A survey conducted by UC Berkley says outsourcing will take 14.1 million US jobs over the next 10 years and ship them overseas. That means hundreds of thousands of American families will have to endure heartache and unemployment. Three hundred thousand call center jobs will end up in India and the Philippines. Incidentally, none of these 14.1 million jobs include estimates for outsourced jobs to what is called near shore in countries like Mexico. When the government and foundations are asked about outsourcing, they deny they have statistics and called any such activity economic efficiency. It is believed that in three years that information technology exports to the US from India alone will be $50 billion. What do our 200,000 graduate engineers do each year, move them to Bangalore and work for $8,000 a year? India handles 85% of US outsourced IT work. We are going to lose eight million jobs paying over $60,000 a year. We are going to lose 15% of our jobs and the public still does not get it. Our President demands outsourcing and our Congress does whatever the elitists tell them to do. Three thousand and two hundred manufacturing jobs are transferred overseas every 24 hours resulting in a net loss of 1.2 million jobs per year. The countries handling personnel data have endemic identity theft and reams of valuable information are there for the taking.
A US space-based satellite can record a moving car and tell you how fast it is traveling. The government said they used the satellite to tell how fast the car carrying a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage that US troops opened fired on in Iraq, was traveling.
If they can do this then they can identify who is killing innocent people in Sudan or in Africa, or the 9/11 attack, etc. Well enough of that. We do not believe it, nor that the car with the Italians was doing 60 MPH.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in deep trouble as is George W. Bush. Both have seen their approval ratings drop to about 40. Arnold’s biggest problem is he has alienated just about everyone in the state over the past 19 months. Portrayed as heartless he has shelved a proposal to privatize the state pension fund, which would have cut off death and disability payments for police and firefighters. Teachers are pounding the governor because of his opposition to restore $2 billion funding for schools. He refused to do so after he promised he would California is 43rd in per-pupil spending. About the only thing Arnold has going for himself is that the voters gave the legislature lower approval ratings then Arnold and the Democrats are still in disarray.
The FBI bagged an Israeli spy by bugging a restaurant in Arlington, VA as he lunched with Naor Gilon, Chief of political affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Steve Rosen, longtime policy director and key operative of the American Israel Political Committee (AIPAC), and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s senior Iran specialist. Franklin is a committed ideologue and neocon conservative and passionately committed to Israel rather than his own country. He held in his hand at the table a top-secret document on US policy on Iran. He then briefed the three Israeli spies of the contents of the document. The FBI had been watching the Israelis for two years and had finally got the goods on a web of espionage, ensnaring all four traitors.
When the FBI searched Franklin’s office and home they found 83 classified documents, of which 38 were top secret, 37 were secret, and eight were confidential. Strangely, the names of AIPAC, Rosen and Weissman were not even mentioned in the affidavit. Israeli officials and their American gofers had unlimited access to “Franklin’s lending library. Israel had gotten caught spying in the US thousands of times but our government has just looked the other way. These four were caught in a counter-intelligence probe, espionage, the worst since Jonathan Pollad. Incidentally, Franklin faces only 10 years for what he has done and a fine. Just to give you an idea what the arrogant neocons think, Michael Ledeen has called the charges nonsensical. The May 17 trial of Franklin should also put Israel and the neocons on trial. We then ask where are the trials for Gilon, Rosen and Weissman? All assembled, including our President and most of Congress lied us into war with Iraq. In addition why isn’t Paul Wolfowitz on trial? He was the deputy secretary of defense, who was responsible for planning this. And how about Douglas Feith, in whose office – the Office of Special Plans, that this was planned along with phony intelligence dispersed to justify the war on Iraq. Let’s face it; Israelis have the run of our government. They do anything they please. Anytime anyone pins something on them it disappears from the media. This situation has to stop. An Israeli underground cannot be allowed to run our country and foreign policy. Let it be said here, we are not anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish; we are just reporting the truth and the facts no matter how the neocons and Israel try to twist them.
Franklin was using a court appointed lawyer but not any more. He has Trout Cacheris and high-class expensive lawyer John Thorpe Richards. We wonder who is paying for that. It sure isn’t Franklin.
Less than 20% of Americans have pension plans and many of those plans will go bankrupt or be taken over by the PBGC. Social Security only replaces 40% of pre-retirement income, making personal savings more important than ever. But, savings are lower than ever. Last seen at 1%, 37% of Americans do not have any retirement savings at all. For those who do have them they have saved $95,943 but the median value was only $27,000. The median value was $55,000 in 2001 for those aged 55 to 64. Only 11% have retirement savings of $250,000 or more. If you want to replace an income of $100,000 a year you need savings of $1.5 million. The median net worth of US households, where the head of the household is between 55-64, was just $181,500 as of 2001. We know we covered a portion of this last week, but we deemed it so important we expanded on it. Our favorite place for your nest egg is in gold and silver related assets and US and Euro Treasuries. Occasionally you can get involved in a special situation like oil and gas, uranium or by selectively shorting the market.
Our press spends a great effort hiding the best-kept secret of the Iraq war; the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraq’s population, but also the whole world. These weapons have released deadly carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that winds carry them worldwide. This radioactivity lasts for 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage and kidney failure, and extreme birth defects, killing for ages to come. These particles are so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Lancet says 500 children die every day from the fallout. It is estimated that it will cause 500,000 additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. We must also not forget the hundreds of thousands of US military personnel exposed to these weapons that our government refuses to recognize as DU inflected injuries. One in three Iraq veterans are affected. Uranium oxide can cause the body’s communication system to break down, leading to malfunction of vital organs and then to many medical problems.
The reason our illustrious government doesn’t want to know about Agent Orange and depleted uranium is that the medical costs will be enormous. Their attitude is let them die. Our veterans have been harmed by our government – our government is the enemy. Wait until the draft and all those 17 to 23 year old boys and girls are sent to Iraq to breathe depleted uranium. The harm the US and UK governments have done is beyond belief. DU is a weapon of mass destruction, but you never see the media depicting it that way. Uranium causes cancer, mutation and death. If the US and UK continue its use all of human life is endangered. Our elitists are totally evil.
Governors and state legislators have devised proposals for sweeping changes in Medicaid to curb its rapid growth and save billions of dollars. Some beneficiaries would have to pay more for care, and states would have more latitude to limit the scope of services. This is why Congress endorsed a budget blueprint that would cut projected Medicaid spending by $10 billion over the next five years. Medicaid has simply become fiscal madness. It does not guarantee good care, and it is a budget buster. A big fight is going to ensue. The combatants are AARP, Families USA, pediatricians, hospitals and nursing homes. The state and federal governments feel safe if they cut now they wouldn’t have to make massive cuts later. Medicaid now covers 50 million low-income people and to many the cuts will be a staggering blow. Government believes they should be allowed to impose higher co-payments and deductibles on recipients with higher incomes. They believe Congress should increase the discounts and rebates that drug companies are required to provide state Medicaid programs, a charge opposed by drug makers, which we are in total agreement with. There is no question the proposal to limit the ability of elderly people to qualify for Medicaid coverage for nursing home care by transferring assets to their children should be enacted. Medicaid is for those who cannot afford to pay, not to subsidize the well-to-do. Changes are coming because the burden has become too great. We believe children should take care of their parents in old age.
Luis Posada Carriles was an employee of the CIA and during his engagement with the agency he helped plan and execute the bombing of a Cuban commercial airline that killed 73 innocent people in 1976. He has admitted plotting attacks that blew up tourist spots in Havana that killed an Italian visitor in 1997.
Posada is now an illegal alien in hiding in Florida and is seeking political asylum due to his CIA employment. The government of Venezuela wants to extradite and retry him for the Cuban airline bombing. There is plenty of proof he is guilty. The Venezuelan Supreme Court says, “He must be extradited and judged.”
Our government says it is against terrorism but obviously not their terrorism by their agents. If he is granted asylum, the US will lose the cooperation of Central and South American countries. They can jail him or grant extradition. Knowing the arrogant, elitist, neocons we expect asylum. They do what they want to do.
The SEC will file a civil securities fraud complaint against Richard Napier, a senior executive with the General Re Corporation. He worked on a transaction several years ago that inflated AIG accounts, and that AIG has already acknowledged was improper. General Re is a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren Buffett. The transaction bolstered reserves by $500 million over two quarters. Just more crooks being collared. The executives of AIG regularly made changes to the company’s reserves to help meet earnings goals through much of the 1990’s. Thus, what they are saying is all of AIG’s earnings for some years were a fraud. The director of this fraud was Maurice Greenberg, head of the Greenberg crime family and key elitist, and his CFO Howard I. Smith. It also points up that Warren Buffett was involved in this fraud right up to his eyeballs. The criminals at Citigroup are ready to cut a deal with the FSA, the Financial Services Authority, over allegations that it deliberately manipulated the European bond market last year, just as we had predicted that they had. This goes on all the time, it is just that this time they got caught.
America’s biggest drug makers are returning $75 billion in profits from secret international tax havens to the US by paying a fraction of the regular tax rate. The rate normally 35% is 5.25% because our President and Congress wanted to give a special gift to elitist transnational corporations. Drug makers have told the IRS for years that their profits came mainly from international sales, even though the prices of medicines are far higher in the US and almost 60% of their sales take place in America. That claim, of course, defies reality and the profits mostly come from US sales. Most collectively pay a federal tax rate of 15%. Had these drug companies paid normal taxation instead of hiding the funds they would have paid $26 billion in taxes instead of $4 billion. Pfizer will repatriate $28 billion and by using these funds will cover the losses incurred in firing thousands of employees. Corporations are allowed to have large manufacturing plants in low-tax countries, an advantage not open to individual Americans. Pfizer in 2004 had $4.4 billion in pre-tax profits in the US and $9.6 billion internationally. They shift everything they can to offshore corporations and vastly underpay taxes. Collectively six major drug makers paid $6 billion in taxes instead of $43 billion and get a tax holiday on top of it. We would say our President and Congress are in bed with the drug manufacturers, wouldn’t you? In the process, we pay 30% to 70% more for drugs than say Mexico and Canada. We have been getting screwed on drug prices for years and it should be brought to an end.
After spending more than $4.5 billion on screening devices to monitor the nation’s ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the anti-terrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective or too expensive to operate. The whole operation of Fatherland Security has been a very expensive fiasco. What else did you expect?
The SEC has brought civil fraud charges against another former executive of General Re, Elizabeth A. Monrad, for doctoring paperwork that artificially increased the reserves of a bigger insurer, AIG, by $500 million. Here we see millions of dollars in fraud and there are no criminal charges. All the government wants is the fines and restitution.
The Marine Corps is recalling 5,277 combat vests issued to troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Djibouti. In all, 181,000 Kevlar vests have been issued to Marines, which cost $525 each. The vest was designed to stop a rifle bullet and there are questions as to whether it can do so. There have been no complaints from the field.
This adds insult to injury. The US Army has awarded $72 million in bonuses to Halliburton for logistics work in Iraq but has not decided whether to give the company bonuses for disputed dining services to troops. They gave subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root ratings of excellent to very good. We do not suppose this has anything to do with Dick Cheney.
Experts chastised the Federal Reserve Board for operating in secret and for their scandalous misuse of funds. They said Congress had abandoned its watchdog responsibilities for a sweetheart role. The panel, held by the Center for Study of Responsive Law, one of Ralph Nader’s projects, was totally ignored by the media. They said the Fed had secret meetings with transcripts of the minutes shredded and that they violated the law when they made loans to foreign countries without congressional authorization.
The New York office of Dutch bank giant ABN Amro is getting dragged deeper into a legal battle over a global money-laundering web. The New York law firm of Liddle and Robinson will be filing a claim in New York State Supreme Court, arguing that the bank’s outpost in New York City runs what amounts to a “turn-key” operation for international money launderers.
The suit is part of a year-long running court battle on behalf of International Strategies Group, a Hong Kong based investment fund that says it was swindled out of $16.7 million by First Merchant Bank, a financial firm based in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. First Merchant’s chairman is wanted by Italian police for laundering $50 million and has been questioned in the disappearance of a bank board member. The Fed has designated First Merchant a primary money laundering concern. We would say ABN has a problem as acting as a pass through for First Merchant Bank.
UAL has received approval from a federal bankruptcy judge to terminate its four employee pension plans. They have defaulted on $9.8 billion in pension obligations and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp will now cover 134,000 UAL employees and retirees. Their payout will drop some 50% or more. There could be a domino affect as other airlines are forced to seek bankruptcy protection to bring their pension costs down to UAL’s levels. All the promises UAL made to retirees were worthless, nothing but lies. Now the question is will United’s employees go on strike? The UAL decision by the court could very well trigger the collapse of the defined benefit pension system nationwide. Incidentally that should put PBGC in debt about $33 billion. Their congressionally authorized limit is $43 billion.