Hassan's opening statement (he's representing himself): “Evidence will show I was on the wrong side of America’s war and I later switched sides,”
“We
in the mujahideen are imperfect beings trying to establish a perfect
religion,” Hassan added. “I apologize for any mistakes I have made in
this endeavor”
Hassan also does not deny shouting “Allahu
akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” – before committing the deadliest
mass shooting ever on a U.S. military base
Up a tall ladder and down a short rope.
P.S.
Having admitted in open court to waging war against the United States;
a charge of Treason should now be appended to the charge sheet and Obama 's name should be added to the charges.
After nearly four years of delays as Maj Nidal Hassan mocked the Army
and the military’s judicial system, the Ft. Hood shooter’s trial began
today. Hassan gave a brief opening statement in which he confessed to trying to kill as many American soldiers as he could.
“Evidence will show I was on the wrong side of America’s war and I later switched sides,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, who is representing himself, declared during a two-minute opening statement in a heavily guarded courtroom on the base.
“We in the mujahideen are imperfect beings trying to establish a
perfect religion,” Hassan added. “I apologize for any mistakes I have
made in this endeavor”
It was a jarring opening argument from a Muslim fanatic who has
admitted killing 13 of his countrymen and wounding 32 others, and claims
he did it to protect Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
A son of Palestinian immigrants who grew up in Virginia, Hassan also
does not deny shouting “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” –
before committing the deadliest mass shooting ever on a U.S. military
base.
The Obama administration classifies Hassan rampage as “workplace
violence,” a politically useful designation that allows the
administration to claim that there have been no terrorist attacks on
American soil on its watch. The “workplace violence” designation also
deprives survivors of their due military benefits and medals.
OBAMA MUST BE DEPOSED... HE IS WORKING WITH THE ENEMY... TO HARM AMERICANS..
ARTICLE 3 SECTION 3 OF THE US CONSTITUTION APPLIES!
In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Michael Saltsman exposes
the flawed logic of Vice-President Joe Biden’s selection of 1968 as the
base year to justify his claim that a hike in the minimum wage is
overdue. According to one news report,
Biden said the real value of the minimum wage is much
less then it has been in the past, specifically at its peak in 1968. In
1968, the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. In 2013, that wage would have
the same purchasing power as $10.71. “That’s all they’re asking here, is
‘just pay me minimum wage of what you paid folks in 1968,’ think in
those terms. They’re not asking a whole heck of a lot,” Biden said.
The logic goes something like this: Had the minimum wage
tracked inflation since 1968, it would today be more than $10 an hour,
so Congress should seek to bring it up to at least that amount. The
federal minimum wage was first set in 1938 at 25 cents an hour. Had it
tracked the cost of living since, it would today be $4.07 an hour, based
on Labor Department data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation
calculator (see blue line in the chart above for the year 1938). This is
the only logically consistent “historic” value of the minimum wage, and
it’s 44% less than the current amount of $7.25. Advocates of a higher minimum wage arbitrarily selected 1968 as the
historical reference point. It’s no wonder: That’s when federal minimum
wage hit its inflation-adjusted high point (see chart). How about picking other arbitrary years to track the minimum wage and
inflation? If you used 1948 instead of 1968, the minimum wage’s
inflation-adjusted value would only be $3.81 an hour. If you chose 1988,
the adjusted minimum wage would be $6.50 an hour.
MP: The chart above shows the history of the nominal
and real minimum wage (in constant 2013 dollars) from 1938 to 2013, and
reveals why Biden (and other supporters of the minimum wage) would pick
the year 1968 to make a case for a higher minimum wage – that year’s
inflation-adjusted minimum wage at $10.66 per hour was the highest in
the history of the minimum wage back to 1938 when it was first enacted. But if you pick another year as the base year, like 2007 when the
Great Recession started, the case for a minimum wage increase today
weakens considerably. In real dollars, today’s minimum wage of $7.25 per
hour during the worst jobless recovery in US history is almost 11%
higher than it was in 2007 when the recession started. Perhaps that
explains why the jobless rate today for teenagers (the group most
affected by the minimum wage law) is stubbornly stuck at 24%, more than
seven percentage points above the 16.8% rate in December 2007 when the
recession started? If Joe Biden really cared about creating jobs for
unskilled and low-skilled workers during a sub-par economic recovery, he
should use 2007 as his base year, and not 1968, when considering the
advisability of raising the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage
today, and increasing the cost of hiring unskilled and low-skilled
workers, would be a disaster for the most vulnerable Americans
struggling to find a job in a very tough labor market. As Michael Saltsman concludes, “Entry-level employees can only move
up the career ladder if they have experience. To get experience, you
need a job in the first place. These jobs will be more difficult to come
by if Congress embraces the flawed logic of a 1968 minimum wage.”
SO Again, which is better: 600 jobs at $8.25/hr or 0 jobs at $12.50/hr?
States and localities owe far, far more than their citizens know.
Maria Pappas, the
treasurer of Cook County, Illinois, got tired of being asked why local
taxes kept rising. Betting that the answer involved the debt that state
and local governments were accumulating, she began a quest to figure out
how much county residents owed. It wasn’t easy. In some jurisdictions,
officials said that they didn’t know; in others, they stonewalled.
Pappas’s first report, issued in 2010, estimated the total state and
local debt at $56 billion for the county’s 5.6 million residents. Two
years later, after further investigation, the figure had risen to a
frightening $140 billion, shocking residents and officials alike.
“Nobody knew the numbers because local governments don’t like to show
how badly they are doing,” Pappas observed. Since Pappas began her project to tally Cook County’s hidden debt,
she has found lots of company. Across America, elected officials,
taxpayer groups, and other researchers have launched a forensic
accounting of state and municipal debt, and their fact-finding mission
is rewriting the country’s balance sheet. Just a few years ago, most
experts estimated that state and local governments owed about $2.5
trillion, mostly in the form of municipal bonds and other debt
securities. But late last year, the States Project, a joint venture of
Harvard’s Institute of Politics and the University of Pennsylvania’s
Fels Institute of Government, projected that if you also count promises
made to retired government workers and money borrowed without taxpayer
approval, the figure might be higher than $7 trillion. Most states have restrictions on debt and prohibitions against
running deficits. But these rules have been no match for state and local
governments, which have exploited loopholes and employed deceptive
accounting standards in order to keep running up debt. The jaw-dropping
costs of these evasions have already started to weigh on budgets; as the
burden grows heavier, taxpayers may decide that it’s time for a new
fiscal revolt.
Illustrations by Sean Delonas
Most state constitutions and many
local-government charters regulate public debt precisely because of past
abuses. In the early nineteenth century, after New York built the Erie
Canal with borrowed funds, other states rushed to make similar
debt-financed investments in toll roads, bridges, and canals—projects
designed to take advantage of an expanding economy. But when the
nation’s economy fell into a deep recession in 1837, many of the
projects failed, and tax revenues cratered as well, prompting eight
states and territories to default on their debt. Stung by losses,
European markets stopped lending even to solvent American states. The
debacle inspired a sharp reevaluation of the role of state governments,
with voters looking “more skeptically” on legislative borrowing, wrote
political scientist Alasdair Roberts in 2010 in the academic journal Intereconomics.
A member of New York’s 1846 constitutional convention even warned that
“unless some check was placed upon this dangerous power to contract
debt, representative government could not long endure.” Over a 15-year
period, 19 states wrote debt limitations into their constitutions. Since then, the history of state and local debt has been a tug-of-war
between those struggling to keep governments from overextending
themselves and elected officials seeking legal loopholes for further
debt spending. In the second half of the nineteenth century, for
instance, some states, now restricted from doing it themselves, used
local governments to float debt, producing tens of millions of dollars
in new obligations—and calls for limits on local borrowing. The go-go
1920s, a period of unprecedented construction and transformation
throughout America, saw states and localities once again borrowing
massively, this time to build roads and electrical infrastructure. State
and local debt had hit $15 billion ($260 billion in today’s dollars) by
the Great Depression’s onset. Arkansas was one of the heaviest
borrowers, with obligations reaching $160 million ($2.8 billion today).
It defaulted in 1933—one of more than 4,700 Depression-era defaults by
state and local government entities, including nearly 900 by school
districts. The wave of bad borrowing led some states to tighten restrictions
even more. Even as reformers made progress, however, courts began to
sign off on government evasions of debt limits. As a consequence, such
limits “have had only a modest effect on aggregate state and local
debt,” writes Columbia Law School’s Richard Briffault. Judges, he notes,
“appear to share with state governors and legislators a belief in the
legitimacy of the modern activist state.” In the words of the New York
State Court of Appeals, judges have often proved open to any “modern
ingenuity, even gimmickry” that legislators can cook up to get around
debt restrictions. Today, states and localities engineer most of their borrowing
through what Briffault calls “non-debt debt,” a term for bonds designed
to avoid legal restrictions on borrowing. For example, courts in some
states have decided that when a state’s independent authorities issue
bonds, that borrowing isn’t restricted by constitutional debt
limits—even if taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for it. If a
legislature takes on debt itself, that also doesn’t count against
constitutional restrictions on borrowing, according to the judiciaries
in some states. Briffault estimates that such evasions are responsible
for three-quarters of state debt and two-thirds of municipal obligations
incurred through bond offerings. The growth of this kind of borrowing
helps explain why state and local debt outstanding from municipal
securities has blasted from $2 trillion (in today’s dollars) in 2000 to
nearly $3 trillion today—real growth of 50 percent in little over a
decade. New York State has turned to
court-sanctioned gimmickry again and again. Though New York’s
constitution requires that voters approve any new government debt, only 5
percent of the state’s $63 billion in outstanding borrowing has
received voter authorization, down from 10 percent a decade ago.
Meantime, the cost of servicing that debt has risen by an average of 9.4
percent annually. Partly because of such unsanctioned borrowing, New
Yorkers bear the nation’s second-highest per-capita load of state debt,
says New York’s comptroller. The state is still paying off what it owes
from the infamous 1991 Attica prison deal, in which New York, trying to
close a budget deficit, “sold” the facility to one of its independent
authorities, which borrowed the money to pay for it. New York also still
counts on its books debt from the 1970s bailout of New York City,
which, thanks to refinancing, it won’t pay off until 2033. Other New York deals engineered without voter say-so include a $2.7
billion bond offering in 2003, backed by 25 years’ worth of revenues
from the state’s gigantic settlement with tobacco companies. To
circumvent borrowing limits, the state created an independent
corporation to issue the bonds and then used the money from the bond
sale to close a budget deficit—instantly consuming most of the tobacco
settlement, which now had to be used to pay off the debt. Legislators
engineer such borrowing because they aren’t confident that voters would
agree to new debt: of the seven bond offerings that Empire State voters
have considered over the past 25 years, four went down to defeat. Thanks to its low state debt, Texas enjoys a reputation for budgetary
restraint. Yet as Texas comptroller Susan Combs found to her dismay,
the state’s towns, cities, counties, and school districts have racked up
the second-highest per-capita local debt in the nation, behind
only New York’s spendthrift municipalities. The total, nearly $8,000 per
resident, is more than seven times higher than Texas’s per-capita state
debt. Over the last decade, local debt in the Lone Star State has more
than doubled, growing at twice the rate of inflation plus population
growth. At the moment, Texas localities owe $63 billion for education
funding—155 percent more than they did a decade ago, though student
enrollment and inflation during that period grew less than one-third as
quickly. The borrowing has also paid for a host of expensive new
athletic facilities, such as a $60 million high school football stadium,
complete with video scoreboard, in the Dallas suburb of Allen. As in Cook County, so many different levels of government in Texas
can issue debt that taxpayers, bewildered by the complexity of it all,
let overlapping districts keep on borrowing. As an example, Combs
describes how the residents of a single Houston block must repay debt
incurred by the county, the city, the city’s school district, and
Houston Community College, among other entities. “I went to dozens of
town hall meetings around the state, and when I asked, not a single
member of the public knew just how much people in their towns were on
the hook for,” she says. Texas, like New York, amassed all this debt by pushing the limits of
the law. Though taxpayers must approve most government borrowing, Texas
provides an exception for localities that need to issue debt quickly: a
“certificate of obligation,” borrowing that doesn’t require approval
unless 5 percent or more of local voters petition to have a say on it (a
rare occurrence, since most don’t even know that they have that power).
Since 2005, Texas localities have issued nearly $13 billion worth of
these certificates, often for dubious ends. In 2010, for instance, Fort
Worth borrowed nearly $35 million through certificates of obligation to
build a facility for horse shows. Texas school districts have made use of another controversial
financing technique: capital appreciation bonds. Used to finance
construction, these bonds defer interest payments, often for decades.
The extension saves the borrower from spending on repayment right now,
but it burdens a future generation with significantly higher costs. Some
capital appreciation bonds wind up costing a municipality ten times
what it originally borrowed. From 2007 through 2011 alone, research by
the Texas legislature shows, the state’s municipalities and school
districts issued 700 of these bonds, raising $2.3 billion—but with a
price tag of $23 billion in future interest payments. To build new
schools, one fast-growing school district, Leander, has accumulated $773
million in outstanding debt through capital appreciation bonds. Capital appreciation bonds have also ignited controversy in
California, where school districts facing stagnant tax revenues and
higher costs have used them to borrow money without any immediate budget
impact. One school district in San Diego County, Poway Unified, won
voter approval to borrow $100 million by promising that the move
wouldn’t raise local taxes. To live up to that promise, Poway used bonds
that postponed interest payments for 20 years. But future Poway
residents will be paying off the debt—nearly $1 billion, all told—until
2051. After revelations that a handful of other districts were also
using capital appreciation bonds, the California legislature outlawed
them earlier this year. Other states, including Texas, are considering
similar bans. Judges have proved especially eager to approve evasions of debt
limits when they’re the ones demanding that states or localities spend
money. Back in 2001, New Jersey’s activist supreme court mandated that
the legislature embark on a project of building and refurbishing schools
(see “The Court That Broke Jersey,”
Winter 2012). To comply, Trenton lawmakers announced a plan to borrow
$8.6 billion through a bond offering—a shockingly high sum. Taxpayer
groups reacted with such outrage that officials knew that voters would
never endorse the move. So the legislature decided to channel the
borrowing through an independent authority. The taxpayer groups sued,
but the state supreme court brushed their objections aside, arguing that
a clear precedent existed for such borrowing. The state quickly burned
through half of the borrowed money on patronage and inefficient
construction practices, so it borrowed another $3.9 billion, again
through the authority. Taxpayers, needless to say, will foot the bill. If you define municipal debt simply as what states and localities have borrowed,
the total nationwide comes to about $3 trillion. Nevertheless, these
governments actually owe more than twice that much, according to
estimates from groups like the States Project. The reason for the
discrepancy is that states and localities carry another kind of
debt—promises of retirement benefits to public-sector workers—and they
have radically underfunded the systems that must pay for it. As Boston
University Law School professor Jack Michael Beermann wrote recently in
the Washington and Lee Law Review, the situation is a “double
whammy” for future taxpayers, who not only will have to pay for “the
consumption of prior generations” but also will receive “reduced
government services” as increased spending on retirement debt crowds out
other programs. Some states have laws stating that annual funding of future pension
or health-care payments must be considered part of current budgets, but
as Beermann points out, many states don’t. Those states can therefore
run deficits—even if they have balanced-budget requirements, as most
do—by shortchanging retirement accounts. A report by the Pew Center on
the States showed 29 states failing to make the necessary payments into
their pension systems in 2010, the latest year for which data are
available. Over the last decade, Kansas, a prime offender, has
contributed less than 80 percent of the necessary dollars to fund
employee pensions, according to a recent report by the Kansas Policy
Institute. Even in an economically robust year like 2006, the state
government managed to set aside just 64 percent of the necessary funds,
one reason that Kansas’s state pension system is less than 50 percent
funded. State and local governments have likewise made ambitious promises to
finance the health care of their employees when they retire, yet they
have set aside almost no money to do it. Instead, they’re purchasing the
health care on a pay-as-you-go basis as workers retire. With workers
quitting earlier and living longer, governments suddenly find themselves
with little room in current budgets and zero reserve funds. State
governments owed nearly $700 billion in health-care promises to
retirees, the Pew study estimated, but they had set aside only about 5
percent of that amount. The study found that only one state, Alaska, had
paid in advance for more than 50 percent of its obligations. Even
states with low levels of other debt had done little to finance
retirees’ health-care benefits; Texas, for instance, had set aside just 1
percent of the funds. Similarly, a Pew study of 61 big American cities
determined that they owed $126 billion in health-care promises and had
paid for only 6 percent. Consider Michigan, where crushing government retirement costs helped
push Detroit into insolvency, leading to a state takeover of the city’s
fiscal management. With Detroit’s debt crisis in view, Governor Rick
Snyder commissioned a study of the level of health benefits promised
retirees throughout Michigan. The study, the first of its kind,
concluded that the state’s municipalities had put aside, on average,
just 6 percent of what was necessary to finance their retirees’ health
care; the remainder, some $12.7 billion, hadn’t been funded. The city of
Lansing, for example, already devoted $20 million of its $150 million
annual budget to retirees’ health care, the study observed; yet its
unfunded liabilities were so great that to fund the debt properly each
year, it would have to double property-tax rates. Many municipalities,
the study added, had done little to control debt. More than half
required no annual contribution from government workers to help fund
their future health-care costs. Earlier this year, a commission created by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel
reported that that city’s health-care costs for retirees would rise
from $109 million in the 2013 budget to $541 million in a decade.
Chicago has since decided to drop its current health-insurance program
and shift all retirees onto the health-insurance exchange being set up
in Illinois under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. That insurance
will be cheaper because the federal government will subsidize the rates
of the exchanges, basically getting taxpayers nationwide to pick up some
of the cost for Chicago workers. In some places, elected officials have promised benefits to workers
without even a cursory effort to calculate what they might add up to.
Before the California city of Stockton filed for bankruptcy last year,
auditors listed “uncontrolled pension, health, and other benefit cost
increases” as a big part of the city’s woes, including a whopping $400
million unfunded liability for retirees’ health care. “No one gave a
thought to how it was going to eventually be paid for,” said a financial
manager brought in to address the fiscal difficulties. Stockton may be an extreme example, but after its bankruptcy,
officials in other California municipalities began asking what their
cities owed. Earlier this year, to take one example, Sacramento
officials commissioned a study to measure their city’s debt. In what the
Sacramento Bee reported as a “sobering” city council session,
the city manager explained that Sacramento had racked up some $2 billion
in obligations—a “big and scary” number, the manager said, for a city
of 477,000 residents with an annual general-fund budget of just $366
million. Nearly half of that debt was retirement-related, including $440
million for retirees’ health care. To pay down the debt, the city
estimated, it would have to put aside $43 million annually, or 12
percent of the general fund. City officials added that it wouldn’t be
easy to solve the problem by firing workers, since Sacramento had
already cut some 1,200 employees, or 20 percent of its workforce, in the
last several years.
Estimates of state and municipal debt have
been growing for another reason: more and more independent experts are
exposing local governments’ faulty accounting standards. The
Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting observes that
governments are balancing their budgets using “antiquated budgeting
rules and accounting standards,” adding that “hundreds of billions of
dollars of unfunded retirement systems’ liabilities are not reported on
the face of states’ balance sheets.” One problem, the group says, is that half of all states don’t bother
to file their required annual financial reports on time. Local
governments are guilty, too. Though the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) requires any government that issues municipal bonds to
file a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, a 2011 study by the
California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission estimated that one in
four Golden State local governments in that position failed to file the
report on time—and one in ten never filed it at all, even though the
SEC gives states and cities three times as long to file as it gives
private companies. In May, the SEC cited Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for
failing to file reports for two years, even as the city collapsed into
insolvency. Another source of dispute involves the way states and cities
calculate pension debt. For starters, they often use a
nineteenth-century form of balance-sheet math known as cash-basis
budgeting, in which you don’t report expenses until they’re paid. This
approach lets local governments ignore costs, such as retirement
obligations, that are building up today but aren’t payable for years to
come. Also, the loose accounting standards that states and cities use,
recommended by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, allows them
to calculate pension debt using their own projected annual rate of
return on the investments that they make, rather than a rate set by an
independent body or by some preestablished formula. The higher the
projected returns, the lower the pension debt appears to be;
unsurprisingly, the projections tend to run high. The rules governing
private pensions in the United States, as well as both private and
government pension systems in Europe and Canada, are much more
restrictive. Economists Aleksandar Andonov, Rob Bauer, and Martijn
Cremers noted in a recent paper that corporate pensions in the United
States, as well as private and government pension systems in Canada and
Western Europe, had significantly lowered their investment projections
as interest rates declined, reasoning correctly that lower rates made it
harder to hit lofty investment goals. By contrast, government pension
funds in the United States responded to lower interest rates by
increasing risky investments and maintaining high projections of market
returns (see “The Pension Fund That Ate California,”
Winter 2013). In the United States, government funds projected gains of
8 percent, on average, the study found; government funds in Canada and
in Europe projected returns of 6.7 percent and 3.6 percent,
respectively, considering those targets more realistic. Different projected returns can result in significantly different
debt calculations. In 2011, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
pointed out that, according to states’ own accounting methods, their
pension systems had $700 billion in unfunded debt. But if you used a
lower, more plausible, rate of return, the CBO added, total unfunded
pension debt was somewhere between $2 trillion and $3 trillion—and the
amount has kept growing since then. Some states have intentionally used the complexity of pension
accounting to mislead taxpayers and investors. Over the last three
years, the SEC has accused two states, New Jersey and Illinois, of
making deceptive and fraudulent statements to potential investors about
the health of their employee-pension funds. The SEC said that Illinois
failed to tell investors both that its plan to bail out its troubled
pension system wouldn’t actually achieve that goal and that the system
was “structurally underfunded,” meaning that without further reform, it
would fall still deeper into debt. Illinois also failed to report that
it used a form of pension accounting that funds a larger percentage of
an employee’s retirement costs near the end of his career, increasing
the system’s risk of running out of money. In New Jersey’s case, the SEC
disclosed that the state had neglected to tell investors that it wasn’t
adhering to a financing plan that it had concocted to stabilize its
pension system, creating a “fiscal illusion” that it could meet its
financial requirements. Eventually, such soft accounting slams into reality, and pension
systems begin to miss investment projections. Governments then find
themselves contributing more and more each year to keep the system
afloat. New York City’s average pension contributions have risen from
6.1 percent of its budget in 2005 to 11.5 percent today, according to a
recent paper by Manhattan Institute scholar Daniel DiSalvo. In 2005,
pension payments consumed 43 percent of income-tax revenue; in 2013,
“every penny in personal income tax we collect will go to cover our
pension bill,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently complained. America’s
second-largest city, Los Angeles, has seen its pension payments rise
from 3 percent of its budget to 18 percent today. Atlanta’s pension
payments increased from $43 million annually in 2002 to $144 million in
2010, consuming 19 percent of its budget, before the city finally
initiated pension reforms that capped costs and began reducing debt. Even as governments scramble to find ways of
paying their existing obligations, taxpayers should demand fundamental
reforms that will make state and local leaders more fiscally responsible
going forward. An easy place to start would be a push for honest
accounting and greater transparency. States and cities need to move away
from cash-basis budgeting and adopt the accrual accounting that private
corporations and the federal government use, in which future expenses
are included in current reckonings, providing a clearer picture of
long-term debt. Taxpayers should also demand that states and cities produce timely
financial reports. The SEC should slap governments and elected officials
with harsher penalties for failing to file on time or at all. To date,
the commission has mostly just required states to agree not to miss
future deadlines. And reformers should strive to make state
balanced-budget amendments rigorous again. Some states that have
recently enacted pension reform, such as New Jersey, have written into
law that the government must make its required annual pension
contributions: a budget wouldn’t be considered “balanced” if officials
ignored that requirement. At the same time, states need to remove some of the discretion that
retirement systems have to calculate pension obligations, including
their discretion to predict future investment returns. Handing that task
to an independent body or determining it with a formula—perhaps one
linked to the movement of interest rates—would remove some of the
political manipulation of retirement accounting. The ratings agency
Moody’s and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board have each
proposed new, more accurate, ways of calculating pension debt. But these
new standards will have little effect unless states and cities respond
to them by contributing more to their pension systems or by cutting
benefits. An even better way to make retirement plans more honest would be to
replace defined-benefit plans with hybrid systems, as some states and
cities have already done. Such systems start with a 401(k)-style
defined-contribution plan featuring individual retirement accounts and
then add either Social Security (in places where public workers receive
it) or, in lieu of Social Security, a basic, inexpensive defined-benefit
plan that pays a small monthly pension. Taxpayer obligations to workers
are much clearer in defined-contribution plans, since the government
must simply contribute a certain percentage of a worker’s salary into an
account each year, eliminating the vexed question of whether it can
afford to pay a defined pension many years down the road. Reformers should also seek to get rid of the many loopholes that
state legislators use to get around debt-limit rules. In particular,
states should be banned from assuming debt through independent
authorities or by direct appropriation of the legislature. Reform should
also cap state-supported debt by tying it to some flexible measure of
economic or revenue growth, such as state personal income, rather than
just stating a dollar limit. Reformers should strive, too, to end governments’ use of debt to
balance budgets, perhaps by introducing a requirement that all
taxpayer-supported debt be used for capital projects, such as schools,
roads, and bridges. Such structures endure for decades, so it’s
reasonable to ask future residents to contribute to their construction
through debt payments. By contrast, bonds floated to close a particular
year’s budget, pledging to the bondholders that they’ll be paid with
future lottery, toll, or tobacco revenues, give today’s residents a
benefit at future residents’ expense. There’s no single cure for the debt crisis afflicting state and local
governments. But unless taxpayers start pulling harder in that
everlasting tug-of-war, they can expect to keep losing ground.
FOUR TIMES Bigger than the Bakken Fields in the Dakotas... IN CALIFORNIA!!
People wonder if the Obama Cabal is stupid for not drilling for oil in the US. Its them that are stupid if they really thinks so.
They are preserving the oil for the day when America is taken over by the Socialists and the SHTF then Oil will be the economic lifeblood of the newly poor "UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF AMERICA." THE POOR WILL GET SUBSIDIZED OIL.. say $ 0.25 per gallon like in Venezuela along with subsidized transportation and basic foods all paid for by the OIL DOLLARS...
TILL THEN... THE LEADERS OF THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENTS (ALSO KNOWN AS USEFUL IDIOT MOVEMENTS) ARE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY Oil Exporting Countries and THE SAUDI MONARCHY and the American Socialists to keep the Oil in the ground based on LOONY GLOBAL WARMING AND SAVE THE PLANET BULLSHIT!!
On October 15, 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo entered the Santa Barbara channel off the coast of California. According to his captain’s log, he noticed “long, colorful slicks of
rainbows” and “black balls” floating in the ocean for miles... He didn’t know it at the time, but these were oil slicks that were
coming from natural seeps in the seabed and from surface seeps onshore. Cabrillo recorded that the Native Americans along the Santa Barbara
Channel used the tar-like substance (known as asphaltum) to caulk their
canoes. Cabrillo followed the Native Americans' example, using the
substance to waterproof two of his own ships. In 1792, Captain Cook's crew reported the ocean near Goleta in the
Santa Barbara Channel was covered with an oily surface in all
directions. According to Vancouver, Cook’s navigator, the oil was so
thick that the entire sea took on an iridescent hue. Many other explorers reported similar sightings. Fast-forward 215 years to 2007... In February 2007, a large number of tar balls washed up on the
beaches in Central California —from Monterey Bay north to Half Moon Bay
and San Francisco. Concerned California residents called state officials asking where
these balls of tar might have come from, and whether they posed a threat
to wildlife or affected the beaches. Overwhelmingly, people assumed the
oil on the beaches was the result of an oil spill. However, after taking several samples and analyzing the tar balls
back in the lab, the U.S. Geological Survey concluded the oil came from
fissures in the seabed off the coast of California. You may recall in my recent article, "A Brief History of Oil," I wrote:
And ever since, oil and gas companies have used the observation of naturally occurring seeps to find massive oilfields. That’s because typically where you see a seep, you find a
highly-pressurized reservoir below. The high quality oil is literally
being pushed out of the ground.
And you can see by this image from the USGS how seeps and oil fields are closely related: A couple of weeks ago, CNN Money reported that “California could be the next oil boom state.”
You may remember when, late last year, California Gov. Jerry Brown
pushed for a top state regulator to ease regulations for energy
companies seeking to drill for California's oil. The official refused. A week later, Brown fired the regulator — along with a deputy, Elena Miller. The governor appointed replacements who agreed to stop subjecting
every fracking project to a top-to-bottom review before issuing a
permit. Jerry Brown knows what's at stake... California could have more than
four times the recoverable shale oil than the Bakken in North Dakota. It
has more than 4.5 times the reserves of the Eagle Ford Formation in
Texas. And it has nearly ten times the shale oil reserves in the Avalon
and Bone Springs Formation in New Mexico and Texas. According to the same EIA report:
The largest shale oil formation is
the Monterey/Santos play in southern California, which is estimated to
hold 15.4 billion barrels or 64 percent of the total shale oil resources
shown in Table 1. The Monterey shale play is the primary source rock
for the conventional oil reservoirs found in the Santa Maria and San
Joaquin Basins in southern California.
The next largest shale oil plays are
the Bakken and Eagle Ford, which are assessed to hold approximately 3.6
billion barrels and 3.4 billion barrels of oil, respectively.
This is important — because geologists have concluded that the Monterey Shale is the "source rock" for Southern California's oil production. In other words, the oil was cooked and created in the Monterey Shale. Over time, the oil migrated into surrounding oil reservoirs, where it's been drilled for a century. Take a look: For the past 100 years, California has been a major oil producer, and most of that oil was produced by the Monterey Shale. Now oil companies are going to the source... The results could be an absolute bonanza. I say “could” because California doesn’t have the same friendly business environment as Texas and North Dakota... but we’ll see. WHY CALIFORNIA WONT DRILL ??? THE LEADERS OF THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENTS (ALSO KNOWN AS USEFUL IDIOT MOVEMENTS) ARE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY Oil Exporting Countries and THE SAUDI MONARCHY!! Obama too is bought and paid for by Saudi Arabia and other Oil Exporting Countries and will work to keep the cost of Oil high!
EXAMPLE:
Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Movie Financed by Oil-Rich Arab Nation
A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas
producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural
American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed
in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
The creators of Promised Land have gone to absurd lengths to vilify oil and gas companies, as Scribe’s Michael Sandoval noted Wednesday.
Since recent events have demonstrated the relative environmental
soundness of hydraulic fracturing – a technique for extracting oil and
gas from shale formations – Promised Land’s script has been
altered to make doom-saying environmentalists the tools of oil companies
attempting to discredit legitimate “fracking” concerns.
While left-leaning Hollywood often targets supposed environmental evildoers, Promised Land
was also produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi, a
subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, according to the preview’s list of
credits. A spokesperson with DDA Public Relations, which runs PR for
Participant Media, the company that developed the film fund backing Promised Land, confirmed that AD Media is a financier. The company is wholly owned by the government of the UAE.
OR DO YOU LET THIS CONTINUE.. WHAT NEXT ??? WHY WAIT TILL WHAT NEXT ???
ObamaCare for thee, little peons, but not for the majestic
aristocracy of Congress and their loyal courtiers! His Majesty King
Barack I has once again sniffed disdainfully at that dust-covered old
scrap of parchment we call “The Constitution,” dispensed with its
antiquated “separation of powers” claptrap, and issued a royal decree
that Congress shall be immune from the health-care boondoggle that’s
killing the American job market. The Wall Street Journal brings us the joyous news:
The Affordable Care Act requires Members of Congress and
their staffs to participate in its insurance exchanges, in order to gain
first-hand experience with what they’re about to impose on their
constituents. Harry Truman enrolled as the first Medicare beneficiary in
1965, and why shouldn’t the Members live under the same laws they pass
for the rest of the country? That was the idea when Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley proposed the
original good-enough-for-thee, good-enough-for-me amendment in 2009, and
the Finance Committee unanimously adopted his rule. Declared Chairman
Max Baucus, “I’m very gratified that you have so much confidence in our
program that you’re going to be able to purchase the new program
yourself and I’m confident too that the system will work very well.” Harry Reid revised the Grassley amendment when he rammed through his
infamous ObamaCare bill that no one had read for a vote on Christmas
eve. But he neglected to include language about what would happen to the
premium contributions that the government makes for its employees.
Whether it was intentional or not, the fairest reading of the statute as
written is that if Democrats thought somebody earning $174,000 didn’t
deserve an exchange subsidy, then this person doesn’t get a subsidy
merely because he happens to work in Congress.
But all of that is old news, because His Majesty has once again asserted powers absolutely unknown to the Constitution, and
rewritten a duly ratified body of law to create a very special
carve-out for those very special six-figure employees of Congress.
There’s not a single phrase in the Affordable Care Act that gives the
President executive power to lift the ObamaCare requirements from the
ruling class, any more than he has the power to unilaterally revise the
date when the employer mandate goes into effect on the lowly serfs in
the private sector. But Obama calculated that American patriotism has run dry enough to
keep anyone from objecting too strongly if he just rewrote the law to
favor those bloated congressional offices. You know, the same geniuses
who foisted ObamaCare on us in the first place. Obviously they just couldn’t go
through the legislative process laid out in the Constitution! They
might have lost the necessary votes, or given ObamaCare critics an
opportunity to assail the disastrous Affordable Care Act again. And you
wretched peasants clearly cannot be trusted with representative rule in
such important matters.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs
federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to
the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on
the [Federal Employees Health Benefit Program] defined-contribution
formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance
plan. For 2013, that’s about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for
families. How OPM will pull this off is worth watching. Is OPM simply going to
cut checks, akin to “cashing out” fringe benefits and increasing wages?
Or will OPM cover 75% of the cost of the ObamaCare plan the worker
chooses—which could well be costlier than what the feds now contribute
via current FEHBP plans? In any case the carve-out for Congress creates a
two-tier exchange system, one for the great unwashed and another for
the politically connected.
This is exactly the kind of arbitrary imperial whimsy that America was founded against.
For a while, we went through the motions of pretending the rule of law
applied, but it’s increasingly clear that the rule of law is
fundamentally incompatible with ObamaCare. The President and his Party
dumped a pile of corrupt legal code into the American system; America
must now be rewritten to make ObamaCare run. Perhaps Obama’s judgment upon this weakened nation is correct. The
fires of 1776 have burned down to cold ashes. Clear grounds for
impeachment result in not even the most casual discussion of
consequences for the President. The American people are no longer
jealous of liberty, and no longer expect their central government to
obey the law. It makes sense that the ruling class would enjoy
privileges and immunities unavailable to the general public. They’re
better than us – smarter, wiser, less selfish, more visionary. When
Congress began crying for its ObamaCare waiver, it wailed about a “brain
drain” caused by top staffers abandoning public service due to their
increased health insurance expenses. We can’t have that, can we? Our
nation cannot afford to lose the Great Men and Women of government to
the grimy drudgery of private sector employment. Everyone knows Washington could not possibly survive the sort of
financial audit it routinely inflicts on private industry. Why expect
Congress to bear the same ObamaCare burden it eagerly imposes upon the
private sector? We all know the ruling class was never going to stand
before the death panels and beg them to fudge quality-of-life
spreadsheets, so they could have access to tightly rationed medical
resources. Why expect them to be satisfied with overpriced low-quality
health insurance like the rest of us? Speaking of which, for those keeping score on the degeneration of ObamaCare, Aetna just announced it would bail out of the Maryland health insurance exchange,
because it says it couldn’t stay in business if it obeyed regulatory
demands. The company, which is one of the nation’s largest providers,
previously withdrew from the exchanges in Georgia and California. And
South Carolina became the latest state to estimate huge increases
in the cost of insurance due to ObamaCare – 50 to 70 percent for
individual insurance plans, 10 to 20 percent in the small group market. Who can blame Congress for wanting to escape from that? You can’t expect our best and brightest to pay those inflated premiums. But they most certainly expect you to
pay them, and if you don’t, you’ll be dealing with the Internal Revenue
Service… whose agents are also looking for an ObamaCare waiver,
naturally.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Misrepresenting 2013 Job Gains By Over 40%
Many were surprised when last month we exposed the divergent lies at the Bureau of Labor Statistics when comparing two otherwise convergent data sets: the monthly all-important Non-Farm
Payroll report and the (one month-delayed) JOLTS survey. Specifically,
what we showed is that the Net Turnover from JOLTS (Hires less Separations) is now 40% below the trendline of cumulative job additions implied by the Non-Farm Payroll report's Establishment survey
which has become the holy grail for both the stock market and the
Federal Reserve's tapering ambitions. Following the release of the June JOLTS update, we can report that the divergence within BLS data series continues, and that the average monthly US job gain for the first 6 months of 2013 is either 198K if one uses the non-farm payroll data, or 30% lower, 140K to be specific, if one uses the JOLTS net turnover number. The divergence in the two data series, historically convergent, can be seen highlighted on the chart below: While from a distance the highlighted area may not amount to much,
here it is zoomed in just for 2013. The difference becomes quite
pronounced, and amounts to just shy of 60K jobs per month on average
for 2013 alone. Putting the above into words:
In April, according to JOLTS, there were 108K job additions. According to the NFP data, the job gain was 199K or 84% more than per JOLTS
In May, according to JOLTS, there were 109K jobs additions. According to the NFP data, the job gain was 176K or 62% more than per JOLTS
In June, according to JOLTS, there were 120K jobs additions. According to the NFP data, the job gain was 188K or 57% more than per JOLTS
Adding across for all of 2013 (through the end of June
data), JOLTS would have us know that only 837K jobs were added (or 140K
per month average). Compare this to the 1,185K new jobs according to
the Establishment Survey (198K per month average).
-> A 42% difference! Finally, the chart below shows that while until 2013 the divergence between two data series has been mostly cluster-free except for the Lehman collapse and the period just after it promptly normalizing thereafter, the past 7 months have seen a dramatic imbalance in data benefitting the algo-headline scanner moving NFP data,
which on a 3 month trailing basis is almost as wide as it has been at
any point in the past 5 years and just shy of the wides seens just
after the Lehman collapse. This means that either the JOLTS survey is substantially
underrepresenting the net turnover of workers, or that once the
part-time frenzy in the NFP data normalizes, the monthly job gains will
plunge to just over 100K per month to "normalize" for what has been a
very peculiar upward "drift" in the NFP "data." And just like last month we will conclude with the same advice to the BLS: when manipulating data series across dimensions, make sure the manipulations foot across, and not just in 1 dimension.
Obama Fires Or Kills off Military Officers Because He 'Fears a Coup'
TIME FOR REVOLUTION: SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS.
We ask all fired Officers to please come to our side. Never in the History of our country have so many gallant and brave Soldiers been relieved of their command in such short order. This is destroying the morale of the real fighting men!
UPDATED APRIL 30 2015
Marine Corp Times Report:
The commanding officer of Marine
Corps Base Hawaii was relieved of his duties Monday following “a loss of
trust and confidence in his ability to lead,” the service said.
Col. Eric Schaefer, who assumed
command of the base in August, was removed from his post by Maj. Gen.
Charles Hudson, the commanding general of Marine Corps Installations
Pacific, according to a Marine Corps news release. Schaefer was
reassigned to another position effective immediately.
“The Marine Corps holds all Marines,
especially commanders, responsible for their actions, and is committed
to upholding high standards of honor, courage and commitment within the
ranks,” the release states.
No additional details about the
relief or Schaefer’s new position were immediately available. Schaefer
could not immediately be reached for comment.
Col. Christopher Snyder, the deputy
commander of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, has been assigned as
the interim commanding officer of Marine Corps Base Hawaii until a
permanent replacement is named by Headquarters Marine Corps.
Schaefer, a career aviator with more
than 2,000 flight hours, graduated from San Diego State University in
1991, according to his official Marine Corps biography. He served as the
commanding officer of Marine Attack Squadron 214, which was named the
Marine aviation attack squadron of the year in 2009 following a
deployment to Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
From Commander, Naval Surface Force U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs
SAN DIEGO (NNS) — The commanding
officer of USS Lake Erie (CG 70) was relieved of his duties April 27,
due to loss of confidence in his ability to command.
Capt. John Banigan was relieved by Rear Adm. Dee Mewbourne,
commander of Carrier Strike Group 11. The decision was based on the
findings of an investigation into poor command climate aboard Lake Erie,
a guided-missile cruiser homeported in San Diego. Banigan assumed command of the ship in May 2013. He has been
temporarily assigned to the staff of Commander, Naval Surface Force,
U.S. Pacific Fleet. Capt. Douglas Kunzman, deputy commander of Destroyer Squadron 9,
will temporarily assume command of Lake Erie pending assignment of a
permanent relief.
The List of Senior Ranking Military Officers Forced Out By Barack Hussein Obama
Many of these below have spotless records, 25 and up years service,
many medals and honors such as Brig. Gen Bryan W. Wampler and Command
Sgt. Major Don B. Jordan.
Commanding Generals fired:
General John R. Allen-U.S. Marines Commander International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] (Nov 2012)
Major General Ralph Baker (2 Star)-U.S. Army Commander of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn in Africa (April 2013)
Major General Michael Carey (2 Star)-U.S. Air Force Commander of the
20th US Air Force in charge of 9,600 people and 450 Intercontinental
Ballistic Missiles (Oct 2013)
Colonel James Christmas-U.S. Marines Commander 22nd Marine Expeditionary
Unit & Commander Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force
Crisis Response Unit (July 2013)
Major General Peter Fuller-U.S. Army Commander in Afghanistan (May 2011)
Major General Charles M.M. Gurganus-U.S. Marine Corps Regional Commander
of SW and I Marine Expeditionary Force in Afghanistan (Oct 2013)
General Carter F. Ham-U.S. Army African Command (Oct 2013)
Lieutenant General David H. Huntoon (3 Star), Jr.-U.S. Army 58th
Superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point, NY (2013)
Command Sergeant Major Don B Jordan-U.S. Army 143rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command (suspended Oct 2013)
General James Mattis-U.S. Marines Chief of CentCom (May 2013)
Colonel Daren Margolin-U.S. Marine in charge of Quantico’s Security Battalion (Oct 2013)
General Stanley McChrystal-U.S. Army Commander Afghanistan (June 2010)
General David D. McKiernan-U.S. Army Commander Afghanistan (2009)
General David Petraeus-Director of CIA from September 2011 to November
2012 & U.S. Army Commander International Security Assistance Force
[ISAF] and Commander U.S. Forces Afghanistan [USFOR-A] (Nov 2012)
Brigadier General Bryan Roberts-U.S. Army Commander 2nd Brigade (May 2013)
Major General Gregg A. Sturdevant-U.S. Marine Corps Director of
Strategic Planning and Policy for the U.S. Pacific Command &
Commander of Aviation Wing at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan (Sept 2013)
Colonel Eric Tilley-U.S. Army Commander of Garrison Japan (Nov 2013)
Brigadier General Bryan Wampler-U.S. Army Commanding General of 143rd
Expeditionary Sustainment Command of the 1st Theater Sustainment Command
[TSC] (suspended Oct 2013)
Commanding Admirals fired:
Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette-U.S. Navy Commander John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group Three (Oct 2012)
Vice Admiral Tim Giardina(3 Star, demoted to 2 Star)-U.S. Navy Deputy
Commander of the US Strategic Command, Commander of the Submarine Group
Trident, Submarine Group 9 and Submarine Group 10 (Oct 2013)
Naval Officers fired: (All in 2011)
Captain David Geisler-U.S. Navy Commander Task Force 53 in Bahrain (Oct 2011)
Commander Laredo Bell-U.S. Navy Commander Naval Support Activity Saratoga Springs, NY (Aug 2011)
Lieutenant Commander Kurt Boenisch-Executive Officer amphibious transport dock Ponce (Apr 2011)
Commander Nathan Borchers-U.S. Navy Commander destroyer Stout (Mar 2011)
Commander Robert Brown-U.S. Navy Commander Beachmaster Unit 2 Fort Story, VA (Aug 2011)
Commander Andrew Crowe-Executive Officer Navy Region Center Singapore (Apr 2011)
Captain Robert Gamberg-Executive Officer carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower (Jun 2011)
Captain Rex Guinn-U.S. Navy Commander Navy Legal Service office Japan (Feb 2011)
Commander Kevin Harms- U.S. Navy Commander Strike Fighter Squadron 137 aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln (Mar 2011)
Lieutenant Commander Martin Holguin-U.S. Navy Commander mine countermeasures Fearless (Oct 2011)
Captain Owen Honors-U.S. Navy Commander aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (Jan 2011)
Captain Donald Hornbeck-U.S. Navy Commander Destroyer Squadron 1 San Diego (Apr 2011)
Rear Admiral Ron Horton-U.S. Navy Commander Logistics Group, Western Pacific (Mar 2011)
Commander Etta Jones-U.S. Navy Commander amphibious transport dock Ponce (Apr 2011)
Commander Ralph Jones-Executive Officer amphibious transport dock Green Bay (Jul 2011)
Commander Jonathan Jackson-U.S. Navy Commander Electronic Attack Squadron 134, deployed aboard carrier Carl Vinson (Dec 2011)
Captain Eric Merrill-U.S. Navy Commander submarine Emory S. Land (Jul 2011)
Captain William Mosk-U.S. Navy Commander Naval Station Rota, U.S. Navy Commander Naval Activities Spain (Apr 2011)
Commander Timothy Murphy-U.S. Navy Commander Electronic Attack Squadron 129 at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, WA (Apr 2011)
Commander Joseph Nosse-U.S. Navy Commander ballistic-missile submarine Kentucky (Oct 2011)
Commander Mark Olson-U.S. Navy Commander destroyer The Sullivans FL (Sep 2011)
Commander John Pethel-Executive Officer amphibious transport dock New York (Dec 2011)
Commander Karl Pugh-U.S. Navy Commander Electronic Attack Squadron 141 Whidbey Island, WA (Jul 2011)
Commander Jason Strength-U.S. Navy Commander of Navy Recruiting District Nashville, TN (Jul 2011)
Captain Greg Thomas-U.S. Navy Commander Norfolk Naval Shipyard (May 2011)
Commander Mike Varney-U.S. Navy Commander attack submarine Connecticut (Jun 2011)
Commander Jay Wylie-U.S. Navy Commander destroyer Momsen (Apr 2011)
Naval Officers fired: (All in 2012):
Commander Alan C. Aber-Executive Officer Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 71 (July 2012)
Commander Derick Armstrong- U.S. Navy Commander missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (May 2012)
Commander Martin Arriola- U.S. Navy Commander destroyer USS Porter (Aug 2012)
Captain Antonio Cardoso- U.S. Navy Commander Training Support Center San Diego (Sep 2012)
Captain James CoBell- U.S. Navy Commander Oceana Naval Air Station’s Fleet Readiness Center Mid-Atlantic (Sep 2012)
Captain Joseph E. Darlak- U.S. Navy Commander frigate USS Vandegrift (Nov 2012)
Captain Daniel Dusek-U.S. Navy Commander USS Bonhomme
Commander David Faught-Executive Officer destroyer Chung-Hoon (Sep 2012)
Commander Franklin Fernandez- U.S. Navy Commander Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 24 (Aug 2012)
Commander Ray Hartman- U.S. Navy Commander Amphibious dock-landing ship Fort McHenry (Nov 2012)
Commander Shelly Hakspiel-Executive Officer Navy Drug Screening Lab San Diego (May 2012)
Commander Jon Haydel- U.S. Navy Commander USS San Diego (Mar 2012)
Commander Diego Hernandez- U.S. Navy Commander ballistic-missile submarine USS Wyoming (Feb 2012)
Commander Lee Hoey- U.S. Navy Commander Drug Screening Laboratory, San Diego (May 2012)
Commander Ivan Jimenez-Executive Officer frigate Vandegrift (Nov 2012)
Commander Dennis Klein- U.S. Navy Commander submarine USS Columbia (May 2012)
Captain Chuck Litchfield- U.S. Navy Commander assault ship USS Essex (Jun 2012)
Captain Marcia Kim Lyons- U.S. Navy Commander Naval Health Clinic New England (Apr 2012)
Captain Robert Marin- U.S. Navy Commander cruiser USS Cowpens (Feb 2012)
Captain Sean McDonell- U.S. Navy Commander Seabee reserve unit Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 14 FL (Nov 2012)
Commander Corrine Parker- U.S. Navy Commander Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 1 (Apr 2012)
Captain Liza Raimondo- U.S. Navy Commander Naval Health Clinic Patuxent River, MD (Jun 2012)
Captain Jeffrey Riedel- Program manager, Littoral Combat Ship program (Jan 2012)
Commander Sara Santoski- U.S. Navy Commander Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15 (Sep 2012)
Commander Kyle G. Strudthoff-Executive Officer Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25 (Sep 2012)
Commander Sheryl Tannahill- U.S. Navy Commander Navy Operational Support Center [NOSC] Nashville, TN (Sep 2012)
Commander Michael Ward- U.S. Navy Commander submarine USS Pittsburgh (Aug 2012)
Captain Michael Wiegand- U.S. Navy Commander Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (Nov 2012)
Captain Ted Williams- U.S. Navy Commander amphibious command ship Mount Whitney (Nov 2012)
Commander Jeffrey Wissel- U.S. Navy Commander of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1 (Feb 2012)
Naval Officers fired: (All in 2013):
Lieutenant Commander Lauren Allen-Executive Officer submarine Jacksonville (Feb 2013)
Reserve Captain Jay Bowman-U.S. Navy Commander Navy Operational Support Center [NOSC] Fort Dix, NJ (Mar 2013)
Captain William Cogar-U.S. Navy Commander hospital ship Mercy’s medical treatment facility (Sept 2013)
Commander Steve Fuller-Executive Officer frigate Kauffman (Mar 2013)
Captain Shawn Hendricks-Program Manager for naval enterprise IT networks (June 2013)
Captain David Hunter-U.S. Navy Commander of Maritime Expeditionary
Security Squadron 12 & Coastal Riverine Group 2 (Feb 2013)
Captain Eric Johnson-U.S. Navy Chief of Military Entrance Processing Command at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, IL (2013)
Captain Devon Jones-U.S. Navy Commander Naval Air Facility El Centro, CA (July 2013)
Captain Kevin Knoop-U.S. Navy Commander hospital ship Comfort’s medical treatment facility (Aug 2013)
Lieutenant Commander Jack O’Neill-U.S. Navy Commander Operational Support Center Rock Island, IL (Mar 2013)
Commander Allen Maestas-Executive Officer Beachmaster Unit 1 (May 2013)
Commander Luis Molina-U.S. Navy Commander submarine Pasadena (Jan 2013)
Commander James Pickens-Executive Officer frigate Gary (Feb 2013)
Lieutenant Commander Mark Rice-U.S. Navy Commander Mine Countermeasures ship Guardian (Apr 2013)
Commander Michael Runkle-U.S. Navy Commander of Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 (May 2013)
Commander Jason Stapleton-Executive Office Patrol Squadron 4 in Hawaii (Mar 2013)
Commander Nathan Sukols-U.S. Navy Commander submarine Jacksonville (Feb 2013)
Lieutenant Daniel Tyler-Executive Officer Mine Countermeasures ship Guardian (Apr 2013)
Commander Edward White-U.S. Navy Commander Strike Fighter Squadron 106 (Aug 2013)
Captain Jeffrey Winter-U.S. Navy Commander of Carrier Air Wing 17 (Sept 2013)
Commander Thomas Winter-U.S. Navy Commander submarine Montpelier (Jan 2013)
Commander Corey Wofford- U.S. Navy Commander frigate Kauffman (Feb 2013)
157 Air Force majors forced into early terminations, no retirement or benefits, all were within six years of retirement.
Update Nov 12
Vice Adm. Ted Branch and Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless have both taken
forced leaves of absence and had their access to classified materials
suspended.
The news comes on the heels of the reports that at least two Navy
commanders allegedly leaked inside information to Malaysian businessman
Leonard Glenn Francis -- chief executive of the contractor Glenn Defense
Marine Asia, which resupplies ships and submarines across Asia. Federal prosecutors are reportedly accusing Navy Cmdr. Michael Vannak
Khem Misiewicz, 46, of tipping off Francis to the worldwide movement of
Navy ships so his company could obtain contracts to service those
vessels at port. Also reportedly arrested was Naval Criminal Investigative Service
supervisory Special Agent John Beliveau, 44, who allegedly (and
secretly) downloaded reports on his agency’s investigation into Glenn
Defense Marine Asia -- and how it won a $125 million contract to service
naval ships at ports of call. Such information allegedly allowed the company to bilk the U.S.
government of more money – and even secure more contracts worth up to
$200 million -- as it defended itself from the Navy's criminal
investigations. The Post wrote in a past report that in return for the ill-gotten
information, Glenn Defense Marine also supplied the officers with
prostitutes, cash, luxury hotel rooms, plane tickets, and even tickets
to a Lady Gaga concert in Thailand.
According to The Post, neither Branch nor Loveless has as-yet been
charged with a crime or service violation, or been demoted. As director
of naval intelligence, Branch serves as the Navy’s top intelligence
officer. But the paper cited a Navy official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, as saying the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service unearthed
evidence of “personal misconduct,” by Branch and Loveless as part of the
larger investigation into Glenn Defense Marine. And the paper adds the alleged improprieties predate either man’s promotion to their current positions.
“We do believe that other naval officers will likely be implicated in
this scandal,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Navy’s chief spokesman,
told The Post in a telephone interview.
UPDATE NOV 10 2013
3-star Navy admiral fired as deputy chief of nuclear command, demoted to 2-star rank
This image provided by the U.S. Navy shows Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina
in a Nov. 11, 2011, photo. The Navy says a Giardina was notified
Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013, that he has been relieved of duty as
second-in-command at the military organization that oversees all U.S.
nuclear forces. Giardina will drop in rank to two-star admiral as a
consequence of being removed from his position at U.S. Strategic
Command. He is under investigation in a gambling matter. (AP Photo/U.S.
Navy) (The Associated Press)
WASHINGTON – The deputy commander of
U.S. nuclear forces, Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, was notified Wednesday that
he has been relieved of duty amid a military investigation of
allegations that he used counterfeit chips at an Iowa casino, the Navy
said. The move is exceedingly rare and perhaps
unprecedented in the history of U.S. Strategic Command, which is
responsible for all U.S. nuclear warfighting forces, including
nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and land-based missiles. The
Navy's top spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said Giardina, who had held
the job since December 2011, is being reassigned to the Navy staff
pending the outcome of the probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative
Service, which originated as a local law enforcement investigation in
Iowa in June. As a consequence of being removed from
his post at Strategic Command, Giardina falls in rank to two-star
admiral. He had been suspended by Gen. Robert Kehler, the top commander
at Strategic Command, on Sept. 3, although that move was not disclosed
publicly until Sept. 28. After his suspension
Giardina remained at Strategic Command but was not allowed to perform
duties that required use of his security clearance. The
decision to take the next step — to relieve him of duty — was made
on Oct. 3, one official said. That required approval by President Barack
Obama, two defense officials said. The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the
internal decision-making. Kehler had recommended to
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Giardina be relieved of duty and
returned to the Navy, according to Pentagon spokesman Carl Woog. A
former commander of Strategic Command, retired Air Force Gen. Eugene
Habiger, said he believes this is the first time in the history of the
command that a deputy commander has been relieved of duty. Strategic
Command was created in 1992 at the end of the Cold War. The aim was to
unify the command of nuclear forces previously run separately by the Air
Force and the Navy. "I know of no other case ever
of a deputy commander who was relieved for cause," Habiger said in a
telephone interview. He headed the command from 1996-98.
UPDATED OCTOBER 31 2013:
BREAKING....ANOTHER OBAMA ASSASSINATION!
USAF General Brown Dies in Mysterious Crash today: He was Investigating MISSING NUKES!
The plane went down in a subdivision near the Williamsburg/Jamestown Airport
Two people, including a Major General in the United States Air Force,
were killed Friday afternoon when a small plane crashed in the
Williamsburg area. WAVY, citing Virginia State Police, reported that
Major General Joseph D. Brown IV, 54, had died in the crash, along with
a female passenger and a family pet. The woman’s name was not released.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen
described the plane as a Cessna 210 that went down about a half-mile
from the Williamsburg/Jamestown airport in a subdivision. No injuries
were reported on the ground. Read More Prior to assuming his
current position, he served as the Deputy Director for Nuclear
Operations, U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. In this
capacity, he was the principal adviser to the commander on issues
pertaining to strategic deterrence and nuclear operations and was
responsible for management and oversight of the nuclear enterprise
overseeing personnel, procedural, equipment, communications and facility
requirements supporting the nuclear command and control system. The
general is a command pilot with more than 4,300 hours, primarily in the
B-1 and B-52, including combat time in operations Enduring and Iraqi
Freedom.
The BOGUS CONSTRUCTION OF THE OBAMA CABAL TALKING POINTS ABOUT THE BENGHAZI ATTACK. A PAGE BY PAGE EXPOSE...SHOWS THE LIES UPON LIES.
As the hour grew late on the night of Sept. 14, the White House
wanted to make one thing clear to the State Department and the CIA as
the three collaborated on what would come to be known as the Benghazi
"talking points," designed to be used by Congress and administration
officials to explain what had happened three days earlier at the U.S.
diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
The attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three
other Americans, was not planned, White House National Security Council
spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote in an 8:54 p.m. email.
"There is massive disinformation out there," Mr. Vietor wrote.
"They
all think it was premeditated based on inaccurate assumptions or
briefings. So I think this is a response to not only a tasking from the
house intel committee but also [National Security Council] guidance that
we need to brief members/press and correct the record."
The initial talking points ran six paragraphs long and said the crowd
was a mix of individuals, but "that being said, we do know that Islamic
extremists with ties to al-Qaida participated in the attack." The
talking points went on to recount attacks against other countries'
diplomatic missions in Benghazi and raised the prospect that the U.S.
facilities were "previously surveilled" in anticipation of the attack.
By the time the talking points were approved a day later, they had
been reduced to three paragraphs and any hint of terrorists or planning
had been scrubbed. The final version said the attack was the culmination
of "demonstrations" that were "spontaneously inspired" by protests at
the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier Sept. 11, though it did acknowledge
"indications that extremists participated in the violent
demonstrations."
Benghazi and the administration's talking points have not gone away as an issue for Republicans.
On Tuesday, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, delivered a
floor speech on the need for a special committee to answer several
questions. He said he plans a series of statements and letters to the
State Department to garner more information before the August recess.
"Perhaps the most telling sign of the incomplete state of the
Benghazi investigation is the fact that not one of the survivors of the
Benghazi attacks - from the consulate or the [CIA] annex - have publicly
testified before Congress," Mr. Wolf said. "Despite nearly a full year
of multiple committee investigations, not one witness has been brought
before a committee to publicly testify under oath about what happened
that night."
On Thursday, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold a
hearing on what Rep. Edward R. Royce, California Republican and
committee chairman, calls "inadequacies" in the State Department's
accountability review board and its report on Benghazi security
failures.
A page-by-page examination of administration emails documenting the
editing of the talking points shows a final product that got the facts
wrong, but dovetailed with President Obama's campaign-mode narrative
that a mob angry over an American video committed the attack.
The document has become the centerpiece of a Washington scandal, as
Republicans charge that the White House attempted to cover up what
really happened so as not to harm the president's re-election chances.
Obama supporters say the exercise was standard interagency
back-and-forth discussion as all sides tried to reach agreement on the
facts.
Some findings from the pages of emails released by the White House on May 16:
- Obama aides ignored or discounted mounting evidence that the attack
was planned - not, as they asserted, a spontaneous violent protest over
an anti-Muslim YouTube video.
- During the exchange of emails, the FBI said al Qaeda was involved
in the assault, yet the words "al Qaeda" were deleted from an early
draft and never reinserted.
- State Department political appointees worked to delete any language
that suggested there were warnings of an attack, saying it would leave
Foggy Bottom open to criticism from Congress.
(Congressional hearings
later would show that the embassy in Tripoli had sent memos warning of
increased violence and asking for more security.)
- An early CIA draft did not mention a protest at the mission in
Benghazi. But by Friday afternoon, the word "demonstrations" was added
twice, leaving the public to believe that random protesters were to
blame for the attack.
- That initial draft also had errors. It said the attacks were
inspired spontaneously by the protests in Cairo - an assertion that
turned out most likely to be untrue.
Sept. 14 The CIA began drafting talking points the morning of Sept. 14. CIA Director David H. Petraeus had met over coffee with members of
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who wanted an
unclassified report, or talking points, to give the press and public.
Mr. Petraeus returned to CIA headquarters at Langley and started a
drafting process that would occupy senior officials into the night.
At the CIA, hours after the attack, there was near unanimous opinion
that Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked Islamic group, was responsible,
an informed source told The Washington Times. CIA officers had been in
Libya for months, had good contacts with various militias and were
tracking Ansar al-Sharia.
What was murky was whether there was some type of protest at the same
time. It was unclear at best. Neither the Benghazi mission nor the U.S.
Embassy in Tripoli reported a demonstration. (The U.S. deputy chief of
mission in Tripoli would tell Congress later that there was no protest
and that no one in Libya talked about the video. He said no one at State
consulted with him about the talking points.)
At 3 p.m. on Sept. 14, the CIA circulated one of the early drafts
that reflected Mr. Petraeus' desire to say as much as possible and put
the attack in historical context.
The draft document said the attack was "spontaneous," spurred by
protests in Cairo, but did not say there was a demonstration at the
mission. It continued: "We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to
al Qaeda participated in the attack."
The draft mentioned that Ansar al-Sharia was attempting to spread
jihad in eastern Libya and had posted a Facebook note not denying
involvement.
It further noted previous plans for attacks in Benghazi against
Western targets, including the British ambassador's convoy. It also
suggested that the mission had been surveilled, meaning the attack was
planned.
Some in the CIA directorate objected to blaming extremists linked to al Qaeda without more evidence.
Nonetheless, the first version of the talking points would prove to be highly accurate.
Yet few of its words would survive, especially once State Department
political appointees and the White House joined the discussion. What is
not known is what was said in conversations outside the email exchanges
among State, CIA and the White House as edits were made and the final
product took shape.
At 3:04 p.m., CIA public affairs sent the draft to the White House's
Mr. Vietor, who had been an aide to Mr. Obama in the Senate and worked
in the White House press office before moving to become NSC spokesman.
Also on the list was Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser
for strategic communication.
That version did not assert there was a protest and said Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda participated in the attack.
The word 'demonstrations' appears
At 4:42 p.m. inside the CIA, a major change happened. The word "demonstrations" showed up twice in the first and second
paragraphs of a draft as a fact that day in Benghazi. The words "al
Qaeda" were removed. The emails do not indicate who inserted the pivotal
word "demonstrations."
Also added was the fact that the CIA sent a report Sept. 10 warning
that jihadists were threatening to attack the embassy in Cairo on Sept.
11, the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on America. Still included was the language that "Islamic extremists" were
involved. Language that had been added underscored that the CIA had been
warning in reports to the administration "on the threat of extremists
linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya." State gets on the email train
At 6:33 p.m., CIA public affairs sent the first draft to the State
Department's public affairs office, then headed by Victoria Nuland, whom
Mr. Obama has since tapped as assistant secretary of state for European
and Eurasian affairs, pending Senate confirmation. A career diplomat, Ms. Nuland has served under Democratic and
Republican presidents, and was a national security adviser to Vice
President Dick Cheney.
Ms. Nuland would play a major role in altering the document.
At 7:16 p.m., she asked the CIA how it knew extremists attacked.
At 7:39 p.m., she told the CIA and the White House that she did not
want to blame Ansar al-Sharia. "Why do we want [Capitol] Hill to be
fingering Ansar al Shariah, when we aren't doing that ourselves?"
She also objected to the language on CIA warnings, saying the words
"could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat the State Department
for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed
that either? Concerned."
At 8:43 p.m., Mr. Vietor weighed in with an email to Ms. Nuland and
Jacob Sullivan, then deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton and now national security adviser to Vice President
Joseph R. Biden.
"There is massive disinformation out there, in particular with
Congress," Mr. Vietor wrote. "They all think it was premeditated based
on inaccurate assumptions or briefings. So I think this is a response to
not only a tasking from the house intel committee but also [National
Security Council] guidance that we need to brief members/press and
correct the record."
At 8:59 p.m., the CIA public affairs office sent Ms. Nuland a new
version. The CIA held its ground, continuing to blame Islamic extremists
and noting its warnings to the administration.
At 9:23 p.m., Ms. Nuland rejected the version. "These don't resolve
all my issues or those of my building leadership," she wrote. She said
the unidentified "leadership" was consulting with the White House. The
emails do not disclose those conversations.
At 9:25 p.m., Mr. Sullivan told Ms. Nuland that he was talking to Mr. Vietor. "We'll work through this in the morning," he said.
At 9:52 p.m., public affairs told Mr. Petraeus that the redrafting had "run into major problems."
In between this exchange, at 9:43 p.m., CIA congressional affairs
told other agency offices that the FBI said al Qaeda was involved in the
attack.
At 10:42 p.m., the CIA fully capitulated with a lined-out version.
Gone was the Sept. 10 warning from the CIA, any reference to Islamic
extremists and any reference to CIA warnings about violence in eastern
Libya.
One administration official in the email chain said the Sept. 10
warning was deleted because "they seemed to encourage the reader to
infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our
embassy."
Ms. Nuland said in the emails that she was worried about how she
would respond to reporters asking how the U.S. was sure extremists were
involved.
"I'll need answers to those if we deploy that line," she wrote. Sept. 15
At 9:47 a.m., the CIA Directorate of Intelligence, the agency's
analytical branch, sent to the CIA's Office of Terrorism Analysis,
public affairs and the White House a whittled-down, low-information set
of talking points.
It blamed the attack on "demonstrations." There was no mention of Islamic extremists, al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia or CIA warnings. At a Saturday meeting of deputies - the No. 2 officials at Cabinet
departments involved in national security - a final product emerged that
reinserted the word "extremists."
At 12:51 p.m., CIA public affairs sent the scrubbed words to Mr.
Petraeus, who wanted more information released to the public to help
explain how four Americans - Stevens, his aide Sean Smith and two former
Navy SEALs turned security officers - had perished that day.
At 2:27 p.m., Mr. Petraeus expressed his displeasure, wondering why
there was no mention of the Sept. 10 cable to Cairo warning of an attack
the next day - an event that did happen.
"Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this," he replied, but added that a decision would be up to the White House.
The talking points were sent to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Susan E. Rice, who was chosen to be the face of the administration for
the first post-attack Sunday talk shows. That Sunday, Sept. 16, she
repeatedly blamed the attack on the anti- Muslim YouTube video - an
assertion not in any version of the talking points. Mr. Obama would
repeat the video argument in a speech to the United Nations later that
month.
At the White House on Sept. 18, press secretary Jay Carney said: "I'm
saying that based on information that we - our initial information, and
that includes all information - we saw no evidence to back up claims by
others that this was a pre-planned or premeditated attack, that we saw
evidence that it was sparked by the reaction to this video."
On Oct. 9, on the evening of the first investigative congressional
hearing on Benghazi, the State Department convened a conference call
with reporters to express its new position, saying there was no protest
that day linked to any video. Asked why that had been the administration
story line, an unidentified official said, "That was not our
conclusion."
Aftermath Mr. Vietor did not respond to a message from The Washington Times seeking comment on his role.
The White House has maintained publicly that the talking points were
based on the best intelligence at the time, and officials point to the
erroneous claim in the initial draft that the assault was inspired by
the Egyptian protests as evidence for how fluid the information was.
But Mr. Carney has acknowledged that the talking points Ms. Rice ended up using were inaccurate. "It is absolutely true that that assessment turned out to be wrong.
What is also true is what we have maintained from the beginning, that
that assessment was made by and drafted by the CIA, the intelligence
community. And when it proved not to be the case, we acknowledged that,"
he said.
Congressional Republicans say the White House is withholding other
emails that would provide a clear picture of how the talking points were
edited. Mr. Carney would not commit to releasing more, citing a right
of the executive branch not to disclose confidential discussions to
Congress.
Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has called Mr. Carney a
"paid liar." He has issued subpoenas to the State Department for "all
documents and communications" on how it influenced the CIA's first draft
talking points.
And where was Obama during all this ? Sleeping... BULLSHIT... they just kept him in the loop vie a secret teleconference from the Family Quarters so that if something went wrong there would be "plausible deniability"
