Jacob Hornberger on civil liberties, the Constitution, and the War on Terror

George Takei on the Japanese internment camps during WWII

Company Paid Millions of Non-Existent Money to Protect Buildings

Now this is a curious expenditure for a government that is talking about austerity -

...Vendtech-SGI, LLC, of McLean, VA, landed a contract worth more than $311.5 million to provide about 600 guards to protect approximately 200 different posts at more than 130 separate buildings in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, according to a DHS notice posted online on Feb. 14.

The same day, another firm, Master Security Company, LLC, of Hunt Valley, MD, was awarded a $43.1 million small business set-aside contract by the same DHS office to protect two facilities in Suitland, MD, and one each in Seabrook and Camp Springs, MD.

Both contracts were issued by the Federal Protective Service.

The award to Vendtech envisions approximately 1,000,000 hours of basic service, 100,000 hours of “temporary additional service” and 40,000 hours of emergency security services, says the DHS award notice.

The agency intended to award a one-year base contract, with four one-year options to Vendtech.

“The required class of security guard services is Guard II, and the Government requires a mix of fixed and roving posts assignments, providing interior and exterior coverage, with some posts requiring 24/7 coverage,” explains the DHS notice.

The Real Effect
I'll capitulate upfront that I know little of the details of such a posting, but I find the numbers to be absolutely captivating. Let's look at the math on this for a moment:

$311.5 million / 600 guards = $519,166.67 per guard. Let's be generous and say that each guard make $50 an hour, given a standard 40 hour workweek,  that equates to a salary of $104,000 a year. For a security guard. Is this Robocop? But let's go even further! Subtract your cost of $104,000 from your revenue of $519,166.67 and you have a profit of $415,166.67 or 80% of your revenue!

If we wanted to look at this just in hours, the cost comes out to $273.25 per hour of provided coverage!!!.

Now obviously this is all back of the envelope type stuff that doesn't take into account things such as overhead, pensions, things like that. But I am willing to venture up front that these guards are NOT making $50 and hour and the real cost is something more like $35 - $40. Roll the numbers around in your head for a while. Does this seem reasonable to you that a company should be making 500 - 800% markup on guarding buildings?

Personally to me, it's not even a question of if it should be making this kind of dough on our dime, but why, we the citizens, permit this? Perhaps an even more relevant question is - What is the government expecting that they are committing a half billion dollars to guarding buildings?

Causes of the 2008 Crisis

A resource to deal with the underlying causes of the 2008 collapse.

• Issue #1 Fraudulent Loans - The banks fraudulently loaned money to parties they knew could not repay. (Sub-prime crisis) 
• Not verifying income, FICO scores and payment history. (No legislation passed caused the banks to do this, specifically the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977)
• Standard & Poors, Moody's, and Fitch Rating rated much of the junk paper as AAA.
• Corrupt appraisers - Always come in at exactly the purchase price. They asked Congress to do something.
• The banks  recklessly loaned money to parties they knew could not repay.
• Citifinancial knew that 80% of its loan origination did not meet quality guidelines
• Bad loan "products"
• “No Money Down” Mortgages (0% down payments) Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozlilo
• "No doc" loans
• "Teaser Rate" loans (2/28)
• Interest only loans
• Neg Am loans
  
• "Piggy back" loans -Lent 1st mortgage and HELOCs for the down payment.
• Mortgage equity withdrawals(HELOC)

• 50% of sub-prime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision; another 30% were made by banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations.
• Gaming their own systems  
• The shift in Loan to value (LTV) from 80% to 120%
• Issue #2 Fraudulent Title Transfers (MERS)- They committed fraud against the deed recording agencies by knowingly transferring deeds against many state law in a complex shell game called MERS. This was to avoid paying taxes on these transfers which would have sucked out the profits on the transactions.(These are the supposed "clerical errors")
• The institutions committed loan title fraud to hide this fact by shredding documents to keep things easy and clear.
• Robosigned documents
• Prosecutions for forgery in Jefferson City, Mo. (606 count indictment)
• Prosecution for forgery in Nevada. (136 count indictment)
• Issue #3 Fraudulent Securities - They then split the mortgages into tranches and then fraudulently sold these investment instruments to individuals and companies that used these in part for leverage to the tune of quadrillions of dollars.
• The sellers of the securities lied repeatedly.
• Bear Sterns - Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin (2942331Q)
• Countrywide - MBIA Inc claimed it has new evidence of "widespread mortgage-origination fraud" at Bank of America Corp's Countrywide unit
• Mutual and pension funds invested in these assets believing they were solvent.
• Pension funds chasing yields

"It appears as though many loans and other mortgage-related assets have been double and even triple-pledged to various constituencies."
- Bank of America, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Jacksonville, CASE NO. 3:09-bk-07047-JAF

Wachovia -

The SEC’s order found that Wachovia Capital Markets violated the securities laws in two respects. First, Wachovia Capital Markets charged undisclosed excessive markups in the sale of certain preferred shares or equity of a CDO called Grand Avenue II to the Zuni Indian Tribe and an individual investor. As detailed in the order, Wachovia Capital Markets marked down $5.5 million of equity to 52.7 cents on the dollar after the deal closed and it was unable to find a buyer. Months later, the Zuni Indian Tribe and the individual investor paid 90 and 95 cents on the dollar. Unbeknownst to them, these prices were over 70 percent higher than the price at which the equity had been marked for accounting purposes.

Wachovia Capital Markets misrepresented to investors in a CDO called Longshore 3 that it acquired assets from affiliates “on an arm’s-length basis” and “at fair market prices” when, in fact, 40 residential mortgage-backed securities were transferred from an affiliate at above-market prices. Wachovia Capital Markets transferred these assets at stale prices in order to avoid losses on its own books. 

• Issue #4 Moral Hazard and Intimidation- The banks went before the Congress screaming that "The sky is falling!" and demanded the taxpayers "bail them out" via TARP. These institutions would not exist otherwise. 
• These jerks even threatened that tanks would roll down the streets if they are not rescued from their own myopic stupidity.
• The very next day, Treasury Secretary Paulson stated that he would not use these funds for that purpose. In short, he lied.
• These people are refusing to tell us where the money we are spending is going. 
• Issue #5 Foreknowledge - The Government (FBI) knew about these abuses years ahead of time.
• So did Fannie Mae, in 2003.
• Issue # 6 - Money Laundering -
• HSBC in New York - Evidence exists of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by the global banking giant for Mexican drug gangs.
• Issue #7 Mortgage Defaults - Individuals did not pay their mortgages in a housing price inflated environment driven in part by the fraud and further bankrupted by a Depression created by the banks?

2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act
1%, ZIRP - Federal Reserve (FOMC) , they set the table.
Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS)
Fannie Mae (FNM)

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2138266

Note: This is a resource and will be updated as needed.

2012 Election Fraud and Irregularities By State

Maine: Feb 11, 2012 (Total delegates - 24) 
Official Results - Mitt Romney 39 %, Ron Paul 36%

• Mitt Romney declared winner by GOP Party Chairman Charlie Webster, 196 votes with 84% of the votes counted
  • Webster admits there were clerical errors in the tally on February 11. “What I tell people is that I’m not going to fire my staff because they make clerical errors,” he told the Daily Caller. “My poor staffer is in tears, because people are harassing her.” 
• Counties
• Waldo County - Vote held in Belfast on Feb 4th, the majority of the votes will not be counted.
• Initially was reported that Paul got 37 votes to Romney's 30, Ron Paul won 71 to 50. 
• Many cities were reported as 0.
• Washington County (Typically 110 -120 voters, Ron Paul won in 2008) - Concerns over a non-existent snowstorm by a Mitt Romney supporter canceled the election. In Maine.
• Pembrooke - 50% of votes went to Ron Paul, none to Romney.
• Waterville City - Results were reported but not counted in the state's total (Paul won 21-5)
• Hancock County (Feb 18th) had not yet held their caucuses.These votes will not be counted.
• Washington County is  a Ron Paul stronghold
• Unofficial Real Results
• Video

Minnesota
Official Results - Rick Santorum , Ron Paul 27%

Nevada
More votes then voters

Florida
South Carolina
Iowa

• 8 precincts of 1774 precincts  worth of votes went missing

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/226751.html

Note: This is a resource and will be updated as necessary.

Government debt explained (in a few minutes)

The Black Knight Economy

Retail sales doesn't just suck it sucks something fierce -

...Unadjusted data set: the plunge from $459.8 billion in December to $361.4 billion in January, or -$98.5 billion in one month, was the biggest one month drop in retail sales in history.