We are now one signature away from slavery

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

http://senate.gov/….
Notice the point that says ON CLOTURE

http://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/cloture.htm
cloture – The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes.

This means that consideration on the bill was allowed ONLY for 30 hours from March 23rd 5:45, which means at roughly 11:45pm March 24th, this became a rubber stamped law. It now needs only Obama to sign it into law.

The following is cut directly from the new law, which says you MUST JOIN A NATIONAL SERVICE POSITION, IT IS MANDATORY! And once one joins a national service position, your first amendment rights are destroyed. READ IT FOR YOURSELF!!

The Draft, AKA Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act’ or the ‘GIVE Act’

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1388

Rahm Emanuel: Orwellian double-speak “its not a draft, its universal service” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdwrU3Csi1E

Rahm 2: “All americans” “Train or barracks” … “It will be a common experience” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNKYF5OfwGU

Alex Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRk12HC7Dc4

Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HSTb1PyZpo

“Obama Youth”
I don’t think this group is a part of any official Obama “corps,”  but well-meaning brainwashed idiots are plentiful and they will happily do the federal government’s bidding, especially in an economic crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okjg7ES4ECU

The writing is on the wall.
Thanks to BSC for the links.

Backyard garden? Not any more. Presenting H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

A friend and I spent some time reading over this insanely complicated piece of shit bill. Technically it applies to all food production and storage. I couldn’t find anything about having to transport food or sell it to fall under the jurisdiction of this law. If you have a backyard garden, and you store the food you grow, you will be in violation and face finds of $100,000/day or imprisonment.

And of course, it provides for arbitrary exemptions at the sole discretion of this new Food Safety Administration.

Apparently the FDA isn’t properly doing the bidding of Monsanto, so they want to create an entirely new agency to usurp their authority. I’m starting to see a pattern here (Dept of Homeland Security)

Big agribusiness is holding a gun to the head of all private agriculture in this country. I certainly hope everyone will contact their congress critters asap. At least they won’t be able to say we agreed to go along with it, when push comes to shove.

Update: The Husband of the Bill’s Sponsor Does Work for Monsanto

Reader CW tipped me off to this. It checks out.

Rosa DeLauro is married to Stanley B. Greenberg.

Here’s a bio on Greenberg:

Stanley B. Greenberg is Chairman and CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

He has served as polling advisor to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of Bolivia and their national campaigns.

Greenberg provides strategic advice and research for companies, organizations and campaigns trying to advance their issues amid shifting social currents.

Greenberg is author of the new book, The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break it, published by St. Martin’s Press, described by James Carville as “the most important book on American politics in my memory … maybe since 1960, the Making of the President.” Greenberg is also the author of Middle Class Dreams.

Together with Bill McInturff, Greenberg conducts bi-partisan surveys for National Public Radio on the main issues of the day.

His private sector clients include BP, Boeing, Monsanto, Comverse, Sun Microsystems, United HealthCare, the Business Roundtable, and the organizing committee for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

—END UPDATE—

What this will do is force anyone who produces food of any kind, and then transports it to a different location for sale, to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration.” Even growers who sell just fruit and/or vegetables at farmers markets would not only have to register, but they would be subject inspections by federal agents of their property and all records related to food production. The frequency of these inspections will be determined by the whim of the Food Safety Administration. Mandatory “safety” records would have to be kept. Anyone who fails to register and comply with all of this nonsense could be facing a fine of up to $1,000,000 per violation.

I’ve bought food at several farmers markets for years and I have yet to meet any vendors who are fond of the government. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most vendors at farmers markets won’t go along with this. The problem will be that the people who run the farmers markets will be forced to make sure that vendors are “registered” with the government.

Is this Change we can believe in? Maybe it is for Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Tom “I Fly with Monsanto” Vilsack.

For the rest of us, this is a nightmare.

Let’s take it piece by piece:

What is the legislation called? H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009:

111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 875

To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

How does this affect farmers who just sell fruit and vegetables at farmers markets?

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

…

(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.

…

13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-

(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory, warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.

Does this really apply to fruit and vegetables? Yes.

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

…

(12) FOOD- The term ‘food’ means a product intended to be used for food or drink for a human or an animal and components thereof.

Registration:

SEC. 202. REGISTRATION OF FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS AND FOREIGN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.

(a) In General- Any food establishment or foreign food establishment engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding food for consumption in the United States shall register annually with the Administrator.

(b) Registration Requirements-

(1) IN GENERAL- To be registered under subsection (a), a food establishment shall submit a registration or reregistration to the Administrator.

(2) REGISTRATION- Registration under this section shall begin within 90 days of the enactment of this Act. Each such registration shall be submitted to the Secretary through an electronic portal and shall contain such information as the Secretary, by guidance, determines to be appropriate. Such registration shall contain the following information:

(A) The name, address, and emergency contact information of each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment that the registrant owns or operates under this Act and all trade names under which the registrant conducts business in the United States relating to food.

(B) The primary purpose and business activity of each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment, including the dates of operation if the domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment is seasonal.

(C) The types of food processed or sold at each domestic food establishment or, for foreign food establishments selling food for consumption in the United States, the specific food categories of that food as listed under section 170.3(n) of title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, or such other categories as the Administrator may designate in guidance, action level, or regulations for evaluating potential threats to food protection.

(D) The name, address, and 24-hour emergency contact information of the United States distribution agent for each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment, who shall maintain information on the distribution of food, including lot information, and wholesaler and retailer distribution.

(E) An assurance that the registrant will notify the Administrator of any change in the products, function, or legal status of the domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment (including cessation of business activities) not later than 30 days after such change.

(3) PROCEDURE- Upon receipt of a completed registration described in paragraph (1), the Administrator shall notify the registrant of the receipt of the registration, designate each establishment as a category 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 food establishment, and assign a registration number to each domestic food establishment and foreign food establishment.

Inspection, Category 5 Food Establishments

SEC. 205. INSPECTIONS OF FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.

(a) In General- The Administrator shall establish an inspection program, which shall include statistically valid sampling of food and facilities to enforce performance standards. The inspection program shall be designed to determine if each food establishment–

(1) is operated in a sanitary manner;

(2) has continuous preventive control systems, interventions, and processes in place to minimize or eliminate contaminants in food;

(3) is in compliance with applicable performance standards established under section 204, and other regulatory requirements;

(4) is processing food that is not adulterated or misbranded;

(5) maintains records of process control plans under section 203, and other records related to the processing, sampling, and handling of food; and

(6) is otherwise in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law.

…

(5) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS- A category 5 food establishment shall–

(A) have ongoing verification that its processes are controlled; and

(B) be randomly inspected at least annually.

(c) Establishment of Inspection Procedures- The Administrator shall establish procedures under which inspectors shall take random samples, photographs, and copies of records in food establishments.

What happens if you own a farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation that does not prepare or serve food directly to the consumer?

I hope you like having Feds crawling all over your property and telling you what to do.

SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.

(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to–

(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;

(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;

(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;

(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and

(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.

(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator–

(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or

(2) to track the food in commerce.

(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–

(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;

(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;

(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;

(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;

(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;

(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and

(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.

Is registration required? Yes. Is compliance with inspections required? Yes.

TITLE IV–ENFORCEMENT
SEC. 401. PROHIBITED ACTS.

It is prohibited–

…

(3) for a food establishment or foreign food establishment to fail to register under section 202, or to operate without a valid registration;

(4) to refuse to permit access to a food establishment or food production facility for the inspection and copying of a record as required under sections 205(f) and 206(a);

(5) to fail to establish or maintain any record or to make any report as required under sections 205(f) and 206(b);

(6) to refuse to permit entry to or inspection of a food establishment as required under section 205;

So what might happen if I refuse?

SEC. 405. CIVIL AND CRIMINAL PENALTIES.

(a) Civil Sanctions-

(1) CIVIL PENALTY-

(A) IN GENERAL- Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act.

Bill Status:

More:

Military Industrial Complex Prepares Mass Graves for U.S. Citizens

A usually quiet U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Cemetery, has been unusually active lately. The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona is a beautiful 225 acre facility located in Phoenix.

For the past 30-45 days in the early hours of the morning until sunset, a massive construction operation has been underway. Major amounts of earth have been excavated out about 9-10 feet deep and 600-1000 feet wide. There is multiple locations on the property like this. From the satellite view there appears to be more sections that have been covered with the concrete lids and backfilled to look as if nothing is there. ABC rock is put in place under the burial vaults for good drainage and solid bedding. This will help not contaminate ground water sources from decomposition of human bodies.

The cleanliness of the heavy equipment operation and the large perfect cuts of earth is im pressive. These Massive concrete boxes are transported from a nearby storage yard on various privately owned flatbed semi-trucks, then unloaded and put into place a half mile away at the actual mass grave site. They are installed tight together side by side with no space in between.

An interview was conducted between my friend and a truck driver involved in this operation. After beating around the bush for ten minutes, the driver admitted “ I got paid a whole lot of money to speak good english.” Take it for what it’s worth but that sounds suspect. The truck driver also admitted “Each burial vault holds four caskets.”
I took note that if caskets were not used you could fit 40 bodies or more in each one.

So if these were to hold four troops each and the truck driver did know what he was talking about; this would mean that there are plans in advance for over 4000 U.S. soldiers deaths.

If these are not to contain caskets and only bodies are inserted there could be room for over 40,000 civilians bodies.

See additional photos: photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4.

Editor’s note: On February 11, 2009, D. H. Williams, writing for the Daily Newscaster, reported on the revelations of an Indiana county municipal official in the vicinity of Chicago who revealed how FEMA and DHS were attempting to prepare “county officials to prepare a Hazard Mitigation Plan to deal with flooding, fires, high winds and tornadoes.”

“FEMA inquired to where mass graves could be placed in the county and would they accept bodies from elsewhere,” writes Williams.

See Inside source reveals FEMA & DHS preparing for mass graves and martial law near Chicago.

You and I Can’t Buy the Guns Mexican Cartels Own

The Administration is Not Dealing Straight With Us on Mexico’s Gun Problem

GunNewsDaily
Ralph Weller
March 1 2009

Let’s set things straight right up front. Yes, some guns are being smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. Most are handguns. But, handguns are being illegally trafficked from state to state and from the U.S. to Canada. It should come as no surprise that guns are smuggled into Mexico. But, the problem being portrayed by the U.S. media and our government is not as it seems. You see, Mexico doesn’t allow ownership of most firearms, so ordinary Mexican people seeking self-protection will find a way to get them into Mexico. As for the drug cartels operating in the border towns along the U.S., they have other sources for their weapons and have become the prime supplier within Mexico.

I worked in Mexico in a border town for about five years. It was far enough from San Diego County in the Sonora Desert of Mexico that commuting several hundred miles daily was impossible. So, for a few years I lived in the city and commuted home periodically on some weekends. As crime grew out of control, I eventually moved into a place on the U.S. side and commuted daily in and out of Mexico for my own safety.

I stayed in Mexico for a Mexican holiday my first year. I don’t recall the holiday. Normally, I would leave Mexico for a holiday, but it was in the middle of the week and one day was not long enough to come home. All I know is that on that particular Mexican holiday, Mexicans love to fire guns into the air. That evening as I sat on the balcony of my hotel, the gun fire that erupted in celebration was quite unbelievable. It was so intense I backed off the balcony and watched the festivities from a couple three feet in the room. We’re talking war-like firing of weapons, it was that intense.

As I listened that night to the gun fire, I was somewhat shocked at the amount of fully automatic gun fire. It wasn’t sporadic. It was continuous throughout the city. For a country that bans guns I thought, how in the world did they get their hands on all these full-auto weapons? Clearly what sounded like M16 fire was prolific along with 7.62 x 39 AK autos with a smattering of smaller caliber full-autos, most likely 9mm. Gun fire can be heard in most American cities on New Years, but I’ve never heard full-auto weapons being fired, at least not in the San Diego area.

The next day I went into work and sat down with a trusted senior Mexican manager. I looked at him and said, “I thought guns were illegal in Mexico.” He chuckled and said, “So you stayed in town last night?” As the conversation progressed, it became clear that guns are as common in Mexico as tamales at Christmas. Everyone he knows, including himself, own at least one gun. And, it matters not whether it’s a semi-auto or fully automatic, they’re all illegal, so why stop with semi-autos? Though clearly illegal in the states in most instances, a lot of Mexicans have more firepower in terms of military weapons than we can only dream of owning here.

As time went on, parties in the city at middle class Mexican homes become a way of life. Most Mexican managers in the plant knew I was a gun wonk. As it turns out, they couldn’t wait to invite me over to their place on a Friday night to show me their collection. Semi-autos, some very high-end Sigs and other European handguns were not uncommon along with piles of old revolvers. I thought I had seen everything in the states, but in Mexico it’s not uncommon for people to own full-auto military rifles. Everything from an M16, UZI machine pistols and the most popular, select-fire AK47 military rifles. These are not the so-called “assault weapons” you can buy at the local gun shop in the U.S., but full select-fire military-issue rifles. Now, I know you want to know and are dying to ask; Did I see any U.S. military-issue weapons stolen from the U.S. military? Not a single one was marked with U.S. military markings. Everything was marked with additional foreign markings on the receiver, including M16 rifles, or they had nothing at all. I saw firearms manufactured in Europe, China, Russia and South America along with U.S. manufactured weapons. I saw rifles that looked familiar with no place of manufacture, no serial number or manufacturer’s logo. The information was not removed, it was never there to begin with. I can only assume they came from illegal arms manufacturers in India or Pakistan that produce copies of weapons. It was obvious that none of these firearms came from a U.S. gun shop in Tucson or San Diego. You couldn’t buy them from a gun shop in the states if you tried.

It seems Mexicans have a rich heritage of firearms ownership prior to the ban in 1968. Despite the laws against owning them, they ignore it. Most Mexicans will say they need it for personal protection of themselves and their family. The other reason is they don’t trust the government or local law enforcement. If they have to use it in their home for self-defense, whether they end up in jail is all dependent on how much money they can come up with, or who they know in the government. It also depends on who they shoot. But, given the alternative with high crime rates, most middle class Mexicans willingly and without reservations take the risk.

Despite being able to own .22 caliber pistols or rifles, Mexican law requires them to be stored at an approved firing range. Where’s the firing range I asked many times? No one knew of one. Where’s the gun stores in town to buy legal guns? Gun stores? No one ever recalled seeing one anywhere in Mexico, let alone their city. I’m sure somewhere, maybe in Mexico City you might be able to buy a gun, but not in this city of almost 1.5 million residents. And the gun traffickers know it.

Where do ordinary Mexicans get their weapons? Most buy them from a ‘friend’ or a friend of a friend or cousin or uncle. Where the friend gets them is not talked about. But, it seems that drug cartels in Mexico are heavily involved in gun trafficking of military weapons and related hardware. And, who are these ordinary Mexicans? They range from people who work in factories as managers and senior managers, government workers, doctors, dentists and anyone with the financial means to buy a firearm. I even ran into a couple of government bureaucrats, one a lawyer for the federal government who owns firearms. He confirmed that people he knew in the government, some very highly ranked bureaucrats and politicians all own illegal firearms. The other works for the Mexican equivalent of the IRS. It’s a way of life in Mexico. It seemed to me that you aren’t in the ‘in-crowd’ in Mexico unless you own at least one firearm. I was amazed at the whole thing after believing for years that gun ownership in Mexico was non-existent. That is hardly the case.

All this flies in the face of news articles published by the U.S. media in the last week or two. Mexico’s gun problems are a direct result of gun runners buying “assault weapons” in the U.S. and taking them into Mexico to arm drug cartels, says the U.S. media and government. That is a bunch of government and media nonsense. The cartels aren’t arming themselves from U.S. gun stores with semi-auto AR15 and AK47 rifles. They’ve moved on up. Not to completely dismiss arms moving into Mexico from the U.S., but it is not as it seems when the U.S. media tells the story. The firearms moving across the border are semi-auto rifles and handguns sold to middle class or wealthy Mexicans seeking personal protection from criminals that have no connections in Mexico with gun runners. For the most part the wealthy in Mexico are targets of criminal elements, so they have no intention of connecting up with them to buy a self-defense firearm. You’re better off buying a weapon from someone within the Mexican government than buying it from the criminal element, namely a drug cartel.

Cartels buy their arms from countries around the world, most any place where military weapons can be purchased on the black market, or from countries wishing to destabilize North America. They arm themselves from a worldwide black market of full auto military weapons including grenades, land mines and RPGs. They also “procure” their weapons from the less than savory from within the Mexican military.

The drug cartels can easily afford to fly their weaponry into Mexico using their own fleet of aircraft on to remote airfields, or land them on remote Mexican shores from their fleet of vessels. They do it with drugs all of the time. Drug cartels buying semi-auto AR15 or AK rifles from U.S. gun dealers is viewed as a joke by Mexico’s drug cartel, most Mexicans, and unfortunately by the Mexican government. The only people fooled by all the political rhetoric are Americans listening to the likes of Attorney General Eric Holder and other anti-gun politicians.

Mexico has a gun problem, just like they have a drug problem and both the U.S. and Mexican governments are trying to place the blame on U.S. gun owners. U.S. gun owners aren’t the problem. Mexico is the problem. The government is corrupt from the lowest level law enforcement officer shaking down American tourists for traffic violations, to officials and politicians highly placed within the Mexican government, including elements within the military. Everyone knows it. Everyone in Mexico knows it. Every law enforcement official in the U.S. knows it, and everyone in our government knows it. And anyone who has worked for any length of time within border cities and lived in the local community knows it. This is taking a Mexican problem, blaming the U.S. by turning it into a crisis in order further an agenda, and Eric Holder and President Obama knows it and they are taking advantage of it.

The next time you see a news report of illegal full-auto weapons and grenades being found here in the U.S., you know where they came from. It wasn’t from a gun store in Tucson or Phoenix. The administration is right that gun trafficking along the U.S./Mexico border is a problem. Not only do we have drugs and illegal aliens coming in our southern border, but we also have military arms and explosives coming into our country illegally as well. That’s the issue and our government is being disingenuous in its argument.

This AP news report published today is typical of what is going on. It is disgustingly biased and flat wrong: AP report for Detroit Free Press

Don’t believe me and what I say? See what the Latin American Herald is saying about a recent arrest of cartel members and their weaponry in Mexico. No, the items listed weren’t purchased at a gun store in Phoenix or Tucson. Grenades and RPGs are illegal in the U.S.: LAH Story

GunNewsDaily authorizes the distribution of this commentary providing that GunNewsDaily.com is recognized as the originating source.

Boeing Laser System Redeploys Quickly, Then Tracks Targets And Fires Laser

Space War
by Staff Writers
Albuquerque NM (SPX) Mar 25, 2009

Boeing has demonstrated its Re-Deployable High-Energy Laser System (RHELS) by quickly relocating the prototype weapon system from its Albuquerque development site to a test range, where it tracked ground and airborne targets and fired at a ground target.RHELS integrates a solid-state, thin-disk laser; an acquisition, pointing and tracking capability; beam control, fire control and thermal management systems; and a weapons operator console into a modified 40-foot-long shipping container transportable on a semitrailer.

Boeing began the two-week-long test Feb. 23 by packing up RHELS at its Albuquerque facility, moving it to a local government facility in Albuquerque and setting it up there, all in only a few hours.

With the system status re-established, RHELS then tracked in-flight aircraft and moving and stationary ground vehicles, and successfully fired its laser, hitting a remote target board on the ground. Due to test-range restrictions, the system did not fire at moving targets.

“RHELS demonstrates that a solid-state, high-energy laser weapon system can be transportable, rugged, supportable and affordable,” said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Directed Energy Systems.

“RHELS drives tactical directed-energy laser systems out of the laboratory and into the hands of the warfighter. Its transportability also means developers and warfighters have the opportunity to test this transformational, ultra-precision directed-energy weapon system at a number of ranges under varying conditions and against a diverse set of targets.”

In future tests, RHELS will fire its laser at in-flight targets and moving ground vehicles. RHELS is designed to engage rocket, artillery and mortar (RAM) projectiles, shoulder-fired missiles and unmanned aircraft, as well as a variety of ground-mobile tactical targets.

RHELS is a Boeing-funded initiative to show that directed energy weapons are maturing and are relevant to today’s battlefield. It also provides key lessons for the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD), a truck-mounted, high-energy laser, counter-RAM weapon system that Boeing is developing for the U.S. Army.

“RHELS reduces risk for HEL TD in a controlled but realistic setting,” said Lee Gutheinz, Boeing program director for High-Energy Laser/Electro-Optical Systems.

“It confirms the functionality of a compact, reliable and highly efficient laser system while maintaining future scalability to many tens of kilowatts of laser power.”

Boeing leads the way in developing high-energy laser systems for a variety of warfighter applications. These systems include Airborne Laser, Advanced Tactical Laser, HEL TD, Laser Avenger and the Tactical Relay Mirror System.

Thomas Geoghegan on “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy”

Democracy Now
March 24, 200

Guest:

Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago-based lawyer, recent congressional candidate and author of many books. His most recent is See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation. His latest cover story for Harper’s Magazine is called “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy.”

AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration has unveiled its plan to stabilize the banking industry. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the government plan to buy up as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and other risky assets from banks. Wall Street was certainly happy with the plan with all the major stock indexes soaring as soon as the market opened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly 500 points. Investors saw the plan as a way to rescue the US financial system, clearing a path to recovery from what many have described as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The crisis has been largely blamed on deregulation of the financial industry and lax government oversight. But a new article in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine argues otherwise. It reads, quote, “no amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened…The problem was not that we ‘deregulated the New Deal’ but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws.” The article goes on to say, quote, “We dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term.”

The article in Harper’s Magazine is written by Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago-based labor lawyer, recent congressional candidate and author of many books. His most recent is See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation. His Harper’s article is called “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy.” Thomas Geoghegan joins us from Chicago.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. OK, how did we get here? Or how did they get us in this mess?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: In the article, I talk—that appeared in Harper’s, I’ve talked about the fact that we’ve not focused enough on the big deregulation that precedes all other deregulations, and that’s the ceiling that has existed on the financial sector since time immemorial on the amount of interest that banks can get from their clients, their customers, their depositors. Historically, and even up through movies like It’s a Wonderful Life with Frank Capra and Mr. Potter and George Bailey, the interest rates in this country were capped at eight percent, nine percent. In the 1970s, we began to deregulate this, and then we had a massive big bang with a Supreme Court case that effectively knocked out all the interest rate caps. And we have today, taken as common, that banks can charge 17, 18, 19, 30, 35 percent, not to mention payday lenders charging 200, 300, 400 percent in states like Illinois, California [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Tom Geoghegan, let’s go back to that 1978 case, Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp. Explain the significance of it. What was it?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Sure, that’s the Brown versus Board of Deregulation for the financial sector. The case—Justice Brennan, of all people, opinion said that banks that operate—out-of-state banks that were subject to the National Banking Act of 1864, signed by President Lincoln in the middle of the Wilderness Campaign, effectively preempted any state regulation capping the interest rates of those banks when they sent their credit cards in from out of state. Now, back in 1864, banks in Delaware weren’t operating out in Nebraska or handing out credit cards across the country, and there was no such thing as Visa or MasterCard.

The effect of this was that the big national banks were not subject to any state usury law, because the Banking Act of 1864 had no interest rate cap on it, not contemplating the kind of situation that we’re in today. And in effect, this sealed what had been a trend throughout the country, which is lifting these interest rate caps for banks and giving consumers easy credit on the premise that they would just pay tons and tons of interest so that the banks were protected if the loan weren’t repaid. In fact, the banks had incentive to hand out credit cards and hope that the loans would not be repaid, because the interest rates on these credit cards were so high.

You know, if you are Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life and can only get six percent, seven percent on your loan, you want the loan to be repaid. Moral character is important. You want to scrutinize everybody very carefully. But if you’re able to charge 30 percent or, in a payday lender case, 200 or 300 percent, you don’t care so much if the loan—in fact, you actually want the loan not to be repaid. You want people to go into debt. You want to accumulate this interest. And this addicted the financial sector to very, very, very high rates of return compared to what investors were used to getting in the real economy, the manufacturing sector, General Motors, which would give piddling five, six, seven percent returns.

So the capital in this country began to shift in the financial sector. That’s why the financial sector began to bloat up. That’s why we ended up, by 2006, having a third of all profits going into the banks and the financial firms and not into the real economy.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Geoghegan is our guest. His piece in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy.” We’ll be back with him in a minute.

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AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Thomas Geoghegan. He has a very interesting piece in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine. It’s called “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy.”

Tom Geoghegan, you talk about how, with no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor—they’ve always done so—but that capital gushes out of manufacturing into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits like auto manufacturing. Now, I’ve just come back from Grand Rapids this weekend, and going through Detroit, they’re in a dire situation—

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —talking about money fleeing from the auto industry.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Sure. I feel one of the reasons I am in favor of the bailout of the auto industry is, aside from all the other reasons, a sense of guilt that we set up all the returns in this economy in favor of financial firms and really disinvested from industry. And even worse, we began to turn industry into a banking itself. General Motors, General Electric began to operate banks, because that’s where they made the big profit, in the loans to consumers, uncapped interest. It’s a very destructive situation.

And this isn’t some left-wing progressive critique circa 2009. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, warned how important it is to have interest rate caps on the financial sector, or all the money will gush into there and out of productive uses. Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, the great classic, 1936, has a little chapter at the end saying, “Yes, we have deficit spending. I’ve got this way of getting out of the Depression. By the way, we’ve got to keep the interest rate caps on the banks.”

Well, we took that stuff off, the thing that was kind of an instinct in human and legal civilization, from the time of the Code of Hammurabi up to the present, and we created all these incentives for money to go into speculation, derivatives, because we addicted the economy to very, very high rates of return by squeezing money out of people. And the way in which we disinvested from the economy was, in my view, not so much globalization or trade as the fact that we had preteens in shopping malls who were running up, you know, debts where they were paying 25, 30 percent interest, when investors could only get five, four, three percent from our globally competitive industry.

AMY GOODMAN: In your history of usury, basically, from ancient times to today, you’re also giving a labor history, a labor history of this country.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Well, history—historians like Niall Ferguson, conservative historians and progressive historians, many economic historians, see history as nothing but a turf war between three groups: the manufacturers, workers and the bondholders, or the financial sector.

So where does labor fit in in all of this? People lost the ability to get wage increases and got the ability, an incredible ability, really unknown in previous times, to get credit cards with which they had high rates of interest. So, unable to get wage increases, people—or unable to get union cards, really, people got credit cards and began running up these great debts, which addicted the country to high rates of return in the financial sector, so that people were kind of spending their way out of the real economy, pushing more and more money, by the fact that they were going into debt, into this virtual financial sector economy. So, really, the inability of people to raise their own wages and the incredible ease with which they could get credit instead helped create this flow of capital out of manufacturing and into finance. You know, we, the little people in this country, helped finance the bloating up of this financial sector and really the downsizing of our own jobs in the real economy. We sent the signals, you know, to investors to put money into the financial sector and not into the manufacturing sector.

AMY GOODMAN: You say US workers increased their productivity over the past thirty-five years, but real wages actually decreased.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Yes. Well, certainly if you look at the amount of money that went into actual wage, as opposed to non-wage labor costs. You know, one of the tragedies of working people in this country is that we don’t have single payer. So, what some of the additional increment—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by that.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: If private employers were not paying healthcare costs to the private sector, the private insurance industry, a lot of that money could go for wage increases. It also could make the country much more globally competitive. You know, in this congressional campaign that I just finished, I argued for an increase in Social Security, single payer, basically for the government taking over non-wage labor costs so that the globally competitive parts of the economy could lower their labor costs, hire more employees, people could actually get pay raises, and the government would be assuming these non-wage labor costs, which are so, so important to making the country globally competitive. It’s what many of our high-wage rivals are able to do. And they run trade surpluses; we run trade deficits.

AMY GOODMAN: You were running for Rahm Emanuel’s open seat. So why didn’t this idea fly?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Well, I only had two months to argue it, and it took me about one month to raise enough money to get the message out to voters. And also, Amy, it’s very hard to go door to door and explain things to people, which is the key, when it’s 30 below wind chill. But next time I’m going to start in the summer and—if I attempt any run for any office again.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, as the economy grew and Wall Street was just blooming, individual workers were—

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —as you write it, individual people were actually becoming worse off.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Sure. Well, they went from being creditors to debtors. That’s what is so insidious about this whole process. Not only were people being denied wage increases, but they were losing their, quote, “savings,” at least in the sense losing the kind of security that they used to have. I saw that as a labor lawyer in Chapter 11 reorganizations, seeing all these companies, now taken over by financiers and squeezed for as much profit as they can, go belly up after outsourcing occurred. And then, people would be brought into court as creditors, not named as parties, but because they had claims to retiree health insurance and so forth, and would just be stripped of these rights.

So, you know, in addition to people not having the wage increases that they needed, because of lack of unionization, because of really the fact that the healthcare system was devouring up the money that would have been there to pay for them, they were also losing their savings and, worse than that, losing the sense that if they entered contracts with their employers, the money would be there at the end of the day. So you had this destruction of future-oriented thinking just at the time that the credit cards were being handed out to them, and it was kind of “live for the moment.” We really—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain this issue of people who are getting their healthcare from the company, a pension, retirement, and today we hear, on the issue bonuses, you can’t break contracts. But what happens to all of this, for example, when a company decides to, well, just declare bankruptcy?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Well, they aren’t really bankrupt. That’s the first thing. It’s just that these firms set up subsidiary corporations that go into Chapter 11 and get, quote, “reorganized.” It’s very easy to shed unsecured obligations. And virtually all uninsured, non-insured PBGC pension obligations and all healthcare obligations and other supplemental benefits that people earn over a lifetime are completely unsecured and are the first thing to go in a reorganization.

So, over the 1980s, 1990s and, if any were left, by the early twenty-first century, the early twenty-first century, the ’01s, people would be dragged into court as creditors and emerge as debtors. And the debtors—that is, the big companies—would walk away with enormous savings. And these companies were really just subsidiaries often of firms that were really quite well off. But they used the device of subsidiary and corporation, they used the ease of going in and then out of Chapter 11, or just liquidating these subsidiary corporations and starting over with a different framework, to shed all these obligations. Or they just went out of business altogether and put the money into speculative financial sector type things, which were supposedly going to bring huge returns.

AMY GOODMAN: When, Thomas Geoghegan—

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: The kind of returns they were used to.

AMY GOODMAN: When did usury become legal?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: I would say that it happened slowly through the late 1960s and early 1970s. You know, there were, at first, very limited deregulations with lots of bells and whistles to make sure it wouldn’t go too far. So if you look at the first state laws that deregulated usury, they usually say, “We are only going”—like in Illinois, for example, which I’m most familiar with, but which is typical—“We’re only going to let you do this if you pass a test of having good moral character. We’re going to investigate your reputation in the community. We’re going—we at the Department of Financial Regulation will make findings that your reputation for honesty and fairness is such that we can let you get out of these interest rate caps to lend money more freely to consumers.”

But then that all went by the by, and then it was anything goes. And soon you had the most predatory behavior going on without any kind of check into moral character or otherwise, which was the fig leaf to allow this deregulation to occur at the state level. And then came Marquette Bank, where it became pointless to try to regulate it at all, because all the states were effectively preempted when they’re dealing with the big Chase and Citibanks and out-of-state credit card issuers. So that’s how it happened.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what is your recommendation? You make four major points, what you think has to happen now.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Well, my major points change from month to month, and that was some time ago, but I still stick with those that are in the article.

First of all, we ought to have an interest rate cap in this country. Senator Durbin proposed 35 percent, but it should be much lower than that, especially for the banks that we’re bailing out. I’d slash it at least by half.

Second, I think that there should be something in the country like what Europeans, the Germans, in particular, have, the Sparkasse—and I’m probably mispronouncing the German word. Somebody taught me the correct pronunciation of it, but I’ve bungled it. These are state-run banks that make low-interest rate loans to consumers and are a wonderful alternative to the payday lending system that is being put up in most states, soon will be in New York, too, I assure you, but are certainly in California and Illinois.

And third, I think that as long as we’re in the process of bailing out the banks, we’ve got to restructure them. That’s one of several grievances I have against the administration plan. And in particular, at the very least, let’s put aside the issue of nationalization. I think that there should at least be these public guardians on the board of directors who will, from inside the bank—from inside the bank, there has to be a restructuring of these banks to ensure that these banks are much more in the nature of fiduciaries and guardians and do what banks ought to be doing in this country: pushing money into the globally competitive parts of the economy, accepting lower rates of return, not squeezing money from consumers. It’s not enough to have external outside regulation. You have to change the internal corporate structure of the banks. And I think some kind of codetermination with the public at the board level is the way to go.

And finally, I think that we have to inject equity not only into the banks, but to the people who the banks are lending to. We’ve got to make people—we not just have to force the banks to extend credit, we have to make people more creditworthy. And one of the ways of doing that and encouraging future-oriented thinking is, I believe, for the President and the administration right now to make a big point about promising people that if they work for a living in this country, they will get a decent public pension to live on when they retire. So, instead of cutting back on entitlements—and all the veiled sounds coming out of Washington are to that extent—I would increase the replacement rate of Social Security from our very low level now, which is something like 40 percent on average, to the amount that other developed countries pay on average, according to the OECD, which is closer to two-thirds of working income.

AMY GOODMAN: And where do you see the labor movement today under an Obama administration and the Employee Free Choice Act, which I think the large corporations this week, Starbucks and Costco and Wal-Mart, are joining together to launch a massive advertising campaign against?

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Yes. Well, EFCA, or the Employee Free Choice Act, or whatever you want to call it, is crucial for labor. Some sort of labor law reform is important. But I would urge people in labor and all friends of labor throughout this country that if we’re really serious about bringing back the labor movement through changes in laws, which are absolutely crucial—not just Employee Free Choice, but bankruptcy laws, all sorts of laws that allow us to hold corporations liable for their wage obligations—we have to do something about the filibuster in the Senate. It has to be removed. It has to be taken away. It’s destroyed the labor movement over and over. Labor laws have gone down the drain because of the filibuster. As long as that’s in place, we’re going to have a country that is on warp speed—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: Well, under Carter, we could have had labor law reform, but for the filibuster. You know, it passed the House, got majority in the Senate, went down the drain because of the filibuster. Under Clinton, we could have had labor law reform, but for the filibuster—passed the House, got a majority in the Senate, went down the drain because of the filibuster.

The stimulus plan that Barack Obama just proposed could have been great. It went down the drain because of the filibuster. We had to negotiate—it got through, but it got negotiated away. The same is going to happen with the Employee Free Choice Act.

Until you move to a Senate that is more majoritarian, you know, the reality is that you’re going to be in a situation where you have a very unequal, unfair, often unethical and oppressive economy, because you can’t get the changes that you need, you can’t get the New Deal reenacted with the kind of filibuster that is in place today. FDR couldn’t have had the New Deal if he had had the filibuster that we have now, you know, where any senator can just raise his hand and say, “Well, I would like to filibuster this. I don’t actually have to get up there and argue. I would just like to do it and require two-thirds—sixty votes of the Senate to get measures through.” The New Deal wouldn’t have happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Thomas Geoghegan, Chicago-based lawyer. His piece is called “Infinite Debt” in the latest issue of Harper’s. And when I talked about the Employee Free Choice Act, the groups that are joining together in a joint advertising campaign are Costco, Whole Foods and Starbucks, though Wal-Mart is also opposed to EFCA.

Senate Rubber Stamps National Enslavement Bill

Legislation passes to create multi-million civilian “army” in line with Obama’s compulsory national service agenda

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Senate last night rubber stamped a nightmare domestic draft bill that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers working at the the behest of the government, while also containing language that threatens to ban free speech and the right to protest.

Last week, we reported on the House passage of the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, which was carried with a 321-105 margin vote.

Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed.”

Section 120 of the bill also discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.”

The bill was rubber stamped by the Senate last night in a 74 to 14 vote, a move that creates “An army dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, (which) would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said tonight, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work,” reports the New York Times.

References to the program as the creation of a civilian “army” have dominated mainstream news coverage of the legislation.

7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.

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The GIVE Act is just one of many pieces of legislation that vastly expand service organizations in line with Obama’s agenda to create a “national civilian security force”.

In January we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.

The DoD report states, “Management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.”

Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.

One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.

Similar initiatives have been introduced in other western countries, including recently in the UK with the announcement that MI5 is currently training up to 60,000 UK citizens as part a civilian network of terrorist spotters, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.

In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”

“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent – there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained – that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”

Asked if the training would be military style, with people wearing uniforms, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” adding that the service could be done through state national guard.

Shockingly, the GIVE legislation also contains language that could completely demolish the 1st amendment.

The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”

As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”

Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude and domestic spy squads were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.

Numerous other national service bills have been introduced which target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly. They include the Service For All Ages Initiative, the Summer of Service Act, the Semester of Service Act, the Encore Service Act and the ACTION Act.

Regarding the GIVE Act, “The bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service,” reports Fox.

“We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” said Luke Sheahan, contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”

Lee Cary of the conservative American Thinker warns that Obama’s agenda is to, “tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda.”

The passage of such shocking legislation with barely a whimper from political activist groups goes to show how well the corporate media has performed in camouflaging the legislation with flowery characterizations of helpful volunteerism, when in reality the bill creates the pretext for mandatory national service and the creation of a multi-million man domestic civil defense unit who will be tasked with spying on their fellow Americans under the justification of protecting the country from terrorism