kpete
kpete's JournalUS First Criminal Charges Prepared in BP Oil Spill
U.S. prosecutors are preparing what would be the first criminal charges against BP PLC employees stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, said people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors are focused on several Houston-based engineers and at least one of their supervisors at the British oil company, though the breadth of the investigation isn't known. The prosecutors assert the employees may have provided false information to regulators about the risks associated with the Gulf of Mexico well while its drilling was in progress, these people said.
The felony charges-which might be disclosed early in 2012, if they are brought-could involve providing false information in federal documents, these people said. A conviction on such a charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison as well as a fine.
The Department of Justice still could decide not to bring charges against the individuals, people familiar with the situation said. It's not unusual for prosecutors to use the threat of charges to pressure people to cooperate in investigations.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/28/first-criminal-charges-are-prepared-in-bp-oil-spill/?ref_dom=freerepublic.com&ref_url=/focus/f-news/2826311/posts
Tin Foil Hits Fan: Michele Bachmann claims Ron Paul bribed co-chair for endorsement
The tinfoil is coming out!
Bachmann on radio now claiming Kent Sorensen "said it was a great deal of money" Paul offered him to switch.
https://twitter.com/#!/daveweigel/status/152407631779209218
7:42 AM PT: And now another Bachmann adviser—Wes Enos, her Iowa political director—is defending Sorenson from Bachmann's allegations:
Wes Enos, Bachmann’s Iowa political director, released a statement Thursday defending Sorenson from Bachmann’s accusation that Paul offered him money to switch allegiances.
In a statement distributed by Sorenson, Enos stated “unequivocally” that Sorenson’s decision was “in no way financially motivated.”
“His decision had more to do with the fact that the Ron Paul supporters have been something of a family to him since he was first elected in 2008 and here in the end, as it becomes more and more apparent that the caucus cycle is coming to an end, Kent believed that he needed to be with them as they stand on the cusp of a potential caucus upset,” Enos said in the statement.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/29/1049667/-Michele-Bachmann-claims-Ron-Paul-bribed-co-chair-for-endorsement?via=blog_1
That's white Christian American oil right there.
“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Mr. Perry said in Clarinda, earning a loud round of enthusiastic applause.Later, the audience reacted again to Mr. Perry’s assertion that buying so much energy from foreign countries is “not good policy, it’s not good politics and frankly it’s un-American.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/what-moves-republican-crowds-in-iowa/?smid=tw-thecaucus&seid=auto
In Republican land, "foreign" doesn't mean what it does to you and me. It means "vaguely brown, Mooslim countries with names likes Ooz-beki-beki-beki-stan."
By Republican definitions, Canada isn't a foreign country. That's white Christian American oil right there.
Unless the subject is healthcare. Then Canada's as foreign as can be.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/definition-of-foreign-by-davidoatkins_29.html
Scott Walker Getting Nearly Half His Donations from Out-of-State While Decrying Out-of-State Money
Nearly half of the $5.1 million raised by the embattled Republican governor since July 1 came from outside of Wisconsin. In all of 2010, when Walker won a hotly contested election that included a primary, just 8 percent of the more than $8 million he raised came from out of state.
Out-of-state donors accounted for $2.4 million of the amount in Walker’s most recent report, or 47 percent of the total.
In all, Walker has raised $7.6 million in donations since he took office on Jan 3. Of these, $3.2 million, or about 42 percent, came from out of state.
“I’ve never seen any candidate — ever — get close to half their money from out of state,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog. “I used to always be stunned when I saw a candidate for state office with 10 percent coming from out of state.”
http://www.ashlandcurrent.com/article/11/12/24/walkers-out-state-supporters-opponents
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/29/1049450/-Scott-Walker-Getting-Nearly-Half-His-Donations-from-Out-of-State-While-Decrying-Out-of-State-Money?via=siderecent
More Proof Big-Profit Insurers Doomed; Single Payer Coming Sooner Rather Than Later
Yet, a report issued this week by, of all places, the conservative Galen Institute, reveals that you can’t judge the long-term viability of an industry by its current share price. Indeed, the results of the Galen study highlight that the exodus of insurance companies from the health insurance business may be happening far more quickly than I imagined.
Among the many companies that are dropping out of the business —rather than comply with the MLR requirements that would force them to actually spend an appropriate share of the premium monies received from customers on real health care— are some of the nation’s largest carriers.
Principal Financial Group had already announced late last year that they were leaving the health insurance business, impacting on some 840,000 insured.
Another key player in the business, Cigna, has decided to quit the small business market in states like California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
MORE:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/12/28/more-proof-that-the-american-for-profit-health-insurance-model-is-doomed/
So, like it or not—as the growing exodus of insurers from the marketplace bears out—government, single-payer coverage is coming.
The only question is whether we will get out in front of the problem that will be created by private insurers bailing or wait, as we often do, for the system to collapse.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/28/1049496/-Rick-Ungar:-More-Proof-Big-Profit-Insurers-Doomed;-Single-Payer-Coming-Sooner-Rather-Than-Later?via=siderec
75 Yr old Wall Streeter: "There will be prosecutions & show trials & violence-mark my words"
Michael Thomas' ominous reflections on 75 years of life as American, in which he worked on Wall Street and saw all of his assumptions about his country undone:
This time, I fear, the public anger will not be deflected. Confessions, not false, will be exacted. Occupy Wall Street has set the snowball rolling; you may not think much of OWS—I have my own reservations, although none are philosophical or moral—but it has made America aware of a sinister, usurious process by which wealth has systematically been funneled into fewer and fewer hands. A process in which Washington played a useful supporting role, but no more than that.
Over the next year, I expect the “what” will give way to the “how” in the broad electorate’s comprehension of the financial situation. The 99 percent must learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers and rent-extractors from those in the 1 percent who make the world a better, more just place to live. Once people realize how Wall Street made its pile, understand how financiers get rich, what it is that they actually do, the time will become ripe for someone to gather the spreading ripples of anger and perplexity into a focused tsunami of retribution. To make the bastards pay, properly, for the grief and woe they have caused. Perhaps not to the extent proposed by H. L. Mencken, who wrote that when a bank fails, the first order of business should be to hang its board of directors, but in a manner in which the pain is proportionate to the collateral damage. Possibly an excess-profits tax retroactive to 2007, or some form of “Tobin tax” on transactions, or a wealth tax. The era of money for nothing will be over.
But it won’t just end with taxes. When the great day comes, Wall Street will pray for another Pecora, because compared with the rough beast now beginning to strain at the leash, Pecora will look like Phil Gramm. Humiliation and ridicule, even financial penalties, will be the least of the Street’s tribulations. There will be prosecutions and show trials. There will be violence, mark my words. Houses burnt, property defaced. I just hope that this time the mob targets the right people in Wall Street and in Washington. (How does a right-thinking Christian go about asking Santa for Mitch McConnell’s head under the Christmas tree?) There will be kleptocrats who threaten to take themselves elsewhere if their demands on jurisdictions and tax breaks aren’t met, and I say let ’em go!
At the end of the day, the convulsion to come won’t really be about Wall Street’s derivatives malefactions, or its subprime fun and games, or rogue trading, or the folly of banks. It will be about this society’s final opportunity to rip away the paralyzing shackles of corruption or else dwell forever in a neofeudal social order. You might say that 1384 has replaced 1984 as our worst-case scenario. I have lived what now, at 75, is starting to feel like a long life. If anyone asks me what has been the great American story of my lifetime, I have a ready answer. It is the corruption, money-based, that has settled like some all-enveloping excremental mist on the landscape of our hopes, that has permeated every nook of any institution or being that has real influence on the way we live now. Sixty years ago, if you had asked me, on the basis of all that I had been taught, whether I thought this condition of general rot was possible in this country, I would have told you that you were nuts. And I would have been very wrong. What has happened in this country has made a lie of my boyhood.
THE REST:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/25/wall-street-has-destroyed-the-wonder-that-was-america.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/27/1049179/-Elder-on-Wall-Street:-There-will-be-violence,-mark-my-words?via=siderec
It Is OUR Duty, WE Are the Ones...
"We are the ones we have been waiting for"
[font color=purple]At the end of the day, the convulsion to come won’t really be about Wall Street’s derivatives malefactions, or its subprime fun and games, or rogue trading, or the folly of banks. .....It will be about this society’s final opportunity to rip away the paralyzing shackles of corruption or else dwell forever in a neofeudal social order.[/font]
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/25/wall-street-has-destroyed-the-wonder-that-was-america.print.html
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MON DEC 26, 2011 AT 11:56 PM PST
Why The Oligarchs Want to Ghettoize The Country
byRay PensadorFollow
.......................
...........................once the system has turned totally corrupt, predatory, and criminal (as it's the case today in the United States), then patriotic and informed citizens have the duty to stop it from operating normally, in order to defend against a domestic enemy (the likes of ALEC, The US Chamber of Commerce, and other neo-fascistic organizations).
Such a system, if not stopped on its tracks, always leads to the following: A very tiny elite comprised of people with extreme wealth and a totally bought-off class of politicians (as it's the case now with the Democratic and Republican party establishments), in control of most of the wealth and power of the country, and a population living in a neo-feudal society.
We are way on our way to become such a society. All the hallmarks of a banana republic or third world country have been met, including rampant bribery of the political establishment, thievery and criminality at grand scale, with impunity and aided and covered up by bought off and corrupt politicians, the rise of an increasingly brutal police state.
The only question that remains is if the dwindling middle class is going to decide to cower in fear, remain on their knees, bowing down to large-scale criminals, or stand up for justice, freedom, and democracy.
the rest:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/27/1049085/-Why-The-Oligarchs-Want-to-Ghettoize-The-Country?via=siderec
"Fake Newton" GET THIS: Newt Gingrich led a protest against a bank!
Turns out Newt was a dirty fucking protesting hippie prior to his political opportunism and self-serving greed for power got in the way.
Beyond mere policy liberalism however, Newt’s associations and activities during the era were actually quite a bit farther to the left than that. Though a “Rockefeller Republican” (which among Southern Republicans was almost unheard of), from 1968-1969, Gingrich consorted quite openly with members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) — the preeminent student radical group in America at the time — and even led a mass movement in favor of the campus paper’s right to publish nude photographs. In his role as the defender of dirty pictures, Gingrich helped lead a march 700-strong to the home of the University President, protesting administration censorship, at which Tulane’s chief was hanged in effigy. Other demonstrations by Newt’s activist group targeted the New Orleans offices of Merrill Lynch, a department store and a local bank, all of which had executives sitting on the Tulane Board of Administrators. Got that? Newt Gingrich led a protest against a bank.
http://www.timwise.org/2011/11/fake-newton-looking-for-the-real-newt-gingrich/
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