Truemors
The International Institute of Nonviolence
News&Opinion
By: Rev. Jermano
Just what is the GOP Republican Administration doing when it says it is against Big Government but they do things that are quite otherwise. I am scratching my head on this, and I find the Republicans building more Big Government programs than the Democrats in the past few years.... Just look at the military cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan War....2 trillion dollars. That is 2,000 Billion dollars to be exact. And that price tag does not include the military budget which is another whopping 2.3 trillion. They have created another Government Department called Homeland Security .
The FY2009 appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Administration requested a net appropriation of $38.8 billion in budget authority for FY2009. The requested net appropriation for major components of the department included the following: $9,487 million for Customs and Border Protection (CBP); $4,748 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); $4,057 million for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); $9,071 million for the U.S. Coast Guard; $1,414 million for the Secret Service; $1,286 for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPP); $5,573million for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); $151 million for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); $869 million for the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T); and $564 million for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO).
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34482.pdf
What is really troubling about this manipulation is now that the Private Sector Banks are failing the Big GOP has been saying all along it would not bail out those in trouble especially blaming so called poor credit risk people causing the huge Mortgage Crisis that is on going. First they bail out Bear Stearns.
Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve engineered a $30-billion dollar Saint Paddy’s day present for the JP Morgan bank by handing them the corpse of Bear Stearns. The object of the game is to prevent the “assets” of Bear Stearns from going to the auction block, on which they would be discovered to be nearly worthless, which would instantly render all similar assets held by the other big banks to be similarly worthless, and would result in a universal margin call that would pretty much unwind the hallucinated “wealth” acquired the past ten years.
http://markmaynard.com/index.php/2008/03/16/fed_bails_out_bear_stearns
After that little hit and run they bumped into another called Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae.
The US government has seized control of the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in what could be the largest corporate bailout ever. The Treasury Department has pledged to provide as much as $200 billion as the two quasi-public companies deal with heavy losses on mortgage defaults. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee just under half the country’s $12 trillion in mortgage debt. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the bailout. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/9/us_bails_out_fannie_mae_freddie
It is not over because after that bail-out Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy and the Feds refused to help them.....until they discovered that Lehman Brothers fall-out triggered AIG one of the biggest Insurance conglomerates around the world to begin hemorraging and seeing it a heart beat away from its own heart failure and bankrupty....What do they do? They bail them out toooooooooooo! The nation's No. 4 investment bank Lehman Bros. has lost almost $7 billion in the last two quarters alone, primarily because of wrong-way bets on mortgage securities and other risky investments.http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/442981.aspx
And so as Lehman Bros caused real troubles in the Markets around the world AIG was calling for help...The Feds/ Republicans Federal Reserve said earlier today it would provide up to $US 85 billion ($107 billion) in an emergency, two-year loan to rescue AIG, which teetered on the edge of failure because of stresses caused by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and the credit crunch that ensued.
In the meantime as Lehman Bros filed bankruptcy Barclays of UK said Wednesday it's paying $1.75 billion to acquire the U.S. investment banking and capital markets operations of Lehman Brothers...
Does this whole thing sound like small government to you? And why are US mom and pop America forced to pay taxes for these rich scamsters who screwed up? And why should mom and pop American pay for the US War Machine and its phoney war on terror, which makes us pay for the New Welfare Department called Homeland Security?
And why did they go along to bail out AIG? Because Henry Kissinger is on the board of directors and they are intimately tied with BlackStone Group and the Carlysle Group.
Kissinger McLarty Associates has a “strategic alliance” with the Blackstone Group – seen by many as nothing more than another arm of the Carlyle Group. The Blackstone Group describes their relationship thus: “Blackstone's alliance with Kissinger McLarty Associates is designed to help provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high-level strategic advice. The relationship was announced in 2000 and recently completed its first strategic advisory assignment on behalf of a NYSE-listed company.” (source) Infact the alliance also incorporates Maurice Greenberg’s American International Group, as per this press release on February 21st 2000: “American International Group, Inc. (AIG), The Blackstone Group L. P. and Kissinger Associates Inc. announced the establishment of a new venture to provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high-level independent strategic advice. […] The venture will operate globally and will take advantage of the existing relationships between the partners: - AIG has an ownership interest in Blackstone and is an investor in several of Blackstone's private equity funds; - AIG and Blackstone have a joint venture, specializing in restructuring and M&A advisory services in selected Asian countries; - Henry Kissinger chairs both AIG's International Advisory Board and the advisory boards of several AIG-sponsored Infrastructure Funds. The AIG-Blackstone-Kissinger Associates venture recently completed its first advisory assignment on behalf of a New York Stock Exchange listed U.S. company.” (source) (note: “M&A” means “Mergers and Acquisitions”) Indeed: “In 1998, American International Group ("AIG") acquired a 7% non-voting interest in The Blackstone Group for $150 million and committed to invest $1.2 billion in future Blackstone-sponsored funds.” (source) And Maurice Greenberg sits on Blackstone’s Domestic Advisory Board. In 1999 Kissinger Associates signed on SGV & Co “Asia's largest accounting and consulting firm” to “further expand its reach”. On June 6th 2002 SGV became an affiliate of Ernst & Young – prior to that it was “a member firm of Arthur Andersen” http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/elite/Kissinger_Associates.htmThese bums should be put in jail.....and I will tell you what....I refuse to pay a red cent to the lot of them...
Rev. Jermano
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