Minicon maven (go look it up!) Jonah Goldberg has announced dolefully in his latest commentary on NRO that “the GOP is wrecked, no matter who wins.” The source of this problem for Jonah is the unwanted intrusion of the Donald into Republican national politics. Whether the convention that will take place in Cleveland this summer nominates Trump or tries to withhold the nomination from someone whom Jonah finds to be a peddler of “snake oil remedies,” the Republican Party may be irreparably ruined. There was a chance but one that has been missed to cut the New York troublemaker off at the pass: “Republicans and commentators didn’t believe he would run. They didn’t believe he could be an attractive candidate to rational people, no matter how angry with ‘the establishment’ voters said they were.” In an even greater act of self-delusion, Jonah’s pals didn’t rally to Jeb, Marco and other “conservatives.” Indeed Jeb’s PAC “spent $35 million trying to destroy Rubio before it dropped its first $25, 000 attacking Trump.” Now we face the possibility of a third party, because “the Republican nominee is probably going to be determined on the convention floor in Cleveland.” This means that Trump and his followers will probably capture Jonah’s beloved party or else leave it split by forming their own populist breakaway party.

Jonah’s dire prediction makes me about as much grief-stricken as did the experience of watching the Soviet empire crumble. Perhaps our divergent perceptions result from our contrasting views of the party that Jonah adores and which I profoundly despise. And one of the reasons (I won’t hide it) that I’d be delighted to see the GOP go the way of the Soviet politburo  is that I associate it with greasy deal-makers, who are invested in expanding government and surrounded by neoconservative “advisers.” To see both of these groups lose influence simultaneously would be for me a dream realized, although I remain skeptical that it can be achieved. After listening to Trump (as well as Cruz) giving a speech at AIPAC that sounded as if it were written by Max Boot, I’m beginning to doubt whether the Donald will reach the convention in July without first trying to “make a deal” with neocon elites. Jonah (for all I know) may land up becoming his speech-writer, although I would like to think this won’t be the case.

If truth be told (and I’ve already expressed this view on this website), I think it would take more than a brokered convention and a split in the GOP to rid us of the neocons. Their assets and connections remain forces to be reckoned with.  What is for me really astonishing is Jonah’s panic that he may be losing his party base, that is, the one that he and his pals depend on for their readership and following. But even if the improbable happened and the GOP vanished, it’s still quite possible that Jonah’s patrons and friends would remain employed, perhaps going to work for Hillary or for someone else as official “conservatives.” There is nothing that requires neocons to be based in the party that Jonah fears may be “ruined.” Parties come and go; but neocons and their offspring, like the common cold virus, may be invincible.

I for one am also struck by the difference between Jonah’s interpretation of the Trump challenge to the GOP establishment and the far more thoughtful response of Peggy Noonan to the same development.  Although Noonan is certainly no farther to the right than Jonah, she is painfully aware of what her party has done to awaken their nemesis. She doesn’t blame Trump and the great unwashed for the “uprising” but sees Republican leadership as responsible for bringing about the disaffection.  “The bottom and the middle are pushing against the top” and the pressured is being felt by elites in both parties. Noonan is understandably afraid that the GOP elite is “deaf” to what’s stirring, and here she shows that she is, at least, sentient. In Jonah’s world, like that of George Will, everything was going swimmingly well up until recently. Up until then we could look forward to the happy event of another Mitt or Dole or W being elevated to the GOP nomination. Then suddenly the “anti-conservative” Trump erupted on to the scene, and no countermeasures were taken to make him and his voters disappear.

To his credit, however, Jonah never descends to the imbecility of Megyn Kelly, Guy Benson and other “moderates” whom one hears every evening on Fox-news telling us about how Kasich (presumably their Democratic-lite candidate) would trounce Hillary by some astronomic majority. We are thereupon shown poll figures indicating that Trump would lose to the Hillmonster by eleven points or more, dragging down with him Congress as well as the executive. As Jonah understands, “my father was a postman” would never beat the Dems because his nomination could only take place at a brokered convention, and this would necessarily precipitate a third party challenge by Trump and his indignant supporters. Allow me also to express skepticism about the poll numbers indicating that Hillary would run away with the election if she faced Trump. Given the torrent of abuse that the media has been dumping on Trump, I suspect that respondents are terrified to admit to pollsters that they’re voting for this week’s version of Hitler. But this doesn’t mean the same respondents wouldn’t vote for Trump in the privacy of a voting booth. I also find it impossible to imagine that nausea I feel every time I behold Hillary’s sour face and listen to her canned feminist and grievance rhetoric is not being experienced by tens of millions of other people. Hillary may have the same relation to running for the presidency that I do to playing professional hockey.

The Best of Paul Gottfried

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Editor’s Comment: There’s just no getting over what a farce it all is.

Even though Americans will be hearing about little else than the heated race for the presidency and the upcoming November election, there is really little reason to buy into the charade. No doubt Trump in particular has energized this election cycle like no other by playing a dual role as both villain and hero.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, plays villain to all but a few mindless and naive supporters who vote based on such superficial categories as gender, race and the graft of socialism. The Democratic Party, under the control of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has so thoroughly rigged the primary as to exclude and intimidate all would be competitors to Hillary, save a tired, old, grumpy socialist who has entered a race that is unwinnable because the “victor” was decided in the minds of the insiders long ago, and because the delegate and party rules have skewed any chance of a Hillary upset. Did anyone ever question why Biden refused to enter the race, or why the Republicans managed to have 17 contenders, and the Democrats only 3?

Watch Schultz struggle to explain the super-delegate system as a way of keeping candidates from being challenged by grassroots voters:

Will voters question why the independent streak in Arizona was altogether kept from casting a vote, and the whole charade in that state’s voting process, as well as numerous other primary states has been a total joke? Bernie has garnered just enough support to remind Americans – regardless of their political leanings – how little choice they have in their leaders. Conversely, Republican voters are being reminded that the party can and will challenge their pick if indeed it ends up being a person like Trump, who is not locked into the self-serving mechanism of the political party machine.

American Democracy – Allegations of Voter Suppression Emerge from the Arizona Primary

by Michael Krieger

The following is extremely disturbing. If I were a Bernie Sanders supporter in Arizona, I’d be absolutely apoplectic.

AZCentral reports:

By a combination of misjudgment, misplaced priorities and old-fashioned voter suppression, Tuesday’s primary was a disaster.

 

As reported by The Arizona Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl, Maricopa County reduced the number of polling places from more than the 200 available for the 2012 presidential election to … 60.

 

Sixty? Are you kidding me.

 

The fact that a voter could go to any polling place didn’t matter much when the lines were so long that many people were forced to abandon the line.

 

I’ve heard from a number of those who stood outside and waited, and waited, and waited.

 

And if that isn’t bad enough, Arizona law already effectively disenfranchises 36 percent of registered voters.

 

These would be voters who are unaffiliated with any political party. Independent. The only way those individuals can vote in a presidential primary is to re-register with a political party. And they have to do so 29 days before the election.

 

It’s ridiculous to think that 36 percent of Arizona voters — can’t vote.

 

They represent a constituency that is larger than the state’s Democrats.

 

They represent a constituency that is larger than the state’s Republicans.

 

It should be more and more clear to everyone that Arizona needs to institute an open primary system. Otherwise a plurality of Arizona voters is, essentially, permanently disenfranchised.

 

That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. After waiting in line for hours, some registered Democrats were then told they weren’t registered as Democrats and therefore couldn’t vote.

The Phoenix New Times reports:

Polling places in Maricopa County were swamped with enthusiastic voters today, spurring gripes and a possible election complaint over party identification problems.

The state Democratic Party sent an e-mail to constituents asking them to send their election-day stories for a complaint that would be submitted to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. Enrique Gutierrez, Arizona Democratic Party spokesman, said some Democrats waited in long lines — then were told they weren’t really Democrats when they tried to obtain a ballot.

“We’ve received complaints throughout the whole day of lifelong Democrats showing up to the polls and being told they are either independent or have no party affiliations,” Gutierrez said. No official election complaint will be submitted — yet, he says. But the party will continue to gather information.

 

A message left for county Elections wasn’t immediately returned.

 

The Washington Post also covered the story:

All day Tuesday, voters in Maricopa County reported waiting in lines that stretched around the block, sometimes for hours. County officials told local news the long lines were in part to blame on independent voters showing up without realizing they couldn’t vote in Arizona’s closed Democratic and Republican primaries. But at least one voter who contacted The Washington Post said she was turned away even though she’s a registered Democrat and that election officials blamed a computer glitch that rendered many Democrats as independents in the eyes of the system.

 

Somehow I don’t think this will encourage Bernie supporters to vote Hillary.

Any questions?

SOURCE

The post How the DNC Rigged Arizona for Hillary: “Long Lines and Old-Fashioned Voter Suppression” appeared first on Patriot Rising.

This weekend I finally got the chance to watch the four-time Academy Award-winning (along with two Golden Globes and three BAFTAs – the British Academy Awards) movie “The Big Short.”

Michael Lewis used to be a bond trader at Salomon Brothers back in the heyday of bond trading in the 1980s and wrote about it in his first excellent book “Liar’s Poker.” “The Big Short” is another book that pierced the veil of the Financial Oz that is Wall Street.

And his most recent book, “Flash Boys,” tore open the inner workings of high frequency trading (HFT) and how Wall Street and the bankers organized a system for rigging the market further in the favor of the institutions at the expense of individual investors. And this took place both during and after the financial collapse in 2008.

“The Big Short” is the story of the financial collapse told through the lens of classic Lewis characters; outsiders who realized that the entire mortgage bond market was built on and perpetuated by the collusion and greed of bankers. I mention this in case you are not aware of Lewis: This is a mainstream movie and popular book, not a fringe exposé by a relative unknown.

Some background into the collusion

What the movie doesn’t go into is how the marriage of institutional investment banks (high-flying traders that soared or crashed on an hourly basis) and traditional commercial banks (banks that made pennies on every dollar) was allowed to occur when then-President Bill Clinton struck down the Glass-Steagall Act that had served the U.S. and global banking system since 1933.

It’s important to understand that after the market crash in 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt summoned famed market manipulator and “bucket shop” master Joseph Kennedy to the White House.

He made a deal with Kennedy. He offered him either a government investigation of his market manipulation (Kennedy pulled out all his positions and went short just days before the crash and made a literal fortune) or he could write the rules so that people like him could never rig the markets again.

The Securities Act of 1934 and Glass-Steagall were part of what Kennedy helped build. And they remained effective for 60 years. That’s not to say there weren’t some scandals now and again, but none that would tear down the entire U.S. economy.

That disappeared with a stroke of Clinton’s pen and let Wall Street and the bankers run riot on the system, as we now know. It’s not crazy to think the system will not be spared the same pain under a President Hillary.

I heartily suggest that everyone watch “The Big Short,” which is now out on DVD, Amazon and Netflix, so you have no excuse. In two hours it gives a better picture of how the global financial system works, especially in the U.S.

The key moment for me was one scene where a trader who figured out what a pile of crap the mortgage backed bonds had become — and the impending economic doom once (not if) it collapsed — is talking to a contrarian hedge fund team that thinks he’s lying to them. He looks at them all and says, in essence, to a group of cynical insiders, I’m shocked by your child-like faith that underneath it all, the system is honest.

He tells them the system is corrupt and it’s being corrupted by the banks and brokerage firms knowingly and purposefully.

Now, having spent time with plenty of Wall Street insiders, I am fairly certain that there was no artistic license with that scene. It likely went down exactly like it was portrayed. It would have been a memory seared into the minds of everyone in that room.

But the point is, even after all this, Lewis wrote another book about yet another scandal being perpetrated in the same time frame; and thanks to big money lobbying from Wall Street, continues even today – HFT and dark pool investing.

And after all this subterfuge and malevolent behavior there are four truths about bankers and the banking system of which you need to be aware:

1. Only one Wall Street player was jailed for the fraud that was revealed in 2008.
2. The “too big to fail” banks have gotten even bigger.
3. ALL the players who erased trillions in stock market value and people’s personal wealth are still in power.
4. The banks, after all the QE and manipulation, are still not healthy.

What you can do

For you, it is time to decide how you are going to protect your assets. My advice is, keep it out of Wall Street’s hands as much as you can.

Debt, aka “credit,” is now more important than true wealth for many Americans. No one has savings, they have credit cards and mortgages and car loans. And that suits the banks just fine. Because they can wheel and deal your debt, just like they did mortgages.

So avoid taking on any debt at this point. This is the time for hard assets. Precious metals aren’t incredibly expensive now, even as they continue a long-term rally. Real estate is a good idea. And if you’ve been flirting with the idea of buying property in another country, the strong dollar is a good friend.

In times like these, collectibles are also a good idea; cars, guns, art. Stick with collectibles that have fairly big markets so they remain liquid investments.

There are some investments in the certain strategic sectors — utilities, energy, healthcare — that are worth stepping into the market to own. Just don’t rely too heavily on this part of your portfolio, and make sure you’re either ahead of the crowd or buying into an undervalued trend.

SOURCE

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The people who spend two bucks for chili at the Courtesy Diner at Laclede Station Road can’t fathom why anyone would pay Hillary Clinton $225,000 to make a speech.

Nor can they understand why the U.S. Senate is taking a 17-day break for Easter after spending much of their time last week fuming over the Supreme Court vacancy. Somehow, people all over America are saying loudly and clearly this election year, Washington and its enablers – the media, the political pros and Wall Street – don’t understand us.

That’s why, all over this slice of middle America, exasperated people got up before dawn on a cold, 37-degree morning recently to spend four hours in a line so long that from its end people couldn’t even see the Peabody Opera House, where they would hear Donald Trump. And it wasn’t just Trump. In the next two days, other folks nearby lined up to hear the outsider talk from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.

They share the same grievance. In 2016 America, the deepest divide is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s not even between conservatives and liberals. It’s between Us and Them – the people versus The Establishment.

In dozens of interviews, in a cross section of the country, the sentiments were the same.

“They’re political bureaucrats who would like to control the people,” said Sandy Garber, a St. Charles real estate agent, when asked to define the establishment.

John Hackmann, a Fairview Heights, Ill., retiree, labeled it a “Washington cartel.”

“They just let the government do whatever they want,” said Jim Walker, an Arnold, Mo., businessman.

What is the establishment? Nationally, eight in 10 people told a McClatchy-Morning Consult poll this month it includes members of Congress. Similar numbers cited the Democratic and Republican parties, political donors, Wall Street bankers and the mainstream media.

They split on whether Trump, a billionaire real estate developer who’s thrived in the New York business world, was part of the establishment, but seven in 10 said Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was.

In essence, the establishment lives and thrives in a small world that lives and works in New York and Washington, on Wall Street, in Big Media, and in Politics, connected by the high-speed Acela corridor and often by mutual self interest.

Many, perhaps most, do care deeply about the common good though they are anything but common themselves. They hire each other and each other’s children. They huddle at the same white tie and black tie dinners. And, they sometimes attend each other’s weddings.

Eleven years ago, for instance, Trump got married for the third time. The over-the-top Palm Beach wedding in 2005 was a who’s who of elites, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Access is this group’s common currency. Wall Street spends millions to open doors to the top levels of the government that regulates it. Politicos bend over to get access to the money that keeps them in office. The media cut deals to get access to decision makers needed to feed ratings and circulation, even if sometimes at the cost of objectivity.

“It’s a collection of people who live in Washington, D.C., and don’t care about the rest of the world,” said Hackmann. And, he noted, “They all have jobs.”

THE DC-NY AXIS

“The establishment is anybody with big money who can get to the Congressmen and lobbyists,” said Judy Surak, a nurse from Clemson, South Carolina.

All over South Carolina, ask the people reveling in the music at Greenville Heritage Main Street Fridays, or starting their day with homemade onion sausage at Lizard’s Thicket on Two Notch Road in Columbia to define the establishment, and they usually echo Surak.

They often add a gentle qualifier: They don’t want to blow up the political system. They just want it to be more responsive, to work better.

“The country’s long-term problems have to be fixed within the system we have,” said Mark Cruise, a Columbia executive.

The most wary tend to be better educated, higher earning, older voters, according to the national poll. They tend to see establishment figures easing in and out of lucrative, comfortable jobs, climbing ladders to success that seem unavailable to the rank and file who populate South Carolina’s office cubicles.

Of 78 members of Congress who left after the 2010 elections, four out of five found work with lobbying firms or clients, state or federal governments or political action committees.

One of Bill Clinton’s former White House spokesmen hosts an influential network Sunday talk show. NBC hires Chelsea Clinton as a “special correspondent,” paying her a reported $600,000 annually, far above the typical pay for a reporter with no journalistic experience.

The ties are intricate and deep. Five Treasury secretaries in the past three presidential administrations have either headed big Wall Street firms, or became top executives after leaving their jobs.

Every member of the U.S. Supreme Court has at least one Ivy League degree. Every president elected since 1988 is an Ivy Leaguer. So are Clinton and Trump.

Even among Republican presidential candidates who insist they’re running against the establishment, establishment ties have served them well.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, promotes himself as a maverick, but has two Ivy League degrees and worked in state and federal governments before being elected. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio was a congressman for 18 years, then was a senior executive at Lehman Brothers’ investment banking division. Trump’s company is building a luxury hotel five blocks from the White House.

Somehow, many see Trump through a different lens.

“He has all he ever wanted. He doesn’t have to bother with this,” explained Elaine Verma, a Kiawah Island court reporter. “He just has the best interests of the United States at heart.”

WALL STREET and BIG MONEY

Outside St. Louis in St. Clair County Illinois, people are far removed from Wall Street or Fifth Avenue. They want to know the conditions of their commute on Interstate 64. Or the streets of downtown Belleville, virtually empty by 6 p.m., so there’s easy parking if you want to run in for carry out at the St. Louis Bread Company on Main Street.

Trying to fathom the stratospheric sums lobbyists and corporations spend to ingratiate themselves with Washington decision-makers is akin to learning a foreign language.

People here understand this much: “Everybody’s got somebody from Wall Street paying for them,” said David Vail, an O’Fallon, Ill., retiree.

Corporate and other interests retained 11,465 registered lobbyists last year, spending $3.2 billion, roughly the same amount the United States pledged to poor countries to cope with global warming. To voters, the big money is emblematic of an impenetrable system they have no chance of influencing, let alone understanding.

That’s why many cheer when Sanders complains that no one was punished harshly for the financial meltdowns of 2008. His lament touches directly what distresses people about the New York-to-Washington axis. People lost their jobs and homes in that recession. The nation teetered on the brink of an historic financial meltdown. Banks and institutional investors had let the mortgage market run amok.

“No senior banker tried for crash-related frauds,” said Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen and former Senate Banking Committee chief of investigations.

Goldman Sachs, a major Wall Street and Washington player, did agree in 2010 to pay $550 million and change its business practices in order to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges it had misled investors in mortgage dealings as the housing market began to wobble. The company neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

In January, the company also agreed in principle to a $5 billion settlement that resolved both actual and potential civil claims by the Justice Department, New York and Illinois attorneys general and others “relating to the firm’s securitization, underwriting and sale of residential mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007.”

Sanders was livid, saying the latest agreement “should make it clear to everyone that the business model on Wall Street is a fraud,” a product of the financial world’s revolving door to Washington.

Clinton was paid $675,000 for three Goldman Sachs speeches behind closed doors in the years after she left her job as secretary of state in 2013. She demanded transcripts be kept, and so far refuses to release them publicly.

Andrew Williams, Goldman Sachs spokesman, explained, “Clinton spoke at conferences that we hosted for clients. We host literally hundreds of conferences around the world and continually search for fascinating speakers.” Such speeches are commonplace, he said, and singling out Clinton’s talk is “misleading.”

None of this convinces Tronda Minnie, a building service worker from Alton, Ill., that Clinton – or for that matter much of official Washington – can break these ties.

“I’m for Sanders all the way,” Minnie said. “Where’s (Clinton’s) money coming from?”

GOVERNMENT’S CLOISTERED WORLD

Much of the influence industry’s goal is to get a slice of the $4 trillion federal budget.

“They make these deals, and they profit somehow,” said Richard Shinkle, a pipeline builder from Columbia, Mo.

“All of them just take money from lobbyists and use it the way they want,” added Ron Lowe, an entertainment theme worker from O’Fallon, Mo.

In recent years, the budget has become ever more a prize for the establishment insiders, removed even from most members of Congress. The last four annual budget plans have been negotiated by a handful of leaders, including former House Speaker John Boehner, then presented to the rank-and-file as a done deal.

Conservatives have tried hard to have more clout.

In 2013, for example, about 20 members of Congress met in the basement of the Tortilla Coast restaurant down the street from the Capitol, where the grilled chicken quesadilla costs $9.95, and a steak burrito with the housemade sauce costs $11.95. Their goal: use the budget leverage to end or at least dilute the Affordable Care Act.

They lost. The establishment prevailed.

It’s all part of a shadowy system that, to the people in suburban St. Louis, seems open and approachable only to the well-entrenched and well-heeled.

Once elected to the Congress, for example, members basically have lifetime employment regardless of elections. In 2014, for example, 95 percent of the members of the House of Representatives won re-election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A key reason for the insider edge? Money. The average incumbent running in 2012, the last year when full figures were available, raised $1.6 million for the campaign. The average challenger: $268,000.

It’s an incestuous system, voters say, that’s hard to crack. “The real access causing changes in laws is what big money buys,” explained Vail, the O’Fallon retiree.

Whoever wins the White House will find the same establishment chiseled into the Washington fabric as firmly as the monuments that dot its landscape.

Two-thirds of the Senate doesn’t face re-election this year. History says at least 85 percent, and probably many more, House of Representatives members will return. The lobbyists won’t suddenly close their practices. “This isn’t about one person,” said Steven Reinisch, a Missouri investment adviser. “This is about the whole, big picture.”

The post AMERICA TO ESTABLISHMENT: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? appeared first on Patriot Rising.

Health insurance premiums have increased faster than wages and inflation in recent years, rising an average of 28 percent from 2009 to 2014 despite the enactment of Obamacare, according to a report from Freedom Partners.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010, and Wednesday is the law’s sixth anniversary.

The Obama administration expressed concern in 2009 about skyrocketing health care premiums in a report entitled, “The Burden of Health Insurance Premium Increases on American Families.” They were concerned that premiums had increased by 5.5 percent from 2008 to 2009.

However, from 2010 to 2011 in the first year after Obamacare was enacted, premiums increased by 9.4 percent.

“In 2009, when the [Executive Office of the President] issued its report, states had seen premiums increase on average by 30 percent between 2004 and 2009,” states the Freedom Partners report. “But since 2009, health insurance premiums have continued to grow faster than wages in nearly every state, averaging a 28 percent increase from 2009 to 2014, resulting in a greater amount of disposable income being consumed by rising premiums.”

According to the report, while premiums increased by 28 percent from 2009 to 2014, wages increased by only 7.8 percent. From 2004 to 2009 when premiums increased by 30 percent, wages increased by only 12.2 percent.

SOURCE

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A convenience store owner in Orlando successfully used her personal protection handgun to stop an armed robber in her store. Surveillance video footage corroborates the presence of an armed assailant entering her store and threatening her with a handgun. She retreated behind the counter and when he pursued, she pulled out her .38 special revolver and warned him to leave. He refused and when he advanced, she pulled the trigger.

The bullet didn’t strike the robber but it did act as incentive for him to flee the store, according to the news report filed through the Orlando Sentinel. Police found the bullet lodged in the front of her store and are currently searching for the man in the video.

She managed to potentially save the life of another coworker as well as show that she wasn’t going to be just another victim of this criminal’s violent intentions.

People often times think getting a handgun for personal protection is a good move. It’s a dangerous world out there and if you own or operate in a business that is subject to frequent “visits” from armed criminal elements, a handgun can provide a modicum of personal confidence when dealing with the public. However, a handgun by itself is not an effective tool in stopping the violent theft of your property. You also need to develop a mental awareness and a sense of self-sufficiency so when push comes to shove, you can put rounds on target.

It’s not the bang of the gun or the wave of the barrel that guarantees survival — it’s hitting your target when it matters the most.

That’s why, for concealed carriers, we can’t just be content simply to have and hold a handgun in our daily adventures. We need to make sure we’re ready and prepared to use it should the need arise.

It’s not about killing bad guys, it’s about neutralizing a threat to your life. In this case, not only did this store owner need to protect herself, she also had another coworker in the building with her.

These are things to pause and consider in our daily routines. Don’t let complacency blur your judgment.

CONCEALED NATION

The post [VIDEO] What Sends This Armed Thug Running For His Life? An Armed Citizen (Who Got REAL Lucky) appeared first on Patriot Rising.

Bangladesh is not pleased with the NY Fed.

One Friday in early February, hackers who had apparently been stalking the Bangladesh central bank for at least two weeks bombarded the Fed with requests for transfers of nearly $1 billion from the country’s FX reserves.

The good news: the vast majority of that total was not transferred. The bad news: $100 million of it was and of that $100 million, more than $80 million is still missing.

For those who missed the story, you can review it in all its James Bond-ish glory in the four posts linked below, but here is a brief summary of what happened to the $81 million: 1) it was transferred to four accounts at the Jupiter Street, Makati City, branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines, 2) $470,000 in cash went into the branch manager’s trunk and the rest went to a possibly forged (but possibly not) account registered to one William Go, 3) the money was transferred to an FX broker called Philrem, 4) $50 million was split between two casinos and the remaining $31 was delivered to a “Weikang Xu” in cash.

From there, the trail goes cold.

(branch manager Maia Santos Deguito)

The CCTV cameras at the bank weren’t functioning during the questionable transfers but branch manager Maia Santos Deguito stands accused of ignoring a stop order from the central bank and from her superiors. Meanwhile, William Go claims he had nothing to do with it, Bangladesh’s finance minister AMA Muhith thinks his country’s central bank was in on the scam, and the NY Fed says it followed proper protocol. This evening, WSJ reported that according to people familiar with Bangladesh central bank’s operations, its SWIFT terminal for interbank messaging might have been left logged on the night of February 4, creating a hole via which more than $100 million was stolen.

• Plot Thickens In New York Fed Heist As $30 Million In Cash Said Delivered To Mystery Chinese Man
• The Incredible Story Of How Hackers Stole $100 Million From The New York Fed
• Chinese Hackers Break Into NY Fed, Steals $100 Million From Bangladesh Central Bank
• Mystery Of New York Fed Robbery Has Central Banks Asking Who’s Next

As we wrote last week, “what seems likely here is that this is part of something far larger and it could very well be that none of the people along the paper trail (Deguito, Go, whoever was or wasn’t involved at the Bangladesh Bank, etc.) actually knows who is ultimately pulling the strings.”

Regardless of who is behind the heist, the Fed “cannot avoid their responsibility in any way,” FinMin Muhith insists.

His government is apparently willing to push that line, because as Reuters reports, “Bangladesh’s central bank has hired a lawyer in the United States for a potential lawsuit against the New York Federal Reserve.”

“We view this as a major lapse on the part of FRB NY,” BB said in the report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

(Muhith)

RCBC has since fired Deguito and her assistant Angela Torres who requested the money that later ended up in her boss’s car. Branch officer Romualdo Agarrado claims Deguito told him that she feared for her life and that was why she had to ignore the freeze order on the accounts. Here’s what he told lawmakers: “But the one that stuck in my mind – she said, ‘I would rather do this than me being killed, or my family.’” Deguito denied making the statement.

Deguito would later say William Go asked for 10% of the $81 million to keep quiet about the scheme. Go has since threatened to sue Deguito.

“We offered Maia (to be included in the) Witness Protection Program but she turned it down,” Osmena, chairman of the Senate committee on banks and financial institutions,told PhilStar who adds that Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito said there is a need to establish first Deguito’s role before she can be tapped as state witness. “I don’t think that’s proper at this point. Being a state witness means she must not be the most guilty, but according to the testimonies during the hearing, she appears to be one of the main actors in this scheme,” Ejercito said.

Perhaps she should have accepted the witsec offer. Over the weekend, reports suggested a cyber crime expert who spoke to police and the media about the heist had disappeared.

“Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury said her husband Tanveer Hassan Zoha had been taken from a motorized rickshaw in the early hours of Thursday by people in plainclothes who blindfolded him and drove off with him in a vehicle,” Reuters said.

Meanwhile, the Philippines’ anti-money-laundering agency has filed criminal complaints against Weikang Xu – the casino junket operator who took delivery of $31 million in cash at the Bloomberry – and another businessman named Kim Wong. “The president of PhilRem, a local money-remittance firm that helped transfer the money, testified that once the money was in the Philippines, $29 million was directed to the account of a man he identified as Mr. Xu at Manila-based Solaire Resort & Casino. He also said that approximately $30 million was delivered to Mr. Xu in cash,” WSJ writes. “PhilRem’s president said an additional $21 million was transferred to a local online gambling company called Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co., owned by Mr. Wong.”

“The AMLC alleged that Wong knew or should have known that the funds remitted or transferred to the accounts of the four ‘John Does,’ ‘Willam Go,’ Philippine Remittance Ltd. (PhilRem), Eastern Hawaii Casino and Resort in the Cagayan province, and to his own account were part of the stolen funds from the Bangladesh Bank,” CNN Philippines reports.

Who is Kim Wong, you ask? Good question. Here’s a bit of useful background information from ABS-CBN:

Fifteen years ago, on August 23, 2001, a 39-year-old Chinese man–also named Kam Sin Wong, alias Kim Wong–faced the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.

 

Wong sat in the same room just a few steps away from three other men who had accused him of involvement in illegal drugs and other criminal activities.

 

The three were Col. Victor Corpus, then chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP); former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim; and one Ador Mawanay, an alleged agent of the now defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force.

 

According to the Senate transcripts of the hearing, Corpus had suspected Sen. Panfilo Lacson of links to the illegal drug trade and that it was Wong who was the senator’s conduit to the drug mafia.

 

Both Lacson and Wong denied the allegations.

 

Wong told the Senate hearing that he had no clue as to why the ISAFP was accusing him of such crimes. “Ako ay isang negosyante lang na maliit,” Wong said.

 

But as the hearing unfolded, it became clear Wong was anything but a small-time businessman.

By 2001, Wong owned a garments business and three restaurants in Manila as well as golf and tennis club memberships. 

 

It would appear business was going very well because he and three Chinese friends were in a position to gift the Western Police District with a building which was constructed within the police headquarters’ premises.

 

By the time the Senate wrapped up its 2001 investigation, Wong was left unscathed, while his principal accuser, Corpus, was admonished for his “blunder.” 

 

Corpus had presented the picture of the wrong Wong to the media at the onset of the probe. Mawanay too was deemed an “unreliable” witness, according to the committee report.

 

Allegations against Lacson were merely passed on to the Department of Justice for further investigation in 2001.

 

NBI records in 2001 showed one Kam Sin Wong had been charged for swindling and estafa.

 

And then, in 2009, a case of illegal dismissal was filed by one John Aguyaoy before the National Labor Relations Commission against the Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co. and Kim Wong.

 

The case reached the Court of Appeals, with the Eastern Hawaii Leisure Corporation saying Wong was “neither an employee (nor) director or stock holder of the company” and Aguyaoy saying “Wong is the real owner …and the police, the public, his employees …were all made to believe that he is the owner because he was in control of all the activities” of the company. 

 

But aside from these cases, not much was heard about Wong, until the name of one Kam Sin Wong alias Kim Wong surfaced again last week.

 

PhilStar sums all of the above up as follows: “In 2001, Wong was tagged as one of the former Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s financiers during the investigation of the former senator’s alleged hidden wealth and ties with drug lords.” According to Deguito, it was Wong who introduced her to Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher Lagrosas, Alfred Santos Vergara and Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, the four “John Does” whose names were on the RCBC accounts where the money was initially transferred after it left the NY Fed.

She also says it was Wong who told her to open the account under William Go’s name. “When the Senate Blue Ribbon committee opened the investigation on March 15, it said it could not locate Lagrosas, Vasquez, Cruz and Vergara at their given addresses,” ABS-CBN goes on to note.

So we suppose the question now is this: who does Wong work for? Or is this, like the accusations against the businessman in 2001, a case of mistaken identity wherein unscrupulous witnesses are presenting a picture of the “wrong Wong”?

Incidentally, Panfilo Lacson is running for Senate again. In two months.

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

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A blizzard shut down Denver International Airport on Wednesday, canceling more than 1,000 flights after it temporarily knocked out power and made takeoffs and landings unsafe, airport officials said.

The storm, which hit the Denver area early on Wednesday, caused ripple effects in other parts of the country, as planes were forced to sit on tarmacs while awaiting clearance to depart for Denver.

“Denver International Airport has made the decision to close the airport until further notice,” the airport said on Twitter. “Passengers should not plan on coming to the airport until further notice.”

The closure came one day after a suspicious package was found at the airport’s main terminal, prompting a brief evacuation amid heightened security in response to deadly suicide bombings in Brussels.

Power was knocked out at the airport for more than an hour on Wednesday, briefly preventing crews from fueling and de-icing aircraft, airport spokesman Heath Montgomery said.

A total of 573 departing and 549 arriving flights had been canceled at the airport by about 1 p.m. MDT (1900 GMT), according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.

Other flights destined for Denver were delayed by more than five hours, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Blowing and drifting snow prompted the closure of Interstate 70 just east of Denver to the Kansas state line, the Colorado Department of Transportation said on it website.

Stretches of Interstate 25, the main north-south highway through the state’s urban corridor, were also shut down from Colorado Springs to the Wyoming border due to the adverse weather conditions and multiple accidents, the department added.

Authorities discouraged driving throughout eastern Colorado.

“When tow trucks and fire trucks are getting stuck it’s bad,” the Colorado State Patrol said on its Twitter feed.

Separately, 118,000 customers in the Denver metropolitan area were without electricity due to damaged power lines from ice buildup, fallen trees and high winds, said Xcel Energy spokesman Mark Stutz.

The Denver metropolitan area was expected to see between 6 inches (15 cm) and 12 inches (30 cm) of snow on Wednesday, with the fierce storm moving across northern and northeastern Colorado, the National Weather Service said.

The weather system is expected to move on from the central Rocky Mountains to the upper Midwest as it heads toward New England, the weather service added.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Colorado Springs and Alex Dobuzinskis and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney and Sandra Maler)

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