The perennial question: rent or buy? Has the 'who's the sucker?' equation changed at all lately?:
RICK 6 hours ago
I moved to Cabo San Lucas Mexico in 2005..., bought a new 1600 sq.ft.home up in the hills for $83,000 with a partial ocean view..., remodeled it from top to bottom..., NICE STUFF..., for under $15,000. I work under 40 hours a week, home by 2 - 3 PM, and surf, ride my Harley, and enjoy great Mexican food...., and a beautiful Mexcian girlfriend. Best decision I have ever made. 10 Replies 11users liked this comment
YAHOO_USER 6 hours ago That's a boring life. I do that for 2 weeks and I want to come back keep myself busy. What a waste of human life!. 1users liked this comment
Interesting times 5 hours ago
Good for you...All of us wish we could get away from the craziness of running on this broken treadmill.I've always been happy for people who are enjoying life and what they're doing. Life's too short and enjoy every moment of it.... 1users liked this comment
George 5 hours ago Well played sir. Well played..
Thereisnohopeforus 5 hours ago
Excellent. Costa Rica is great too. If you have some cash get it out of the US. The expat lifestyle is nice!!!.
Boubou 5 hours ago
Most people are afraid to make a move like that. it worked out great for me - in Antigua . i paid 300k for a house on a hill at the entrance to Falmouth harbor with panoramic views of the Atlantic, neighboring islands and a harbor with mega-yachts and local fishing boats. I was lucky to have a skill that is needed in a place like this..
jmoney1978 5 hours ago
This guy is an idiot. If you are paying $1000 per month for rent but you qualify to purchase a bigger home with a mortgage payment of only $500 per month than that is a no brainer. If the American Consumer wasn't stupid they wouldn't have bought when real estate was at its peak they would be buying now. Warren Buffet doesn't buy stock when its valued high he buys when its valued low. The same principal applies to real estate - now is a great time to buy!
Allen 5 hours ago $500 for the mortgage is not the end of it. How about insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc..
Chrystal 5 hours ago
Yea, but that house has about $500 a month in taxes and insurance, not to mention upkeep/maintenance, which is a material cost of homeownership. And the prospects for future appreciation, at least in the near term, are very limited - more like DEPRECIATION.
Not such a no-brainer now, is it?.
MyDaughtersBill 5 hours ago
you lose your down payment when you stick the key in the door, $10k-$15k. just for a little lower monthly payment?, and wait 'til Obama takes away your interest credit. do the math, its not worth it!.
Jake 5 hours ago
Renting for twice the mortgage rate can be extremely rational once all factors are considered.. 2users liked this comment
Chris 5 hours ago
You can buy my place for $1,100 a month or less (depending on interest rate), taxes and association fees included or I can rent it to you for $1,400 and you still pay all utilities. The choice is yours..
Northeastern 5 hours ago
I agree the freedom of home ownership is great if you can afford it and are able to stay in the same area for a while. After 30 years if you make all your payments there is some equity regardless if its less than you paid. After 30 years your rent would have gone up a lot and you would have zero equity. I know people who bought homes 15 years ago and pay less on a nice single family with a yard than I do on rent
DoingMyBest 3 hours ago
I don't think HE is the idiot! His point is that it's stupid to take out a loan on a depreciating asset. Residential homes are depreciating. And Americans (in general) aren't stupid. (Except that they keep taking loans for cars and that's stupid).
Jmoney - you're example is flawed. You say you'll get twice the home for half the price. But you get something else as well: the debt that goes with it. And even if you're house goes down in value (which is exactly what's happening), you're stuck with the loan...
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
America: Of the 1% By the 1% For the 1% - Joseph Stiglitz
http://youtu.be/cZC1HVRz450
woohoo, economic disparity worse than the Middle Ages! And Fox News says it is not enough and the rich should get even more share of GDP!
woohoo, economic disparity worse than the Middle Ages! And Fox News says it is not enough and the rich should get even more share of GDP!
Dreams of Obama - Ron Suskind book reveals a naive financial illiterate
http://www.amazon.com/review/RMB2NL7LNJ51L
the only consolation is that McCain would have been worse, it was a choice between two financial illiterates in the pocket of Goldman Sachs
review:
Ignores Obama's long standing connections to Wall Street's Hedge Funds,private Equity firms and Goldman Sachs, September 25, 2011
By Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (Hardcover)
This book attempts to explain away the close and long standing connections that have existed between Obama and Wall Street.It presents a very incomplete picture of the long and close connections that have existed between Obama and Wall Street that predate the 2008 election.
The interesting thing is that the Wall Street-Obama connection has been available for anyone to discover who is a regular reader of mainstream newspapers and magazines.Obama's voting record in the Senate in the 2004-2008 period demonstrates time after time a voting pattern supporting Big Oil,the insurance industry,the HMO's,etc.The connection between Obama and British Petroleum had been established by his Senate voting record.The same holds for his long association with Goldman Sachs and his reliance on many libertarian academics associated/connected with the University of Chicago's economics department and Booth School of Business .The author attempts to submerge the long lived Obama- Goldman Sachs connection.
In general,the voting public has been ignorant of who they have been voting for.
(duh)
Consider the following information that was available in late 2007-early 2008:For example,one could simply read the July 9,2007 issue of FORTUNE magazine to discover who the major backers of John McCain,Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were.One could also have read Business Week(2-25-2008) or the Los Angeles Times of 3-21-2008.Through February, 2008 the major donors to the McCain campaign were 1)Merrill Lynch,2) Citigroup,3)Goldman Sachs,4)J P Morgan Chase and 5)Credit Suisse.The major donors to the Hillary Clinton campaign were 1)Goldman Sachs ,2)Morgan Stanley,3)Citigroup,4)Lehman Brothers and 5)J P Morgan Chase.
Guess who were the major donors to the Obama campaign ? If you guessed 1)Goldman Sachs,2)UBS Ag,3)J P Morgan Chase ,4)Lehman Brothers and 5)Citigroup,then you are correct. Obama's reliance on Martin Feldstein,Alan Goolsbe,Summers, Geithner,Bernanke,etc.,is explained by the above connections.
The American public has been hoodwinked, bamboozled and befuddled by Obama.
Consider that the two cochairs of the Obama appointed commission to study Social Security,Erskine Bowles and Wayne Simpson,are both Wall Street connected politicians.Similarly,consider that Obama's appointments mirror those of his Democratic predecessor,Bill Clinton,in terms of his reliance on Wall Street fiancier manipulators dedicated to the continued off shoring ,downsizing and hollowing out of our remaining industrial manufacturing capacity and outsourcing of American jobs . Clinton's appointment of F D Raines,a Wall Street operator-speculator-manipulator,to run Fannie Mae,created serious problems for this company.Raines simply looted Fannie Mae.Fannie Mae was in financial trouble long before 2007. The likes of Geithner,Rubin, Summers, Bernanke,etc., all have been known to represent the finacial speculator views of Wall Street.
There is a possible solution if an independent candidate ,someone like Ross Perot, will step up to the plate and offer a serious alternative by creating a third party.
(the problem is without ranked choice voting, a third party vote is a wasted vote, we DESPERATELY need election reform to enable third party votes to count)
The Republican Party is being set up by the heavily connected Wall Street financiers of the " Tea Party" to run a libertarian candidate like Alf Kandon,Wendell Wilkie or Barry Goldwater.This candidate is guaranteed to lose.This will guarantee Wall Street four more years of control through Obama.
Obama could have appointed people like Felix Rohatyn,"Adam Smith",Michael Lewis,Warren Buffett,George Soros or even a Paul Volcker or Ralph Nader (woohoo).The author of this book offers a series of poor excuses designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Obama went out of his way to avoid putting such people in positions of power in his administration.
The very simple answer is that appointing such individuals would have not been approved by his long standing Wall Street supporters.
the only consolation is that McCain would have been worse, it was a choice between two financial illiterates in the pocket of Goldman Sachs
review:
Ignores Obama's long standing connections to Wall Street's Hedge Funds,private Equity firms and Goldman Sachs, September 25, 2011
By Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (Hardcover)
This book attempts to explain away the close and long standing connections that have existed between Obama and Wall Street.It presents a very incomplete picture of the long and close connections that have existed between Obama and Wall Street that predate the 2008 election.
The interesting thing is that the Wall Street-Obama connection has been available for anyone to discover who is a regular reader of mainstream newspapers and magazines.Obama's voting record in the Senate in the 2004-2008 period demonstrates time after time a voting pattern supporting Big Oil,the insurance industry,the HMO's,etc.The connection between Obama and British Petroleum had been established by his Senate voting record.The same holds for his long association with Goldman Sachs and his reliance on many libertarian academics associated/connected with the University of Chicago's economics department and Booth School of Business .The author attempts to submerge the long lived Obama- Goldman Sachs connection.
In general,the voting public has been ignorant of who they have been voting for.
(duh)
Consider the following information that was available in late 2007-early 2008:For example,one could simply read the July 9,2007 issue of FORTUNE magazine to discover who the major backers of John McCain,Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were.One could also have read Business Week(2-25-2008) or the Los Angeles Times of 3-21-2008.Through February, 2008 the major donors to the McCain campaign were 1)Merrill Lynch,2) Citigroup,3)Goldman Sachs,4)J P Morgan Chase and 5)Credit Suisse.The major donors to the Hillary Clinton campaign were 1)Goldman Sachs ,2)Morgan Stanley,3)Citigroup,4)Lehman Brothers and 5)J P Morgan Chase.
Guess who were the major donors to the Obama campaign ? If you guessed 1)Goldman Sachs,2)UBS Ag,3)J P Morgan Chase ,4)Lehman Brothers and 5)Citigroup,then you are correct. Obama's reliance on Martin Feldstein,Alan Goolsbe,Summers, Geithner,Bernanke,etc.,is explained by the above connections.
The American public has been hoodwinked, bamboozled and befuddled by Obama.
Consider that the two cochairs of the Obama appointed commission to study Social Security,Erskine Bowles and Wayne Simpson,are both Wall Street connected politicians.Similarly,consider that Obama's appointments mirror those of his Democratic predecessor,Bill Clinton,in terms of his reliance on Wall Street fiancier manipulators dedicated to the continued off shoring ,downsizing and hollowing out of our remaining industrial manufacturing capacity and outsourcing of American jobs . Clinton's appointment of F D Raines,a Wall Street operator-speculator-manipulator,to run Fannie Mae,created serious problems for this company.Raines simply looted Fannie Mae.Fannie Mae was in financial trouble long before 2007. The likes of Geithner,Rubin, Summers, Bernanke,etc., all have been known to represent the finacial speculator views of Wall Street.
There is a possible solution if an independent candidate ,someone like Ross Perot, will step up to the plate and offer a serious alternative by creating a third party.
(the problem is without ranked choice voting, a third party vote is a wasted vote, we DESPERATELY need election reform to enable third party votes to count)
The Republican Party is being set up by the heavily connected Wall Street financiers of the " Tea Party" to run a libertarian candidate like Alf Kandon,Wendell Wilkie or Barry Goldwater.This candidate is guaranteed to lose.This will guarantee Wall Street four more years of control through Obama.
Obama could have appointed people like Felix Rohatyn,"Adam Smith",Michael Lewis,Warren Buffett,George Soros or even a Paul Volcker or Ralph Nader (woohoo).The author of this book offers a series of poor excuses designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Obama went out of his way to avoid putting such people in positions of power in his administration.
The very simple answer is that appointing such individuals would have not been approved by his long standing Wall Street supporters.
Joys of Police Scanner Radios
oaklander05-28-2009, 11:18 PM
The amount of crime in Alameda County is insane. 99 percent of it does not make the papers. After listening to my police scanner for the last week, I am convinced that it is a battle zone out there!
And not just Oakland - but also San Leandro, Hayward, etc..
The most disturbing calls are when the dispatcher reports something like "RP reports gunshots then screaming and yelling at XXX and XXX."
:eek:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TheBundo05-28-2009, 11:19 PM
Wow, I'd better stay away from XXX and XXX
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dwtt05-31-2009, 12:48 AM
I had a scanner when I was in grad school and living in north oakland near the Berkeley border. It was an AOR scanner that was able to pick up cell phones. I sent the thing back to the mail order company because it was depressing to hear all the phone calls between couples arguing about one of them having sex with a bartender at the local bar, or some crack addicted kid in middle school yelling at his nonresident father for only buying $50 in groceries for him and his single mother and leaving no money to buy drugs, or some drug dealer on 51st Street offering a teenage girl some weed for a blow job, or the father of a high school foot ball player scheming with an athletic agent how to get the boy to pass drug tests after he took some performance enhancing drugs,... the list goes on. Like someone else said, ignorance is bliss.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oaklander05-31-2009, 1:22 AM
:)
Not sure yet - still figuring out how to program! The RS dealer did initial programming, but I need to tweak.
Interestingly, I get the local BUS LINE too, and some sort of maintenance channel for public housing - those are funny!
Some bus driver was complaining that someone stole her purse during a bathroom break, and the dispatcher suggested not leaving it in the bus!!!
Then there's the calls for toilet clearing and the like. . .
Are you able to pick up any milcom up by you?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
nobody3305-31-2009, 1:28 AM
I forget who says it, but a LEO here says that 95% of the calls they go to are BS.
About 90% of my hot calls as BS. Pretty accurate. The good stuff usually I happen upon or comes out as nothing on the air.
I had a day last week where I went from a carjacking, to a robbery, to a child abduction in progress, and finally to a murder suspect sighting. All right in a row. Not a single one was legitimate. Two were drug rip offs, and the others were cases of watching too many CBS cop shows.
As a kid I got a scanner for christmas (best gift ever). I turned it on and the first call I heard was the sheriff going to "keep the peace" at a house while the divorced parents watched their kids open gifts. Apparently without the police they would fight...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The amount of crime in Alameda County is insane. 99 percent of it does not make the papers. After listening to my police scanner for the last week, I am convinced that it is a battle zone out there!
And not just Oakland - but also San Leandro, Hayward, etc..
The most disturbing calls are when the dispatcher reports something like "RP reports gunshots then screaming and yelling at XXX and XXX."
:eek:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TheBundo05-28-2009, 11:19 PM
Wow, I'd better stay away from XXX and XXX
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dwtt05-31-2009, 12:48 AM
I had a scanner when I was in grad school and living in north oakland near the Berkeley border. It was an AOR scanner that was able to pick up cell phones. I sent the thing back to the mail order company because it was depressing to hear all the phone calls between couples arguing about one of them having sex with a bartender at the local bar, or some crack addicted kid in middle school yelling at his nonresident father for only buying $50 in groceries for him and his single mother and leaving no money to buy drugs, or some drug dealer on 51st Street offering a teenage girl some weed for a blow job, or the father of a high school foot ball player scheming with an athletic agent how to get the boy to pass drug tests after he took some performance enhancing drugs,... the list goes on. Like someone else said, ignorance is bliss.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oaklander05-31-2009, 1:22 AM
:)
Not sure yet - still figuring out how to program! The RS dealer did initial programming, but I need to tweak.
Interestingly, I get the local BUS LINE too, and some sort of maintenance channel for public housing - those are funny!
Some bus driver was complaining that someone stole her purse during a bathroom break, and the dispatcher suggested not leaving it in the bus!!!
Then there's the calls for toilet clearing and the like. . .
Are you able to pick up any milcom up by you?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
nobody3305-31-2009, 1:28 AM
I forget who says it, but a LEO here says that 95% of the calls they go to are BS.
About 90% of my hot calls as BS. Pretty accurate. The good stuff usually I happen upon or comes out as nothing on the air.
I had a day last week where I went from a carjacking, to a robbery, to a child abduction in progress, and finally to a murder suspect sighting. All right in a row. Not a single one was legitimate. Two were drug rip offs, and the others were cases of watching too many CBS cop shows.
As a kid I got a scanner for christmas (best gift ever). I turned it on and the first call I heard was the sheriff going to "keep the peace" at a house while the divorced parents watched their kids open gifts. Apparently without the police they would fight...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Economic Disparity - Has Anything Changed since the Medieval or Feudal Ages?
well, slavery is now outsourced to China, but other than that the economic disparity is not much different from 1000 years ago
the following post is an edited version from the blogger PsychedelicDragon:
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/capitalism-is-just-a-slight-12983.html
07-19-2010, 08:24 AM PsychedelicDragon Master Psychonaut
Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 43
"History has been a struggle between the different classes and groups of people. There is a social and economic component to these struggles. I will be using western civilization as the main example of this. In ancient times, such as in the Greek and Roman societies, the inequality was the worst among the different classes. The lowest class was of course the slave. The slave owned nothing, they were themselves owned by a master. The slave class made up 25% or 1/4 of the entire population of Rome for instance! Slaves were an important part of the economy back then.
Then we move to the next stage, that of feudalism. Now in the medieval european world, absolute chattel slavery became abolished and was replaced by the new servitude class: serfs. Serfs had some rights granted to them by their lord, but ultimately they were a lot like slaves and while they could own property, they could not leave their land and had to give most of their bounty to their feudal lords. In such a system, the upper classes (lords and kings) controlled 95-99% of the wealth of the nation, while the rest of the vast majority of the 95-99% controlled less than 1%.
The next social and economic stage is the birth of capitalism which started sometime during the european age of exploration. In this more evolved yet flawed system, serfs and common men were not forced to remain at the bottom of the social ladder anymore. Social class was now determined by economic status. Slavery did make a come back at this point, but usually only the richest could afford slaves.
The underclass however still remained. The serfs were no longer individuals bound to a lord. Now they were workers fighting for their existence to live. Indeed, from the birth of capitalism having basics no longer became something guaranteed by the community....if you could not make enough money by working for the new overlord, the capitalist boss, you would starve without the assistance from society. Beginning at the 20th century, social movements among the working class sprung up, demanding that the new industrial elite pay for the money they got from exploiting workers. As time went on, entitlements programs such as social security and welfare came into existence, but only after much working class revolt and riots.
So here we are. In the modern age of capitalism with a few elements of protectionism. And how is economic inequality today? Well let's take a look....according to a study done by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University, that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. Ain't that a shocker?! 85% of everything is controlled by a ruling class of 10% (- The World Distribution of Household Wealth. James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff. 5 December 2006)! The same study goes on to say 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global asset and that bottom half of the world adult population owned 1% of global wealth.
So this means since the time of feudalism, we have only improved by 10-15%. We have people who are starving, and yet this top 10% has this 85% surplus of wealth that is going to nothing useful, and is in fact destabilising to the economy since it fuels speculative investment bubbles as Wall Street tries to figure out what to do with it all.
Those surplus global assets are fueling destructive speculative bubbles, that only enrich the elites and do nothing to decrease the poverty rates of the population.
And yes you read it right - 40% of the wealth is in the hands of less than 1%. That is huge inequality. Another study goes on to point out that the richest 2% own more than half of the global household assets (article - "The rich really do own the world" - theglobeandmail.com). 2% own half of the worlds households, and yet we have such a large homeless population globally. How is this so much an improvement to feudalism? So much for the glory of capitalism.
Now ok, I did give a global figure, and previously I was discussing the history of wealth distribution within the framework of western civilization. So let's take a look at a western country like the United States. 10% of the population owns 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%! On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth! (Phillips, Peter (2006). Censored 2007:The Top 25 Censored Stories. Seven Stories Press. p. 207. ISBN 1583227385). And yet, who owns all the DEBT? Yep, you guessed it, the poor! The housing crash of 2008 really demonstrated how the transfer of wealth from poor to rich occurs via debt pushing by the rich. The poor are suckered into heavy debt burdens by aggressive loan sharking via brokers who deal with the middle layer of suckers - the banks - and then when it all collapses, the rich are bailed out by the taxpayers and the poor go bankrupt and homeless! It is really a breathtakingly genius strategy.
The sad fact is that economic neo-liberalism is widely being pushed as the only mode of economic organization around the world. Even traditionally more socialist countries like India is giving way to these economic "reforms" but while it might provide some short term growth, the nation now faces the problem of having an even bigger gap between rich and poor.
Neo-liberalist policies usually lead towards more economic inequality. Look no further than the United States. Thanks to Reaganomics, wages have been declining for working class people and the gap of inequality has gone up. There has been growth, but the growth has been going to the hands of the few, not to the population as a whole. No president since Reagan has tried to reverse these policies. It seem like Clinton was responsible for taking the economics of the democrat party far more right. No surprise there as the democratic party seems to be little more than a slightly more left republican party.
If we want a safer and more equitable world, we need to stop this massive monopolization of wealth by the ruling elite. It should be noted that regions with far more wealth re-distribution, like Scandinavia, have the highest living standards. It's only common sense that equality leads to more happiness and security of freedom.
Yet, the tension between freedom and equality - where freedom leads to oppression of the weak by the strong, and equality leads to oppression of the strong by the weak - continues to tilt to the side of more freedom for the wealthy to oppress the poor. A natural development when society is a system of laws and the laws are for sale to the highest bidder, aka lobbyist.
So what is stopping the world from adopting a more egalitarian social model? Well I think it largely has to do with the failure of communist and other regimes claiming to be socialist. In such countries, true socialism was never really tried, so everyone thinks socialism is something like the soviet union or maoist china (some anti-freedom state-worshiping system).
There is however a system of socialism that is far more pragmatic and far more progressive, that has almost never been tried. This is of course libertarian socialism, or socialism with individual freedom.
It doesn't take rocket science to realize that wage slavery is not very different than chattel slavery. The idea that you have to rent yourself to someone, and that you have follow their orders, and you work in a certain place but don't own it, and the conditions of your employment make it very difficult to move among different jobs, is a highly unnatural notion for any person claiming to be for true human rights.
So the age-old balancing act between the contradictory values of freedom and equality continues, with the increasing likelihood that the age-old method of last resort of rebalancing through revolution will happen once again.
The more things change ..."
the following post is an edited version from the blogger PsychedelicDragon:
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/capitalism-is-just-a-slight-12983.html
07-19-2010, 08:24 AM PsychedelicDragon Master Psychonaut
Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 43
"History has been a struggle between the different classes and groups of people. There is a social and economic component to these struggles. I will be using western civilization as the main example of this. In ancient times, such as in the Greek and Roman societies, the inequality was the worst among the different classes. The lowest class was of course the slave. The slave owned nothing, they were themselves owned by a master. The slave class made up 25% or 1/4 of the entire population of Rome for instance! Slaves were an important part of the economy back then.
Then we move to the next stage, that of feudalism. Now in the medieval european world, absolute chattel slavery became abolished and was replaced by the new servitude class: serfs. Serfs had some rights granted to them by their lord, but ultimately they were a lot like slaves and while they could own property, they could not leave their land and had to give most of their bounty to their feudal lords. In such a system, the upper classes (lords and kings) controlled 95-99% of the wealth of the nation, while the rest of the vast majority of the 95-99% controlled less than 1%.
The next social and economic stage is the birth of capitalism which started sometime during the european age of exploration. In this more evolved yet flawed system, serfs and common men were not forced to remain at the bottom of the social ladder anymore. Social class was now determined by economic status. Slavery did make a come back at this point, but usually only the richest could afford slaves.
The underclass however still remained. The serfs were no longer individuals bound to a lord. Now they were workers fighting for their existence to live. Indeed, from the birth of capitalism having basics no longer became something guaranteed by the community....if you could not make enough money by working for the new overlord, the capitalist boss, you would starve without the assistance from society. Beginning at the 20th century, social movements among the working class sprung up, demanding that the new industrial elite pay for the money they got from exploiting workers. As time went on, entitlements programs such as social security and welfare came into existence, but only after much working class revolt and riots.
So here we are. In the modern age of capitalism with a few elements of protectionism. And how is economic inequality today? Well let's take a look....according to a study done by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University, that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. Ain't that a shocker?! 85% of everything is controlled by a ruling class of 10% (- The World Distribution of Household Wealth. James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff. 5 December 2006)! The same study goes on to say 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global asset and that bottom half of the world adult population owned 1% of global wealth.
So this means since the time of feudalism, we have only improved by 10-15%. We have people who are starving, and yet this top 10% has this 85% surplus of wealth that is going to nothing useful, and is in fact destabilising to the economy since it fuels speculative investment bubbles as Wall Street tries to figure out what to do with it all.
Those surplus global assets are fueling destructive speculative bubbles, that only enrich the elites and do nothing to decrease the poverty rates of the population.
And yes you read it right - 40% of the wealth is in the hands of less than 1%. That is huge inequality. Another study goes on to point out that the richest 2% own more than half of the global household assets (article - "The rich really do own the world" - theglobeandmail.com). 2% own half of the worlds households, and yet we have such a large homeless population globally. How is this so much an improvement to feudalism? So much for the glory of capitalism.
Now ok, I did give a global figure, and previously I was discussing the history of wealth distribution within the framework of western civilization. So let's take a look at a western country like the United States. 10% of the population owns 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%! On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth! (Phillips, Peter (2006). Censored 2007:The Top 25 Censored Stories. Seven Stories Press. p. 207. ISBN 1583227385). And yet, who owns all the DEBT? Yep, you guessed it, the poor! The housing crash of 2008 really demonstrated how the transfer of wealth from poor to rich occurs via debt pushing by the rich. The poor are suckered into heavy debt burdens by aggressive loan sharking via brokers who deal with the middle layer of suckers - the banks - and then when it all collapses, the rich are bailed out by the taxpayers and the poor go bankrupt and homeless! It is really a breathtakingly genius strategy.
The sad fact is that economic neo-liberalism is widely being pushed as the only mode of economic organization around the world. Even traditionally more socialist countries like India is giving way to these economic "reforms" but while it might provide some short term growth, the nation now faces the problem of having an even bigger gap between rich and poor.
Neo-liberalist policies usually lead towards more economic inequality. Look no further than the United States. Thanks to Reaganomics, wages have been declining for working class people and the gap of inequality has gone up. There has been growth, but the growth has been going to the hands of the few, not to the population as a whole. No president since Reagan has tried to reverse these policies. It seem like Clinton was responsible for taking the economics of the democrat party far more right. No surprise there as the democratic party seems to be little more than a slightly more left republican party.
If we want a safer and more equitable world, we need to stop this massive monopolization of wealth by the ruling elite. It should be noted that regions with far more wealth re-distribution, like Scandinavia, have the highest living standards. It's only common sense that equality leads to more happiness and security of freedom.
Yet, the tension between freedom and equality - where freedom leads to oppression of the weak by the strong, and equality leads to oppression of the strong by the weak - continues to tilt to the side of more freedom for the wealthy to oppress the poor. A natural development when society is a system of laws and the laws are for sale to the highest bidder, aka lobbyist.
So what is stopping the world from adopting a more egalitarian social model? Well I think it largely has to do with the failure of communist and other regimes claiming to be socialist. In such countries, true socialism was never really tried, so everyone thinks socialism is something like the soviet union or maoist china (some anti-freedom state-worshiping system).
There is however a system of socialism that is far more pragmatic and far more progressive, that has almost never been tried. This is of course libertarian socialism, or socialism with individual freedom.
It doesn't take rocket science to realize that wage slavery is not very different than chattel slavery. The idea that you have to rent yourself to someone, and that you have follow their orders, and you work in a certain place but don't own it, and the conditions of your employment make it very difficult to move among different jobs, is a highly unnatural notion for any person claiming to be for true human rights.
So the age-old balancing act between the contradictory values of freedom and equality continues, with the increasing likelihood that the age-old method of last resort of rebalancing through revolution will happen once again.
The more things change ..."
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Where's the Beef? Where's the Jobs? Tax cuts Create Jobs Dont They? So where are the Jobs?
tax cuts create jobs, tax cuts create jobs, tax cuts create jobs, it must be true, I've heard it a million times from the Cantor-clones and other economic royalists.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/harvard-jeffrey-miron-blames-anti-business-democrats-lack-171746551.html?sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
17users liked this comment
9 users disliked this comment
Bruce about an hour ago
Taxes for the super rich have been dramatically lowered over the last 30 years, easily cut in half. So were are the jobs? Taxes as a percent of GDP were 18% under Bush and are less than 15% now. So were are the jobs? There are more billionaires now than ever. So where are the jobs? Corporations are sitting on about 2 trillion in cash, there is another one trillion in overseas accounts and the banks have another 1.6 trillion on deposit at the Federal Reserve. So where are the jobs? The answer is we sent all the good jobs overseas so we could generate all these trillions of dollars that are owned by guess who? The top 1% owns 35% to 40% of all the wealth in the nation and the top 10% owns 90%. The median wage is only $30,000. That's the problem! People don't have money to spend because wages are so low. Then add in the fact the the average health care plan for a family of four is over $14,000 consuming huge amounts of disposable income. The problem with the economy is demand. No business will hire or expand if they can't sell their products, period. Demand went away because the credit binge blew up. Things are not going to get better until the consumer de-leverages and that will take another 5 years at least. The Perry god, the Romney god or the Obama god can't fix it.
comment Julius about an hour ago
Blah blah blah. The speech is "tax the billionaires" and the bills are "tax people 200k up". The speech is "repeal the bush tax cuts for millionaires" and the reality is "tax hikes for people like me making 200k".
Total US public taxes as a percentage of GDP were 20% under Bush and will be 33% next year. ($5T out of $15T GDP). Make sure to count state and local tax burdens. In my state, California, my state and local taxes equal my federal taxes.
There are only 8200 people making $10 million a year or more in the US.
If you don't think there is an anti-Business sentiment in this administration, ask Boeing and Gibson guitars.. 0users liked this comment
comment Bruce 26 minutes ago
Your figures are wrong. Under Bush federal taxes were 18%. Total taxes with state and local income, property taxes, and sales taxes have been about 40% for decades. I hope they are only 33% next year because would be a huge tax break. My total tax load now is around 35% without counting sales taxes.
The 8200 families making more than 10 million emphasizes my point. The top 0.01% are cleaning up and pay much lower tax rates than you or I do. At 200K a year, you are not the problem getting away with paying low taxes. You are small potatoes.
I own a small business and the feds aren't bothering me at all. I'm doing well. The figures that I originally posted are true. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean that they are false..
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/harvard-jeffrey-miron-blames-anti-business-democrats-lack-171746551.html?sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
17users liked this comment
9 users disliked this comment
Bruce about an hour ago
Taxes for the super rich have been dramatically lowered over the last 30 years, easily cut in half. So were are the jobs? Taxes as a percent of GDP were 18% under Bush and are less than 15% now. So were are the jobs? There are more billionaires now than ever. So where are the jobs? Corporations are sitting on about 2 trillion in cash, there is another one trillion in overseas accounts and the banks have another 1.6 trillion on deposit at the Federal Reserve. So where are the jobs? The answer is we sent all the good jobs overseas so we could generate all these trillions of dollars that are owned by guess who? The top 1% owns 35% to 40% of all the wealth in the nation and the top 10% owns 90%. The median wage is only $30,000. That's the problem! People don't have money to spend because wages are so low. Then add in the fact the the average health care plan for a family of four is over $14,000 consuming huge amounts of disposable income. The problem with the economy is demand. No business will hire or expand if they can't sell their products, period. Demand went away because the credit binge blew up. Things are not going to get better until the consumer de-leverages and that will take another 5 years at least. The Perry god, the Romney god or the Obama god can't fix it.
comment Julius about an hour ago
Blah blah blah. The speech is "tax the billionaires" and the bills are "tax people 200k up". The speech is "repeal the bush tax cuts for millionaires" and the reality is "tax hikes for people like me making 200k".
Total US public taxes as a percentage of GDP were 20% under Bush and will be 33% next year. ($5T out of $15T GDP). Make sure to count state and local tax burdens. In my state, California, my state and local taxes equal my federal taxes.
There are only 8200 people making $10 million a year or more in the US.
If you don't think there is an anti-Business sentiment in this administration, ask Boeing and Gibson guitars.. 0users liked this comment
comment Bruce 26 minutes ago
Your figures are wrong. Under Bush federal taxes were 18%. Total taxes with state and local income, property taxes, and sales taxes have been about 40% for decades. I hope they are only 33% next year because would be a huge tax break. My total tax load now is around 35% without counting sales taxes.
The 8200 families making more than 10 million emphasizes my point. The top 0.01% are cleaning up and pay much lower tax rates than you or I do. At 200K a year, you are not the problem getting away with paying low taxes. You are small potatoes.
I own a small business and the feds aren't bothering me at all. I'm doing well. The figures that I originally posted are true. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean that they are false..
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Sociobiology - Evolutionary Benefits of Manic Depression for Tribe Leaders / Shamans
makes sense - there is an altered state of consciousness that conduces to tribal survival that shamans access in times of crisis for the tribe, just look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, and the book Black Elk Speaks, and Shamanism in Siberia. Nowadays manic depressives run for president, like Newt Gingrich, or run corporations, like Larry Ellison.
Friday :: Sep 9, 2011
Book Review: A First-Rate Madness
by paradox
A First-Rate Madness
Uncovering the Links Between leadership and Mental Illness
Nassir Ghaemi
Penguin Press, New York, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59420-295-7
Many brilliant human minds defy the stigma of mental illness and perform quite well, just as an injured NFL player performs through pain. Furthermore, recovering from the often-episodic travails of some forms of mental illness can obviously leave beneficial effects, such as resilience, realism, and empathy, even enhanced creativity.
Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi not only shatters the stigma of mental illness in A First Rate Madness, he also makes a convincing case that human leadership usually benefits from mental illness, that as a people in times of crisis it would be much better if we were led by someone who fits the profile of once experiencing manic-depressive illness, or at least has an “abnormal” mental profile that serves crisis leadership very well.
Continue reading "Book Review: A First-Rate Madness"
Friday :: Sep 9, 2011
Book Review: A First-Rate Madness
by paradox
A First-Rate Madness
Uncovering the Links Between leadership and Mental Illness
Nassir Ghaemi
Penguin Press, New York, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59420-295-7
Many brilliant human minds defy the stigma of mental illness and perform quite well, just as an injured NFL player performs through pain. Furthermore, recovering from the often-episodic travails of some forms of mental illness can obviously leave beneficial effects, such as resilience, realism, and empathy, even enhanced creativity.
Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi not only shatters the stigma of mental illness in A First Rate Madness, he also makes a convincing case that human leadership usually benefits from mental illness, that as a people in times of crisis it would be much better if we were led by someone who fits the profile of once experiencing manic-depressive illness, or at least has an “abnormal” mental profile that serves crisis leadership very well.
Continue reading "Book Review: A First-Rate Madness"
America R.I.P. - Karl Rove is Still Free, and Jeff Gannon and Roger Stone are still not talking
The Forgotten Story of Karl Rove's Plot Against America, will it ever be fully told?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2454987#2455061
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002695.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/03/04/96889/-Gannon-Rove-Stone-TANG-Forgeries-Timeline-(must-read!)
Should we date the Fall of America from Bush v Gore, or from Reagan's October Surprise, or from Reagan's Union Busting, or from Karl Rove's enthronement of Bush's second term via a staged war against Iraq and sabotage of a gullible Dan Rather?
Karl Rove ensured Bush's 'election'/selection with the forged Killian memos fed to Rather via the dirty trickster Roger Stone's wife, giving Rather a true story with tainted evidence, guaranteeing the story to be buried by the braindead media.
UTUSN (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-05-04 07:39 PM
Response to Original message
3. It's Totally KKKarl's m.o.
*************QUOTE********
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/238624p-20...
Karl Rove, ambush strategist?
When Dan Rather finally admitted that fake memos might have been used in his "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush's National Guard Service, political insiders immediately suspected the hand of Karl Rove.
Rove has vehemently denied the speculation. But, as the Atlantic Monthly's Joshua Green points out in the upcoming issue, Bush's political guru has earned quite a reputation for using dirty tricks in the heat of a campaign.
Green reports that:
In the 1996 Alabama Supreme Court race between Democratic incumbent Kenneth Ingram and Republican challenger Harold See, Rove printed anonymous fliers attacking See, his own client. The purpose was "'to create a backlash against the Democrat,' as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me," Green writes. "Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. ... The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate."
Rumormongering is another tool in Rove's bag, Green writes. In the late 1980s, when political consultant John Weaver - John McCain's top 2000 adviser - hired away one of Rove's employees, "Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man at a state Republican function," Green writes. Weaver quickly became persona non grata in the Texas GOP.
Rove's slimiest moment came in 1994, when See first ran for the Supreme Court in Alabama against Democratic incumbent Mark Kennedy, who had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. Kennedy's commercials highlighted his volunteer work - and included one that showed him holding hands with children - so Rove started a whispering campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile, Green writes. "What Rove does is try and make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship," explained Perkins.
The traumatized Kennedy won narrowly, but decided not to run for reelection.
Rove didn't respond to Green's request for an interview.
**********UNQUOTE********
Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."
So Sixty Minutes II went with the story using these documents. The White House released a copy of those documents to the media and Scott McClellan affirmed that the White House believed in the authenticity of those documents.
Yet, only hours later, an anonymous blogger known as Buckhead posted at freerepublic.com that the documents were forgeries and said "this should be pursued aggressively". And so it was. And the right-wing pack of hounds was off baying for Dan Rather's blood.
Buckhead now known to be Atlanta lawyer, Harry W. MacDougald, was revealed to be a right-wing operative, who has been involved in any number of right-wing attacks, including the petition drafted in 1998 to suspend Bill Clinton's law license.
It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service � a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.
But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.
Mr. MacDougald also has had his dirty little fingers in the controversy over whether the electronic voting machines in Georgia are reliable (via Hullabaloo). As Digby said,
Using the new laws of journalism and truth, this is all that's needed as proof that this was a Rovian operation from the get-go. This guy is no expert on typography, and he's an extremely well connected Republican operative who has worked at the highest level of GOP legal circles. That's good enough for GOP government work.
This was a Republican dirty trick.
I agree with Digby. Just look at the MO.
1996 - According to someone who worked with him, in 1996 Karl Rove created flyers viciously attacking his own candidate, Harold See, running for Alabama State Supreme Court. The resulting backlash against the Democrat allowed See to win the race. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003688
2000 - According to James Moore, after losing NH primary, Rove apparently resorts to push-polling on McCain in the SC primary, intimating that McCain was mentally unstable, his wife was a drug addict and he had a black love-child from a prostitute. Bush campaign denies responsibility. http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/
2000 - According to Jeffrey Toobin, Miami riot led by Stone, MacDougald also summoned by Baker. Nydia and her mother Olga help recruit Cubans for the Courthouse Riot and march advertised on Radio Mambi. From Dec. 4, 2000, Time Magazine: The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown, while Stone directed the action with a walkie-talkie. (Stone could not be reached for comment.) - Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375761071/103-7025856-3836615?%5Fencoding=UTF8
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/1204/cover_riot.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
Nov. 13, 2000 - Stone starts campaign to recall Democratic FL State Supreme Court Justices hearing the Gore vs. Bush case. Illegal campaign contributions eventually draw the attention of the FEC. http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/09/15_recount.html
2001 - According to Toobin, Cheney calls Roger Stone to thank him for Miami Courthouse Riot, asks him what he would like as compensation (Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call).
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
Feb 13, 2001 - Enquirer article on The Vault sex club in NYC says Roger and Nydia Stone used to be frequent customers. http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4616/enq0213.html
2002 - Stone given lucrative Indian casino political consulting contracts. Stone allegedly does political dirty trick hit on BIA official standing in way of his casino clients. http://www.indianz.com/News/archive/001861.asp
2002 - According to James Moore, Rove said to be behind GA Senate race ad associating Max Cleland with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/
2003 - Stone calls up Al Sharpton and offers to manage his campaign and help him fundraise. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
January 17, 2004 - Michael Moore "Deserter" charge, Wesley Clark supports Moore's right to say it 5 days later. http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html
End of January 2004 - Kerry says Bush's TANG records not important. Terry McAuliffe says Bush was AWOL.
February 10, 2004 - White House does document dump and says it is the full release of Bush's TANG records--but later on many more real docs show up.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/021004_bushmil.pdf
February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett appears on Hardball and with James Moore tells the story of how in 1997 he heard Joe Albaugh from Bush's office talk to Adjutant General David James on speaker phone, to tell him that Dan Bartlett and Karen Hughes will be down to "clean up" then-Governor Bush's TANG files. This trip was ostensibly to write a book but really to prepare for his 1998 and 2000 runs and make sure nothing embarrassing was in the records. Chris Matthews asks Burkett to swear that he is telling the truth, as if he were in court. Burkett does. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/
After February 12, 2004 - [MY SPECULATION:] Rove and Bartlett, certainly alarmed at Burkett's appearance on Hardball, presumably hatch phony TANG documents plot and create forgeries with slight mistakes on the wrong typewriter, an electric typewriter. If it was them, they would have used the Olympia Manual memos Mrs. Knox said she originally typed for Killian in 1972 and 1973. They would then have called Stone and asked him to get them to Burkett, the perfect patsy for their scheme.
After February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett says he starts receiving calls from a lady with a Latin accent named "Lucy Ramirez", who could be Nydia Stone, the Cuban wife of GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone [REGEN MAN'S SPECULATION]. "Lucy" tells Burkett she has previously unknown memos from Col. Killian and that he Burkett should get them and give them to the Kerry campaign. She also convinces him to burn the originals so she can never be identified. Burkett thinks she is trying to keep an old sexual affair with Killian secret. Burkett arranges with "Lucy" to meet her at the huge Houston Livestock Show..
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/
March 3, 2004 - According to Burkett's second story, the Unknown Man asks for him at Livestock Show, finds him and hands him envelope containing the CBS TANG forgeries without saying a word (source: Bill Burkett USA TODAY) USA TODAY confirms that ANOTHER person, an unnamed woman, said Burkett gave her papers that day which she held for him until the event was over in a box. Burkett and USA Today know who this woman is. So the likelihood is that Burkett is telling the truth when he said he was given the envelope by the Unknown Man. Burkett has never been given a photo of Stone to ID.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/
March to August, 2004 - For whatever reason, Burkett sits on the memos for five months until the Swift Boat ads enrage him and he calls up Max Cleland. Cleland tells him he'll talk to Kerry but no one calls Burkett back on the documents. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/
August 2004 - Mary Mapes, CBS Producer following up on TANG/AWOL, asks Burkett if there is anything new on the TANG story. He tells her of the Killian memos, thinking them real and that CBS News would have them checked by experts.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm
August 2004 - Roger and Nydia Stone miss first Republican Convention since 1968, taking a vacation in Spain. Stone says "It's pathetic that we are fighting over John Kerry's war record in Vietnam and George W. Bush's service in the National Guard given that there are a bunch of Islamic maniacs who want to wipe us off the face of the earth. I'll be on a beach in Barcelona." http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El1391&enZone=Articles&enVersion=0
Sept. 8, 2004 - First CBS report on Killian memos. To protect a lady's honor, Southern Gentleman Burkett intimates that a fellow National Guard officer gave him the TANG memos. CBS reports Dan Bartlett told John Roberts in the morning that "I have no reason to doubt their authenticity" so many times in the same way Roberts notes it in his book. Presumably this was the comment decided upon by he and Rove to make that day. Bartlett also says, "The memorandum in your possession shows that he spoke to the commander who made that order to talk about his personal situation and the fact that he is going to Alabama. So at every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirement. Granted permission to meet his requirement. And that's why President Bush was honorably discharged." Because Bartlett had used the forged copies to say that Bush fulfilled his TANG requirements, Roberts told his superiors, the memos are authenticated. Had Roberts been "played"? The trap, whoever forged the documents, was ready to close on Rather and destroy the potency of the TANG/AWOL issue.
September 8, 2004 - Within 18 minutes of the end of the TANG report, posts from "Buckhead" appear on FreeRepublic.com, saying he thinks something is phony. Within a few hours, Buckhead is putting forth forensic analyses of fonts and proportional spacing, claiming the memos are forged and actually word-processed. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=25054500;name=Buckhead http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22146919;name=Buckhead http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckhead
September 9, 2004 - Media trumpets forgery claim, discrediting Rather and whole TANG issue.
September, 10 2004 - Jeff Gannon receives a "scoop" from unknown person that Mapes was the CBS producer responsible. BEFORE writing his own scoop, Gannon tells Sean Hannity about Mapes. Hannity: HANNITY: "Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he's about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents." HANNITY: "And apparently they're also, according to Jeff Gannon, the -- Talon News -- this woman, Mary Mapes, this Dallas producer, is under pressure for the [CBS] network, and now there's doubts about their authenticity has taken place." [The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04]
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2454987#2455061
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002695.php
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/03/04/96889/-Gannon-Rove-Stone-TANG-Forgeries-Timeline-(must-read!)
Should we date the Fall of America from Bush v Gore, or from Reagan's October Surprise, or from Reagan's Union Busting, or from Karl Rove's enthronement of Bush's second term via a staged war against Iraq and sabotage of a gullible Dan Rather?
Karl Rove ensured Bush's 'election'/selection with the forged Killian memos fed to Rather via the dirty trickster Roger Stone's wife, giving Rather a true story with tainted evidence, guaranteeing the story to be buried by the braindead media.
UTUSN (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-05-04 07:39 PM
Response to Original message
3. It's Totally KKKarl's m.o.
*************QUOTE********
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/238624p-20...
Karl Rove, ambush strategist?
When Dan Rather finally admitted that fake memos might have been used in his "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush's National Guard Service, political insiders immediately suspected the hand of Karl Rove.
Rove has vehemently denied the speculation. But, as the Atlantic Monthly's Joshua Green points out in the upcoming issue, Bush's political guru has earned quite a reputation for using dirty tricks in the heat of a campaign.
Green reports that:
In the 1996 Alabama Supreme Court race between Democratic incumbent Kenneth Ingram and Republican challenger Harold See, Rove printed anonymous fliers attacking See, his own client. The purpose was "'to create a backlash against the Democrat,' as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me," Green writes. "Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. ... The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate."
Rumormongering is another tool in Rove's bag, Green writes. In the late 1980s, when political consultant John Weaver - John McCain's top 2000 adviser - hired away one of Rove's employees, "Rove spread a rumor that Weaver had made a pass at a young man at a state Republican function," Green writes. Weaver quickly became persona non grata in the Texas GOP.
Rove's slimiest moment came in 1994, when See first ran for the Supreme Court in Alabama against Democratic incumbent Mark Kennedy, who had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. Kennedy's commercials highlighted his volunteer work - and included one that showed him holding hands with children - so Rove started a whispering campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile, Green writes. "What Rove does is try and make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship," explained Perkins.
The traumatized Kennedy won narrowly, but decided not to run for reelection.
Rove didn't respond to Green's request for an interview.
**********UNQUOTE********
Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."
So Sixty Minutes II went with the story using these documents. The White House released a copy of those documents to the media and Scott McClellan affirmed that the White House believed in the authenticity of those documents.
Yet, only hours later, an anonymous blogger known as Buckhead posted at freerepublic.com that the documents were forgeries and said "this should be pursued aggressively". And so it was. And the right-wing pack of hounds was off baying for Dan Rather's blood.
Buckhead now known to be Atlanta lawyer, Harry W. MacDougald, was revealed to be a right-wing operative, who has been involved in any number of right-wing attacks, including the petition drafted in 1998 to suspend Bill Clinton's law license.
It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service � a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.
But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.
Mr. MacDougald also has had his dirty little fingers in the controversy over whether the electronic voting machines in Georgia are reliable (via Hullabaloo). As Digby said,
Using the new laws of journalism and truth, this is all that's needed as proof that this was a Rovian operation from the get-go. This guy is no expert on typography, and he's an extremely well connected Republican operative who has worked at the highest level of GOP legal circles. That's good enough for GOP government work.
This was a Republican dirty trick.
I agree with Digby. Just look at the MO.
1996 - According to someone who worked with him, in 1996 Karl Rove created flyers viciously attacking his own candidate, Harold See, running for Alabama State Supreme Court. The resulting backlash against the Democrat allowed See to win the race. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003688
2000 - According to James Moore, after losing NH primary, Rove apparently resorts to push-polling on McCain in the SC primary, intimating that McCain was mentally unstable, his wife was a drug addict and he had a black love-child from a prostitute. Bush campaign denies responsibility. http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/
2000 - According to Jeffrey Toobin, Miami riot led by Stone, MacDougald also summoned by Baker. Nydia and her mother Olga help recruit Cubans for the Courthouse Riot and march advertised on Radio Mambi. From Dec. 4, 2000, Time Magazine: The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown, while Stone directed the action with a walkie-talkie. (Stone could not be reached for comment.) - Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375761071/103-7025856-3836615?%5Fencoding=UTF8
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/1204/cover_riot.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
Nov. 13, 2000 - Stone starts campaign to recall Democratic FL State Supreme Court Justices hearing the Gore vs. Bush case. Illegal campaign contributions eventually draw the attention of the FEC. http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/09/15_recount.html
2001 - According to Toobin, Cheney calls Roger Stone to thank him for Miami Courthouse Riot, asks him what he would like as compensation (Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call).
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
Feb 13, 2001 - Enquirer article on The Vault sex club in NYC says Roger and Nydia Stone used to be frequent customers. http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4616/enq0213.html
2002 - Stone given lucrative Indian casino political consulting contracts. Stone allegedly does political dirty trick hit on BIA official standing in way of his casino clients. http://www.indianz.com/News/archive/001861.asp
2002 - According to James Moore, Rove said to be behind GA Senate race ad associating Max Cleland with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/
2003 - Stone calls up Al Sharpton and offers to manage his campaign and help him fundraise. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html
January 17, 2004 - Michael Moore "Deserter" charge, Wesley Clark supports Moore's right to say it 5 days later. http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html
End of January 2004 - Kerry says Bush's TANG records not important. Terry McAuliffe says Bush was AWOL.
February 10, 2004 - White House does document dump and says it is the full release of Bush's TANG records--but later on many more real docs show up.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/021004_bushmil.pdf
February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett appears on Hardball and with James Moore tells the story of how in 1997 he heard Joe Albaugh from Bush's office talk to Adjutant General David James on speaker phone, to tell him that Dan Bartlett and Karen Hughes will be down to "clean up" then-Governor Bush's TANG files. This trip was ostensibly to write a book but really to prepare for his 1998 and 2000 runs and make sure nothing embarrassing was in the records. Chris Matthews asks Burkett to swear that he is telling the truth, as if he were in court. Burkett does. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/
After February 12, 2004 - [MY SPECULATION:] Rove and Bartlett, certainly alarmed at Burkett's appearance on Hardball, presumably hatch phony TANG documents plot and create forgeries with slight mistakes on the wrong typewriter, an electric typewriter. If it was them, they would have used the Olympia Manual memos Mrs. Knox said she originally typed for Killian in 1972 and 1973. They would then have called Stone and asked him to get them to Burkett, the perfect patsy for their scheme.
After February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett says he starts receiving calls from a lady with a Latin accent named "Lucy Ramirez", who could be Nydia Stone, the Cuban wife of GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone [REGEN MAN'S SPECULATION]. "Lucy" tells Burkett she has previously unknown memos from Col. Killian and that he Burkett should get them and give them to the Kerry campaign. She also convinces him to burn the originals so she can never be identified. Burkett thinks she is trying to keep an old sexual affair with Killian secret. Burkett arranges with "Lucy" to meet her at the huge Houston Livestock Show..
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/
March 3, 2004 - According to Burkett's second story, the Unknown Man asks for him at Livestock Show, finds him and hands him envelope containing the CBS TANG forgeries without saying a word (source: Bill Burkett USA TODAY) USA TODAY confirms that ANOTHER person, an unnamed woman, said Burkett gave her papers that day which she held for him until the event was over in a box. Burkett and USA Today know who this woman is. So the likelihood is that Burkett is telling the truth when he said he was given the envelope by the Unknown Man. Burkett has never been given a photo of Stone to ID.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/
March to August, 2004 - For whatever reason, Burkett sits on the memos for five months until the Swift Boat ads enrage him and he calls up Max Cleland. Cleland tells him he'll talk to Kerry but no one calls Burkett back on the documents. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/
August 2004 - Mary Mapes, CBS Producer following up on TANG/AWOL, asks Burkett if there is anything new on the TANG story. He tells her of the Killian memos, thinking them real and that CBS News would have them checked by experts.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm
August 2004 - Roger and Nydia Stone miss first Republican Convention since 1968, taking a vacation in Spain. Stone says "It's pathetic that we are fighting over John Kerry's war record in Vietnam and George W. Bush's service in the National Guard given that there are a bunch of Islamic maniacs who want to wipe us off the face of the earth. I'll be on a beach in Barcelona." http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El1391&enZone=Articles&enVersion=0
Sept. 8, 2004 - First CBS report on Killian memos. To protect a lady's honor, Southern Gentleman Burkett intimates that a fellow National Guard officer gave him the TANG memos. CBS reports Dan Bartlett told John Roberts in the morning that "I have no reason to doubt their authenticity" so many times in the same way Roberts notes it in his book. Presumably this was the comment decided upon by he and Rove to make that day. Bartlett also says, "The memorandum in your possession shows that he spoke to the commander who made that order to talk about his personal situation and the fact that he is going to Alabama. So at every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirement. Granted permission to meet his requirement. And that's why President Bush was honorably discharged." Because Bartlett had used the forged copies to say that Bush fulfilled his TANG requirements, Roberts told his superiors, the memos are authenticated. Had Roberts been "played"? The trap, whoever forged the documents, was ready to close on Rather and destroy the potency of the TANG/AWOL issue.
September 8, 2004 - Within 18 minutes of the end of the TANG report, posts from "Buckhead" appear on FreeRepublic.com, saying he thinks something is phony. Within a few hours, Buckhead is putting forth forensic analyses of fonts and proportional spacing, claiming the memos are forged and actually word-processed. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=25054500;name=Buckhead http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22146919;name=Buckhead http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckhead
September 9, 2004 - Media trumpets forgery claim, discrediting Rather and whole TANG issue.
September, 10 2004 - Jeff Gannon receives a "scoop" from unknown person that Mapes was the CBS producer responsible. BEFORE writing his own scoop, Gannon tells Sean Hannity about Mapes. Hannity: HANNITY: "Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he's about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents." HANNITY: "And apparently they're also, according to Jeff Gannon, the -- Talon News -- this woman, Mary Mapes, this Dallas producer, is under pressure for the [CBS] network, and now there's doubts about their authenticity has taken place." [The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04]
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
America R.I.P: Gov Chris Chrsitie shows us how Plutocracy works, thanks to Bradblog's Brad Friedman
Gov Chris Christie has secret meeting with Koch brothers plutocrat convention and gets his marching orders of how to screw the middle class yet again while preserving the historically low tax rates for the plutocrat class, only revealed by the intrepid Brad Friedman of Bradblog, we peons get a peek under the tent of how our futures are determined by the Economic Royalist Plutocracy who now rules America, removing even the pretense of democracy:
NJ gov met with oil exec before gas pact pullout
BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press
Updated 05:05 p.m., Wednesday, September 7, 2011
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Months before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced the state was withdrawing from a pact aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions among 10 Northeastern states, he met with one of the billionaire oil industry brothers who have fought to end regional greenhouse gas initiatives.
Now environmentalists and liberals are holding up that meeting and a closed-door seminar in June hosted by brothers David and Charles Koch, in which Christie was the keynote speaker, as evidence of their claims that Christie is influenced by big oil.
"This is the smoking gun that shows he's been working with the Koch brothers from the beginning," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
On Wednesday, the liberal magazine Mother Jones revealed Christie's contact with the brothers in a report that featured secretly recorded audio from the closed-door conservative conclave in Vail, Colo., on June 26. The audio also revealed that Christie met with David Koch privately this winter.
"Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke — just the two of us — for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government," David Koch said in introducing Christie at the seminar, according to Mother Jones' recording. "At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, 'I'm really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy.'"
Christie announced in May he was pulling the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative by the end of the year. He said the program was "a failure" at actually reducing such emissions. He said the cap-and-trade pact "does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment."
A spokesman for Koch Industries did not return a call and emails sent Wednesday seeking comment on the Mother Jones report.
A spokesman for the governor said that timing of events — both the meeting in New York and the speech in Vail — were "wholly unconnected" to the governor's decision to pull out of RGGI.
"The governor has stated clearly the reasons that make RGGI bad public policy," spokesman Michael Drewniak said.
NJ gov met with oil exec before gas pact pullout
BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press
Updated 05:05 p.m., Wednesday, September 7, 2011
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Months before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced the state was withdrawing from a pact aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions among 10 Northeastern states, he met with one of the billionaire oil industry brothers who have fought to end regional greenhouse gas initiatives.
Now environmentalists and liberals are holding up that meeting and a closed-door seminar in June hosted by brothers David and Charles Koch, in which Christie was the keynote speaker, as evidence of their claims that Christie is influenced by big oil.
"This is the smoking gun that shows he's been working with the Koch brothers from the beginning," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
On Wednesday, the liberal magazine Mother Jones revealed Christie's contact with the brothers in a report that featured secretly recorded audio from the closed-door conservative conclave in Vail, Colo., on June 26. The audio also revealed that Christie met with David Koch privately this winter.
"Five months ago we met in my New York City office and spoke — just the two of us — for about two hours on his objectives and successes in correcting many of the most serious problems of the New Jersey state government," David Koch said in introducing Christie at the seminar, according to Mother Jones' recording. "At the end of our conversation, I said to myself, 'I'm really impressed and inspired by this man. He is my kind of guy.'"
Christie announced in May he was pulling the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative by the end of the year. He said the program was "a failure" at actually reducing such emissions. He said the cap-and-trade pact "does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment."
A spokesman for Koch Industries did not return a call and emails sent Wednesday seeking comment on the Mother Jones report.
A spokesman for the governor said that timing of events — both the meeting in New York and the speech in Vail — were "wholly unconnected" to the governor's decision to pull out of RGGI.
"The governor has stated clearly the reasons that make RGGI bad public policy," spokesman Michael Drewniak said.
America R.I.P.: The Fairness Doctrine is DEAD! Long Live Fair and Balanced Fox News Fascism!
Obama FCC Kills "Fairness Doctrine" Dead, as Requested by Congressional Republicans
Tuesday 23 August 2011
by: Brad Friedman, TheBradBlog | News Analysis
In apparent response to GOP leaders of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee who requested in June that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Julius Genachowski "strike the Fairness Doctrine from the agency's rulebook," the former corporate media executive has announced exactly that today, striking the rule, and 82 others, from the official FCC rulebook...
As reported by Hollywood Reporter today...
The controversial Fairness Doctrine and 82 other rules governing electronic media were deemed obsolete and, therefore, abandoned by the FCC on Monday.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski called the rules "outdated" and said they were being removed to lessen the burdens of regulation on media companies. The decision also includes significant reductions in satellite and broadcasting license fees. The FCC said the moves are part of its focus on eliminating rules that are no longer needed and revising others to reflect changes in technology, "thereby clearing the path for greater competition, investment and job creation."
Bound to get the most attention though is ditching the Fairness Doctrine, an idea that was meant to force radio broadcasters into offering as much left wing political content as they offer right wing commentary. Although the doctrine has not been enforced since President Ronald Reagan deemed it unnecessary at best and an infringement of free speech at worst, the rule was still technically on the books.
Liberal commentators and even some lawmakers were agitating for its enforcement again, though Genachowski has resisted and on Monday made its demise official policy.
“The elimination of the obsolete Fairness Doctrine regulations will remove an unnecessary distraction," Genachowski said. "As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead. The Fairness Doctrine holds the potential to chill free speech and the free flow of ideas and was properly abandoned over two decades ago. I am pleased we are removing these and other obsolete rules from our books."
As noted by Hollywood Reporter, the Fairness Doctrine has largely been a dead letter since Reagan ordered his FCC to stop enforcing it in 1987. Despite how the legend has it --- and as Hollywood Reporter somewhat misleads in its report --- the doctrine did not ensure balance of political views on the publicly-owned airwaves. It did, however, require that media at least offer the opportunity to air opposing views on controversial issues.
Ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine, which had served the nation well since the early days of radio in 1949, paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and other hard right commentators to use the public airwaves as little more than a one-sided propaganda tool. The situation was exacerbated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as signed by President Bill Clinton, under the pretense that it would allow for greater competition in the broadcast media market. The act allowed for virtually unrestricted corporate ownership of local radio and television stations and ultimately gave a handful of corporate outlets unfettered control of almost all of the nation's limited broadcast bandwidth.
The result, as Sue Wilson --- a former news producer and director of Broadcast Blues, a documentary about many recent failings of the FCC --- noted at The BRAD BLOG last April, is that Rightwing talk radio now dominates the nation's public airwaves, even dwarfing the reach of Rightwing television cable outlets such as Fox "News".
Tuesday 23 August 2011
by: Brad Friedman, TheBradBlog | News Analysis
In apparent response to GOP leaders of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee who requested in June that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Julius Genachowski "strike the Fairness Doctrine from the agency's rulebook," the former corporate media executive has announced exactly that today, striking the rule, and 82 others, from the official FCC rulebook...
As reported by Hollywood Reporter today...
The controversial Fairness Doctrine and 82 other rules governing electronic media were deemed obsolete and, therefore, abandoned by the FCC on Monday.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski called the rules "outdated" and said they were being removed to lessen the burdens of regulation on media companies. The decision also includes significant reductions in satellite and broadcasting license fees. The FCC said the moves are part of its focus on eliminating rules that are no longer needed and revising others to reflect changes in technology, "thereby clearing the path for greater competition, investment and job creation."
Bound to get the most attention though is ditching the Fairness Doctrine, an idea that was meant to force radio broadcasters into offering as much left wing political content as they offer right wing commentary. Although the doctrine has not been enforced since President Ronald Reagan deemed it unnecessary at best and an infringement of free speech at worst, the rule was still technically on the books.
Liberal commentators and even some lawmakers were agitating for its enforcement again, though Genachowski has resisted and on Monday made its demise official policy.
“The elimination of the obsolete Fairness Doctrine regulations will remove an unnecessary distraction," Genachowski said. "As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead. The Fairness Doctrine holds the potential to chill free speech and the free flow of ideas and was properly abandoned over two decades ago. I am pleased we are removing these and other obsolete rules from our books."
As noted by Hollywood Reporter, the Fairness Doctrine has largely been a dead letter since Reagan ordered his FCC to stop enforcing it in 1987. Despite how the legend has it --- and as Hollywood Reporter somewhat misleads in its report --- the doctrine did not ensure balance of political views on the publicly-owned airwaves. It did, however, require that media at least offer the opportunity to air opposing views on controversial issues.
Ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine, which had served the nation well since the early days of radio in 1949, paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and other hard right commentators to use the public airwaves as little more than a one-sided propaganda tool. The situation was exacerbated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as signed by President Bill Clinton, under the pretense that it would allow for greater competition in the broadcast media market. The act allowed for virtually unrestricted corporate ownership of local radio and television stations and ultimately gave a handful of corporate outlets unfettered control of almost all of the nation's limited broadcast bandwidth.
The result, as Sue Wilson --- a former news producer and director of Broadcast Blues, a documentary about many recent failings of the FCC --- noted at The BRAD BLOG last April, is that Rightwing talk radio now dominates the nation's public airwaves, even dwarfing the reach of Rightwing television cable outlets such as Fox "News".
Friday, September 9, 2011
Homage to Steve Jobs - Selling Sugared Water and Expensive Baubles by the River
The question we should all ask ourselves on a regular basis, (along with the practice of Memento Mori):
“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
— What Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley to lure him to Apple. Sculley mentions it in the documentary Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs.
comments:
Hernan 18 Mar 11
Hey Steve, do you want to sell overpriced pretentiously-designed baubles for rich ne’er-do-well’s for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?
hasen 19 Mar 11
I love this quote. It embodies the idealistic spirit.
Sorry to all the practical people who don’t get it—you’re just not wired to think that way, and that’s ok, but really you shouldn’t try to belittle it.
Donny V 21 Mar 11
The only way Apple has changed the world is by creating bigger trash piles in China, full of old iPads and iPhones
“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
— What Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley to lure him to Apple. Sculley mentions it in the documentary Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs.
comments:
Hernan 18 Mar 11
Hey Steve, do you want to sell overpriced pretentiously-designed baubles for rich ne’er-do-well’s for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?
hasen 19 Mar 11
I love this quote. It embodies the idealistic spirit.
Sorry to all the practical people who don’t get it—you’re just not wired to think that way, and that’s ok, but really you shouldn’t try to belittle it.
Donny V 21 Mar 11
The only way Apple has changed the world is by creating bigger trash piles in China, full of old iPads and iPhones
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