Our man on the spot X – by SPE
Federal government – The National Security State
The whistle blower essential to our national security is now being threatened as a traitor with life imprisonment. The internet providers have provided the FBI according to insiders a “Back Door” (special access codes thru NSA to FBI) to all, I repeat all phone calls, text, and email and Representative Rogers, General Alexander and all spokesperson for the administration are all lying, says Steven Cohen, lawyer for whistle blowers (WNWC, June 20, 2013).
Our man on Staten Island Joe Tirone
(N.Y. Times Editorial, June 13, 2013)
Our man on Staten Island Joe Tirone, realtor turned “savior” to hundreds, and this reporter’s landlord by gosh, after Super Storm Sandy who organized the government buyout program for the worst affected “…Governor Andrew Cuomo has put forward an extensive proposal to buy out homeowners on shore properties in storm – damaged areas like Oakwood Beach on Staten Island [first proposed by Joe]…If the houses there are demolished [after being bought out by the state] the area would return to natural marshlands, which help protect inland areas.”
As here the gains don’t gain for everyone
(N.Y. Times Business, June 20, 2013)
Floyd Whaley, “According to government estimates poor Filipino households are not able to earn the 5,460 pesos or $135, needed each month to eat. That amount is about the same as the price of a back row upper-level ticket to the recent Aerosmith concert in Manila, where many of the country’s wealthy could be found holding parties into the night.”
Lenders fall short of terms [of course]
(N.Y. Times Business, June 20, 2013)
“…Four of the five biggest mortgage lenders…have yet to meet their commitment to end the maze of frustrations that borrower must navigate to modify their loans…”
Don’t be so easy to find online
(N.Y. Times, June 20, 2013, Natasha Singer)
“The only real way to avoid data profiling would be to get off the grid…but there are ways to minimize digital footprints…lose the smartphone get a dumb-phone that lets you make calls, send text messages…smart phones are…tracking devices. ‘I think its common to be wary of giving out your personal information for every single server,’ says Dan Auerbach Staff Technologist of Electronic Frontier Foundation. ‘If you are going to give me a sign-up form, I am going to give you a bogus answer back…AND PAY CASH WHEN YOU CAN.’ In other words, that old counter measure by Hester Prime in The Scarlet Letter…in 1850 remains good advice even in an era of big data, ‘We must not always talk in the marketplace, Hester Pryme said, of what happens to us in the forest.’”
Clearer skies more hurricanes
(N.Y. Times, Science, June 25, 2013, Justin Gillis)
“…The up-turn in storms over the last couple of decades maybe no accident. It could, instead be at least partly a consequence of the clean- air acts that have reduced pollution around the North Atlantic basins, thus returning the storm cycles to their more natural state.”
Spring suicide rites
(Mind Times, David Dobbs, June 25, 2013)
“On average 700 Americans kill themselves each week – but in the fine-weather weeks of May and June jumps to 800…a possibility (for the spring) includes vitamin D, the low levels caused by lack of sunlight in the winter are thought to lead to inflammation…people already at risk…enter spring with vitamin D deficiencies.”
FBI shootings all good
(N.Y. Times, June 19, 2013, P.I, Savage & Schmidt)
“From 1993 to 2011 FBI agents fatally shot about 70 “subjects” and wounded 80 others and everyone of these episodes was deemed “justified”…according to internal FBI records…In most of the shooting the FBI’s internal investigation was the only official inquiry.”
Retired U.S. General accused in Iran leak
(N.Y. Times, National, June 28, 2013)
“The former second-ranking officer in the U.S. Military, General James E. Cartwright of the Marines is a target of an investigation into the leak about American cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program. “Since his retirement in 2011, General Cartwright has joined the Center for Strategic and International studies and has spoken in favor of major cuts in nuclear weapons and warned of possible ‘blow back’ from the use of drone aircraft.”
“Since President Obama Took office seven government officials…have been charged under the Espionage Act…compared with three under all previous presidents.”
NYC and storm surges
(N.Y. Times, June 28, 2013, Jim Dryer about New York)
“John Boule an engineer about how to keep what is dry New York that way in future storms, ‘We really haven’t found a good design for 11 or 12 feet of waters…that’s an incredible threat. Unfortunately, there are 500 plus entrances into the subway station at the very tip of Lower Manhattan alone…Across the harbor on Governors Island he pointed to another fort, Ft Williams, also built before the War of 1812. ‘Those fortifications worked, he said. It’s time for the country to look at defending the same piece of land from a different threat.'”
Fast food employers say forget-about-it for overtime
(N.Y. Times, June 28, 2013)
“…80% of employees in the industry in New York …experienced some form of wage theft in the past year Shenita Simon; a mother of three who works at a KFC in Brooklyn said that to avoid paying her overtime, the manger would make her clock out even though she was still working.”
REMEMBER – as Bush said to a divorced mother of three: “You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”
Additional Bushisms
“We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.”
“I’m the master of low expectations.”
“For NASA, space is still a high priority.”
“This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous, and having said that, all options are on the table.”
“If we don’t succeed, we run the rise of failure.”
“It is clear our nation is reliant upon foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
(N.Y. Times, July 1, 2013)
“For banks that are looking to recoup billions of dollars in lost income from a spate of recent limits on debit and credit card fees, issuing payroll cards (for companies that refuse to write payroll checks) can be lucrative…The lack of regulation…can potentially leave cardholders swimming in fees. Take the example of inactivity fees that penalize customers for infrequently using their cards. On some of its payroll cards, (usually issued to the poorest in the workforce) net spend (a card issuing company for various large companies) charge $ 2.25 for out of network A.T.M. withdrawals .50 cents for balance inquiries….50 cents for a purchase using the card, $5 for statement reprints, $10 to close an account… and $ 7.50 after 60 days of inactivity…”
CEO pay: the unstoppable climb
(N.Y. Times, June 30, 2013)
Executive pay report: Gretchen Morgansen, “…The median 2012 pay package (for Top 100 CEO’s ) come in at 15.1 million – a leap of 16 percent from 2011.
“So much for the idea that shareholders were finally getting through to corporate boards on the topic of reining in pay…Xerox…paid its top managers 165.7 million over five years, even though its economic profits amounted to a negative 1.65 billion.”
Losing coal
(N.Y. Times, June 28, 2013)
“It’s always important to remember that what ails the U.S. economy right now isn’t lack of productive capacity (reference of replacing coal – fired electricity plants) but lack of demand. The housing bust, the overhang of household debt and ill-timed cuts in public spending have created a situation in which nobody wants to spend: and because your spending is my income and my spending is your income, this leads to a depressed economy…”
Stop and frisk
(Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2013)
“Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, …he believes the NYPD stops white people too much and non-white people too little based on murder suspect descriptions.”
New York down to a murder a day
(Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2013)
“In the first quarter of this year, the number of stop-and-frisks fell 51% compared with the same period in 2012, a period in which murders also fell 30% – feeding skepticism among the tactics (stop-and-frisk) many critics that it is a major driver of crime reduction.”
War on unemployed
(N.Y. Times, Op-Ed, July 1, 2013)
“…there’s a nationwide movement underway to punish the unemployed, based on the proposition that we can cure unemployment by making the jobless even more miserable…
Consider North Carolina’s unemployment rate at 8.8 %, is among the highest in the nation… Thanks to a national environment in which there are three times as many people seeking work as there are job openings.
Nonetheless the state’s government has just sharply cut aid to the unemployed…they also reduced the average weekly benefits making the state ineligible for about 700 million in federal aid…[??!! Go Figure]”
The end of car culture
(N.Y. Times, June 30, 2013, Elizabeth Rosenthal)
“A study last year found that driving by young people decreased 23% between 2001-2009. They don’t value cars and car ownership they value technology…a car is just a means of getting from a to b when BART doesn’t work.”
Germans now don’t trust
(N.Y. Times Opinion – Mark Spitz, June 30, 2013)
“In may 2010 I received a brown envelope in it was a CD with an encrypted file containing six months of metadata stored by my cell phone provider T-Mobile. This list of metadata contained 35,830 records that’s 35,830. My phone company knew if, where and when I was surfing the web, calling or texting…you can follow my travels across Germany, you can see when I went to sleep and woke up…”
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