Repealing The Rule Of Law For White-Collar Criminals
A report from Salon by Paul Rosenberg. “With Donald Trump representing a frightening unknown future, more akin to foreign authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Ergodan of Turkey and Abdel Fattah el-Sis of Egypt than anything in American history, Barack Obama looks better all the time — a fact reflected in his approval ratings. But there’s a good argument to be made that a more forceful, more boldly progressive Obama could prevented this outcome. Not a radically different person, just one more comfortable with the sort of direct confrontation that was central to the teachings of Saul Alinsky, whom he was tarred with anyway.”
“One trope that’s emerged after Trump’s election, is that leftist attitudes are somehow responsible. A recent Politico article is typical of pieces with this argument that liberal smugness was to blame for Trump. This argument overlooks two things: first, the worldwide rise of authoritarianism over the past two decades, intensified both by the fight against al-Qaida and then ISIS and then by the worldwide Great Recession; and second, the failure to indict high-level officials of former president George W. Bush’s administration for actual crimes.”
“Not every Republican is a criminal, of course. But with crimes unpunished and democratic norms eroding, those students are expressing a moral censure that the nation’s institutions and political leadership ought to have provided on their own. This was primarily President Obama’s responsibility — one he ducked in the name of ‘looking forward, not backward,’ a progressive, no-nonsense way of framing letting war criminals go scot-free — and financial criminals as well, the ones who crashed the whole world economy. There were reasons offered for those decisions at the time, but by now the failure of that approach should be obvious.”
“Just from January 2007 to December 2011, there were more than 4 million completed foreclosures and more than 8.2 million foreclosure starts, of which only a small fraction received effective help from Obama’s Home Affordability Modification Program, which provided government payments to mortgage servicers and investors in exchange for lowering a mortgage’s interest rate and occasionally reducing the principal. This was a clearly ill-conceived plan that relied on the same people who had caused the problem in the first place.”
“The flip side to Obama’s foreclosure failure was his unwillingness or inability to hold any insiders criminally responsible for the greatest financial crime spree in American history. In March 2009 economist and former regulator William K. Black provided a road map for understanding the crimes involved.”
“‘The FBI has been warning of an ‘epidemic’ of mortgage fraud since September 2004,’ Black wrote. ‘It also reports that lenders initiated 80 [percent] of these frauds,’ which qualifies it as ‘control fraud,’ he explained. ‘The FBI correctly identified the epidemic of mortgage control fraud at such an early point that the financial crisis could have been averted had the Bush administration acted with even minimal competence.’ Obviously, it did not. But Obama, unaccountably, refused to hold anyone criminally responsible.”
“In 2013, the Frontline documentary, ‘The Untouchables,’ looked back at what had happened. ‘Even during the bubble years, the Department of Justice had arrested and prosecuted many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers,’ but no bankers had gone to jail. Only the little fish got caught.”
“‘We have known for decades that repealing the rule of law for elite white-collar criminals and relying on corporate fines always produces abject failure and massive corporate fraud,’ Black wrote in 2015. But that was precisely what Obama chose to do.”
This article is worth reading in full.
Yes, indeed. Thank you very much.
Agreed. Could’ve been more hard-hitting, but it was a lot more truthy than I’d ever expect from a Salon article.
Both parts, terrorism and corrupt financial officials, are due to the United States being in bed with Israel.
+1000. And the neocon-AIPAC stranglehold on our foreign policy. And then there’s the Fed….
And the takeaway is Krugman is a blooming idiot that should have been the first in jail.
Stopped reading right here.
“I have a phone and a pen…”
Ignore laws you don’t like.
Make up laws you wished you had.
EO Friday afternoons…
“If Congress won’t act, I will…”
—–
A report from Salon by Paul Rosenberg. “With Donald Trump representing a frightening unknown future, more akin to foreign authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Ergodan of Turkey and Abdel Fattah el-Sis of Egypt than anything in American history, Barack Obama looks better all the time —
Right. Because no Republican has ever acted unilaterally.
Liberace!
When the people who own Obama put him in the white house, how could he put those people in jail.
+ 1 Nice Find Ben…
The buyers got greedy and wanted free equity.
‘Obama’s Home Affordability Modification Program, which provided government payments to mortgage servicers and investors in exchange for lowering a mortgage’s interest rate and occasionally reducing the principal. This was a clearly ill-conceived plan that relied on the same people who had caused the problem in the first place’
I don’t know why the media willfully ignores the “foam the runway for the banks” meetings, but these programs were meant to help the banks, not the FB’s.
‘This Obama failure opened the door for Trump’
‘President-elect Donald Trump rallied angry voters by blaming trade for the loss of high-quality jobs. That was hardly an original observation. In fact, Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, made a similar case back in 2010.’
‘Obama’s pitch was different than Trump’s, focused on fixing shortfalls in the nation’s trading relationships instead of tearing up free-trade deals and starting over. Specifically, Obama called in his 2010 State of the Union speech for doubling exports by the end of 2014. This, he said, would create 2 million jobs, and they’d mostly be good-paying jobs in manufacturing. In other words, it might make America great again.’
‘It didn’t.’
If there hadn’t been a housing bubble, there never would have been a President Trump. There’s a lot connected here. The populist mood echoing away from the crash. Some of it is the crash and some is the response. The Salon piece touches on how that brought the Tea Party to life.
But an under appreciated aspect of how these people failed us was relying on high house and stock prices to bring the economy back. If that was a solution there never would have been a crash to begin with. Obama let Bernanke and Geithner make that choice. Save the banks, blow up prices and here we are with President Trump.
Sometimes the political discussions on the HBB have reached a fever pitch, but there is a lot of justified anger over how the banksters and politicians who caused the 2008 financial crash were never held accountable, and in fact carried on with the same policies and swindles that caused the crash in the first place - and will cause the next, worse one. Whereas 95% of the sheeple meekly bent over for the oligarchy in 2008 and 2012 by voting for the crony capitalist status quo, Trump’s victory showed that at least 61 million people have become awake and aware - and their numbers are growing in leaps and bounds from all indications.
To that 61 million people, could you add those voters who voted for Johnson, Stein, or left the top of the ballot blank. Those people were aware too. If all the Stein voters and 25% of the Johnson voters had voted for Clinton, Clinton would have won (barely).
Stein and Johnson were not status quo either.
‘David Betras could see trouble coming. The Democratic Party chairman in Youngstown, Ohio, wrote to Hillary Clinton’s advisers in May warning she needed to put a jobs-focused message at the heart of her White House campaign or else watch blue-collar voters in states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania slip away to Republican Donald Trump.’
‘Clinton never responded to Betras, and in the final weeks of her campaign she spent much of her time portraying Trump as unfit, rather than highlighting her economic plans. On Nov. 8, Election Day, Betras’ warning proved prescient - she lost Ohio and Pennsylvania and, on Wednesday, Michigan, too, based on the latest unofficial ballot counts.’
“You can have all the great ideas on Earth, but if they don’t think you are on their side they aren’t going to listen to you,” said U.S. Representative Dan Kildee, of Flint, Michigan, one of a small cadre of Democrats in Congress who have learned how to win in working-class districts by emphasizing economic solutions.’
‘Democratic U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright, whose district around Scranton, Pennsylvania, was one of the presidential campaign’s prime battlegrounds, also won re-election to a third term with about 54 percent of the vote. About 40,000 Trump voters crossed over to back him, he said in an interview.’
“Why would they pick me and not also Hillary Clinton? It comes down to credibility,” he said. “I know the pain out there. When I talk to voters, jobs is always my No. 1 message, and I tell them exactly what I’m doing to get more jobs back to the district.”
‘From decimated industrial towns to inner cities or the rural plains, voters share a similar anxiety about an economic system that seems to have left them behind, he said.’
“Everybody is talking about the same thing, and it’s economic uncertainty - it’s the fear of not having a job, or their kids not getting a job, or not having a retirement,” Kildee said. “If we aren’t talking about jobs and the economy first, no one is listening when you talk about other issues.”
‘Betras had urged Clinton in his memo to spend more time talking about ways to entice companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs, or her plans to create jobs through boosting infrastructure programs - both key elements of Trump’s stump speech.’
‘Both candidates made frequent visits to Pennsylvania and Ohio. But after the party conventions in July Clinton only traveled to Michigan four times, twice in the last week of the campaign, and never visited Wisconsin. Trump hit both a half-dozen times.’
‘David Murray, a registered independent who lives just outside Flint, Michigan, said he voted to re-elect Kildee and backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, but cast his presidential ballot for Trump this time.’
“I didn’t feel like Clinton really cared about us,” said Murray, a personal service industry worker. “We are still hurting here. I feel as if we haven’t recovered from the economic free fall. Clinton seemed like just another four years of what Obama has done for my area, which is four years of nothing.”
Clinton never responded to Betras…
—-
Yes she did!
She barely walked back her support of the TPP after years of enthusiastically supporting it.
And…
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”
– Hillary Clinton, 2016
(In correct thread)
“Everybody is talking about the same thing, and it’s economic uncertainty - it’s the fear of not having a job, or their kids not getting a job, or not having a retirement,” Kildee said. “If we aren’t talking about jobs and the economy first, no one is listening when you talk about other issues.”
But Obama and Clinton were focused on the really important stuff, like bathrooms for trannies.
“But Obama and Clinton were focused on the really important stuff, like bathrooms for trannies.”
So were a lot of other people who already have theirs. Especially on the coasts. It’s hard to imagine any group of people more out of touch than those living on the East and West Coasts of the USA.
Those who are working their @sses off trying to cobble together some sort of existence are not the least bit interested in “race”, in “transgender bathrooms”, in “women’s rights”. Note: I said those WORKING.
They have much more important eggs to fry than social justice warrior b.s.
Our politicians and coastal residents are willingly clueless.
Until the last election, 95% of the electorate willingly bent over on demand for our political elites and their oligarch masters.
I told you all Mr. Trump would be our next president.
Next time, if you really want to understand where it’s all going, pull your head out of the clouds, get off the computer and get with working people, shut your mouth and listen. The pulse is right there in front of everyone waiting to be read. For you smarmy pukes, you’ll never develop the fortitude to admit you’re working class like everyone else. You’re worse than poor.
And theres much more knowledge to gain than where elections are going.
Old and Dirty
Why did you vote for Trump? Do you believe he’s bringing back jobs? Do you believe multinationals want to return?
Merely for the enragement factor. I more than voted for him.
Ditto. Trump was a Molotov cocktail hurled at the sleazy, corrupt Oligopoly-owned Republicrat status quo. The fact that so many Establishment and neocon types came out so strongly against him was further validation that he was the guy to vote for.
Unlike 95% of the ‘Murican electorate, I didn’t bend over for more of the same in 2008 or 2012, and I wasn’t about to vote for the corrupt status quo in 2016, either.
Drain the swamp!
I hope your’e right, HA. While it was (and still is) delicious schadenfreude to re-watch all those SJWs and attendant media melt down, Trump is still not a dictator. He still has to contend with a Republican Congress who would love to implement their laundry list of business-friendly legislation — among which are carving out SS for Wall Street and privatizing Medicare. Bush tried some of that in 2005 and failed. But, the baby boomers and the AARP have been dying off at a pretty good clip since 2005.
All good ideas Donk. And it won’t much matter what congress has to say. Mr. Trump will just bring to the people. Just like he did with his campaign strategy.
Look out and look below especially.
What is a “personal service industry worker?” Do I want to know?
“‘We have known for decades that repealing the rule of law for elite white-collar criminals and relying on corporate fines always produces abject failure and massive corporate fraud,’ Black wrote in 2015. But that was precisely what Obama chose to do.”
Obama and Bush were two sides of the same coin. Both owned by and beholden to the neocons and banksters. Both equally determined to ensure there was never any accountability for the neocon’s massive strategic blunder in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or the systemic fraud that caused the 2008 financial crash. The Salon article of course ignores the role of the Fed and its engineered boom-bust cycles as a means of looting and asset-stripping the 99% for the enrichment of its oligarch patrons. If Trump fails to follow through on his campaign pledges to restore the rule of law - and he’s already backpedaling - his supporters are going to turn on him en masse.
Clinton never responded to Betras…
—-
Yes she did!
She barely walked back her support of the TPP after years of enthusiastically supporting it.
And…
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”
– Hillary Clinton, 2016
They probably should have gone after the Bushes and the bankers, but you know what the result would have been — lots of pleading the 5th and “I can’t recalls”, and nothing would have happened. Which doesn’t make it right, but anyway.
Trump says he wants to drain the swamp. It’s a pretty big swamp! More like an ocean of sludge. I wish him luck.
With Attorney Generals like Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, there was zero possibility of going after the banksters and Wall Street grifters. Obama’s donors looked like a who’s who of financial firms that got bailed out. And then there was his “bundler” Jon Corzine, who bilked MF Global account holders out of $1.6 billion and need never worry about being brought to justice.
If Trump’s AG has just a few banker perp walks…
He is going to win 2020 in a landslide.
Clinton team to take part in U.S. state vote recount, Trump blasts effort
Sat Nov 26, 2016 | 5:25pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-recount-idUSKBN13L0TX?il=0
So go ahead and do what you told your supporters you’d do - drain the swamp. In Crooked Hillary’s case, that means finally holding her accountable for 30 years of law-breaking and influence-peddling.
Jill Stein raises $4.8 million in just over 24 hours for a recount after raising $3 million for her entire campaign yet Marc Elias says the Clinton campaign had not planned to seek a recount?
My @ss the Clinton campaign had not planned to seek a recount.
“Elias said in a statement on the Medium website that the Clinton campaign had not planned to seek a recount since its own investigation had failed to turn up any sign of hacking of voting systems.”
“But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Elias said.”
Another Clinton proxy war…
((Stein)) is getting ripped pretty good on her fakebook page
https://www.facebook.com/drjillstein/
Shes a doctor? Yeah, more like a witch doctor!
How did Jill Stain come up with all that money so quickly?
Thanks for posting the FB link jerzdebil. Love how despite the best efforts of oligarch media moguls like Zuckerberg to control The Narrative and promote the elites’ political toadies, the proles ain’t having it and are ripping Crooked Jill a new one.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/25/uniquely-talented-only-the-democrats-could-have-lost-to-trump/#more-137133
A great uproar goes forth from the enemies of the Trump Beast, with much gnashing of hair and pulling of teeth. He will be a terrible President, they say, and they may well be right. There are ominous signs, particularly as regards foreign policy, and he seems radically incoherent and contradictory. Interestingly, his critics have no slight idea why he won. The reason is obvious: He won because everybody was campaigning for him, in particular the media, Hillary, Black Lives Matter, Obama, Democrats, and far leftists. Everybody worked for Trump. He couldn’t lose.
The election was a referendum on Marie Antoinette’s court. It was the revolt of the unnoticed downtrodden, the financially sinking, the working classes rising against privileged snots–but it was engineered by the elites. The glittering elect of course did not say “working class,” this being a loaded phrase redolent of Marxism and of the Democratic Party of five decades back before it became a royal court. They spoke instead of disgruntled white men, racists, homophobes, sexists, and the Islamonauseated–phobic, I meant.
“The most satisfying Trump video ever ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr_4VrtxkBI
All those tears for Hillary are delicious.
It makes you remember how hard he had to fight the GOP “leadership”.
“Media Experts & Pundits have never been so Wrong | Trump Victory”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nAjgVGCZ50
It makes you remember how hard he had to fight the GOP “leadership”.
The GOP “leadership” couldn’t lead ants to a picnic. All of them are in the bag for Wall Street and their corporate overlords. The sooner they get Cantored, the better.
I never saw someone work so. dang. hard. for the Presidency or any political post, for that matter. Never saw someone take his case to the people like that, day after day. Never saw someone meet every. single. obstacle. that was thrown up against him and overcome it. He never shrank, he never backed down. If he fights half that hard for the country and its citizens, and I think he will, we’ll come out of the mess we got into. I want someone like that in my corner.
Remember that guy who rushed the stage at one of his early rallies? Notice, in the video, that Trump doesn’t run away, he actually tries to go TOWARD the man. Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB90uhhb5y4
Whew. Who does something like that? If I’d been the target of 1/100th of the darts and attacks that came Trump’s way, I’d have been curled up in a fetal position, sobbing my life out.
During the campaign, I read a comment on the Donald subreddit by a guy who said that Trump had inspired him to man up and meet his obligations with a better attitude. He said that the problems he had to deal with were nothing compared to what was being thrown at Trump, and whenever he felt down or defeated by some circumstance, he thought of what Trump was being put through and it made him more willing to go the extra mile and put forward a little more effort.
For those of us who support him, the real work begins after inauguration and we’re going to have to do things to help our friends, families, neighbors and co-workers get through. Even small things, gestures of help and thoughtfulness, willingness to do a little more than the usual, that sort of thing.
‘I never saw someone work so. dang. hard. for the Presidency or any political post’
Yet the bedwetters are curling up in a ball at every CNN demoralization attempt. Relax. Good things come to those who wait.
“All those tears for Hillary are delicious.”
Too much salt is not good for you.
Too much salt is not good for you.
The War on Salt is not substantiated by science (unless you have pre-existing high blood pressure).
Back in the early 1970s, our grade school class took a tour of the local post office. They had a salt tablet dispenser on the wall, for the postmen to use (who, back then, actually WALKED from house to house, parking every block or two).
Our postman still walks from house to house.
My Mom has the only house on the street where they deliver the mail to the door. I think it was back in the 80s when anyone new who moved in had to have a mailbox put in at the road and everyone else was grandfathered in. My family moved into that house in 1960 and she is the only one left without a mailbox at the road.
“Our postman still walks from house to house.”
A co-worker’s husband delivers mail on foot in those pressed uniform shorts. He says he knows who is having affairs, doing drugs, which kids are barefoot or hungry, knows all the dogs, etc., and he’s in great shape.
I haven’t seen Obama miss that many times in such short order since I saw him miss 20 out of 22 shots on the White House basketball court.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IjDqm-JHrA
It is interesting to watch the Al Jazeera journalist try, and fail, to put words into Noam Chomsky’s mouth. Chomsky has some choice words for the MSM’s epic failure to focus election coverage on substantive issues.
Noam Chomsky on the new Trump era - UpFront special
Al Jazeera English
…
When a country’s laws are ineffective a revolution is inevitable.
Not directly housing related, but funny.
“Silicon Valley Is Hard At Work Solving The Wealth Inequality Problem”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/11/26/silicon-valley-is-hard-at-work-solving-the-wealth-inequality-problem
While I wouldn’t say those people are the best representatives of silicon valley — their “solution” is creating mobile-phone apps to enable online applications for Food Stamps, and other ways to make it easier for people to get on the government dole with their phone. Yeah right, that’s gonna help.
“Push Button. Get Food Stamps.”
With a cut to the app developer and VC backers…
“Push Button. Get Food Stamps.”
Maybe people who need food stamps should be buying food with their limited funds instead of smartphones?
One more from Silicon Valley. They have a heart.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/26/editorial-election-shows-silicon-valley-has-a-heart/
“Reeling from an election in which 80 percent of Santa Clara County voters rejected the nation’s choice for president, Silicon Valley needed some buck-up news. It came last week when Measure A, the nearly $1 billion bond for affordable housing, finally reached a sufficient margin over the required two-thirds vote to declare victory.”
“Measure A will mainly fund supportive housing for the homeless — the kind of thing that Abode Services does so well, seeing that medical and psychological care, job training and other kinds of help are provided to stabilize residents and keep them off the streets.”
On the surface, sure it sounds very nice, helping the homeless and starving families to get off the streets.
$1 billion dollars for it. You know all the county and city officials, all their departments that will be involved, and all the private sector contractors in the area, the builders, that Abode company, *everyone* will be salivating.
It’s going to be one big money grab, and no doubt, a lot of skimming and kickbacks and all that. By everyone. And in end, they will have built some new crappy slums!
Or not… maybe it will turn out to be a fine place for homeless people to get back on their feet.
You got to spend a billion in order to save a few million…
—-
This actually will save taxpayers millions of dollars a year, given the current cost of ambulance rides, hospital admissions and jail stays.
Yeah, it sounds like it’s more of a containment plan. Cheaper to have them all boxed up in a specific place rather than roaming all over, and fewer complaints.
Yeah, it sounds like it’s more of a containment plan ??
Or conversley maybe its a humanitarian plan but you are blind to that…
I read through the text of Measure A. It’s pretty short actually, not too much detail at all about implementation. They plan to raise property taxes to pay for it. One thing they don’t say is where specifically these new homeless buildings will be built. There’s not a whole lot of free land there. I wonder if they will get “NIMBY” type of reactions by people who don’t want a slum being built nearby their neighborhoods.
Lock her up.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/revealed-hillary-clinton-schemed-since-day-election-steal-presidency-donald-trump/
My gut tells me Wikileaks is holding back a few juicy emails just for this situation…
ELECTORAL VOTERS ‘DELUGED’ WITH DEATH THREATS IN MULTIPLE STATES
Published: 11/17/2016 at 7:44 PM
LEO HOHMANN
One of Michigan’s 16 electors who will be called upon to cast a vote validating the election of Donald Trump in the Electoral College has testified on video that he and others in the state are receiving “dozens and dozens of death threats” from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to switch their votes to Clinton.
On Dec. 19 the Electoral College will convene to cast their votes for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, with each state’s electors pledged to vote for the candidate elected on Nov. 8 in their state.
But Clinton supporters have “deluged Banerian and other GOP electors with pleas and nasty emails to reverse course and cast their ballots for Clinton,” the Michigan Republican Party is reporting.
“You have people saying ‘you’re a hateful bigot, I hope you die,’” he told the News in a 6-minute video interview. “I’ve had people talk about shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out. And I’ve received dozens and dozens of those emails. Even the non-threatening-my-life emails are very aggressive.”
He said that while many of the emails are clearly death threats, others would fall into the category of “death wishes.”
Things like, “do society a favor and throw yourself in front of a bus.”
“I’ve just gotten a lot of ‘you’re a hateful bigot and I hope you die,’ which is kind of ironic,” Banerian said, “that they’re calling me hateful and yet wishing for my death. They don’t even know me.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/electoral-college-voters-deluged-with-death-threats/#DDMgRliUzI5Jtm5d.99
If a popular vote margin of victory near two million isn’t sufficient to enable Hillary to “steal” the election from the pitchfork brigade in Flyover, then it seems odd for alt-right journalists to concoct scenarios where some sort of covert activity by Hillary could secure victory.
Having the President encourage aliens to vote illegally for her didn’t do it either. Pretty amazing actually.
Let’s change the constitution to have the person with the most donor money be president. Clinton outspent Trump 10 to 1. Or maybe the person who gets the most votes per dollar spent, in which Trump would win by a landslide. The candidates campaigned based on the rules that existed.
Let’s change the Constitution so that only those who put more into the system in taxes than they take out in benefits are allowed to vote. In one feel swope the social parasites would be eliminated from voting themselves benefits someone else has to pay for, and we’d immediately get a better, more accountable class of politician.
Back in the old days, only white male landowners could vote. There’s a quote below from John Adams about it.
From:
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring07/elections.cfm
“At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word “democracy” had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation’s inhabitants were able to participate in elections: among the excluded were most African Americans, Native Americans, women, men who had not attained their majority, and white males who did not own land.
John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and later president, wrote in 1776 that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans:
Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.”
—
“Lads from 12 to 21..” LOL he predicted the social justice warriors way back then.
Another couple of good quotes:
“Property requirements were widespread. Some colonies required a voter to own a certain amount of land or land of a specified value. Others required personal property of a certain value, or payment of a certain amount of taxes. Examples from 1763 show the variety of these requirements. Delaware expected voters to own fifty acres of land or property worth £40. Rhode Island set the limit at land valued at £40 or worth an annual rent of £2. Connecticut required land worth an annual rent of £2 or livestock worth £40.
Such requirements tended to delay a male colonist’s entry into the voter ranks until he was settled down and established. They reflected the belief that freeholders, as property owners were called, had a legitimate interest in a community’s success and well-being, paid taxes and deserved a voice in public affairs, had demonstrated they were energetic and intelligent enough to be trusted with a role in governance, and had enough resources to be independent thinkers not beholden to the wealthiest class. English jurist William Blackstone wrote in the 1700s:
The true reason of requiring any qualification, with regard to property, in voters, is to exclude such persons as are in so mean a situation that they are esteemed to have no will of their own. If these persons had votes, they would be tempted to dispose of them under some undue influence or other. This would give a great, an artful, or a wealthy man, a larger share in elections than is consistent with general liberty.”
Plenty of black land owners voted in early America.
Including black land owners who owned slaves.
In fact, the first person to own slaves in the Americas and who petitioned the court to make slavery legal…
Was a black man.
“Back in the old days, only white male landowners could vote.”
The feudal system lasted for some 600-yrs. Some economists believe that without a functioning government that economic sorting would yield similar results.
Of course, race/religion/gender should not be disqualifiers for voting, but the parts about requiring a demonstrated ability to be a productive member of society resonate.
I like the idea of requiring that someone actually pay taxes of one form or another, not just take from the system.
One thing about using the criteria of “if you pay taxes, you can vote” is that you can’t exist in this country without paying taxes of some kind — whether it is sales tax, gasoline tax, or heck even the Obama penalty/tax if you don’t have health insurance.
It’s crazy how far the pendulum has swung. Back then, voting was very restricted by steep qualifications, and seems have been treated very seriously.
Now it’s the complete opposite. You don’t even need to show an ID, you can vote as many times as you want.. even non-citizens are told to vote. Crazy.
You don’t even need to show an ID,
Crazy indeed. Voting shouldn’t be easier than entering a bar.
AWFUL: Obama Encourages Illegal Aliens to Vote
Published on Nov 5, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiywDVCPzwI
I could understand “a chicken in every pot” promise, but this pandering for illegal votes is simply disgusting.
“If a popular vote margin of victory near two million isn’t sufficient to enable Hillary to “steal” the election from the pitchfork brigade in Flyover”
Election Fraud in Broward County: Officials Caught Ballot Stuffing, Destroying Ballots
NOVEMBER 4, 2016 BY PPD ELECTIONS STAFF
“Once in the room, I could see the four SEO employees sitting at the same table actively filling out election ballots,” the affidavit reads. “Each had a stack of blank ballots to the right of them (about an inch high) and a stack of completed ballots to their left… I could see that the bubbles on the right stack had not been filled in, while the bubbles on the left stack had been blackened in.”
“I could see that the SEO employees were using the same black pens (white body with a black cap) that the SOE supplies to voters at the polling sites. I was then told to leave the room by one of the employees.”
When the volunteer returned the next day, they were met by uniformed security guards and told they had been terminated.
https://www.peoplespunditdaily.com/news/elections/2016/11/04/election-fraud-broward-county-officials-caught-ballot-stuffing-destroying-ballots/
UPDATE: TRUMP CAMPAIGN PREPARING LAWSUIT Against Broward Co FL Sec of Elections Brenda Snipes
Jim Hoft Nov 4th, 2016 3:23 pm
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/update-trump-campaign-preparing-lawsuit-broward-co-fl-sec-elections-brenda-snipes/
How long can Draghi play extend-and-pretend with insolvent Eurozone banks?
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/11/26/hit-by-rising-global-risks-banks-in-spain-get-jittery-again/
Longer than you can stay solvent.
The UK Guardian’s Glen Greenwald blasts the Washington Post on its shoddy “journalism” and neo-McCarthyism.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
– Benito Mussolini
“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
– Benito Mussolini
Weston, CT Housing Prices Crater 11% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/weston-ct/home-values/
This was a clearly ill-conceived plan that relied on the same people who had caused the problem in the first place.”
It didn’t just _rely_ on those same banksters—it _paid_ them, richly! HAMP? Servicers were paid to perform those modifications. HARP? Loan originators were paid sizable fees for every refi.
The author apparently still fails to understand who the intended beneficiaries of HAMP, HARP, etc actually were… Hint: it wasn’t the loanowners.
Every FB dollar will be harvested…
BEG FOR SOME CREDIT!
More Than Half Of New Yorkers Are One Paycheck Away From Homelessness, Says Study
http://gothamist.com/2016/11/26/more_than_half_of_all.php
“One Paycheck”
They may not have three months of savings, but in NY they are several months away from an eviction in any case.
In my neck of the woods (a large rental apartment complex in Oregon where I currently rent from..). After several months of trying, last week the owners finally sold the complex to some new owner.
Two days after they announced the sale, I noticed two of the units in my building had Eviction papers taped to their doors — people who I think had been living there for a long time.
Looks like the new owners are cleaning out the deadbeats.
NYC - still expecting lots of Federal dollars while being a sanctuary city ..
God Bless DJT
—-
And although an increase in rental assistance services like the one proposed by Queens Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi could cost the cost $450 million in state and federal funding, it would be more cost-effective than allowing more families to enter the chronically underfunded shelter system.
I bought my banker a case of beer this year for the holidays.
Charles Hugh Smith fires back at the oligarchy shills at the Washington Post who labeled him and 200 other alternative media (i.e. truth-tellers) Russian propagandists or useful idiots.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov16/useful-idiots11-16.html
As the 200 alternative-media sites slandered by the flailing Oligopoly stenographers at the failing WaPo fire back, I suspect the readership and site traffic on these independent sites unafraid to speak truth to power is going to continue growing in leaps and bounds as more and more former sheeple become awake and aware.
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/11/25/liberty-blitzkrieg-included-on-washington-post-highlighted-hit-list-of-russian-propaganda-websites/
Lock her up!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3975860/Sleep-Donald-Trump-launches-furious-morning-Twitter-rant-Hillary-accusing-hypocrisy-refusing-accept-election-result-said-join-Wisconsin-recount.html
EVEN OBAMA SLAMS STEIN’S RECOUNTS: THE RESULTS “ACCURATELY REFLECT THE WILL OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”
“As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”
Zero Hedge - NOVEMBER 27, 2016
Jill Stein’s credibility seems to be sinking fast as both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign have released statements this morning indicating they’ve failed to uncover a single shred of election hacking evidence. The Obama administration confirmed their confidence in the election results via comments made to the New York Times saying that the election was “free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective” and that votes “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”
55 Comments
Foxtrot Yankee • 16 minutes ago
Her whole platform on man made climate should be a clue that she’s batshit crazy. Nevermind her snappy comebacks….she’s a mental case with a turkey neck.
1 • Reply•Share ›
Leviticus Falwell ✓ᴰᵉᵖˡᵒʳᵃᵇˡᵉ • 17 minutes ago
Conservative estimates would show that 3 million dead people, 2 million illegals and well over a million hacked votes all went to Hillary and Trump still won it……That bitch better quit while she is ahead!!!
5 • Reply•Share ›
http://www.infowars.com/category/featured-stories/
Citizen! Cease and desist posting links from Russian propaganda purveyors (branded as such by anonymous “researchers” using crowdsourced SJWs to search out allegedly “Russian” propaganda memes). We the Sheeple have Real Journalists to tell us all we need to know. Please report to your nearest struggle session of the Comrades of Proven Worth to engage in Two Minutes of Hate, to be followed by self-criticism for falling short of The Party’s ideals!
Fidel Castro, now burning in hell, embodied the hypocricy and venality of Comrades of Proven Worth everywhere once they get their hands on the levers of power.
http://nypost.com/2016/11/27/inside-fidel-castros-life-of-luxury-and-ladies-while-country-starved/
2banana’s Rule:
Conservatives are more than happy to live under the same laws and taxes they want for everyone else.
Liberals and progressives expect to be exempted from the same laws and taxes they want for everyone else.
Buh-bye and good riddance, Fidel.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/27/ding-dong-the-bastard-is-dead/
Sunday funnies from TBP. Enjoy!
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/27/sunday-funnies-140/
China might crack down on the small-fry moving their money out of the country, but the super-rich and well-connected, as in certain other countries, can flout the rules with impunity.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/11/27/china-inc-billionaires-use-global-buyout-binge-to-dodge-capital-controls/
Has it ever been any other way?
God bless President Trump.
there u go buddy!
Did you miss the housing boom again too?
Remember my friend… A house is a rapidly depreciating asset that costs you money every day you want it.
I want to see the new first lady advocating pilates thigh gap exercises.
Ron Paul joins independent media bloggers in blasting the WaPo’s pathetic attempt to smear truth-tellers as Russian propagandists.
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/washington-post-peddles-tarring-of-ron-paul-institute-as-russian-propaganda