunch of stooges on the world stage.  From Reuters:

Excerpt:

Putin offers transcript to prove Trump did not pass Russia secrets

Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump had not divulged any secrets during a meeting in Washington with Russian officials and offered to prove it by supplying Congress with a transcript.  But a leading U.S. Republican politician said he would have little faith in any notes Putin might supply.

Two U.S. officials said on Monday Trump had disclosed classified information about a planned Islamic State operation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when they met last week, plunging the White House into a fresh controversy just four months into Trump's tenure…

Putin, who still hopes Moscow can repair battered ties with the United States despite a deepening political scandal in the United States related to Trump's purported Russia ties, said Moscow had rated Lavrov's meeting with Trump highly.  If the Trump administration deemed it appropriate, Putin said Russia could hand over a transcript of Trump's meeting with Lavrov to U.S. lawmakers to reassure them that no secrets were revealed…


Trump is also under pressure over accusations he asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the agency's investigation into the Russia ties of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.  The allegation stems from a memo written by Comey and seen by a source familiar with the contents of the memo.

'EITHER STUPID OR CORRUPT'

Complaining about what he said was "political schizophrenia" in the United States, Putin said Trump was not being allowed to do his job properly.  "It's hard to imagine what else these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next," said Putin, referring to unnamed U.S. politicians.

"What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans. Either they don't understand the damage they're doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt."

No kidding, our government officials that are engaged in a witch-hunt against Donald Trump are both stupid and dangerously corrupt.   They, along with the CIA’s disinformation arm at the Washington Post and New York Times have zero credibility.  From World Socialist Website:

Excerpt:

Media claims Trump revealed classified information to Russian visitors

The incident, assuming it is accurately reported and not a piece of deliberate disinformation from the US intelligence apparatus, suggests, among other things, that at least one country allied with Washington still maintains friendly relations with ISIS. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar come to mind…

No significant evidence has yet been produced to substantiate claims that the Russian government was responsible for the hacking of materials subsequently published by WikiLeaks. Nor has there been any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.  The anti-Russia campaign has been launched in opposition to Trump’s initial suggestions of a more cooperative relationship with Moscow, including a pullback from efforts to overthrow Assad in Syria, to focus more military resources on China and East Asia…

From the standpoint of the deepening US political crisis, the main question raised by the Post report is how details of a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office made its way to the newspaper. The most likely sources are the CIA and NSA…

In other words, the newspaper chose to enlist in the ranks of the military-intelligence officials waging political warfare against Trump.

Our “elected” officials are working against our President just like they did during the Clinton Administration.  Our country is run by a shadow government run by our spy agencies, particularly the CIA who isn’t accountable to anyone.   The fact that our president, after meeting with Russian officials behind closed doors is being sabotaged by the media on behalf of the CIA shows how dangerous the CIA has become.  From Russia Today:

Excerpt:

CIA is world’s most dangerously incompetent spy agency – Assange

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has described the CIA as “dangerously incompetent,” in response to the US agency branding him a “friend of terrorists.” The war of words started after RT asked the CIA to comment on reports of its hacking exploits.

“Dictators and terrorists have no better friend in the world than Julian Assange, as theirs is the only privacy he protects,” CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak told RT in an email.

The scathing response came after RT asked the CIA to comment on the assessment of former agency analyst Ray McGovern. He suggested that the capability to falsify digital fingerprints, exposed by WikiLeaks as part of its ongoing Vault 7 disclosure, cast doubt on allegations against Russia in connection with the 2016 US presidential election.

“Could it be that the ‘Russian hack’ was really done by John Brennan of the CIA? If I were asked to bet on that, then I would bet that that was exactly the case,” McGovern told RT’s Going Underground program.

“What does that mean? It means that these trumped-up charges against Trump, pardon the pun, are baseless,” McGovern added…

“The CIA is the world’s most dangerously incompetent spy agency. It has armed terrorists, destroyed democracies and installed and maintained dictatorships the world over,” he said in an email. “There are good men and women at the CIA but if our publications are any guide they work for WikiLeaks.”

CIA spokesperson Horniak also lashed out at RT for questioning the allegations of Russia’s interference in the US election.

“The responsibility of the Russian intelligence services for the election-related hacking is an established fact, but it is not surprising that an identified propaganda outlet like RT would attempt to muddle those facts. No reputable news organization doubts Russian culpability,” Horniak claimed.

Anyone who questions the “anonymous” sources that provide the sketchy information behind the Russia-Trump allegations are immediately attacked by the media.  On Tucker Carlson’s show Tuesday evening Tucker played a clip as an example of the unhinged CNN moderator screaming at her guest for questioning the veracity of using unnamed sources. 



CNN has become notorious for promoting CIA and FBI lies as news and attacking anyone who dares question their reportage.  But there are many voices in the wilderness calling them out for their bias and hatred toward Donald Trump.  Roger Stone who was an advisor to Trump wrote an excellent piece for Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

The CIA’s Legacy of Lies

The recent announcement that the Trump Justice Department is considering indicting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for release and publication of materials obtained by federal whistle blowers is contrary to the position of President Donald Trump who said, “I love WikiLeaks”, during the Fall campaign.

As I wrote last week the troubling comments made by Director of Central Intelligence Mike Pompeo could be a troubling sign that the same intelligence agency involved an illegal leaking of surveillance regarding General Flynn is out to destabilize President Trump.

These damn agencies lead the charge for the limited air strike in Syria and worked with their allies in the military to push the president to put 150,000 troops in Syria. They are also responsible for the leak to the NYT on Jan 20 on which Washington Post Reports that Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Carter Page were all subject to NSA ordered FBI surveillance. There is no evidence that either Stone or Manafort colluded with the Russian State…

Acting on faulty intelligence endorsed by Director Pompeo, the President has now violated international law, the UN Charter and the War Powers Agreement with Congress… But not only is the public shortchanged by an agency that all-too-often misses either the boat or gets things wrong, its operations around the world have gone far beyond the scope of its charter. The agency is out of control.

Even Harry Truman, who signed The National Security Act in 1947, concluded that creating the CIA had been his most grievous mistake, the American people need to know the kinds of actions that the agency has taken that are not only violate the sovereignty of other nations but subvert the ideas of the United States itself. Its actions have been primarily responsible for the wide-spread belief that America is “the greatest terrorist state” in the world.

We can far more easily replace an incompetent director than we can constrain its pernicious influence in other nations. The CIA has become the most effective instrument for subverting freedom and democracy in the name of “freedom and democracy” the world has ever seen and has permanently tarnished the image of the USA, which virtually everyone but the American public understands…

Once again, the controlling media does its best to manage public perceptions, which continues to this day. With Donald Trump in the White House, many of his supporters, myself included, had high expectations that the “Deep State” would be cut down to size—and, indeed, in some respects, it has been. But appointments like that of new CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, indicate that nothing has really changed…  If we want to do better, we are going to have to get rid of the forces that control us. The CIA would be a good place to start.

Scathing rebuke of the CIA by Roger Stone.  All of this baloney about Russia and Trump is fabricated by the intelligence apparatus to preserve their own status.  Former Representative Ron Paul is calling for the destruction of the spy apparatus.  From Free Thought Project:

Excerpt:

Ron Paul: Comey was a Good Start — Now Fire the Entire FBI

Lamenting the degree to which Comey’s termination has been politicized by media pundits and Washington pols, Paul implored the need for critical thinking on the matter, asking the nation to consider several imperatives.  “What is the purpose of the FBI? And are they fulfilling a purpose?” Dr. Paul rhetorically asks Daniel McAdams for the Liberty Report...

Further still, is the existence of an organization “investigating and spying on everybody” in the country even necessary — let alone, justifiable?  With around 35,000 agents at its disposal — enough to populate a small city — the agency has mushroomed to proportions unnecessary for a nation virtually devoid of terrorism or other constant, existential threats…

Discussing the State’s propaganda machine, Dr. Paul emphasizes that what’s typically termed ‘spin’ in actuality, “it’s mostly flat-out lying when they lie us into war,” as has been the case in Syria and a lengthy list of other zones of conflict with U.S. military involvement…

“You know, the founders warned against a standing army,” Dr. Paul affirms, “and I think … we have the standing army. We have the nationalization of the police force. And the FBI has thirty-five thousand in their ‘army’…

Dr. Paul asks, “And what do they do? We end up losing. We’re supposed to be fighting and getting involved to protect our Constitution and our liberties.”  But that isn’t what the FBI does — its collection of information on American citizens and leaders runs in direct contradiction to the supposed protection of freedoms with which such an organization ostensively began. 

As Paul and McAdams continue the discussion, the insidious nature of the modern FBI is made apparent, between spying and data collection, to the creation of a climate of fear — where a pro-war, pro-U.S. interventionist belief system equivocates laudable patriotism — and civilians blindly accept whatever narrative the government puts forth, no matter the consequences to liberty and innate rights.

“I would not be upset if we didn’t have an FBI,” Dr. Paul opines.

It is high time America review the intelligence apparatus that has become so powerful that it no longer functions in a way that is good for America.  Now we see in the WashingtonTimes that the FBI tried to bribe a Russian in their crosshairs to confess to hacking the DNC on Putin’s orders:

Excerpt:

Russian charged with breaching U.S. firms says FBI attempted to coerce confession over Clinton hack

A Russian man wanted by the Justice Department on charges connected to hacking U.S. companies now claims the FBI offered him immunity in exchange for accepting responsibility for cyberattacks targeting former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Yevgeny Nikulin, the alleged hacker, laid the claim to Russian media Thursday in a letter sent from a Czech Republic prison cell amid an international extradition battle currently underway between Washington and Moscow.

FBI agents promised Mr. Nikulin money, American citizenship and a free apartment for taking the fall over hacking Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, he alleged in a letter published Thursday by Nastoyashchoe Vremya, a Russian-language website.

“[They told me:] you will have to confess to breaking into Clinton’s inbox for [President Trump] on behalf of [Russian President Vladimir Putin],” Mr. Nikulin wrote, as translated by The Moscow Times…

The FBI declined to comment.

FBI agents asked Mr. Nikulin to admit hacking Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, Democratic Party computers and American polling stations “on Putin’s orders,” he wrote. In exchange, he alleges, the FBI said he’d be extradited to the U.S. but ultimately given money, citizenship and a free apartment.

Looks like the FBI creates a crime then looks for a patsy to take the fall.  But wait a minute, what’s this?  From Newsweek:

Excerpt:

FBI ACTING DIRECTOR ANDREW MCCABE ALSO BEING INVESTIGATED OVER CLINTON EMAILS

Following President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, Andrew McCabe, the deputy director, will temporarily lead the bureau. The president dismissed Comey because of his handling of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, according to a memorandum by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but McCabe is also under scrutiny for his involvement in the Clinton emails matter.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General announced in January that in response to requests from members of Congress, organizations and the public, it was opening a review of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton matter. Among the aspects that the office said it would review were “allegations that the FBI deputy director should have been recused from participating in certain investigative matters.”

Those concerns came after revelations by media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, that a political action committee affiliated with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, contributed almost $500,000 to the 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe. (She lost the election.) She also received $207,788 from the Virginia Democratic Party, which is connected to McAuliffe, a Democrat.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, wrote a letter to Comey on March 28 expressing concerns about McCabe’s involvement in the Clinton emails matter, given the donations that his wife received. “These circumstances undermine public confidence in the FBI’s impartiality,” Grassley wrote. 

And then there’s this article in the Washington Post:

Excerpt:

Justice Department inspector general to investigate pre-election actions by department and FBI

The Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky explains why the Department of Justice is opening a new inquiry into FBI Director James B. Comey and how he handled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s email practices.

The Justice Department inspector general will review broad allegations of misconduct involving FBI Director James B. Comey and how he handled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s email practices, the inspector general announced Thursday.

The investigation will be wide-ranging, encompassing Comey’s various letters and public statements on the matter and whether FBI or other Justice Department employees leaked nonpublic information, according to Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

The inspector general’s announcement drew praise from those on both sides of the political aisle and again put a spotlight on Comey, who emerged as a controversial figure during the 2016 race. Democrats, including Clinton, have blamed the FBI director for the Democratic candidate’s loss, arguing that the renewed email inquiry and Comey’s public missives on the eve of the election blunted her momentum…

Comey has also been criticized for months by former Justice Department officials for violating the department’s policy of avoiding any action that could affect a candidate close to an election. President-elect Donald Trump has notably declined to commit to keeping the FBI director.

“This is highly encouraging and to be expected given Director Comey’s drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol,” Fallon said. “A probe of this sort, however long it takes to conduct, is utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the FBI’s reputation as a non-partisan institution.”

As I previously stated, there comes a time when one must ask, who is a bigger threat to our Democracy, Russia or the America intelligence apparatus?  There can be no doubt that our intelligence agencies are out of control and instead of preserving our freedoms are undermining our Democracy.  Russia did not hack our election nor did Russia in any way affect the outcome of the election.  The Dominos are falling and hopefully there will be a major overhaul of our intelligence apparatus who only serve the Deep State and the banking cartels. 



By Patricia Baeten

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The firing of FBI Director James Comey sends Democrats to the fainting couches


Dripping with hypocrisy Senate minority leader Senator Chuck Schumer demanded a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the firing of disgraced FBI Director, James Comey.  Schumer claims Comey was fired due to his investigation of collusion of Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.  Those claims have been made since Hillary Clinton, who ran the most hapless campaign in recent history, lost the election.  To date absolutely no evidence of Russian tampering has been revealed.   Now the Democrats, who themselves had called for the resignation of Comey, are heading for the fainting couches crying out for a special prosecutor. 


What is truly shocking is not that Comey wasn’t fired sooner, but why he was named FBI Director in the first place.  From LaRouche Pac.

Excerpt:

More Obama-HSBC Collusion: Obama Picked FBI Director Comey from HSBC Executives

Not only is the Attorney General of the United States, Lorretta Lynch, the US Attorney who gave drug money laundering bank, HSBC, a free pass with a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, but the head of the FBI, James Comey, was plucked by Obama from a plum job at HSBC, which Comey took in January, 2013, just after HSBC got the deferred prosecution deal. Comey's job for HSBC was as a leading member of the bank's “Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee,” formed immediately after HSBC settled with the federal government for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for the deadly Mexican drug cartels.

Get it? The Attorney General of the US and the head of the US FBI are both part of the deal that let HSBC off the hook.

In addition, Stuart Levey, Obama's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for administering sanctions against terrorist supporters and closing off terrorist and criminal money laundering left the Obama administration to become HSBC's Chief Legal Officer, a top position in the London headquarters along with the board of Directors.

As reported in the EIR article, "Obama Kills Again: The Case of HSBC," reported on Feb. 22 by the British Daily Mail, could blow open the secret findings of the "Monitor," Michael Cherkasky,

The Mail says that Cherkasky's findings could "In the worse case scenario" cause HSBC "lose its banking license in the US." The paper says that HSBC's annual report released last week "revealed that an independent monitor installed by the US government had flagged up significant concerns" about measures that HSBC is supposed to take to "fight crime." Cherkasky "also refused to sign off on its efforts to improve compliance," with US federal law, the Mail said.

Hmm, maybe a special prosecutor isn’t a bad idea, seems the Democrats are on to something.  Why would Obama appoint someone so utterly unqualified and compromised to lead the FBI in the first place?  Seems to me a special prosecutor should follow the money, all the way to London.  From The Daily Mail last February:

Excerpt:

Why Cherie's bank is still a haven for crooks: HSBC reveals 'monitor' installed by the US after it was fined £1.1bn for money laundering has flagged 'concerns at pace of progress'

·        It is revealed Britain's biggest bank, HSBC, is still being used by criminals 
·        In the worse case scenario HSBC could lose its banking licence in the US
·        Monitor found ‘instances of potential crime’ and ‘deficiencies’ in systems

Britain's biggest bank is still being used by criminals – almost four years after it was fined £1.1billion for money laundering.  HSBC yesterday revealed that an independent ‘monitor’ installed by the US government had flagged up ‘significant concerns about the pace of progress’ fighting crime.

In the worst case scenario, the bank could now face restrictions on its ability to process US dollar payments through America or could even lose its banking licence in the US.  The damning revelations – contained in the high street giant’s annual report – emerged days after its involvement in a murky deal between the corrupt Maldives government and Cherie Blair was exposed by the Daily Mail.

MPs have called for an investigation into HSBC, and suggested that the payment should have been blocked by its anti-money laundering systems.  HSBC – the bank used by Mrs Blair’s law firm Omnia Strategy – accepted a £210,000 payment from a suspected conman and terrorist for its work for the Maldives’ autocratic president, Abdulla Yameen.

The transaction, which landed in Omnia Strategy’s HSBC bank account last September, was routed via a clothing import export business in Male, the Maldives capital.  HSBC said the monitor – former New York prosecutor Michael Cherkasky – had found ‘instances of potential financial crime’ and ‘deficiencies’ in systems set up by the bank to combat money laundering and other wrongdoing…

The lender caused further anger as it announced that it made a £13.2billion profit last year and dished out £2.4billion in bonuses to staff.  Some 453 staff around the world received more than 1million euros – £780,000 – including HSBC’s chief executive Stuart Gulliver, who received a £7.3million pay package…

HSBC was fined £1.1billion in the US in 2012 after being caught laundering billions of pounds for Mexican drugs cartels and rogue states.   Its systems were so lax that US lawmakers said the lender became the ‘bank of choice’ for drug dealers. As part of the settlement with the US government, HSBC entered a five-year ‘deferred prosecution agreement’…

My, my, my.  Me thinks the Democrats protest too much.  Why are the Dems so outraged that Obama’s handpicked FBI Director got shit canned?  Why were there no cries for a special prosecutor to look into the Obama Administration along with Comey and Lynch giving HSBC a complete pass even after Obama’s handpicked monitor in London, Cherkasky was aware of the money laundering still going on in Omnia Strategies HSBC accounts?  And HSBC isn’t the only bankster getting away with murder, there’s Goldman Sachs.  From New York Times last year:

Excerpt:

Federal Reserve Fines Goldman Sachs $36 Million in Document Leak

The Federal Reserve took action on Wednesday against Goldman Sachs and one of its former executives, escalating a long-running investigation into a leak of confidential government information.  The action, which forced Goldman to pay a $36.3 million penalty, stemmed from an incident in 2014, when a junior Goldman banker took confidential information from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The junior banker, whom Goldman promptly fired, received the information from a New York Fed employee.

Both men pleaded guilty to stealing government property, and Goldman paid a $50 million penalty to New York State regulators because its “management failed to effectively supervise” the banker.  The Fed did not act against Goldman at the time, making its decision to pursue Goldman now a somewhat unusual move. The action, which cites Goldman for an “unauthorized use and disclosure of confidential supervisory information,” is also an awkward one for the Fed.

The leak, after all, originated at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with one of its own employees. And the junior Goldman banker who received the confidential information was a former New York Fed employee himself. Goldman, not the New York Fed, was the one to uncover the leak…

The Fed’s case against Goldman, the details of which were reported last week by The New York Times, centers on what could have been a regulatory gold mine. The confidential information, the Fed said, included reports of bank examinations and other “confidential reports prepared by banking regulators.”

The documents effectively provided Goldman with a window into the Fed’s private insights about regulatory matters. And the bank, the Fed said, used the information in presentations to current and prospective clients “in an effort to solicit business.”

Where was Wall Street’s Senator Schumer then?  Why wasn’t Schumer calling for a special prosecutor?  Where was FBI Director James Comey?  And if that weren’t damning enough there’s Comey’s abysmal record of combatting domestic terrorism.  From Grabien:
Excerpt:

10 MAJOR FBI SCANDALS ON COMEY'S WATCH
The FBI interviewed almost every terrorist who successfully struck America

Here are 10 of Comey's biggest embarrassments at the FBI:

1.      Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again.

2.     Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found).

3.     The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban -- but didn't intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented.

4.     During the Obama Administration, the FBI claimed that two private jets were being used primarily for counterterrorism, when in fact they were mostly being used for Eric Holder and Robert Mueller's business and personal travel.

5.     When the FBI demanded Apple create a "backdoor" that would allow law enforcement agencies to unlock the cell phones of various suspects, the company refused, sparking a battle between the feds and America's biggest tech company. What makes this incident indicative of Comey's questionable management of the agency is that: a) The FBI jumped the gun, as they were indeed ultimately able to crack the San Bernardino terrorist's phone, and b) Almost every other major national security figure sided with Apple (from former CIA Director General Petraeus to former CIA Director James Woolsey to former director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden), warning that such a "crack" would inevitably wind up in the wrong hands. 

6.     In 2015, the FBI conducted a controversial raid on a Texas political meeting, finger printing, photographing, and seizing phones from attendees (some in the group believe in restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic).

7.      During its investigation into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified material, the FBI made an unusual deal in which Clinton aides were both given immunity and allowed to destroy their laptops.

8.     The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son's radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview.

9.     The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen -- during which Mateen admitting lying to agents -- the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case. 

10.  CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the "Draw Muhammad" event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming, but actually had an undercover agent traveling with the Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. The FBI has refused to comment on why the agent on the scene did not intervene during the attack.

The cavalcade of Comey’s incompetence and possible malfeasance has never been questioned by members of congress.  Terror attack after terror attack by people known to the FBI were allowed to happen and no called for a special prosecutor, ever.  And again, Comey lied to congress last week when testifying about Huma Abedine forwarding thousands Hillary Clinton e-mails.  From ProPublica:

Excerpt:

James Comey’s Testimony on Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate

Update, May 9, 2017: On Tuesday, the FBI sent a letter to Congress correcting inaccurate congressional testimony by Director James Comey, six days after he mischaracterized what the FBI discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. The bureau addressed the matter in a two-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee from its congressional liaison, explaining that it was “intended to supplement” Comey’s testimony, by providing “the full context of what was reviewed and found on the laptop.”

In it, the FBI acknowledged that only a “small number” of more than 49,000 “potentially relevant” emails found on Weiner’s laptop had been forwarded from Clinton deputy Huma Abedin to Weiner, her husband, not hundreds or thousands as Comey had stated. The FBI said just two of those messages contained classified information.

The letter was issued shortly before Donald Trump issued his own letter firing Comey, accompanied by a Justice Department memo detailing the FBI director’s “serious mistakes” in handling the Clinton email investigation.

Oh, the horror of it all.  The Democrats hope to use the firing of Obama’s man Comey to railroad Trump into impeachment hearings.  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Undemocratic Democrats Hope to Oust Trump the Way Watergate Toppled Nixon

They want him hounded and railroaded from office for the wrong reasons. Claiming Russian US election hacking on his behalf isn’t working, but the phony accusation persists, bashing Moscow and Trump at the same time.  On Wednesday, Dems got another issue with Comey’s sacking, calling it Nixonian, equating it to Watergate, comparing it to the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, hoping their arguments stick.

Senator Richard Blumenthal and other Democrats called for a special prosecutor after Comey’s firing, wanting an independent investigation into nonexistent Russian US election hacking.  “The first question the administration has to answer is why now,” Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer roared! “Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president,” he added?

“The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation is for it to be led by a fearless, independent special prosecutor” - ignoring months of intelligence community investigations discovering nothing.  Democrat Senator Mark Warner blustered the same way, saying “(o)ur investigation is more important than ever. We need a special prosecutor…and we need this Senate investigation to go full steam ahead.”

Notorious rabble-rousing con man Senator Bernie Sanders, his soul for sale at the right price, in lockstep with imperial wars, NATO’s killing machine, Israeli apartheid, Wall Street, war-profiteers, regressive trade deals, along with shameless Russia and Iran bashing claimed sacking Comey “raises serious questions about what (Trump) is hiding.”

“Why did (he) fire the person leading the investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government,” he blustered?  Calling him “Nixonian,” Sanders shamelessly accused him of “repeatedly tak(ing) steps to kill inquiries into Russia’s involvement in the US election.”

“It is clear that whomever President Trump handpicks to lead the FBI will not be able to objectively carry out this investigation. We need an independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”  There are none. No Russian US election hacking occurred. Sanders irresponsibly bashes Russia like most others in Washington - backing up criticism with nothing, no evidence of any improprieties or wrongdoing…

Dems likely intend using Comey’s firing as an issue to continue bashing Trump - for the wrong reasons instead of the right ones.

Senator Chuck Schumer and the indignant Democrats demand a special prosecutor to look into the firing of James Comey and Russian collusion with Trump.  I agree, let’s have a special prosecutor to look into the many collusions between the Obama Administration, James Comey, Loretta Lynch and HSBC Bank’s money laundering and terrorist financing.  As Obama rakes in millions in speaking fees from the very banks he let off the hook, the Democrats can only cry and head for the fainting couches.  Sad day in America.



By Patricia Baeten

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Trump restocking the swamp one bankster at a time


President Donald Trump campaigned on a platform to restore power to the people.  He claimed to be a champion of the working people who have been pillaged by the Deep State since 2000.  Trump declared that under his tutelage the rich, including himself would pay their fair share of taxes and that he would extract America from wars that ensure the existence of the Federal Reserve Bank. 


Candidate Trump barnstormed across the country endearing himself to the long suffering every man, promising to drain the swamp of the bottom feeders who have enslaved them.  Now President Trump is restocking the swamp one bankster at a time.  From Mike Adams at Natural News:

Excerpt:

$1 trillion budget deal confirms America’s horrifying swamptopian future, hopelessly beyond the zenith of reform or reason

(Natural News) It’s over for America. The “hail Mary” Trump revolution has been suffocated by a hoard of spineless, incompetent corporate prostitutes known as “Congress.”  The $1 trillion spending bill now nearing final approval in Washington D.C. proves beyond any doubt that Washington cannot be fixed by Washington.  It is beyond reform… and beyond the hope of even the most optimistic.

The corruption is so deeply ingrained in the system that even well-meaning individuals like Rand Paul are overrun by the swamp monsters who dominate the establishment. Republican or Democrat, it’s all one big, fat, corrupt party now: THE PARTY OF BIG GOVERNMENT…

No matter who we elect, no matter what the intention of the new people going into the system, the swamp suffocates the good intentions out of them, turning even the most well-meaning individuals into war mongers, statists and betrayers of the American people…. 

We’ve all been conned yet again, which frankly isn’t that surprising. Our election of Donald Trump was primarily an effort to block the coronation of Hillary Clinton, who would have terminated the Republic as we know it today and gutted the Bill of Rights. Most of us strongly suspected Trump was walking into a cesspool of corruption and incompetence, and now we know for sure just how impossible it will ever be to drain the swamp at all…

What Trump’s victory and subsequent swampification has demonstrated beyond all doubt is that it doesn’t matter whom we elect, because the swamp is more powerful than any candidate. Even the most well-meaning individual who dares to enter the swamp becomes subsumed by it, fighting for air while being drowned by the sheer mass of the swamp creatures who inhabit the murky waters…  America’s swamptopian future will be bathed in misery unless the swamp can be defeated…

Notably, I do not place the blame for all this at Trump’s feet…  Now, the swamp monsters themselves are so far beyond recognition that they don’t even appear to be of human origin. They have transformed into wretched creatures of the corporate elite, sucking off the teats of corporate power while thrashing violently at the edges of the swamp, ensnaring well-meaning legislators into their sticky tentacles.

Mike Adams is right the swamp creatures cannot reform themselves they are too far gone.  As Dr. Paul Craig Roberts puts it “AmericanDemocracy is dead man walking.”

Excerpt:

American Democracy: A Dead Man Walking

Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is instructive. We have now had a Democratic president who sold out the people who elected him and a Republican president who has done the same thing. This is a very interesting point, the meaning of which most people miss.

But not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western democracy, which I paraphrase as follows:

In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent.

People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frustrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with propaganda to support more wars.

Obama promised to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq or perhaps it was both. He promised to reverse the police state created by the George W. Bush regime. He promised to focus American resources on American domestic problems, such as health care.

But what did he do? He expanded the wars and launched new ones, destroyed Libya and attempted to destroy Syria…  Obama overthrew democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine. He expanded the police state…  He betrayed the American people again by allowing the private insurance industry to write his health care plan known as Obamacare. The private interests wrote a plan that diverts public monies from health care to their profits…

All of this is forgotten when the ruling elites and the presstitutes that serve only them refocused the demonization on Trump. Suddenly, it was the president-elect of the United States who was the main danger to the US and the American people…

Trump succumbed to pressure and sacrificed his National Security Advisor, who was supportive of Trump’s promise to normalize relations with Russia. Trump replaced him with a Russophobic idiot who apparently cannot wait to see mushroom clouds over cities all over the Western world…

Why did two presidents in succession completely sell out the people who voted for them?

The answer is that presidents are not as powerful as the interest groups who make the decisions.

So let’s take a look at the swamp monster banksters who are running the Trump Administration.  Where better to start than with my favorite writer on the subject Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:

Excerpt:

Man Trump Named to Fix Mortgage Markets Figured in Infamous Financial Crisis Episode

Former Morgan Stanley banker once dumped "shitbag" CDOs on clients

In early 2007, a group of Morgan Stanley bankers bundled a group of subprime mortgage instruments into a package they hoped to sell to investors. The only problem was, they couldn't come up with a name for the package of mortgage-backed derivatives, which they all knew were doomed.

The bankers decided to play around with potential names. In a series of emails back and forth, they suggested possibilities. "Jon is voting for 'Hitman,'" wrote one. "How about 'Nuclear Holocaust 2007-1?'" wrote another, adding a few more possible names: Shitbag, Mike Tyson's Punchout and Fludderfish.

Eventually they stopped with the comedy jokes, gave the pile of "nuclear" assets a more respectable name – "Stack" – and sold the $500 million Collateralized Debt Obligation with a straight face to the China Development Industrial Bank. Within three years, the bank was suing a series of parties, including Morgan Stanley, to recover losses from the toxic fund.

The name on the original registration document for Stack? Craig S. Phillips, then president of Morgan Stanley's ABS (Asset-Backed Securities) division…

This is just another detail in the emerging absurd narrative that is Donald Trump naming Phillips, of all people, to head up the effort to reform the Government-Sponsored Entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As ace investigative reporter Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times noted in a piece back on April 7th, Phillips headed a division that sold billions of dollars of mortgage-backed investments to Fannie and Freddie. Many of those investments were as bad as the ones his unit sold to the Chinese. In fact, as Morgenson noted, Phillips became a named defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), which essentially charged, as the Chinese did, that MORGAN STANLEY KNOWINGLY SOLD FANNIE AND FREDDIE A PILE OF CRAP.

Morgan Stanley ended up having to pay $625 million apiece to Fannie and Freddie to settle securities fraud charges in that case.

Phillips worked in an area of investment banking that was highly lucrative and highly predatory. The basic scam in the subprime world in particular was buying up mortgages from people who couldn't possibly afford them, making those bad mortgages into securities, and then turning around and hawking those same mortgages to unsuspecting institutional dopes like the Chinese and Fannie and Freddie.

Phillips had a critical role in this activity. As Morgan Stanley's ABS chief, he was among other things responsible for liaising with fly-by-night subprime mortgage lenders like New Century, who fanned into low-income neighborhoods and handed out subprime mortgages to anyone with a pulse…

Of those bad actors, there is a subset of still-worse actors, who not only sold these toxic investments to institutional investors like pension funds and Fannie and Freddie, but helped get a generation of home borrowers – often minorities and the poor – into deadly mortgages that ended up wiping out their equity.

Phillips, who helped Fannie and Freddie into substantial losses and worked with predatory firms like New Century, belongs in this second category. As Beavis and Butthead would put it, Phillips comes from the "ass of the ass."

Yes, another bankster swamp monster at the ready to begin the great heist of American Treasury 2.0.  With Phillips, who Matt Taibbi classifies as “in the category of the ass of the ass” in charge of Fanny and Freddie we can expect another mortgage bailout.  Maybe the swamp monsters can learn a lesson from Canada, who is going through a mortgage implosion right now.  From Natural News:

Excerpt:

Of Bunkers, Bankers and Black Swans

A calm surface is exactly what Black Swans like to land on, though by definition we will not know they’re out there until our reveries are broken by the sound of wings flapping. Some kind of dirty bird showed up on Canada’s thawing pond last week when that country’s biggest home loan lender suffered a 60 percent pukage of shareholder equity and had to be bailed out — not by the Canadian government directly, but by the Ontario Province’s Health Care Workers Pension Fund, a neat bit of hocus pocus that amounts to a one-year emergency loan at ten percent interest.

If that’s a way for insolvent public employee pension plans to find enough “yield” to meet their obligations, then maybe that could be the magic bullet for the USA’s foundering pension funds. The next time Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and friends get a case of the Vapors, let them be bailed out by the Detroit School Bus Drivers’ Pension Fund at ten percent interest. That ought to work. And let Calpers take care of Wells Fargo.

The situation across Western Civilization is as follows: virtually every major financial institution has become a check-kiting operation or a Ponzi scheme, and we’ve reached the point where they can only pretend to be rescued. Bailout or not, the Toronto-based Home Capital Group is still stuck with shit-loads of non-performing sub-prime mortgage loans — its specialty — and Canada’s spectacular real estate bubble has hardly begun to pop. The collateral is starting to turn, like dead meat in the May sunshine, and the odium will waft across the border.

It doesn’t take much to blow things up, as the world discovered in several other historically recent episodes.

The 1998 banking contagion started with the collapse of Thailand’s currency, called the baht. I doubt you could count on one hand the number of people in Wall Street or the Federal Reserve (with its 300-plus PhD economists) who gave a flying fuck about the Thai baht. Before you knew it, South Korea and Indonesia started whirling around the drain. And then Russia felt the suck.

And then the Nobel Prize winning economists at a Connecticut hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management found out the hard way that their “secret sauce” investment formula which “could not fail in the life of this universe or several like it,” fatally poisoned its balance sheet on a repast of Russian sovereign bonds after only about eighteen months. And it took all the poobahs of American banking to paper over the firm’s death about five minutes before the global banking system would shut down via the greatest daisy chain of cross-collateralized financial booby-traps ever assembled.

And ten years later, there was the fiasco of 2008, starring Lehman Brothers and a demonic host of grifters trafficking in worthless bonded debt around the sub-prime mortgage racket tied into a toxic web of “derivative financial products” — i.e. bad bets between insolvent counter-parties masquerading as “insurance” against unsound investment. Trillions of bailout monies conjured out of thin air fixed that, oh yes it did!

So enjoy the festivities around the Maypole today, and the suddenly calm waters of global affairs, and keep your ears pricked for the sound of wings flapping.

Now the same swamp monsters are crafting another budget busting $1-7 trillion dollar tax cut for their bankster masters.  The money is flowing and the good times are here for the fat cats that is.  From Truthout:

Excerpt:

Another GOP Tax Plan for Captains of Industry

As he ran for office, Donald Trump repeatedly reminded audiences that he was "really, really rich," but assured voters that as president he would be a working man's champion, a blue-collar Superman.

He said he would stop corporations from offshoring manufacturing jobs with a border adjustment tax on imports. He would end trade cheating and declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. He would launch within his first 100 days a $1 trillion infrastructure improvement program to create millions of jobs fixing the nation's airports, bridges and roads.

Trump's record of promise-keeping to America's working men and women in his first 100 days is this: So far, no good…

The tax plan rewards the captains of industry, the captains of Wall Street, the captains of real estate, like, well, like Trump himself. But the middle class, not so fast. The poor, not at all. Someone needs to tell Donald Trump that banksters and real estate tycoons sporting navy golf polos aren't blue-collar workers. The tax scheme, like so many of Trump's other pledges to workers, is a stab in the back of that indigo shirt.

On the campaign trail, Trump said rich people like him should pay more in taxes. Yet, the tax plan he offered last week would cut his taxes -- by tens of millions a year. That's because it would eliminate the alternative minimum tax. This is a levy intended to require billionaires like Trump to pay at least something after subtracting their multitude of special-rich-people deductions.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns -- the first American president to keep them secret since Gerald Ford, who provided summaries. But Trump's 2005 return, uncovered in part by a newspaper, shows that he had to pay $31 million as a result of the alternative minimum tax.

Trump's plan also calls for eliminating the estate tax. That is paid only by people who inherit more than $5.5 million -- as Trump's children will. And it calls for cutting by more than half, to 15 percent, the tax paid by entities called pass-through corporations. Trump's attorneys indicated in his presidential financial disclosures that his approximately 500 businesses are almost all pass-throughs…  A 2015 study by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research found that the top 1 percent gets 69 percent of pass-through income.

Right now, a worker can't get in on that low 15 percent tax rate unless reporting income below $37,950. But doctors and lawyers and investment bankers would get that special discount rate, no matter how much they make, as long as they pay a few bucks to establish a pass-through corporation. Trump's plan would allow a lawyer paid $1 million a year to cut his taxes by $180,000 by setting up a pass-through.

Certainly, with all of those perks going to the nation's most wealthy, Trump's tax men would assure workers that they will benefit too.

Not really. When asked on ABC's "Good Morning America" last week whether the middle class would pay more under the plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: "I can't make any guarantees."

And the director of Trump's National Economic Council, Gary D. Cohn, could not say how much of a break -- if any­ -- a middle-income American would get under the plan.

Trump's money men, Mnuchin and Cohn, said slashing levies on the wealthy will pay for itself because giving the rich more cash will spur economic growth. So, no need to worry about Trump's tax cuts ballooning the national debt, they assured…

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it this way: "It seems the administration is using economic growth like magic beans: the cheap solution to all our problems."

Ronald Reagan, who like Trump was adored by blue-collar workers, promised that benefits from his massive tax cuts for the rich would trickle down to the rest. That never worked. But now Trump is taking advice from the same Svengali and promoting the same flim-flam plan.

Those heartland workers can't tolerate another hit. But it's not just taxes. The health insurance proposal Trump is pushing would cost many low- and middle-income workers thousands of dollars more a year.

It now costs a billion dollars to run a two-year presidential campaign controlled by billionaires.  After the billionaires’ handmaiden presidents leave office their largess awaits them.  From Cal Thomas at USA Today:

Excerpt:

Cal Thomas: Exploiting the presidency

Every president since Nixon has used the office as a stepping stone to great wealth. Ronald Reagan was paid $2 million for two speeches in Japan. George W. Bush has made an estimated 200 speeches since leaving office, some to benefit wounded warriors and others to benefit himself. Bush once told The New York Times, "I don't know how much my dad gets, but it's more than 50, 75 thousand dollars a speech." According to Politico, Bush 43 makes between $100,000 and $175,000 per appearance.

Then there are the Clintons, who took post-presidential moneymaking to new heights (or depths, depending on your perspective).

Now comes former President Barack Obama, who is receiving $400,000 for a one-hour speech at a conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street firm. Like his Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded soon after he took office with no accomplishments to warrant it, Obama is getting the money primarily for his celebrity, not his deeds.  

As Time magazine noted, "Obama's annual presidential pension is $205,700," which is what the other living ex-presidents get. Like the others, Obama will receive subsidies for travel, office staff and supplies, as well as Secret Service protection. Ex-vice presidents also receive pensions after leaving office, though not protection from the Secret Service.

Since 1958, Congress has generously provided for our ex-presidents, including transition money for office and staff expenses, good for seven months after leaving office, as well as Secret Service protection for life. To Carter's credit, however, of all the modern presidents, he cashes in the least, if he can be said to at all. He rarely accepts speaking fees, and when he does he usually donates the proceeds to his charitable foundation…

Congress should consider reducing payments in direct proportion to how much presidents make in "retirement." With the debt approaching $20 trillion, taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for underwriting lifestyles of former presidents that would have outraged Coolidge and Truman and probably most presidents since George Washington.

Here’s words I never thought I’d write, Cal Thomas is right.  If you are collecting Social Security benefits and you are 65 or younger and you earn more than $$16,920 you will have $1 in benefits withheld for every $2 in earned income over the limit.  Yet if you are a swamp monster  you can make unlimited wealth on top of your presidential pension of $205,700 for life.  Does that seem fair?  President Trump isn’t draining the swamp he’s restocking the swamp one bankster swamp monster at a time. 



By Patricia Baeten