Bits Bucket for July 26, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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7/22/2013
Opinion Journal Live
Who’s Next To Go Bankrupt After Detroit?
Mary Kissel and Paul Gigot discuss Detroit’s bankruptcy filing and other cities that could potentially be next in line? Also, China’s slowdown is more serius than you think.
Any city with the following:
Public unions + huge free sh*t army + long time democrat control
Bailouts are coming. Obama will just give them money from his secret stash.
Forward
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2009/10/08/detroit_s_model_citizens_line_up_for_money_from_obama_s_stash
remember bill clinton’s million dollar haircut?
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/21/us/haircut-grounded-clinton-while-the-price-took-off.html
With Goldman Sachs back in the news, it seems like the good ole days.
Former Goldman Sachs trader Fabulous Fab takes the stand
By Aaron Smith
July 24, 2013: 5:38 PM ET
Former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre is scheduled to speak Wednesday at his SEC fraud trial at federal court in Manhattan.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs trader known as the “Fabulous Fab,” testified for the first time on Wednesday in his fraud trial with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC has charged Tourre with fraud for allegedly misleading investors in real estate-related funds in 2007, withholding the fact that hedge fund Paulson & Co. had shorted the mortgage funds, which were known as Abacus.
“Mr. Tourre did not disclose that a short investor had been involved in selecting that portfolio, that investor being Paulson,” said SEC lawyer Matthew Martens, in opening statements last week. “Mr. Tourre told investors a half-truth, and that half-truth was securities fraud.”
“The evidence also shows that Mr. Tourre knew what was he was doing wrong,” he added.
…
It’s Enron again, folks:
The Goldman Sachs Guide To Manipulating Commodities
By Marcus Stanley
July 24, 2013
Americans have learned a lot in recent years about how our largest financial institutions make their money. But few would have imagined that a million and a half tons of aluminum – a quarter of the national supply at any given moment – typically sits in a network of 27 Detroit warehouses owned by Goldman Sachs. And hardly anyone would have thought that manufacturers seeking to purchase that aluminum might wait 18 months or more for delivery, while warehouse owners like Goldman Sachs collect additional rent, paid for by consumers of aluminum products ranging from beer cans to home siding.
In an important hearing yesterday before the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Weiner of MillerCoors described the operation and how it boosts prices for real-economy companies. The witnesses at yesterday’s hearing explained how the largest Wall Street banks have accumulated massive amounts of physical commodity infrastructure, ranging from warehouses to oil tankers to power generation plants.
Supply bottlenecks in bank-owned warehouses are only one part of the story. Banks are central players in the financialization of commodity markets, the treatment of physical commodities as purely financial assets to be manipulated for trading and investment purposes, rather than inputs for the real economy.
The original purpose of markets in commodities and commodity derivatives was to ensure steady prices and consistent availability for real-economy users of commodities. But the selling of commodities as an inflation hedge and a retirement asset (over $440 billion in investor money has poured into commodity investment funds since 2004, as opposed to just $25 billion into equity funds) has transformed these markets, increasing price levels and price volatility, and opening up many opportunities for manipulation.
Some of the richest opportunities for such manipulation lie in combining control of physical commodities with dominance of commodity derivatives and futures markets. The major banks are, of course, key dealers in these derivatives markets. Control of physical commodities allows them to both forecast and influence the spot commodity prices that can determine derivatives pricing. Indeed, some observers have pointed out that bank involvement in warehousing has allowed them to conceal information from the markets on the true supply of physical commodities, creating market squeezes and artificially fueling investor appetite for commodity futures.
Big financial players are constantly seeking new ways to take advantage of this nexus. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved the applications of JP Morgan and BlackRock for exchange traded funds (ETFs) that will be backed by physical copper. These funds will store physical copper in bank-owned warehouses to back investor shares in the ETF – potentially creating an investor-funded squeeze in the physical copper markets that would raise commodity prices and make market manipulation easier.
The potential conflicts of interest and opportunities for manipulation created by the combination of a dominant position in derivatives markets and a dominant position in actual commodity infrastructure are one reason why the traditional division between banking and commerce makes sense. Banks have a central role in the economy, thanks to their key position in the financial markets, their enormous balance sheet resources supported by leverage levels available to no other industry and their privileged access to liquidity. Unless the scope of their activities is restricted, they have too many opportunities for abuse of market power. As law professor Saule Omarova testified yesterday, Americans have traditionally viewed “large aggregations of financial power in the hands of a few money trusts with great suspicion.” Such aggregation of power is the inevitable result of a failure to separate banking and commerce.
[Read the U.S. News debate: Are Banks Becoming Too Big to Jail?]
…
Is the aluminum reshuffling scheme the ultimate in Keynesian broken window economic stimulus? Not only does it bring in higher profits to Goldman for doing nothing of productive value, but it also stimulates Detroit’s regional economy.
It’s Enron again, folks:
The Goldman Sachs Guide To Manipulating Commodities
Except Enron wasn’t too connected to fail.
The good ole days with the same ole entitled criminality. When, oh when will cells of this monumentally greed-infested enterprise be broken up as an enemy of the people and sent back to the provinces from whence they emanated? At least the mafia makes a pretense of protecting the community it sucks from.
Why not call your Congressmen and ask them that very same question, in the very same way?
rich people pay fines, poor people go to jail.
The really sad thing, azdude, is that ahansen’s comment works extremely well for both Goldman and Congress.
That they are one and the same (in some cases, literally) is probably the reason why.
Please don’t think I have not. Repeatedly.
But Kevin McCarthy is making a fortune as House Majority Whip (I.E.; he controls what business comes to the House floor,) soooooo….
And yes, I’ve considered running for the seat on several occasions, but as I’m one of the (very) few independent voices in an overwhelmingly mainline GOP district dominated by Big Oil, Ag, and MIC interests, the six of so votes I might garner are largely symbolic given the tens of millions I’d have to raise to run a credible campaign.
So I vent with early morning rants instead.
“At least the mafia makes a pretense of protecting the community it sucks from.”
The problem with the Megabank, Inc vampire squid is that it sucks financial lifeblood from every other corner of the planet to support its parasitic NYC financial center existence, and pays off would-be regulators in the process.
At least the mafia makes a pretense of protecting the community it sucks from.
The difference is Mafia had wise guys, Goldman has lawyers.
I’d say the Mafia has a better understanding of human nature and a deeper connection to the community. They can keep the scam going for centuries. The Goldman types would rather maximize profits today even if it means the guillotine tomorrow. They consider themselves separate from and far far above the community they skim from, and it will be their undoing.
Isn’t the mafia organized in families? I assure you, Goldman departments don’t think that way.
Goldman’s “families” are it’s pet politicians.
I think you could trust a Mafia family a lot more when the chips are down.
Exactly how bad is China’s banking crisis?
The true confessions of a Chinese shadow banker
China’s shadow bankers are easy to demonize. Their methods are unorthodox, possibly even unsavory. They look like a disaster waiting to happen
Joe Zhang, Bloomberg News | 13/07/09 | Last Updated: 13/07/09 1:08 PM ET
More from Bloomberg News
Between curbside lenders, microcredit institutions, pawnshops, trust loans, “wealth management products” from banks and other components, this murky and unregulated financial universe is now worth an estimated $5 trillion, challenging the dominance of the traditional banking sector.
Shadow banking has flourished in China for one simple reason: financial repression
In the fall of 2010, as deputy head of China investment banking at UBS AG, I spoke to a group of wealthy investors in Beijing about the outlook for Chinese stocks. A rumpled, 50-something man from Hangzhou named Wang Zhigang pulled me aside afterward and asked for my advice about investing. Until then, he had made his money through curbside lending, not stocks. But, he lamented, his returns had dropped from more than 30% a year to a mere 23%. He worried about his personal fortune, which he had built up from nothing to almost 3 billion yuan (about $445 million back then).
He hardly needed my advice, I told him. “With your performance, even Ba-Fei-Te should farm out some money for you to manage!” I said, referring to Warren Buffett’s name in Chinese.
Intrigued, I flew to Hangzhou a few days later to find out how Wang had done so well. He drove me to the Haining Leather Market to meet some of his customers. They were merchants of leather shoes, handbags and accessories. Their network was wide and close-knit, and they sold products globally through traditional channels, as well as online.
Twenty years ago, these guys would have looked like small fish to a traditional bank. Even after their businesses had grown exponentially, they couldn’t supply the kind of collateral that banks demanded. Yet these merchants needed money, and they needed it fast. So they turned for help to “shadow” bankers, like Wang.
Shadow Portfolios
There has been a lot of talk lately about shadow banking in China. Between curbside lenders, microcredit institutions, pawnshops, trust loans, “wealth management products” from banks and other components, this murky and unregulated financial universe is now worth an estimated $5 trillion, challenging the dominance of the traditional banking sector. Such unrestrained growth naturally worries China’s central bank, which fears that a flood of bad shadow loans could prompt a financial meltdown similar to the U.S. subprime crisis in 2008. A liquidity squeeze in June, when the central bank allowed interbank lending rates to rise to as high as 20% before intervening, was widely interpreted as a warning to banks to clean up their shadow portfolios.
…
Related
China’s ghost towns highlight shadow banking risks
Should we be worried about China’s $2.2-trillion shadow banking system?
Why China is purposely pushing its banking system to the edge of a crisis
Why China’s Economy Could Be Toast
By Greg Canavan • July 19th, 2013
Today we’ll jump on board our old hobby horse, China, and enjoy a leisurely ride. We’ll cover ghost cities gone bust, stimulus options, iron ore and the IMF. After reading, you’ll realise why we expect sharp share price falls ahead .
We say that because China’s own economic restructuring will define Australia’s direction over the next few years. And although we’ve made the point before, we’ll make it again: China’s rebalancing hasn’t even started yet. For example, the property market is still booming.
…
If their economy tanks I guess the FED can buy more treasuries ?
I bet Chinese banks are still in better condition than ours.
I bet after their 1929 event a chunk of their population will return to the family farm like we did in the 30s. And they’ll come out of it even stronger. We’re more likely to end up like England.
England raised a bunch of successful children to lean on in its old age (the US, Canada, AUS/NZ, etc.). We’ve only managed to adopt a few violent felons that continue to throw rocks at the neighbor’s kids.
We’re going to turn into the old guy in the trailer park that sits in his rocking chair with a shotgun in his lap.
Posted by Rapti Gupta on Jul 08, 2013 09:10 AM EDT
Some Abandoned Ghost Towns of America (VIDEO)
Indeed, towns are what the people make of it. These cities were once living, breathing habited areas that are now in ruins, just like a body decaying and rotting with time. While some are spectacularly breathtaking, aging gracefully, others tell a sad story of destruction and suffering. (Photo : Flickr / Creative Commons)
China’s empty ghost cities were recently toured by CBS 60 Minutes. The context was the scores of apartments and housing facilities that remained unoccupied due to stringent property rules in the country. The large estates look like abandoned urban colonies that stand in eerie silence, devoid of any life or bustle that earned them the moniker “Empty Ghost Towns of China”.
However, there are many real cities and towns in America that were abandoned years ago. These cities were once living, breathing areas that are now in ruins, just like a body decaying and rotting with time. While some are spectacularly breathtaking, aging gracefully, others tell a sad story of destruction and suffering.
…
The British car show Top Gear recently did an episode about Spain’s ghost cities. I have no idea how much was scripted, but my god was it illuminating and depressing if even sort of true.
In the episode they:
Stayed in a condo in an abandoned city of condos. It seemed like they just picked one and walked in.
They had a race on an abandoned international airport
They had a race through the middle of an abandoned city.
And all of these were recently built.
Check it out on BBC America or maybe bits of it are on youtube.
The overbuilding in the US just doesn’t even compare, if the episode was even sort of true.
He’s baaaaack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpdoLSJ1wCE
Woman crushed by homemade elevator.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/accidents/woman-killed-when-crushed-by-homemade-elevator-in-weeki-wachee/2133146
Headline alone is enough to know which state.
When I saw Wiki Wachee I thought they meant at the actual spring/resort.
Why couldn’t we have Preet for AG instead of “too big to jail” Holder? Preet’s got a mind like a steel trap, he’s methodical, patient, relentless.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/sac-capital-indicted-in-six-year-u-s-insider-probe.html
As we all know, the US government is spying on almost everything we say and do electronically. To catch terrorists, they say. Yet the US govt. is funding Al-Qaeda in Syria and giving them weapons.
‘Nothing says wholesome family fun like al-Qaeda, which is why the group’s Syrian and Iraqi branches held a festival in a rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo. The bizarre event, captured on video, is part of a broader effort to show Syrian civilians a softer, cuddlier side to the militant jihadist movement, which has been seizing territory in Syria.’
‘The event was hosted by two al-Qaeda-allied groups: Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist Syrian rebel group, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is based in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a recent jailbreak that freed hundreds of insurgents there. The groups have earned a reputation for fearsome fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, but also for their severe rule over areas under their control. According to Syrian rights groups, Jabhat al-Nusra recently executed a 14-year-old boy in Aleppo for referencing the prophet Muhammad in a manner they deemed disrespectful.’
‘According to the Independent’s story on the Aleppo fair, here a few of the very creepy-sounding events:
• An ice-cream-eating contest for boys. A video of the contest, since deleted, showed Islamic State jihadist flags hanging in the background.
• A Koran recitation contest for girls.
• A tug of war between Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State members, video of which has also since been removed from YouTube.
• Distribution of pamphlets, flags and “other propaganda-type products” meant to promote jihadism, according to a terrorism analyst who spoke to the Independent.
• Distribution of food, most importantly bread.
And you can bet there was some preaching as well.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/25/al-qaeda-hosts-a-family-fair-in-syria-complete-with-ice-cream-and-jihad/
Am I the only one here who wonders why we are simultaneously told we can not expect our constitutional rights because of the “war” on Al-Qaeda, while our tax dollars are buying them ice cream in Syria?
‘Am I the only one here who wonders why we are simultaneously told we can not expect our constitutional rights because of the “war” on Al-Qaeda, while our tax dollars are buying them ice cream in Syria?’
Too puzzling to process.
If Ben and Jerry supplid the ice cream, all we did is “help” US business and jobs. What’s so wrong about that?
/s
Too puzzling to process.
Classic case of presidential cognitive dissonance?
expect nothing less from the nobel peace prize president.
Why wasn’t Niel Armstrong given a Nobel Prize?
If anybody deserved one it was him.
Because he had class
I don’t think being good at flying a rocket was one of the categories…
is becoming the 1st black president of the United States one of the categories?
is becoming the 1st black president of the United States one of the categories?
Not being 1st black but by being their kind of black. Darnell or Trayvon will never win peace prize nor will they ever be presidents.
“Am I the only one here who wonders why we are simultaneously told we can not expect our constitutional rights because of the “war” on Al-Qaeda, while our tax dollars are buying them ice cream in Syria?”
No, and my congressman has been vehemently against involvement in Syria, but he was one of the losers in the recent House vote.
And in other news, it looks as if Russia and the US govt are bargaining over Snowden, even more depressing. But I can’t say I didn’t expect it, very bad move to fly to Russia.
China, Russia, REALLY? Those countries are worse than the US, or maybe at least just as bad.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend… sort of. We’ve invaded two countries in the last 12 years, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda, but have decided that Syria is too complex an endeavor to invade. We’ll just arm the same people that were fighting and killing us in Iraq and Afghanistan… where is the outrage? Where is the media coverage?
But the rot goes deeper: liberals and progressives (for the most part) waged a political battle in this country to take away Americans’ 2nd Amendment right to bear arms… while not batting an eye at the CIA providing automatic rifles, grenades, anti-armor and anti-air rocket launchers to the same people that fought and killed our troops in Iraq?
When did arming Al Qaeda become more palatable than arming American citizens?
“ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda”
LOL, just LOL.
What Reagan and Obama have in common?
They both armed Al-Qaeda.
Thank you thank you very much…I will be here all week.
You seem to think that we have a choice in this matter. We don’t. What you don’t understand is technology itself is the issue. If we keep developing ever more advanced devices, networks and software I fail to see how we can stop this runaway train. Someday a A.I. based machine will sit in judgement of our actions. Be it a diagnosis of a life threatening disease or deciding guilt in a court of law, it will happen in our future.
So what’s the plan?
The Qaeda were an offshoot of “our” guys in the first place, and since they’re a significant political presence in the region it only makes sense to co-opt the hybrid that’s evolved over the years of warfare and arcane interaction. We do business with folks who used to be Nazis, Sandinistas, Viet Cong, PLO, and certainly Talib, so why not Al Qaeda moderates? It’s not like they’re going anywhere….
Through binLadin (originally our boy as well, now that I come to think of it), we built a huge business network in the region; it only makes sense to make use of it.
why not Al Qaeda moderates
‘ Rebels belonging to Ansar Al-Sunna an Al Qaeda affiliated militant group executed a kidnapped Alawite whom they claim to be a ‘Shabiha’ and a policeman. They do not provide any idenitifcation and the man, who appears to have been tortured, is wearing civilian clothing.’
‘The victim is likely to have been a civilian, one of many executed by insurgent groups fighting in Syria. Many are killed purely on the basis of the political or religious (Christian, Druze, Shiite or Alawite) beliefs and their fate is completely ignored by Western journalists and human rights organisations despite the growing frequency of such killings.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK_0XwxX7A8
‘Syria - Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front Beheads Christian Priest & Man in Idlib countryside The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate. Viewer discretion is advised.
Continue or Cancel
http://www.youtube.com/verify_controversy?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DalCsFKyAZR8
Continue or Cancel; a good question.
It occurs to me that we used to at least pretend to be decent people in the US. Now we spy, torture, assassinate, imprison without trial, you name it, all on the evening news.
War and statecraft are dirty businesses — atrocities abound and are well-politicized by conflicting sides for propagandistic purposes. But the fact that the US is now conspiring with its once-sworn enemies seems to me a perversely positive sign that rapprochement is brewing. The American North and South once fought a terrible and atrocity-ridden civil war, too, but common interest eventually trumped (some of the) ideological differences.
Instead of battling social systems, we’ll soon be fighting global corporate ones. One can only hope there will be increased accountability, but given human nature, I’m not holding my breath in the short run.
Tragedy & Hope, pp. 1247-1248:
“The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War)….The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
“As we all know, the US government is spying on almost everything we say and do electronically. To catch terrorists, they say. Yet the US govt. is funding Al-Qaeda in Syria and giving them weapons.”
All roads end in Israel regurgitating its Palestinian situation.
July 26, 2013, 8:21 a.m. EDT
SEC goes after the ‘Bitcoin Bernie Madoff’
Commentary: What’s next, investigating Beanie Baby fraud?
By Al Lewis
DENVER (MarketWatch) — There doesn’t seem to be a shred of evidence that alleged Ponzi schemer Trendon T. Shavers took a dime from anyone.
He took bitcoins.
Nevertheless, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Shavers on Tuesday for cheating about 66 so-called investors from Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Some are calling Shavers, a 30-year-old from McKinney, Texas, the “Bitcoin Bernie Madoff.” The SEC says his alleged “sham” amounted to more than $4.5 million worth of bitcoins. He allegedly diverted some bitcoins for his own personal use, selling them for cash to pay rent, automobile expenses, meals, assorted retail purchases and casinos, the SEC said.
…
A Madoff is a Madoff.
During the George Zimmerman trial I deliberately tried to stay away from all facts not directly relevant to the night of the incident ( I was not always successful).
Now that its over, I feel free to investigate things like text messages, school suspensions, thug photos… and most importantly, who raised Trayvon Martin?
At this time I have narrowed my focus to 3 black females, and 1 black male:
Tracy Martin — father
Sabrina Martin — Mother
Alicia Stanley — step mother
Brandy green — fathers “girlfriend”
To date, none of these black people have stepped forward to indicate they promoted and/or tolerated thug like behavior from Trayvon; indeed, they all claim the exact opposite.
Ive come to the conclusion (and its a tragic one) that none of these 4 black people had the will and/or ability to correctly raise a child. I specifically cite the lack of adult caregiver continuity demonstrated by the 3 black females Tracy Martin was “juggling”.
I just listened to a recording of the missing persons call Tracy Martin made to the Sanford PD the day after the shooting. Guess what?
Tracy Martin did not know the address where HE HIMSELF was staying!
WTF???
Listen to it yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpBfbIb3FvY
HOW do you file a missing persons report on your son when you don’t know where he OR you live?
(((shakin my head)))
I don’t know if Trayvon Martin BECAME a thug; but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. Children need continuity of care and instruction in order to “act right”. Just like his dad, Trayvon was bouncing off who knows how many different black females.
Who here is surprised it ended in tears?
I’m not.
Wake up and smell the purple drank.
‘wake up and smell the purple drank’
that’s catchy, maybe it could replace ‘taste the rainbow’ in skittles ads.
Skittles was ready for situations like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ht3JPdLFcw
Bingo, spook. This poor kid was skewered when his bio-mom gave up custody when he was three years old. Seriously, what kind of woman gives up custody of a three-year-old when she’s got a steady county job with the Section 8 housing administration? (Employed by them for 18 years at time of shooting.)
That this woman now plays the part of “grieving mom” when she’s collected a million bucks from the HOA and trademarked “her” dead child’s name tells us all we need to know about the sincerity of her motivations.
Here’s another one for you Ahansen; when did Trayvon’s “girlfriend” Rachel Jeantel contact his parents and/or law enforcement about the phone call they shared that night?
At first I was surprised she didn’t take any action that night. But after running a “criminal thinking situation program” I have a hypothesis.
She abandoned him because she did not want to be connected to what he was doing at the time he was doing it.
Name another time when a friend abandons a friend?
This has bothered me for a long time because I couldn’t understand why a friend ( especially a female) would roll over and go to sleep after hearing what she says she heard on the phone that night?
I can’t find the reference right now, but it may have been as long as two weeks before she came forward. Once she found out it was George Zimmerman and not some gangbanger Trayvon owed money, why didn’t she speak up?
She ghosted on him for a reason; and it may have been because of some knowledge she had of who he really was and what he was really up to that night.
If Trayvon was up to no good that night, she may have been trying to save herself?
Don’t be fooled. Overweight black females can become Johnny Cochran when they really want the truth. Her “puddin” routine may have been her way of saving her own skin.
Country bumpkins like me share at least one cultural affinity with urban “youths” inasmuch as the LAST person we want brought into any given clusterfrack is the Law. The surest way for trouble to become Trouble is to call the cops.
The reasons are myriad, but chief among them is the (well-deserved, in my experience) mutual suspicion and skepticism — civilians of a clueless and assumed trigger-happy authority, cops of an armed and presumed hostile citizenry. Better to stay out of it and not risk getting involved with the legal/court system, and work it out within the community.
Ms. Jeantel may have been reluctant for personal reasons, or she may have just been so “slow” or inured to casual violence that it never occurred to her to call for help. But what I got from her testimony was that she simply didn’t know where Martin’s parents or alleged caregivers might have been, and more importantly, didn’t think them involved enough in his well-being to be of any real use.
Which brings us to the larger issue in this tragedy that no one seems interested in addressing, namely, when will this country stop subsidizing irresponsible young women to have children they can neither afford nor parent?
At the very least, we should require some sort of licensing requirement for prospective parents, and require a certificate of intellectual and financial fitness of them in order to reproduce. (Or at least reproduce for money.)
How we accomplish this, what support and custody laws we need to tweak, however, is the rub. Do we put something in the water and require people to pass licensing in order to get the the antidote? And how do we deal with the offspring of those who conceived in good faith but due to catastrophe or ill-conceit find themselves with children they can no longer afford to support?
Just curious…so having looked at everything you could find on the case so far, do you believe that Trayvon was looking for trouble that night, or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and made an unfortunate decision to fight when it would have been better to submit or run?
Carl, Im no longer investigating the specific questions you raised because it is my opinion that more fundamental questions about Trayvon/Tracy Martin’s PRIOR behavior are really what drove events that night.
I consider myself qualified to raise and consider questions about black male behavior because I am one.
One of the techniques I use to do this is to determine what questions I’m trying to avoid raising and RAISE THOSE.
Trayvon Martin was a victim long before George Zimmerman shot him. Ive seen it too many times before; black people “give up” raising their children as soon as the “hard part” starts.
It reminds me of people who neglect/abandon puppies and kittens as soon as they turn into dogs and cats.
Black people want to change everything but themselves.
black people “give up” raising their children as soon as the “hard part” starts.
I think it’s true for all humans. I was just having a coversation with a date about how most people in our society are good at the beginning or at the end but not the middle. The middle is the hard part….the mundane and boring part…requires patience and some sedative.
Carl,
Martin had FOUR MINUTES to run the 100 yards to the door of his condo, open it, go inside and close the door behind him. Instead he chose to double back and confront the creepy-ass cracker.
You decide….
Oh I know, that’s my thought, too. Somebody did make the point that it’s possible he could have gotten turned around in all the excitement of being followed and not remembered how to run for home. I’m skeptical, but it’s possible.
Except Martin told Rachel Jeantel he was “at the back of his father’s place” when he noticed Zimmerman was following him.
I didn’t follow the case very much so please indulge my ignorance. Was Trayvon acting any weirdly than his peers ( black/white/latino)? I mean was there tall tell signs that he was closer to becoming a danger to the society?
Seems like kind of a loaded question. You’d have to define “peers”, “danger”, “society”, and also take into account that the social norms for where he was that night were not the same as for where he normally lived, as far as what I’ve heard.
peers = 17 years old males of any race
danger to the soicety = thugs
I think there is a huge difference between the real thugs and pretend thugs.
What if there’s a much different standard for “danger to society” in the neighborhood where he normally lived versus the neighborhood where he was killed? Seems like it would be possible to be seen as a normal level of dangerous in one place and an unacceptable level of dangerous someplace else. We’re all at least a little dangerous.
Carl, when it comes to behavior, stupidity and sophistication often have similar profiles. For example, here is a black male exhibiting what I (a black male) consider unnecessary provocative behavior; which as usual, ends in tears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMlV-tpKLxM
Now, the author of the video claims its a hoax; he calls events like this “Agit-prop” (agitation propaganda): an intentionally produced event designed to generate a pre determined specific emotional response in the viewer.
It could be that. But then again, it could just be the typical black male “inyoface posturing” that black males are famous for.
The guy who runs this channel is kinda weird; but in his weirdness, he raises lots of interesting questions about “The News”.
For example, in his “The Violent Home invasion Hoax” video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQRtIZuWUBk
We are TOLD its a “home invasion”, but the beatdown appears to have an element of familiarity to it; like a domestic dispute or something? In addition, black males like to talk while they beat you; where is the Samuel L Jackson/Trayvon Martin “you’re gonna die tonight” commentary from the black male?
Pretty much all you hear are her screaming and his fists impacting her; what about the tee-vee which appears to be on?
Is this a black male committing a “home invasion” in order to steal valuables?
Or is he interested in doing something else, maybe trying to send a message; possibly for someone else?
Can we see the entire baby cam recording?
Look, I know black males can be violent and savage, but our motives are usually very simple and easy to determine. If we don’t get one, I guess we will have to construct our own. But beware, that may be precisely what the system wants us to do.
*its not a lie if people want to believe it*
Interesting. Reminds me a little of the games people play in the war zones of the middle east. But why were the cops so easily sucked into playing their roles? To me it looked like they had no reason to arrest him unless they suspected that he and the dog were going to cause a problem when they breached the door on the other house.
Hey Spook,
I really appreciate your analysis and learned opinion on thing like this. You make some really good points - I don’t always agree, but it’s food for thought.
On the matter at hand, I was wondering if you’ve had a chance to look at the transcripts of Trayvon’s Text messages which can be found here.
I read through most of them and correct me if I’m wrong, but there seems to be a negotiation going on on the price of a .38 handgun at one point. Lots of talk about weed (I’m 420 friendly myself), and mention of being suspended from school (msg #190). If I had to characterize him solely from what I read there(which is about all I have) I would sum up the general feel as “wannabe thug/gang banger.”
I think the media in general has portrayed him closer to innocent schoolboy than what the reality would seem to be, based on his own words which granted are at least partially out of context for us from the outside.
Personally I think the media generally gets off on stirring up shiite, and there’s nothing like racial tension for making headlines.
I’m just wondering what you think about the text messages?
I think social media in general is a reliable indicator of what people WANT to be; but not necessarily what they are.
Either way, if these texts are accurate its still a stupid thing to do.
But Trayvon was 17, you can expect a certain amount of nonsense from a person at that age. The behavior of the parents is what I find much more interesting. For example, who was paying for his phone?
Since when do you get to have a cell phone when you are suspended from school?
WTF?
When you pay for it yourself from that stack of Benjamins you flashed in your FB photo. $14K if the transcripts are to be believed….
But like the jewelry found in your backpack, it probably belonged to “a friend”.
Martin had been sent to stay with Dad’s gf because stepmom had given up on him after the third suspension. A 17-year-old male with a codeine affinity can be a sullen kinda guy. But he reportedly still adored his grandma. (Who likely had more influence on him than Mom did, a dynamic common to lower-middle-class families with substance-abusing Moms).
‘no corporation or corporate oligarchy possessing a food monopoly would be desirable, but monsanto is a particularly frightening contender. so powerful is the company that a special law tailored for it was snuck into a congressional appropriations bill funding us government operations.’
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/26/monsanto-seeks-to-control-worlds-food/
Free enterprise!
“You can shear a sheep many times but only skin it once.”
Are we down to the skinning? Or is it just shearing?
“Secure jobs, well paid, with good health insurance. My God, it’s an outrage!”
This is the vibe that I get from some sections of the political spectrum.
Darn, Hymie has aged well:
http://www.dickgautier.com/new-photo.html
Uh, maybe not as well, but for 82, OK:
http://es.doblaje.wikia.com/wiki/Archivo:Richard_Gautier.jpg