“Well, I would say very generally I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening. They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess, and they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can’t blame them.”–Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Bank Chairman
October 5, Ben Bernanke was answering questions from a U.S. Senate panel (yet again), when he was asked about the growing, and spreading, “Occupy” demonstrations. Senators wanted to know if the protestors were justified in blaming Corporate America for the economic fall of the United States.
“Did Wall Street’s greed and recklessness cause this recession, that lead to so many people losing their jobs?” asked Senator Bernie Sanders. Bernanke replied that excessive risk taking on Wall Street and the failure of financial regulators “had a lot to do” with the recession.
Any job stimulus bill that gets passed by U.S. Congress will be much too little much too late. That’s because the upcoming, publicly announced, layoffs will shut down nearly half a million jobs!
Chicago based Gray & Christmas Incorporated added up all the publicly announced future job layoffs, and it came to 480,000 jobs. 70% of those job cuts involve Bank of America and the U.S. Army.
Analysts say we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, not all layoffs are publicly announced in advance: “Bank of America is not the only bank still struggling in the wake of the housing collapse, and the military cutbacks are probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to federal spending cuts.”-John A. Challenger, CEO of Gray & Christmas
According to the Bloomberg article, it’s the biggest cuts in jobs in the past two years. A 212% increase from September 2010!
And don’t forget the intentional destruction of the U.S. Postal Service, by the U.S. Congress. Happy upcoming Holidays!
“The government may only compel a citizen to assist in law enforcement when there is imminent danger. There was no imminent danger here, and therefore the Operator’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated.”-John Samuelsen, Transport Workers Union Local 100
On the day that thousands of protestors took the Brooklyn Bridge, the NYPD forced New York city bus drivers to off load their passengers, just so the buses could be used as Paddy Wagons. Police said they needed the buses to haul away the 700+ people they had arrested.
Now the New York city bus drivers are taking the cops to court! The bus drivers’ union says police can only take over vehicles in an emergency, and peaceful protesting is not an emergency: “…this was not such an emergency, and our members’ rights were violated. They are there to transport passengers, not be an arm of City Hall to squelch free speech!”-John Samuelsen
The union is asking the New York State Supreme Court for an injunction to keep the NYPD from forcing city buses to be used as Paddy Wagons.
Union members say they are now joining the Occupy movement: “They’ve really thrown a spotlight on issues that are bothering people, especially bothering workers like our members. Right now, we’re discussing how we’re going to give them material support, what we should do for them.”-Jim Gannon, Transport Workers Union
Yet more proof that the Danish government’s tax on fat is about making money, not being healthy. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only 10% of Danes are obese!
On a recent BBC World Have Your Say program, a Danish politician said that the purpose of a democratic representative government is to “find balance” in imposing social policies on the general public. Say what? I always thought a democratic representative government was supposed to do what the majority of the voting public wants! Oh well, I’m still waiting for it to happen here in the United States.
Basically the Danish politician was admitting that Denmark is being run by a minority of do gooders that’re pushing their own agenda upon the majority of Danes.
Consider this: There is scientific evidence that it’s a high carbohydrate/sugar diet that actually makes you fat. Now realize that the majority of Danes eat a high fat diet and only 10% are obese!!! That’s 5% below the average for all of Europe.
There’s also plenty of evidence that shows skinny people are just as prone to conditions (like diabetes) as fat people. In fact there’s growing evidence that most poor health conditions, in adults, are more influenced by genetics than what you eat. Remember the old nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat? There’s truth in it.
“I spent seven years at the University of Michigan getting a PHD in Medieval European History, and I realized that I wasn’t making a difference there, and I thought I can make more of a difference on the street organizing people, getting the 99% out to have a voice.”-Occupy LA protestor
October 3, protestors in Los Angeles, California, have occupied city hall and say they will stay there for as long as possible.
Volunteers from the National Lawyers Guild are educating protesters about their legal rights in case they are confronted by police. But some protestors believe that eventually the police will join the protests: “…their pensions are under attack, their overtime is under attack, their benefits are under attack. So once they realize they’re actually part of this movement, I foresee no problems.”-Occupy LA protestor
The continued expansion of the “occupy” movement across the United States has even protestors amazed: “The leadershiplessness of this movement is incredible! The number of the people, the commitment of the people, the collective education of the people. The moment is ripe!”-Occupy LA protestor
According to Federal numbers, the percentage of unemployed young men in Idaho is more than the national average.
In 2009 the national average was 17%, in Idaho it hit 20%! Idaho’s 2010 rate was around 18%.
Unemployment claims are down, but according to Idaho Labor Department officials that’s because people just don’t qualify for unemployment assistance anymore. One official said about 100 people per week are falling off the state unemployment assistance simply because they’ve exceeded the time limit.
Delta Dental of Idaho is going to cut insurance payments to dentists by as much as 13%.
Delta officials say they have to do it to keep costs down to employers who offer their employees the Delta Dental plan.
Idaho dentists say they will have to jack up prices to make up the difference. One dentist says the cuts took him by surprise: “In the past, Delta Dental has been a great partner with dentists. This is a little out of the blue. I’ve never seen this before.”-Don Wyatt
Delta Dental of Washington state cut payments back in April, by as much as 15%!
Researchers from eight countries are reporting that the hole in the ozone layer above the North Pole is now as big as the hole over the South Pole.
The North Pole hole now covers an area about 3,000 kilometers (1864.113 miles) long and 1,000 km (621.371 miles) wide.
Of course environmentalists are blaming it on man made pollution. Never mind all the volcanic activity, and record number of forest fires, in the past decade. Also, never mind the fact that the Earth’s magnetic field has being weakening, seemingly at the same time that the holes in the ozone layers have been forming.
It is a fact that the North and South Poles of the magnetic field have gotten much weaker. In fact, in 2003, PBS NOVA produced a newer program on the fact that the poles of our magnetic field are about to flip. You can go to the a PBS NOVA web site to use their interactive programs to see how they think our magnetic field works.
In 2009, famed physics professor Michio Kaku, warned that the solar flares, from the Sun’s expected 2012 pole flip, are going to be much worse than first thought, by a “factor of 20”. He called it a “tsunami of radiation”, which is not good when you realize our atmosphere and magnetic field has weakened.
I believe the real reason for the holes in the ozone layer is because of the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field weakening and the intensity of the Sun’s solar flares, could be caused by extrasolar planetary encounters. There is an ancient story of another plant that experienced a similar “breaching” of their atmosphere. The story is thousands of years older than any other written stories found so far.
In the ancient story the founders of Earth’s human civilization notice changes to their planet, changes that we currently call “climate change”: “…the fields diminished their yields, fruits and grains lost abundance. From circuit to circuit [orbits], nearing the Sun heat grew stronger; in the faraway abode, coolness was more biting.”
Earth’s magnetic field is directly caused by the spinning molten core. The people of this ancient story noticed their atmosphere was thinning, and their volcanoes were growing dormant: “In the atmosphere a breaching [ozone hole] has occurred; that was their finding. Volcanoes, the atmosphere, forebear, less belching were spitting up! Nibiru’s air has thinner been made, the protective shield has been diminished!”
While most of these ancient alien people thought their volcanoes were the cause of the strength of their atmosphere, others pointed out a more astronomical cause: “It has happened before, some gave an answer: Nibiru in the past colder or warmer has grown. A destiny it is, in the Circuit [orbit] of Nibiru embedded!”
Eventually the ancients realized that their planet’s atmospheric depletion was the result of millennia of near impacts, and actual impacts, with the planets in a more stable orbit around the Sun. The most devastating impact created the Earth, and stopped the Moon’s progress to becoming a full blown planet itself. Later, a near impact slowed the spinning molten core of Mars, and stripped off the atmosphere.
This ancient planet, according to the translations done in the 1960s and 1970s, orbits against the grain of Earth and the other Solar bodies, and takes several hundreds of thousands of years to make one orbit (which is about the time line for major catastrophic events that take place on Earth).
The ancient planet (and its “companions”) approaches from our South Pole. In the past few decades, dozens of astronomical observatories have been established on Antarctica. Recently Japanese astronomers discovered at least ten large dense (with very strong magnetic fields) planets approaching from the south. They stated that the planets ‘lived’ independent of the Sun. They called them “floating planets”, I call them Ronin Planets.
Here’s a link to an OK (some grammatical & spelling errors) pdf posting of The Lost Book of Enki.
Under the guise of forcing people to eat “healthy”, the governments of Denmark and Hungary have imposed the world’s first taxes targeting specific foods. Of course those foods are the most affordable for the growing number of people with less and less income.
Hungary has imposed a potato chip snack tax. Snack chips (called crisps, in Europe) will be taxed at about U.S.$1 per kilogram (2.2 pounds), which could add 10 to 20 cents per bag of chips. The tax includes other items like sugary drinks, snack cakes, salty snacks, and even food flavorings!
Denmark has imposed a U.S.$3 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) tax on the saturated fat content of food. The main targets of the fat tax are milk, butter and cheese.
Here’s the problem with the logic of the governments’ reasons for taxing food that is fast becoming the only food people can afford: Putting a tax on food does not make people eat healthy! The taxes imposed by Denmark and Hungary are not enough to force people to buy much more expensive health food. In the case of Denmark, they’re taxing the main staples of European diets; milk,butter and cheese! Rather, I think those governments are trying to capitalize on the fact that more and more people will be buying the “less healthy” food, because they can’t afford anything else!
The computer chip maker Micron Technology is in big trouble, and since 2009 isn’t even the second biggest employer in Boise, Idaho. Yet, Idaho real estate agent web sites, which encourage out’a staters to move to Idaho, continue to list Micron as the top employer. Other web sites, and blogs, list the number of Boise Micron employees at 15,000! Even a check of Wikipedia’s section on Boise still claims that Micron is the top employer.
Micron hasn’t been the top employer ever since 2009, after lay offs cut their Boise work force down to about 5,000. And that’s according to a September 2011 Idaho Statesman report. Also, the Idaho Statesman says Micron’s peak Boise employment of about 15,000 happened a decade ago!
To make matters worse, Micron is losing money. They lost $135 million in the third quarter of this year. On top of that they’re about to get hit with a court judgment for price fixing. That judgement could be as high as $11.9 billion.
Micron recently told investors that such a fine would further degrade future operations, and, they admitted they don’t even have any money to pay such a fine!
So why are Idaho real estate companies, web media sites, bloggers, and even Wikipedia still promoting Micron as the top employer in Boise? Conspiracy, or incompetence?