Posts tagged "Government Reform"

Banks, are They Really Your Friend?

Banks, T.A.R.P. — the ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program’, and home foreclosures, have been in the news numerous times since 2008 and will continue to be a hot topic for many years to come. Why? Because, as they say; “It is not over until it is over.” Believe me when I tell you, it is not going to be over for a long time.

Sure, the media would have you believe that things are getting better, but you must keep in mind who most likely owns the controlling shares in the media and who certainly pays for the advertising that keep the media solvent. In short, the media are bought and paid for, so when their puppet masters pull the strings that are attached to their purses, they dance when told to dance.

Are the banks really your friend? Well, let us look at their behavior, and the favor they have with the politicians you elect, and how they are treating those less fortunate and weaker than themselves.

A number of financial giants have received federal bailout monies in the past year. This is in effect your money in the form of current and future taxes. The government immediately printed more and gave it to them and others, which is another story about inflation, and one which we will all pay for in the long run. The government didn’t ask your permission, they just did it. This makes any thinking person ask; whose side is the government really on, yours, or the banks? Those who can bend the politicians’ ears with expensive lobbyist, and provide them with the most benefits of course!

This bailout money has kept the banks solvent and rescued them from a disaster of their own making — one whose root sprang from a seed of greed. They sold the unwitting population dodgy mortgages, tempting them with expensive advertising and highly paid and persuasive salespeople, and the promises of a never-ending prosperity, and when the faux financial ‘chickens came home to roost’ and laid lots of ‘bad eggs’ the banks didn’t want to wear it, so they made the taxpayer pay for their error by lobbying the government to bail them out, ensuring that the very people they sold the dodgy deals to in the first place would carry the burden of their blunder. Perhaps they designed it this way. Are they not supposed to be the experts? Surely, they knew that it would all come down to this.

Let’s not forget that everyone in the chain of events, including the hapless home-buyer, profited from the ‘prosperity dream scheme’. But that is as far as it goes. The prosperity of the homeowner is well and truly over. That which once seemed like the American Dream is now a nightmare for the homeowner. The financial institutions profited the greatest, from those who designed the dodgy loans to those who sold them. Like bedfellows they moved as one. When one turned over, so did the other.

Now here is the insult, in fact one of several. According to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Trouble Asset Relief Program, “The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion” One ranking member, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said, “If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn’t even come close to just $1 trillion — $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure.”

Let’s see, by my calculation it would take 46,000 years — give or take a few centuries — just to pay back the principle, let alone the interest!

This staggering amount of money is created by the Federal Reserve in collusion with the government to beat back the bank collapses, bail out the auto makers, boost lending and stave off further housing foreclosures. Keep in mind, those that own the Federal Reserve are — you guessed it — the banks! Also keep in mind the people who are ultimately going to pay for all of this ‘created from thin air’ money – are the taxpayers, and they will pay back to the banks — at interest — forever! Well, perhaps I exaggerated just a tad. For at least 46,000 years.

Now here’s another insult to us. The bailout monies are being used to provide exorbitant bonuses to the very people who caused this disaster in the first place. According to the New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a great many of the bonuses exceeded the amount of profit generated by the banks! They are fiddling the books like crooks while Rome is burning.

Here is the final insult — well, for now anyway. Banks in states like Arizona are using their lobbying powers, greased with the bonus monies that saved their skins, to have laws changed to their advantage at the expense of the very people to whom they originally sold the dodgy loans, when times appeared to be booming — according to the media that is.

What a shock! Politicians being bribed by those with the big money grip. I thought prostitution was illegal?

The homeowners, who bought into the dream of a second home as an investment, and one that is now in foreclosure, are at this time threatened with garnishment of their wages! It doesn’t take a genius to see that if their wages are garnished that they cannot pay the mortgage on their first home either, and will soon be – well, let’s be perfectly candid — homeless!

If they can do it in one state, don’t you think they will push to do it in the other states as well? After all, they have bonuses to pay themselves and share holders to please.

Talk about mean spirited! Now I ask you once again.  Are the banks really your friend?

Please do two things immediately for your own sake, and do them quickly. Form an L.L.C. or Limited Liability Company to protect your assets, and then invest in Tax Defaulted lands for a fraction of their real worth through tax deed sales, to increase your assets at very little cost – usually for mere pennies on the dollar of their real value. At least then you will own some land, and can build again.

Then do a third and fourth thing if it is possible, don’t believe the media when they tell you the banks are your friends, and don’t trust the banks and their ‘double speak’, and if at all possible, never borrow from them again – they are not your friends. Their actions prove it, and actions always speak louder than words.

Plain speaking in a world of ‘double speak’ is not always easy to hear. Most people want to have everything P.C. — ‘politically correct’, and offend no one. Well, we all should be offended by this outrage. So what can you do? Dig a deeper foxhole and keep your head down, because they are loading their guns — and you are the target.

Find a way to get out from under their ‘big money grip’. Your very existence, and that of your children and grand children, and even their great grand children, may depend on it.

Harry Connor Jr
http://www.articlesbase.com/ethics-articles/banks-are-they-really-your-friend-1145807.html

Mattress Money – the Wave of the Future ?

We are all relieved the unlamented year 2008 is past. It was a brutally rough year, seismic even.

The US stock market went through its worst year since the Great Depression. The Dow fell 33.8 percent, the worst annual decline second only to the 52.7 percent drop in 1931. The S&P500 lost 38.5 percent, just a shade better than its 38.6 percent decline back in 1937. The scope and extent of wealth destruction is just incomprehensible.

The government finally acknowledged in December 2008 that the economy had been in recession since December 2007. The question is: How long will this recession last? Some say 10 months; others say longer.

The Great Depression began August 1929 and did not end until 43 months later. How will things be in 2009? Perhaps, there is some comfort to be taken in the fact that the 11 recessions after the Second World War lasted only about 10 months on the average.

Only one thing is certain: each new day will mean one day closer to recovery. Prosperity will always come again, once said John D. Rockefeller.

For those who have some money left to invest, a conservative approach and a diversified portfolio may help reduce the anxiety of uncertainty. Some possibilities:

1. Corporate bonds
There is expert consensus that investment-grade corporate bonds may be a good bet for the year. Corporate debt is currently priced at a huge discount. Once institutional investors open up to more risk, the prices for bonds issued by the top-rated companies are likely to rise. These days, corporate bond yields are several notches higher than Treasury bonds.

2. US stocks
When you`re brave enough to venture again into stocks, consider that US stocks may be in a better position to rebound than international stocks. The federal government has been bolder in its response to the crisis. Industries primarily targeted by the bailouts and the incoming administration`s promise of massive spending will be the best bets. This means companies in construction, alternative energy, and technology for productivity.  Larger cap companies or small cap banks that derive their revenues mostly from within the US are recommended.

3. TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Security)
TIPS may be in if (or when) inflation comes. During these days of recession, deflation is the main worry. But with government set to spend a lot of money on its proposed $800 billion stimulus package, inflation may strike sooner than you think. When it does, the perfect inflation fighter is TIPS.

4. Companies with necessities
In a period where people buy only what they need, the companies that serve these needs are likely to perform better. Companies like Wal-Mart, the master of low-price goods, Procter & Gamble, or pharmaceuticals like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck are good defensive stocks. Consumer staples like food and beverages will continue to be bought, benefiting companies like General Mills.

5. Municipal bonds
Like corporate bonds, muni-bonds have seen heavily discounted prices — making their yields more attractive. The added incentive is that these bonds are tax exempt. Pick very carefully and look for the more reliable bond issuers.

6. Cash-rich market leaders
Financially sound companies who are market leaders in their industries may be poised to take advantage as economic recovery gets underway. Companies with ample cash flow are most attractive, as this will help them hold out better during this downturn.

7. Dependable dividends
In hard times, it is best to invest in something that provides predictable dividend income. The more dependable sources of dividends are stocks from telecoms companies and utilities.

8. Healthcare firms
Over the years, healthcare stocks have delivered the best values and robust earnings growth. Healthcare reform is not about to impair the industry, even as it seeks to lower healthcare costs and widen access. Old reliables are the giants Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

9. Oil recovers
Oil prices have soared high to a peak of $147 and plunged low to around $40 on fears that demand will drop as the world economy shrinks. But emerging economies like India and China will continue to fuel demand, especially as they recover. Prices may go back up and stabilize around $80 or so — benefiting stock prices of oil companies like Exxon and Chevron.

10.  Gold shines
Like oil, gold prices surged to $1000 per ounce and fell back to $720. But gold and precious metals have always been considered safe havens and 2009 is likely to see price trends going up.

Bilitz
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-ideas-articles/mattress-money-the-wave-of-the-future–735169.html

Chain Reaction

After researching much of the information regarding the Informant system, I believe this is at the heart of much of the corruption that we are seeing in our society. In our justice systems and in our communities. I believe this system is enslaving large portions of society. I also believe that there are many of us that were and are blissfully unaware of what is happening and will remain so until it is too late.

There is a chain reaction that is happening in society that if left unchecked has the potential to infect and destroy the very core of society that we have all known and depended on. That is of course the snitching infection. I call it that, because there is no other way to describe some of the events that I have read about while doing research into the Informant system.

While researching this phenomenon I have come across people who one minute seemed like average decent persons, and the next minute after being caught up in the Snitching/Informant system were willing to sell their very mothers down the drain to keep themselves free. This is not going to be the case for every Informant, but it’s the case with too many that are a part of this system.

Once let loose back into society many will continue with a life of crime. others will continue with what I call the game.

The Game

The game is one of set up’s and betrayal where the Informant will try to set someone up for a fall. They will choose a target and the unsuspecting target will get caught up in a scheme of some kind, eventually be arrested, they do not necessarily have to have committed a crime, and then the informant will testify against the person they entrapped, or other informants will. Once this new person is caught up in the game, should they be turned informant then the cycle continues once again.

I don’t know how many Informants are a part of this game that is ongoing in society, but I suspect that the many are, and all of them once they decide to become informants are owned by the system, and their handlers. That means anytime the government wants or needs a favor guess who they will call upon? Do you begin to see the makings of a corrupt society? Remember they can call upon these informants years later after these informants have been let loose. Many of these Informants will also go onto have careers, and even become contributing members of society, but they are still owned by the state. A lot of these Informant deals are kept off the records, meaning that the person is owned by a handler, but there might not be an official record of it, but when that handler needs a favor, that Informant will be called upon, and will risk exposure if they do not comply.

[quote]For example, unlike a classic plea bargain, informant deals lack finality because an informant’s obligations are ongoing. Written co-operation agreements often extend a defendant’s obligations into perpetuity, while informal, unwritten agreements last as long as the police or prosecutor wishes to use that informant.[/quote]

To understand how the game works, we will review three case studies. These are just a few of the many that I came across when reading the stories on the wall. It’s a continued pattern of set up on unsuspecting pigeons, and hardened Informants who will do what they need to do to stay out of jail.

http://www.november.org/thewall/wall/wall.html

Before we review the case studies I am going to again remind you of some statistics.

http://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file744_30623.pdf

[quote] as many as fifty percent of African American males in some cities – are in contact with the criminal justice system and therefore potentially under pressure to snitch. By relying heavily on snitching, particularly in drug-related cases, law enforcement officials create large numbers of informants who remain at large in the community, engaging in criminal activities while under pressure to provide information about others. These snitches are a communal liability: they increase crime and threaten social organization, interpersonal relationships, and socio-legal norms in their home communities, even as they are tolerated or under-punished by law enforcement because they are useful.[/quote]

[quote]The uncoordinated, widespread use of informants in the United States by thousands of different police departments and various federal agencies does not of course, amount to the focused, purposeful political mission of the Stasi. But if anywhere near eight percent of the male population in inner city communities is snitching, that figure meets or surpasses Stasi level of between one and ten percent of the total population as informers.[/quote]

http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/HoffmanCase.html

[quote]If things had gone according to plan, you never would have heard of 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman. She would have just been another confidential informant, one of more than an estimated 100,000 in the United States who work with police to send someone else to jail.[/quote]

These figures do not include people who are informers via work, school, or community group programs. When we take into consideration numbers such as that, we are looking at an epidemic that is worst than what happened in East Germany. Keep in mind that in addition to all this, there will also be 800,000 Terrorism Liaison Officers added to the Informant population in the United States. These figures should wake up America and other cities to the dangers of what is happening in various societies.

The Game

To understand the game you might want to picture it in the sense of how a disease spreads, you start with on carrier and that person infects one person right after another. Some of those carriers will go on to infect others. Some will be dormant and not infect anyone. You might also want to think of the movie lifeforce, where one has the constant need to feed on one person after another, then those victims need to feed on others. You can have a very sick and infested city in a short space of time if such an infection goes unchecked.

The game is one of the Informant being placed primarily back in society, but this could also happen in jail, where an informant via lies, deceit, entrapment or some other methods set’s up another person to take a fall. That person then come in contact with the criminal justice system, they can then choose to become informants themselves, or refusing to do so, will spend lengthy spaces of time in prison. This game is primarily enacted via drugs, but that’s not the extent of it. Shoplifting is another example. I see this used with the teenaged informants, setting up their friends to steal from the stores, so that they in turn can become snitches.

Theft, drugs, stolen cars, any crime that someone can make a deal with police to become informants, they can be released back into society and are a danger to the rest of society. This is not to say that all Informants are horrible people, many just did not want to be in jail, some others are a true danger to society, nearly all are under pressure by the government to produce other Informants, and that obligation is never ending, some are allowed to lay dormant, till they can be of use.

http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/FL-Hoffman6.html

[quote]In Hoffman’s case, it was the work of another informer that led to her own work for the police.

On April 15, an informer told Tallahassee police that Hoffman had sold marijuana in the past but hadn’t done so recently, according to police records.

At the time, Hoffman, 23, was in a pretrial drug diversion program because of charges of possession of marijuana and resisting arrest in February 2007. To stay in the program, she had to stay out of trouble.

Two days after police got the informer’s tip, a Tallahassee police officer stopped Hoffman as she was getting into her car
[/quote]

http://www.mapinc.org/images/Hoffman.jpg

Rachael Hoffman then went on to become an Informant. She first tried to set up a close friend and when that failed, the close friend helped her find the dealers who she tried to buy drugs from on behalf of the police. The sting went wrong and she was killed. Had this gone successfully, those drug dealers if they agreed to become informants might have been released back into society as Informants and the cycle would have continued. It’s a frightening cycle that has become more widespread than can be imagined.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/

Case number 2.

Joey Settembrino was a young 18 year old, just about to go off to college.

He was set up by an Informant. The Informant was a close friend of his. He use to spend his weekends at the Informants house.

[quote]He was a very good friend. I had known the guy for many years. We had gone out every weekend, fishing on his boat, hydrosliding, skiing. I was very shocked; it was very unexpected. It’s not something you expect from friends.[/quote]

In an Informants society, it’s what you expect from just about everyone and it makes people suspicious and closed off. This is what happened in East Germany once the population became aware of what was happening. In America many Americans are not aware that these types of games are being played. In these cases the targets were encouraged and did get into illegal activities, however that is not always the case, and many times innocent people who had nothing to do with illegal activities are still caught up in these games and convicted on the testimony of Informants.

[quote]He wanted me to go back to the house where I got the acid from and get something else. They wanted me to wear a wire and they wanted me to go back there … to buy some other type of drug, no matter what it was, whatever he had in the house, so they could set him up. Just a chain reaction, one gets to one, one gets the other and they just keep going. I told him that I couldn’t do that, that I didn’t get the drugs from that house. At that time I was really confused. I was shocked, and I told him that I couldn’t do anything for him. But he kept trying, he kept threatening, talking about a lot of time. “You’re going to do 25 years. You’re going to be in prison your whole life.” … He really tried to scare me. But I told him I couldn’t do anything for him … . [Eventually] they went back to the house in which I got it from, they arrested the other guy, my friend [who I bought the acid from]. And he’s now doing a 10-year sentence along with me.
[/quote]

Joey said it best. This is like a chain reaction that just keeps going and going. One get’s one, then another and another and another. Those in turn get others and the cycle continues. Remember it’s not just drugs, and it’s not just the guilty that are being caught up in this game. If we review cases of Gang Stalking, we hear of men who thought that a woman had entered their life for the sole purpose of setting them up to look like a rapist or something else.

There are stories of targets being framed or other set up’s, and there are targets that do turn informant and then go back into society and try to harm other targets. This is happening in ever sector of society. Rachel, Joey and even Clarence were all going off to college, or had finished college when they were caught up in these stings.

Joey refused to become a snitch and thus spent 10 years in jail. His friend that set him up, who had been caught for drugs himself, was back on the streets, selling drugs, and setting up at least 11 or 12 others in the first year that Joey was in jail.

[quote]
Do you know why they wanted you?

I’ve asked that question, I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, “Why me? Why did he set me up?” …
[/quote]

In this game that is happening, I would say that they want just about everyone. They will get some people via community programs to be Informants, some via their places of employment, or community programs. Now the people who are informants via community programs and other legit means might not play the game of setting people up directly, but they are still part of the game, and they still work hand in hand with these others that are playing by a different set of rules. Many might not be aware of who they are working hand in hand with. At the end of the day, they all work for the state, government and all the orders come from the same sources.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/cases/aaron.html

Clearance is in jail because he introduced two parties that wanted to buy or sell drugs to each other. He had never been involved with drugs before, but one day his cousin called him up and asked him if he could find someone to buy drugs from. He said he knew some people and thought that they might be involved in dealing, he would check into it.

Clearances case is interesting because all the other parties who turned Informant received less time than he did. He does not know why his cousin and the others turned against him and lied, or why the prosecutor seemed intent on punishing him because he would not snitch and become an Informant.

[quote]What was it like having your friends testify against you?

Well, we’re sitting in the courtroom. These guys that I knew all my life came up, and they said [stuff] about me that wasn’t true, and they hurt me. It really truly hurt me, Robert and James really hurt me ’cause James is my first cousin. I looked up to him all my life. Robert was supposed to be my best friend at the time. We grew up together from playing Pop ball all the way up to high school ball together, and I couldn’t believe that they would sit there, in front of me … and say the things that they said about me … . [The] only thing I could say was it wasn’t true. But nobody believed me … . You had to have a fall guy, and I was that person.
[/quote]

It should be noted that the others involved all had prior drug convictions. Which means if they were out on the street and able to set him up, they were likely already Informants. He doesn’t know why they turned on him, but it’s possible that this might have been the idea from the get go. The assumption being that he would turn snitch and then be in a prime candidate on the college campus, a pawn to be used to set up other pawns, because that is how the game works.

[quote]Why did he do it?

Well, I had a opportunity to talk to James one time … . He said, “Man, I’m sorry, man.” I say, “James, why you do me like that?” He say, “Because I had no choice.” I said, “What you mean you have no choice in the matter?” He say “Because Miss Griffin say she didn’t want Bob to try your case.” She say if [he] didn’t cooperate and do what she told him to do, that she was going to hurt him worse in his case … . He say, “Well, the prosecutor Miss Griffin said if I don’t do it she going to put me in prison for the rest of my life … . I got to do what I got to do.”
[/quote]

He stats that the prosecutor pulled his cousin aside and when his cousin went back on the stand, his cousin lied. This is not the first time scenarios like this have happened, it can only be imagined what these prosecutors or handlers have on these Informants to make them sell out their own friends, and family.

[quote]And the real drug dealers are out —

On the street now. And probably doing the same thing they were doing before they went in. I just don’t understand.
[/quote]

He also does not understand, but if you review enough of these cases, you start to see a pattern and you start to understand, this is how the game works, and yes they are probably back on on the street looking for the next pigeon to set up, and try to turn them into informants.

It reminds me of something a forum member once told me. This guy said that he was set up because he met this woman online, who he dated only to discover that she was married. Her husband got mad and that’s why he thought he was set up.

The person on my forum pointed out that he had met the woman via some co-workers who introduced him to the website where he located this woman. The person on my forum suggested that he was probably profiled and set up by the co-workers who sent him to the site, knowing he would met this woman. The idea is that these games and set up’s take place long before the victim is aware that they are part of a game.

The Global outlook.

Targets of Gang Stalking complain that even when they leave countries such as the U.K., Canada, U.S. that the stalking continues. That is understandable we have seen muli-governmental corporation in other investigations.

What is not understandable and the most frightening sector of this is that various targets have moved to a variety of countries and they all report the same thing, Informants that are able to follow them 24/7.

This suggest that these Informant networks are getting global in nature. They are popping up in areas that are unexpected, and if this trend continues we will have a global surveillance society.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/04/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast1/print

[quote]Middle East: Israel’s secret police pressuring sick Gazans to spy for them, says report· Treatment only offered to would-be informants
· Patients allowed to cross the border drops sharply[/quote]

The same situation is happening in Iraq where they previously had family structures that might have prevented Informant networks from spreading as rapidly. The country will be rebuilt and the Informant structure will be a part of it.

Why would a global surveillance society be necessary?

I will not speculate. I will however say that based on research many societies in history that had a dictator, tyrant, or despot who came to power and who wanted to pull off an unpopular agenda’s such as Hitlers Germany, or Stasi East Germany, employed an army of Informants. It’s the most effective way that a society can control, monitor and subdue the inhabitants.

Since history has shown us that these informant networks are often needed to move forward tyrannical agendas, then can it be assumed that if we could slow down or stop the chain reaction of the Informant movement, we might be able to stop some of the corruption that we are seeing in many areas of society?

Stopping the Chain Reaction.

To stop the Informant infection people need to be aware that there is a lethal chain reaction happening in many parts of society. They need the understanding of how the game is played, and awareness of how far spread and how far reaching it is.

In America prison system reform could go a long way towards fixing the system that has become corrupt. Then prosecutors would not be as dependent on the testimonies of Informants and the power could start to shift back.

The family structure. Communities with less stable family structures are more vulnerable to this system.

People need to be aware that these entrapment’s are happening at every level of society, ever profession in society, thus why it goes all the way up to the top.

If people are unaware, they will not realise the various ways that people can become entrapped, including using someone that you are in a personal association with, or who you just “accidentally” meet. Someone you have a business relationship with.

Some people they will use their own greed and stupidity against them. Other will be a deliberate trap, others will be framed and will have committed no crime. Not being aware of how this system works, many will quietly accept off the record deals, and thus become indebted to the state, able to be used at will. Remember this is happening at all levels of society. Rich, poor, black, white, male, female.

If you have a parent, grandparent that was a snitch, Informant, they might try to go after the next generation.

Your friends, family, co-workers, anyone that is an Informant not by choice but by force, can be a liability to an innocent person.

The problem is more widespread that many realise, and what’s even worst is the silence that surrounds this problem in society. Till it’s talked about, discussed, and exposed it will continue to infect society, and have far reaching and unimaginable consequences, not just for those caught up in the game, but for the many unsuspecting victims, targets, or pigeons yet to come. This is not just happening at local levels. Targets have moved to various countries around the globe and encounter the same type of surveillance network.

We must stop this chain reaction. Awareness and exposure are key.

Happy Holidays.

gangstalking
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/chain-reaction-695386.html

Cost of Illegal Immigration in Colorado

We the taxpayers are not only bailing out wallstreet and automakers (along with UAW workers), but we are also footing the bill for illegal immigrants in every state.  The cost of illegal immigration has skyrocketed over the years since our government is not taking care of business (oh, what a surprise).  An illegal immigration news website named FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) has studied and created a report on how much it costs the state of Colorado for illegal immigration.

The cost of illegal immigration for the Rocky Mountain state is $1.1 Billion dollars annually. The FAIR study observes the most obvious costs.  For an example, expenses related to medicare, incarceration and education.  There are other costs that the report doesn’t pick up since they only focused on the major expenses. 

Here is part of the report from FAIR:

Education. Based on an estimate of 35,000 school-age illegal aliens and 49,000 U.S.-born school-aged children of illegal alien parents and estimated per pupil costs of $11,000 per year for public K-12 schooling, Coloradans spend about $925 million annually on educating the children of illegal immigrants. An additional $68 million is being spent annually on programs for limited English students, most of whom are likely children of illegal aliens. Those estimates exclude federal contributions to those programs. More than one in ten (10.8%) K-12 public school students in Colorado is the child of an illegal alien, and this share has grown as the illegal resident population has grown.

Health Care. State-funded uncompensated outlays for health care provided to Colorado’s illegal alien population amount to more than an estimated $82 million a year. That is a net cost after crediting compensation from the federal government. Additionally, Coloradans who have medical insurance also pay higher medical insurance bills to help cover the costs of those without insurance.

Incarceration. The cost of incarcerating deportable aliens in Colorado’s state and local prisons amounts to more than $38 million a year. This estimate also is a net amount after deducting compensation received from the federal government. It does not include short-term detention costs, related law enforcement and judicial expenditures, or the monetary impact of the crimes that result in incarceration.

So there is your tax dollars at work, at least if you live in Colorado.  For the ones that live outside the state, don’t worry, you’re footing some of the bill as well since the federal government supplements a lot of these programs.  So where is the Colorado State politicians concerning these problems with illegal immigration?  How about on the federal level – George Bush?  Nance Pelosi?  Harry Reid?  How about Barak Obama?  I’m not going to hold my breath.

RightWingIt.com

Mark Shrigley
http://www.articlesbase.com/immigration-articles/cost-of-illegal-immigration-in-colorado-681673.html

Healthcare Managing Change

Healthcare Managing Change
I consider the question of the managing change with the healthcare issues in a way of curtain problems and they’re solutions. First of all, let’s see some current issues in the USA health care system today. New diagnostic and treatment procedures flourish in the United States. Our medical schools are of the best, our physicians of the first rank. And why not, since we spend some 15 percent of our GDP on health care? Few would argue that there’s a better place to get sick than in the United States if you can penetrate the system. Our system is the problem, and it’s only going to get worse. At dinner party, if you listen to people on the subway, if you talk with physicians, and if you talk with leaders of small business and big business, they’re all very unhappy and confused. Private insurance companies are happy about current trends, if not happy about where we are. In the present, they’re making money. Drug companies were happier six months ago. They think they’ve been taken aback by the bad press that they’ve been getting, and they’re searching for how they can do better. But by and large, until relatively recently, I think they were feeling again comfortable. The more-affluent people that are also fully insured. While they grouse about the paperwork, they have reasonable ways of accessing the tremendous advances that have taken place in the biomedical sciences, which are increasingly translated into better diagnostic care, therapy, drugs. I use the word “access” advisedly, because it isn’t always easy for them either to get to the right places because of the bureaucratic constraints, because of the third-party payers who say you’ve got to have your primary-care physician refer you before you can see a specialist. But when they do gain access to the system, this group feels reasonably satisfied.
National medical errors database hits one million records milestone. Medmarkx, nongovernmental database of medication errors, has received over one million medication error records to date, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (USP) announced recently. Medmarx is an anonymous, Internet-based program used by hospitals and other healthcare organizations to report track and analyze medication errors. Since the program began in 1998, more than 900 HCOs have contributed data to use an historical review of Medmarx data reveals that approximately 46 percent of the medication errors reported reached the patient; 98 percent of the reported errors did not result in harm. JCAHO Creates IT Panel. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has created an advisory panel to recommend ways the Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.-based organization can use its accreditation process to increase the role of IT in healthcare. The panel will conduct a benchmark survey on the existing state of IT adoption in healthcare, and track progress annually. The 39-member panel, chaired by William Jessee, M.D., president and CEO of MGMA, includes provider representatives and reps from health insurers, academia, think tanks, IT vendors and government agencies.
The Council of Smaller Enterprises is putting its considerable weight behind a push by the National Small Business Association for health care reform on a national level. The National Small Business Association, of which COSE is a member, has developed three ideas it plans to take to the federal government as ways to reform the ailing health care system, said William Lindsay III, immediate past chairman of the association, during a recent visit to Cleveland. Those ideas are fair sharing of costs, empowering and focusing on the individual, and reducing costs while improving quality. “The fundamental problem in America is the cost of health care and the cost of insurance,” he said. “We’ve got to get everybody insured.” The Washington, D.C.-based association already has begun to lobby lawmakers to adopt the three basic principles, and they’ve been receptive so far, Mr. Lindsay said. For its part, COSE soon will lobby Ohio lawmakers on the same issues, said COSE president Jeanne Coughlin. Under the association’s proposal, all Americans would be required to obtain basic health care coverage, a package that would be designed and mandated by the federal government, Mr. Lindsay said. The basic package would cost the same for anyone in a given market, regardless of their health condition, he said. For that proposal to work, insurance companies would need to accept everyone into one insurance pool, which would spread costs broadly and reduce uncompensated care, Mr. Lindsay said. If companies provide health care coverage above the basic federal level, they would need to pay taxes on the money spent on those benefits, he said. Those additional tax dollars then would be set aside for health insurance subsidies for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford their own insurance.
It is ironic that Mrs. Jeannie Lacombe received so much attention after her death; she didn’t receive much of it immediately beforehand. On the morning of February 1, the Montrealer suffered chest pains and went to the nearest hospital emergency room. Four hours later, a physician finally looked at the 66-year-old woman, who lay on a stretcher in the hallway. She was dead. On that early February morning, Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital was crowded with 63 patients in a ward designed for 34. Only three of Montreal’s 24 emergency rooms were not overflowing with double or triple their capacity. The problem isn’t confined to Montreal. Two weeks later, in Toronto, a five-year-old boy died in an ER five hours after arriving, without having seen a physician. At times this February, Toronto nurses have fought with ambulance attendants over the stretchers patients were brought in on. A Toronto Ambulance official commented last week that the hospitals have been refusing ambulance patients more often, and for longer periods, than at any time in the last 27 years. In Winnipeg, hospitals have been routinely on “redirect,” meaning that they accept only critical patients, and “critical care bypass,” meaning they are too crowded even for those. In Calgary, a physician arrived for work at Rocky View Hospital one day to find emergency patients lined up in the parking lot. The ER and the foyer were already filled. “I have never seen anything like that in all the years I have been practising,” he says. Calgary’s regional health authority openly contemplated cancelling all elective surgeries, and near month’s end, health officials in Edmonton did so. Somehow, in the “best healthcare system in the world,” patients are waiting hours to be examined. The sickest lie on stretchers for days, awaiting admission. Some argue that a combination of winter storms and flu have placed an unusually great strain on the system. These two factors surely contributed, but how did Medicare erode to the point where minor stresses can wreak such havoc? And is ER overcrowding such an isolated phenomenon? Last year at this time, with neither flu nor ice storm, Montreal’s emergency wards were filled to 155% capacity. And the problems with Canada’s emergency rooms are only the tip of the iceberg. In truth, Medicare has been languishing for years. Consider the plight of Jim Cullen of Winnipeg. Mr. Cullen has a potentially life-threatening abdominal aneurysm. He could bleed to death without warning unless the aneurysm is surgically repaired. Mr. Cullen has waited five long months for that surgery. Despite his optimism, he wonders every day: “How long will that (artery) wall hold out?” But because of the ER crisis, Mr. Cullen’s surgery is on hold indefinitely. Once Canada’s pride and joy, Medicare is marked by long waiting lists for life-saving surgeries, inaccessible diagnostic equipment, dwindling standards of hospital care, and an exodus of good physicians. Meanwhile, Canada’s population is aging. Over the next 40 years, the percentage of senior citizens will double. More seniors require more services; if we can’t meet today’s demand, how will we meet tomorrow’s? To improve Medicare, Canadians must first answer one question: what ails the system? Some-opposition politicians, professional associations, and public-sector unions-argue that the system is simply under funded. Others-cabinet ministers, economists, and policy experts-maintain that the system has enough money: we just have to spend it better through greater government control. If Medicare is under funded, people should pay more into the system. But according to a study by the Fraser Institute, working Canadians already spend 21 cents of every dollar they earn paying for Medicare. How much more do we need to spend? How much higher must taxes rise? The aging of the baby boomers will almost certainly bankrupt us: the Canadian Actuarial Society estimates that taxes will need to rise to an average of 94% of income in the next 40 years to sustain the system.
If greater control is needed, governments must take a larger role in the healthcare system. This has been the trend over the past two decades, but has any government ever managed to browbeat part of the economy into efficiency? Governments are increasingly involved in hospital decision-making, but if Moscow central planning didn’t work in Moscow, what makes us think it will work in Victoria, Edmonton or Toronto? When healthcare is “free,” people do not hesitate to use the system. They request too many tests. They stay in hospitals too long. They consult too many physicians. The costs add up. Millions of Canadians suffer from problems such as insomnia, back pain, chronic fatigue, severe headaches, and arthritis: there is a great potential for them to spend vast resources to little proven benefit. In 1977, a joint Ontario government-medical association committee reviewed patients’ use of the system and concluded that “demand for medical care appears infinite.” Canadians assume that in a “free” system there are no tough decisions to be made. If the doctor suggests that you need an X-ray, you get one. But while you don’t need to think about the cost of the X-ray, the folks at the Ministry of Health do. You don’t worry about the cost of visiting walk-in clinics, or lengthy hospital stays, but these costs still add up. According to the Ontario Task Force on the Use and Provision of Medical Services, Ontario physicians billed $200 million in 1990 alone for “treating” the common cold.
In Canada, the provinces have achieved cost control by restricting access to health services. They have downsized medical schools, restricted access to specialists, and reduced the availability of diagnostic equipment. In many ways, Canada has opted for the old Soviet method of rationing-everything is free, and nothing is readily available. And so Canadians must line up for tests. For surgery. For the basic healthcare they need. Provinces have been busily “reforming” health care, but what are the long-term results? Patients are discharged earlier from hospitals, often too early. Patients wait for treatment; some develop complications. Hospital beds are closed, reducing doctors’ ability to admit patients. All these factors played a role in the ER crisis this February. To make matters worse, bureaucrats have developed elaborate spending controls, reducing the system’s ability to react. Canadians have assumed that if we make health care “free” (and pay the consequent high taxes), no one will ever need to worry about getting quality care when they need it. It seems that this assumption is false. Making health care “free” means everyone must worry about getting quality care. And yet the so-called experts continue to try to make Medicare work-against the odds, against human nature. This dooms us to longer waiting lists and more horror stories.
Isn’t it time we had a meaningful public discussion about health care? Lives are at stake.
Most Americans are insured through their jobs. Employers used to buy the insurance from a third party, typically the local Blue Cross/Blue Shield not-for-profit plan. Recently the Blues have lost ground to more aggressive for-profit insurers. But their strongest competitor is now employers themselves, stung by rising health-care costs and the state authorities’ burdensome regulation of the insurance industry. Federal law allows employers who “self-insure” (usually through an arm’s-length intermediary) to escape state regulation. Over half of America’s biggest employers have now made the switch, in effect paying their workers’ medical bills themselves. The other main insurer in America is the government. The old and the disabled are covered by a federal programme, Medicare. Medicare, which will spend about $110 billion this year roughly twice the cost of Britain’s NHS , is divided into two parts: the first pays for most hospital care out of payroll taxes; the second pays for doctors’ fees out of general taxation and a premium paid by the patient. Medicaid, a state-federal programme that will cost nearly $90 billion this year, pays all the medical bills of the poor, including those for long-term care. Retired and serving soldiers are covered by the Veterans’ Administration, which has a network of inefficient hospitals, and by a special programme with the colourful acronym champus. This patchwork quilt (see chart 4 on next page) has two gaping holes. One is that it leaves a large and growing number of people currently around 35m without any insurance at all. The plight of the uninsured is bad, but not as bad as it sounds: most get care from hospitals that are, in theory, not allowed to turn anyone away. Figures from the census bureau and the American Hospital Association suggest that overall spending on the uninsured is comparable to spending on the insured, though it is unevenly distributed. Uninsured people can be bankrupted by big medical bills. And the bills they cannot or will not pay are a time-bomb passed among others involved in the system. The hospitals try to pass it to the insured in higher premiums; insurers try to pass it back in lower hospital profits, or to offload it on to state and local governments. The other flaw in the American way is caused by costs that are spinning out of control. At over $600 billion, the cost of health care in America now absorbs 12% of GDP. And whereas in other countries it has roughly stabilised, in America the share has been rising throughout the 1980s. Employers have reacted by trimming the health benefits they offer, especially undertakings to cover staff who have retired. Those undertakings will knock a $200 billion hole in profits when they have to be shown in company accounts from next year. One result is that in four-fifths of labour disputes in the past two years, the main fight has been over health benefits.
Foreigners like to blame the tribulations of American health care on excessive reliance on the free market. In fact, government policy has played a big part. Instead of improving equity, well-intentioned state regulation of the insurance market has made insurance all but impossible for small employers to buy. Two-thirds of the uninsured work, many for employers who would like to offer insurance if they could find it. The other third ought to have Medicaid cover, but budget cuts and a diversion of cash into long-term care for poor, old people mean that the programme now covers only 40% of those below the federal poverty line. As for costs of treatment, the biggest source of inflation has been reliance on expensive fee for-service medicine that gives doctors and hospitals an incentive to treat people in the most expensive possible ways. This might look like a market fault. But another prime contributor is the government’s decision to exempt employer-paid insurance premiums from federal and state income taxes amounting to an annual subsidy of nearly $60 billion. It is bad enough that this subsidy is biased to the better-off; worse, it destroys any incentive for employees to choose cheaper insurance. The government is also partly to blame for a legal system that has produced astronomical awards to patients in malpractice suits. These feed straight into the costs of health care through malpractice insurance taken out by doctors. High premiums and the fear of being sued have also made some types of care hard to get (try finding an obstetrician in Florida to deliver a baby). Even more expensively, they encourage doctors to practise defensive medicine such as ordering unnecessary tests.
Not everything about American health care is bad. Its quality is widely thought to be high which is why one opinion poll had 90% of respondents favouring “major changes” in the system, but over half satisfied with their own care. There is plenty of choice of doctors and hospitals: European indifference to patients is rare in America. America has made the biggest progress in developing quality assessment and output measures for health. It remains the world leader in innovation, experiment and new technology, both in medical care and in different ways of delivering and paying for it.
In 1915 a labour pressure group looked forward to national health insurance as the “next great step in social legislation”. Truman tried and failed to introduce it in 1948. In the mid-1960s Johnson managed to push through Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon encouraged the spread of HMOS (in which patients pay a fixed fee to cover all their health care) and managed care. But when he suggested a national health programme based on a mandate for employers to provide health insurance for their workers, it died partly because Democrats like Edward Kennedy wanted government insurance instead. Ironically Senator Kennedy now supports something like the Nixon plan, but it is opposed by George Bush. There is a host of other ideas on offer: Insurance reform. Some want to ban “experience rating” (skimming the cream of insurance risks) and insist on community rating. Others want to encourage the small-employer insurance market, perhaps by pooling risks. A third idea is an “all-payer” system such as Maryland’s, under which all insurers agree to pay the same price to hospitals an attempt to create the monophony power among purchasers that is common in most other countries. But the insurance market already suffers from too much regulation. And an all-payer system could stop the move towards cheaper selective contracts with providers. Medicaid expansion to cover more of the uninsured. This might include letting people above the poverty line, but who cannot otherwise find insurance, buy into the public programme. An alternative is to expand Medicare to cover the whole population. But in deficit-ridden, taxophobic America, neither the federal nor any state government is in a position to take on a new spending commitment that could add up to $250 billion a year (even if it saves more in private spending). State governors have repeatedly asked Congress to stop expanding the coverage of Medicaid. Price and volume controls. The most successful of these has been Medicare’s prospective budgeting for hospitals, where payments are based not on the costs incurred but on fixed prices per case (known in the jargon as diagnosis-related groups, or DRGS). This has been copied by many private insurers. The average patient now stays in hospital for a shorter period in America than in any other country, and a recent Rand Corporation study confirmed that the quality of patient care has not been affected. A new set of Medicare price and volume controls on doctors comes into force next year. But though such controls might hold down spending in one place, bills have a nasty habit of popping up somewhere else as providers fight to maintain incomes. Alain Enthoven of Stanford University has put forward the most sophisticated single reform plan. TO encourage managed care (of which more below) he would cap the tax exemption for health insurance at the cheapest insurance policy available. He would create state insurance pools under healthcare “sponsors” for those who cannot get coverage. Employers who did not give their workers insurance would have to contribute to a state pool an idea known as “play-or-pay”. Congress’s Pepper commission, which reported in 1990, also wanted a play-or-pay plan. But such employer mandates would increase business costs, and without firm cost controls they might lead to more overall spend on health care. Individual mandates. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank based in Washington, DC, is touting a plan that would replace the employee-tax exemption by a tax credit to help people buy their own health insurance. The government would require everyone to take out “catastrophic” health insurance a long-stop protection against the biggest medical bills. Potting the burden on individuals sounds attractive, but it would make it harder to avoid adverse selection by both insurer and insured. As a variant, a government commission headed by Deborah Steelman has been considering replacing both Medicare and Medicaid with catastrophic coverage for all. More patient charges or what are known in the jargon as “co-payments”. But these are already high, in both the private and the public sectors (on some estimates, old people now pay as much out of their own pockets for health care as they did before Medicare). And if they are pushed too far, people simply take out extra private insurance. Managed care in HMOS or PPOS (preferred-provider organisations that offer more choice of doctor and hospital than most HMOS). This still looks the most promising option. About 70m Americans now belong to a managed-care plan. Some plans do little more than insist on second opinions before surgery. But the best of them offer patients all the care they need for an annual prepayment, reversing fee-for-service medicine’s incentive to excessive treatment. HMOS have been touted as the answer for American health care since Paul Ellwood, a health economist, coined the phrase in 1972. But after a one-off cut in costs, their spending growth has since matched the inflation of the fee for-service sector. Many HMOS have lost money; some have gone bust. No wonder Bob Evans of the University of British Columbia says that “HMOS are the future; always have been and always will be.”
Is America ready to make any changes to its chaotic system at all? One day, it must: the uninsured are a growing embarrassment; spending cannot rise for ever; growing paperwork will become intolerable; increasing interference in doctors’ clinical judgments will provoke revolt. But the short-term prospects for reform are poor. The White House appears to think that any change would be politically riskier than letting the system bumble along as it is. As for the Democrat-controlled Congress, it was badly burnt when it expanded Medicare to cover catastrophic health-care costs in 1988, only to be forced to retract it in 1989 when the better-off elderly objected to paying extra taxes. In recent months the Democrats, especially in the Senate, have gingerly begun to discuss changes in health care. Some hope to make a version of national health insurance a big issue in the 1992 election campaign. The biggest problem for Republicans and Democrats alike is the mulish conservatism of America’s powerful interest groups. John Ring, president of the American Medical Association, says his organisation is firmly against national health insurance, or any plan that involves a single payer. (It might horrors reduce doctors’ incomes from their present average of $150,000 a year.) Insurers and private hospitals similarly guard against invasion by “socialised medicine” especially of the iniquitous British variety.
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Andrew Sandon
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/healthcare-managing-change-75487.html

The Cap and Trade Bill is Bad For The Housing Market & Sellers Wallets

As part of The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, adds another layer of conditions for selling personal real estate (your home) in the United States.  The American Clean Energy and Security Act, a whopping 1,200 pages defining a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, a federal renewable electricity mandate, and a suite of new mandatory energy efficiency standards, imposes 397 new federal regulations and 1060 mandates on an American public already overwhelmed by extensive federal regulations.  Written in there is a requirement for all home sales to be conditioned upon an energy audit and an energy rating assessment labeling program. How much additional selling costs will all sellers now be required to pay to comply with the proposed requirements?

Congressmen Ron Paul, on 6-29-09 said:

“The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy’s coffin. The idea is to establish a national level of carbon dioxide emissions, and sell pollution permits to industry as the Catholic Church used to sell indulgences to sinners. HR 2454 also gives federal bureaucrats new power to regulate a wide variety of household appliances, such as light bulbs and refrigerators, and further distorts the market by providing more of your tax money to auto companies.”

Just like the TARP bill, this is all happening too fast. Anyone who thinks that Washington can craft a respectable bill in this short period of time is dreaming. The specifics of the bill aren’t being publicly discussed. The Democrats are trying to push this through so fast no one will know what hit them. The media is complicit in this. This is not the time to increase energy costs, either.

Kansas City Power & Light said the bill will force them to buy so many carbon allowances for coal that electricity rates could rise 50 percent by 2012, and another 70 percent by 2020.

Let’s get some positive economic growth first, not minus 6.6%, before we kick in some expensive program/tax.

Over 7,000 climate scientists have spoken out and signed a petition that states “climate change” is NOT caused by man, more than the number of scientists who wrote the UN charter on the topic.

This, along with the “stimulus” and “health care reform” is able to succeed to a degree because the American people are, for the most part, sheep who demand to be led, do not care to be involved in the process, do not care to know what is happening in their government, do not care to act on their own behalf and figure that Obama is more intelligent than they are. In fact he is leading them down the road to higher taxes, higher inflation and higher costs on all natural resources, all because of a false theory that curtailing carbon emissions can make a difference.

Kim Strassel, published in the (June 2009) Wall Street Journal:

“Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as ‘deniers.’ The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan, and even if less reported, the U.S.”

“In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

“The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak ‘frankly’ of her non-belief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming ‘the worst scientific scandal in history.’ Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the ‘new religion.’ A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

“The collapse of the ‘consensus’ has been driven by reality.”

Scientists – the ones without a political agenda – have shown that solar activity correlates with temperature changes. In fact, it correlates stronger to changes than CO2 does, and changes in CO2 levels FOLLOW changes in temperature by about 800 years. The only reason that CO2 and temperature would be increasing at the same time NOW is that temperature increased about 800 years ago. By the way, temperatures have been decreasing for a couple of years now.

It appears that the government is more concerned about the appearance of making changes and are thus, creating these massive documents that no one can possibly read and digest.  Don’t be naive enough to think we are being saved from disaster; one is being created. France has a better idea called nuclear power.

Bob Schwartz, CRS,GRI, San Diego California real estate broker
http://www.articlesbase.com/real-estate-articles/the-cap-and-trade-bill-is-bad-for-the-housing-market-sellers-wallets-1012018.html