What does the Fourth Amendment do It prohibits federal officials from searching people

\What does the Fourth Amendment do It prohibits federal officials from searching people


The Feds versus the Fourth Amendment
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Keep in mind that this amendment is directed to federal officials, specifically those in the executive and congressional branches. Our American ancestors knew that the federal government would inevitably attract the types of people who would do the things proscribed by the amendment. Thus, to deal with that threat our ancestors made it clear that whoever was elected or appointed to federal office would be prohibited from engaging in the type of conduct prohibited by the amendment.

What does the Fourth Amendment do? It prohibits federal officials from searching peoples homes, businesses, and personal effects indiscriminately. If a crime has been committed, the feds cannot simply go out and search every house and business in the neighborhood to seek out evidence of the crime. And they cannot search everyones things with the aim of preventing a crime.

Instead, the Fourth Amendment requires that to conduct a search of a persons home or business, they have to first go to a member of the third branch of the government— the federal judiciary — and seek out a search warrant from a judge or magistrate. In order to get such a warrant, law-enforcement officers have to swear out an affidavit specifying the exact nature of the evidence that is being searched for. Moreover, they have to provide sworn evidence that rises to the level of “probable cause” for the judge to consider. If they fail to do those two things, the judges responsibility is to deny the application for the search warrant.

Like it or not, thats the system that our American ancestors put into place with the Fourth Amendment.

Thats obviously not the system that we have been living under for many years, given the massive secret surveillance scheme that has now come to light thanks to former NSA employee Edward Snowden. We now know that the U.S. national security state is doing — and has been doing — precisely what the Fourth Amendment was designed to prohibit. It has been gathering and compiling massive amounts of information about the private affairs of hundreds of millions of people, most of whom, needless to say, have never made the target of a specific search warrant request.

U.S. officials say that such a massive surveillance scheme on everyone is necessary to keep Americans “safe.”

Well, lets see. If we go back and read the Fourth Amendment, we immediately notice one important thing: Our American ancestors did not provide an exception to the restrictions based on keeping Americans “safe.”

That is, the amendment doesnt have the following sentence at the end of it: “The provisions of this amendment are null and void in cases where the government is keeping people safe.”

If our ancestors had added such a provision, then the NSA and its supporters might have a point. But they didnt.

Is there anything to prevent the advocates of the NSAs surveillance scheme from seeking a constitutional amendment that modifies the Fourth Amendment to include such a safety exception?

No, there isnt. Then why shouldnt the supporters of such a scheme be required to go that route — the route of seeking a “keep people safe” amendment to the Fourth Amendment, rather than the super-secret, illegitimate route that they have taken?

Proponents also say that the 9/11 terrorist attacks provided the feds with the authority to avoid the Fourth Amendment.

Well, lets see. If we go back and read the amendment, we notice something else important: There is no exception for terrorist attacks in the amendment.

If the amendment had provided such an exception, then the proponents of the NSAs massive secret surveillance scheme might have a point. But they didnt. Our ancestors provided no exceptions for terrorist cases or any other crime. So, if proponents of such a scheme dont like what our ancestors did, why shouldnt they be required to seek a constitutional amendment seeking the modification of the Fourth Amendment?

Our American ancestors knew exactly what they were doing. When you see people like Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein, Peter King, Mike Rogers, and others who are coming to the defense of the massive, secret NSA surveillance scheme that is searching, gathering, and compiling personal information on millions of innocent Americans, you are seeing precisely the types of people that our ancestors knew would end up serving in the federal government and doing the types of things the Fourth Amendment expressly prohibits. You are also seeing precisely why our ancestors believed the Fourth Amendment was absolutely necessary to our freedom, privacy, and well-being.

Remember the wise and immortal words of Justice Louis Brandeis in his dissent in the case of Olmstead v. United States:

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the governments purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Link:
http://fff.org/2013/07/29/the-feds-versus-the-fourth-amendment/

The Desperate Last Gasp Gamble of the Central Bankers

The Desperate Last Gasp Gamble of the Central Bankers


Guest post by Jim Quinn


.icc img { display:block; margin: 0 auto; }In Part 1 of this article I detailed the insane solutions proposed and executed since 2008 by our owners as they attempt to retain and further expand their ill-gotten wealth, acquired through fraud, deceit, swindles, and the brilliant manipulation and exploitation of the masses through Bernaysian propaganda techniques. Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice arent machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?
The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened.

Weve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged.

The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:“Political campaigns today are all sideshows…A presidential candidate may be drafted in response to overwhelming popular demand, but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room…The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Dont Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.Are You Sane?“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” – Kurt Vonnegut – Welcome to the Monkey House
Vonnegut and Huxleys social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dantes inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols. Over the centuries humans have gone mad over tulips, farm land, stocks, and real estate. The easily duped American populace has been victimized by multiple bubbles bursting since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The contention that a central bank run by private banking interests would promote a safer financial system and a stable currency is laughable. The Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it have created three stock bubbles, the largest housing bubble in history, a bond bubble and the mother of all debt bubbles, while destroying 95% of the dollars purchasing power in the last 100 years.
There is a common denominator in all the bubbles created over the last century – Wall Street bankers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. Fractional reserve banking, control of a fiat currency by a privately owned central bank, and an economy dependent upon ever increasing levels of debt are nothing more than ingredients of a Ponzi scheme that will ultimately implode and destroy the worldwide financial system. Since 1913 we have been enduring the largest fraud and embezzlement scheme in world history, but the law of diminishing returns is revealing the plot and illuminating the culprits. Bernanke and his cronies have proven themselves to be highly educated one trick pony protectors of the status quo.Greenspans easy money policies, manufacturing of negative real short term interest rates, regulatory malfeasance and unspoken promise to bail out Wall Street whenever their excessive risk taking threatened to burn down the financial system, led to 50% stock market crash in 2000/2001, a 40% plunge in national home prices, and another 55% stock market crash in 2008/2009. While Ivy Leaguers Bernanke, Paulson, Hubbard, Krugman, and Bush were too obtuse or too blinded by their ideology to recognize the fraudulent housing and stock market bubbles, honest clear thinking men like Robert Shiller, John Hussman, and Ron Paul recognized the bubbles well in advance and understood the consequences to the average American.“Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss.” – Ron Paul – 2003What Ron didnt realize was the peddlers and packagers of fraudulent mortgage debt on Wall Street would walk away unscathed when the bubble they created popped. Trillions of net worth was vaporized due to the policies, solutions, and programs designed and implemented by Bernanke and his Wall Street co-conspirators. The losses should have been borne by those who made the loans. Instead they were borne by the American taxpayer and future unborn generations. David Stockman, in his no holds barred book about the Wall Street and K Street crony capitalist criminals, rails against the Federal Reserve led rescue of the profligate destroyers of capital markets:“At the end of the day, this trillion-dollar infusion of capital and liquidity from the public till had a single overarching effect: it nullified in its entirety the impact of Mr. Markets withdrawal of a similar magnitude of funding from the wholesale money market. So the very monetary distortion – the availability of cheap overnight funding in massive quantities – upon which the Wall Street financial bubble had been built had now been recreated at the lending windows of the Fed, FDIC, and the US Treasury. The opposite path of liquidating the Wall Street bubble was eschewed, of course, not only because it would have meant massive losses to speculators in the stock and bonds of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and the remaining phalanx of the walking wounded. Crony capitalism also triumphed because in muscling the system during the white heat of crisis, Wall Street had plenty of intellectual cover. The fact is, mainstream economists of both parties were trapped in a Keynesian dead end, proclaiming that the solution to the crushing national debt load which had actually triggered the financial crisis was to pile on more of the same.Accordingly, banks which were “too big to fail” couldnt be busted up, since they were allegedly needed to shovel more credit onto already debt saturated household and business balance sheets. Likewise, speculators who should have suffered epochal losses during the meltdown were resuscitated by Fed-engineered zero interest rates in the money market, thereby quickly reviving the same massively leveraged “carry trades” in commodities, currencies, equities, derivatives, and other risk assets which had brought on the crisis in the first place.” – David Stockman – The Great Deformation – The Corruption of Capitalism in AmericaThe working middle class was forced at gunpoint to bail out billionaire bankers who had been fraudulently inducing feeble minded dupes and trailer trash to purchase $500,000 McMansions with negative amortization no doc subprime mortgages, while bullying appraisers into inflating appraisals, buying off the rating agencies, selling the toxic derivatives to their clients, and then shorting the very same derivatives. They subsequently committed foreclosure fraud by robo-signing legal documents. Describing these modern day Shylocks as heartless, cruel, lecherous, avaricious demons understates the vileness and contemptibility of their nature. Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson blatantly lied to the depraved, gutless members of Congress and to the easily hoodwinked fearful American public about the threat of our financial system collapsing unless the Wall Street banks were saved. This false storyline is still peddled today and believed by millions of willfully ignorant crony capitalist devotees. The financial system wasnt going to collapse. The stock prices of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Morgan Stanley, GE, and Wells Fargo were collapsing. The wealth of the financial elites that run the country was in peril. The depositors in these banks wouldnt have lost a penny, but the shareholders and bond holders would have been wiped out. The personal wealth of Dimon, Mack, Lewis, Prince, Immelt, Blankfein and the other titans of finance took precedence over the rule of law and the negative consequences of excessive risk taking and control fraud.True free market capitalism embraces the concept of creative destruction. Poorly run companies fail and are replaced by well-run companies. Bankruptcy law worked perfectly during the liquidation of Washington Mutual. The orderly liquidation of the Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks would have resulted in billions of bad debt being discharged, with the losses being borne by the executives who mismanaged the banks and the investors who were foolish enough to fund the disastrous schemes perpetrated by those executives. The FDIC would have kept depositors whole. The privatization of illicit bank profits from 2002 through 2007 and the socialization of the 2008 through 2010 bank losses are proof that we are experiencing a warped, immoral, crony capitalism that enriches the well-connected and impoverishes the working middle class. Our political, economic and financial systems have been captured by corporate and special interests. This corruption will prove fatal, as the vested interests destroy the system through their myopic greed. Weve allowed a small cadre of malevolent men to gamble away the nations future with impunity from all laws, regulations and any sense of morality, under the guise of capitalism. These men and the nation will pay a high price for these transgressions. The punishment will fit the crimes.“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” – John Kenneth Galbraith – The Age of UncertaintyThe chart below reveals the criminal plan as implemented by Bernanke, the Obama administration and the Wall Street banks. Instead of allowing insolvent financial institutions to fail, $700 billion of taxpayer funds were syphoned from the economy and handed to them. Bernanke has since stuffed their coffers with another $2.4 trillion he printed out of thin air. The purpose of this insane transfer of national wealth from the people to the parasites was not to help Main Street. Forcing the FASB to allow these criminal bankers to mark to unicorn rather than mark to market, buying their toxic mortgages, and providing billions in free money was done to cover-up the fact they are insolvent. Their balance sheets and the Federal Reserve balance sheet are choking on bad debt. The ongoing foreclosure/rent to own scam was designed to drive up home prices and allow the bankers to exit their toxic mortgages with a profit. The criminally insane bankers have used the trillions in excess funds to syphon off billions in stock market gains, with assurances from Ben that QE to infinity will always be there. They know if their gambling leads to losses, Ben will come to the rescue.
The purpose of banks was supposed to be to lend money to businesses and consumers so they could make long-term investments that helped expand the economy. These Wall Street cretins didnt loan money to people and businesses in the real world. It was much easier to generate risk free returns and program their HFT supercomputers to buy, buy, buy. By driving real interest rates below zero for the last four years, Bernanke has stolen $400 billion per year from senior citizens living on the edge and transferred it to bloodsucking bankers. Anyone with money in a bank account is losing money. This was designed to force muppets back into the stock market where they will be fleeced for the third time in the last thirteen years.
Bernankes rescue measures have been a smashing success for the .1%. Wall Street is generating record levels of profits and paying out record levels of bonuses to themselves for a job well done. The stock market is at an all-time high, while the middle class is eviscerated by relentless inflation in energy, food, healthcare, clothing, tuition, rent and taxes. Reality does not match the propaganda touted by the financial elite. Ask the 47.7 million people on food stamps.
The economic recovery narrative propagated by Wall Street paid economists, Wall Street controlled media pundits, and Wall Street bought off politicians is nothing but unmitigated bullshit. True unemployment, that doesnt falsely exclude the unemployed who have thrown in the towel, is north of 20%, with youth unemployment exceeding 40%. The “solutions” implemented by our owners have led to a 10% collapse in the median household income since 2008. If the middle class is seeing their real incomes decline, while their living expenses are rising by 5% per year, how can the economy be recovering? It cant. Bernankes banker welfare program and Obamas $1 trillion deficits, along with accounting fraud and under-reporting of inflation, have produced the illusion of recovery.
Dimitri Orlov summarizes our modern financial system and sets the table for the coming collapse:“The main tools of modern finance are mystification, obfuscation and hypnosis. What is different now is that all the governments have already shot all of their magic bailout bullets. The guilty parties are still at large, richer than they were before this crisis and probably thinking that the next crisis will make them even richer.” – Dimitri Orlov – The Five Stages of CollapseThe questions that must be answered are: How did we allow this to happen? Are we blameless? Can our course be reversed?Time to Look in the Mirror“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a warm body democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as Bread and Circuses.Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.” – Robert A. HeinleinRobert Heinlein has been dead for twenty five years. He wrote these words decades ago. His vision of a state bleeding to death is being played out as we speak. Ben Franklin had an inkling the Republic we were given would not be sustained. The success of our nation hinged upon the wisdom, self-restraint, morality, and civic mindedness of its citizens. Our form of governance was never perfect. Nothing is perfect. Adam Smiths free market capitalism was based upon true competition, but with an underlying moral code. The rule of law meant something. Those who stole, cheated or broke the law were punished. Bankers and their usurious machinations were frowned upon. They were tolerated as a necessary evil, but they certainly werent admired and celebrated. When their greedy schemes to loot the populace went too far, a courageous leader would step forth and rout out the vipers and thieves:“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.” – Andrew JacksonBankers gained more power after the Civil War as oil was discovered, the country grew rapidly, and the robber barons built their fortunes on debt and the backs of the poor. But still, there were leaders like Teddy Roosevelt who stood up to the banking and corporate interests. The die was finally cast in 1913 with the introduction of the income tax, the creation of the Federal Reserve and allowing the people to directly elect their Senators. A century of central banking has led to: a century of war; a century of currency debasement; a transformation from a hard-working, saving, producing society into an irresponsible, debt based spending, consuming society; and the degradation of our society into a mob of egotistical techno-narcissists, who have chosen bread and circuses over freedom, liberty and self-reliance. At first it happened gradually, but accelerated rapidly once Nixon removed the last vestiges of control over greedy bankers, corrupt politicians, and gluttonous voters. The transformation from an industrious nation of savers into a slothful nation of consumers has reached its zenith. Financialization Nation has been built on a pyramid of debt. The youth of today have been left with an un-payable debt burden and as Bill Bonner points out, the endgame will likely be violent and bloody:“Thats a heavy burden. It is especially disagreeable when someone else ran up the debt. Then you are a debt slave. That is the situation of young people today. They must face their parents debt. Even serfs in the Dark Ages had it better. They had to work only one day out of 10 for their lords and masters. As it stands, young people in the U.S., Europe and Japan are expected to work their whole lives to pay for things their parents and grandparents consumed decades earlier.Lets see. Deny a young person work and you deny him a career. Deny him a career and you deny him a way to support a family. Deny him a family life and who knows what happens? Will todays young people accept their lot… and remain in docile debt servitude their whole lives? Or will they rise up and burn T-bonds in public spaces… rampage down Wall Street… and perhaps hang Ben Bernanke in front of the New York Federal Reserve?” – Bill Bonner
The pyramid of debt was built brick by brick over the last century, as an unelected, secretive, unaccountable cabal of private banker pharaohs has controlled the currency of the nation and worked on behalf of the vested corporate and banking interests that control the country. Shortly after its devious creation in 1913, they enabled Woodrow Wilson to wage a war he promised to keep the nation out of. The central banks easy money policies during the 1920s led to an unsustainable credit driven boom in stocks, bonds and real estate. As usual, their belated monetary tightening was too late to avoid the 1929 Crash. Federal Reserve and government intervention after the crash prolonged the Depression for over a decade. The Crash of 1929 proved once again that bankers could not be trusted. Their insatiable greed and reckless thirst for more and more riches required checks on their ability to destroy our economic system. The 38 page 1933 Glass-Steagall Act made sure commercial banking was kept separate from investment banking (gambling), keeping the productive activity of helping businesses grow isolated from the parasitic activity of speculation. This clear, concise, understandable law kept bankers from destroying the lives of millions for 66 years, until a bipartisan screw job repealed the law and unleashed the kraken upon the unsuspecting public. Bernankes QE to infinity driven stock market gains over the last few years are reminiscent of another historic time, and this story also hasnt reached its ultimate climax.“A major boom in real stock prices in the U.S. after Black Tuesday brought them halfway back to 1929 levels by 1930. This was followed by a second crash, another boom from 1932 to 1937, and a third crash. Speculative bubbles do not end like a short story, novel, or play. There is no final denouement that brings all the strands of a narrative into an impressive final conclusion. In the real world, we never know when the story is over.” – Robert ShillerThe destruction of Europe, Russia and Japan during World War II and the Bretton Woods system that made the USD supreme across the world kept the economic peace for the next quarter century. A confluence of events in the late 1960s and early 1970s set the stage for the ultimate collapse of our faith based monetary system. LBJs Great Society welfare programs and our disastrous foray into Southeast Asia began the insane welfare/warfare dynamic that has required more and more debt to sustain. Nixon realized the debt expansion needed to pay for an ever expanding state could never be achieved with the Bretton Woods/gold pegged currency system. In 1971 Nixon unilaterally canceled the direct convertibility of the USD to gold. It ushered in the era of freely floating currencies, relentless inflation, financial bubbles, debt accumulation, consumerism, and the rise of the corporate/fascist propaganda state. Using government supplied CPI statistics, the dollar had lost 75% of its purchasing power between 1913 and 1971. Since 1971 it has lost 83% of its remaining purchasing power. And Ben Bernanke has the guts to publicly state his worries about the ravages of deflation.The years 1913 and 1971 will be seen by future historians as infamous dates when marking the decline of the great American empire. Prior to 1971, the New York Stock Exchange barred the public listing of investment banks. After the exchange repealed this ban, the large investment banks (Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns) converted from partnerships, where the senior employees owned the company and were responsible for all of its liabilities, profits and losses, into publicly owned corporations, where executives incentives become aligned with outside shareholders, who demanded short-term profits and higher stock prices at the expense of long term sustainability. The partnership structure provided a mechanism of restraint, self-control, fiscal responsibility and cautiousness. If the bank failed, the partners net worth would be wiped out. Their incentives were for the long-term sustainability of the business and they were discouraged from taking undue risks that might produce huge short term profits, but might also destroy the firm. Shame and a sense of responsibility to fellow partners was a strong deterrent to obscene risk taking. The unholy combination of allowing investment banks to go public and repealing Glass Steagall in 1999, created a greed driven uncontrollable Too Big To Control brutish monstrosity consuming the world in its desire for more. It will only be stopped when it chokes to death while gorging on whats left of the middle class.The citizens, formerly known as the hard working American middle class, must accept their share of responsibility for the desperate circumstances we face. Some are guiltier than others, but we only need look in the mirror to find the culprits in allowing the bankers, politicians, military industrial complex, mass media and vested corporate interests to gain control over our country. The introduction of the credit card by Wall Street bankers as a must have for every citizen in the early 1970s coincided with the inflationary demons unleashed from Pandoras Box by Nixon and the Federal Reserve, along with the peak of cheap U.S. oil production. Thus began four decades of real wages declining and consumer debt soaring. A nation of people that believed in saving before purchasing were given the freedom to spend money they didnt have. The statistics paint a picture of a society gone mad:Credit card debt grew from $5 billion in 1971 to $856 billion today, a 17,000% increase in forty-two years. GDP rose from $1.2 trillion to $16.6 trillion, a mere 1,400% increase. Real GDP only grew by 300%. Wages have grown from $600 billion to $7 trillion, a 1,200% increase. Real disposable personal income per capita grew from $17,200 to $36,800, a 200% increase.
Non-revolving debt (auto, student loan) grew from $127 billion in 1971 to $1.98 trillion today, a 1,600% increase.
There are over 600 million credit cards in circulation within the U.S. and Americans charged over $2.1 trillion last year.
Over 40% of Americans carry a balance on their credit card from month to month, with an average balance of $8,200 and an average interest rate of 13%.
40% of all low and middle income households must rely on their credit cards to pay basic living expenses like rent, mortgage, utilities, groceries, real estate taxes, income taxes, along with their “needed” iPhones, HDTVs, bling, stainless steel appliances, and tattoo artwork.
Wall Street banks have written off over $300 billion in credit card debt since 2008 (and passing the bill to taxpayers), while bilking their customers out of $60 billion per year in late fees and overdraft fees.
Despite the storyline of austerity, consumer credit outstanding has reached an all-time high of $2.84 trillion because Bernanke and his Wall Street puppeteers require perpetual debt expansion to keep their Ponzi scheme alive. Federal government dispensation of loans to subprime student borrowers has helped mask the true unemployment rate and Federal government doling out of subprime auto loans through Ally Financial and their crony Wall Street partners has created a fake auto recovery. The Blackrock/Wall Street “rent to own” faux housing recovery was designed by our owners to lure clueless math challenged dupes back into the housing market. Our entire economy is nothing but a confidence game at this point.
The four decade long orgy of debt couldnt have ensued if our currency had remained linked to the barbaric relic – gold. The apologists and lackeys for the vested interests scorn and ridicule the notion of our economic system being burdened with any checks or balances. This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they dont have on things they dont need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The publics foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.“When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, theyll figure it out. They dont always do that.” – Michael Lewis – BoomerangThe manner in which our leaders are governing the country and citizens are living their lives can only be considered normal in relation to residing in a profoundly abnormal society. The American Dream of having the opportunity for upward mobility through educating yourself, working hard, accumulating wealth methodically by spending less than you earn, and reaching your full potential as a caring loving human being has been replaced by a perverted nightmare where we run on a hamster wheel for our entire lives trying to achieve the new American dream of accumulating throw away material goods, working to make the payments for McMansions, SUVs, stainless steel appliances, and iGadgets you rent from bankers, while driving yourself into an early grave by consuming mass quantities of processed poison and the stress created by trying to achieve the lifestyle sold to us by Madison Ave. maggots, Wall Street shysters and the mainstream media propagandists. The corporate fascists tell you what to believe, which “enemy” to fear, how you should look, what to eat, what drug to take for the illnesses caused by the food they lured you to eat, the kind of house you need to impress your friends and family, and the car you need to drive to impress your neighbors. As George Carlin aptly pronounced: “Its called the American Dream because youd have to be asleep to believe it.” – either asleep or insane.
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.” - Ellen GoodmanOur profoundly abnormal society of materialistic zombies, who mindlessly obey the commands and marketing messages of the financial elite, has staked their futures and the future of the country on the wisdom and brilliance of an Ivy League academic who never worked a day in the real world, didnt spot the largest fraudulent housing bubble in world history, and whose unlawful acts as Federal Reserve chairman have enriched the banking whores who destroyed the country and impoverished what remains of the dying middle class. Its the height of insanity for the American people to trust these crooked high priests of finance to cure a disease they spread with their immoral, traitorous policies over the last century. Bernanke and his lackeys, in a desperate last gasp gamble to prolong their fiat currency pillaging of the peasants, have rolled the dice with QE to infinity, accounting fraud, and further enrichment of their corporate masters.“Viewed as a religious cult, modern finance revolves around the miracle of the spontaneous generation of money in a set of rituals performed by the high priests of central banking. People hang on the high priests every word, attempting to divine the secret meaning behind their cryptic utterances. Their interventions before the unknowable deity of global finance assure them of economic recovery and continued prosperity, just as a shamans rain dance guarantees rain or ritual sacrifice atop a Mayan pyramid once promised a bountiful harvest of maize.” – Dimitri Orlov – The Five Stages of CollapseBernanke will eventually roll craps. When he does, the collapse will be epic and 2008 will seem like a walk in the park. In Part 3 of this article I will speculate on the timing, scope and consequences of the coming collapse. Its not going to be a happy ending, especially for the existing social order.

Jim Quinn writes at The Burning Platform.

Professor Dervan Testifies on Capitol Hill Regarding Overcriminalization, Regulatory Crimes, and Plea Bargaining

Professor Dervan Testifies on Capitol Hill Regarding Overcriminalization, Regulatory Crimes, and Plea Bargaining




I was pleased to have the opportunity to testify yesterday before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Overcriminalization Task Force. The focus on the hearing was potential solutions to overcriminalization, particularly regulatory overcriminalization.




Below is a portion of my testimony:
" I commend the Task Force for its work,
shining a light on the issue of overcriminalization and working to correct this
fundamental problem in our criminal justice system.
Before beginning a discussion of the possible
solutions to the numerous problems associated with overcriminalization that
have been identified by this Task Force during prior hearings, I think it is
also important to consider once again the far reaching consequences stemming
from the phenomenon of overcriminalization.
As reported by the American Bar Association in a 1998 study, forty-percent
of the criminal laws passed since the Civil War were enacted after 1970. Since the release of this ABA report, it is
estimated that the federal government has created hundreds of additional
criminal statutes and untold numbers of additional criminal regulatory
provisions.
One of the most visible results of overcriminalization
in the last forty years has been the growth in the size of the American prison
population. In a report released in
March 2009, the Pew Center on the States concluded that 2.3 million adults in
the United States were in prison or jail.
This represented 1 out of every 100 adults. Further, when adults in the United States who
were on probation or parole were included, the total number under correctional
control reached 7.3 million, or 1 out of every 31 adults. Finally, as noted in a 2011 study, an
estimated 65 million adults in the United States, which represents more than 1
in 4, have a criminal record. Given
these statistics, it should come as no surprise that the United States has the
worlds largest prison population.
Though we represent only 5% of the worlds population, we have “almost a
quarter of the worlds prisoners.”
It is also important to remember in this
context that the consequences of conviction do not end when a prison sentence is
completed. There are hundreds of
collateral consequences that can flow from a misdemeanor or felony conviction,
regardless of whether a prison or jail sentence is ever served. Further, such collateral consequences can impact
not only the convicted but their family and community as well. The breadth and significance of these
collateral consequences cannot be understated, and I believe this is an
important issue that this Task Force should consider addressing at a future
hearing.

As evidenced by the work of this Task Force,
there is now a deep and bipartisan appreciation for the significance of
overcriminalization in our criminal justice system. Therefore, let us consider several solutions
that might be adopted by Congress to both reduce the negative impacts of past
overcriminalization and prevent a return to overcriminalization in the future. While this hearing is focused on solutions to
regulatory crime, it is important to note that the solutions I propose below
are applicable to all criminal offenses in the federal system and should be
considered potential solutions to the broader issue of overcriminalization, not
just regulatory overcriminalization.

Adopt a
Default Rule for Mens Rea

First, mens
rea is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system and conveys the idea
that individuals should be prosecuted where they have acted with a guilty
mind. As Justice Jackson wrote in Morissette v. United States in 1952, “The contention
that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no
provincial or transient notion. It is as
universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the
human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose
between good and evil.” Today, as a result of overcriminalization,
there are many federal offenses for which there is no mens rea or only weak mens
rea. Where adequate mens rea is lacking, innocent and
mistaken conduct can be criminalized under circumstances in which Congress never
intended a persons liberty to be put in jeopardy.

To correct this problem, Congress should
adopt a default mens rea rule. Such a rule would correct unintentional
omissions of a mens rea term in
existing and future legislation and ensure that those without a guilty mind are
protected from unwarranted prosecutions.
When adopting such a default rule, the Task Force should carefully
consider the appropriate level of mens
rea for incorporation as the default.
While many current federal criminal statutes utilize the lower-level mens rea standard of “knowingly,” this
term generally only requires proof that the defendant had “knowledge of the
facts that constitute the offense.”
Therefore, the utilization of the term “knowingly” will likely fail to
achieve the Task Forces goal of preventing application of regulator crimes and
other offenses to individuals unless they intentionally engaged in inherently
wrongful conduct or acted with knowledge that their conduct was unlawful. A stronger and more appropriate term for
utilization would likely be the term “willfully,” which would require some
proof that the individual was aware his or her “conduct was unlawful.”

Adopt a
Default Rule Applying Mens Rea to All
Material Elements of an Offense

In addition to adoption of a default mens rea rule as described above, consideration
must be given to codification of rules of construction that will assist in
protecting the constitutional rights of defendants. As one such example, the Task Force should consider adoption of a provision requiring
courts to apply any mens rea term
contained in or applicable to a statutory or regulatory offense to all material
elements of that offense.

There are several advantages to adopting such
a rule. First, this type of provision
will assist in clarifying ambiguities if a default mens rea rule is adopted.
Second, such a provision will assist in preventing costly litigation
regarding existing statutes that already contain a mens rea requirement but which are vague as to whether the mens rea applies to each of the material
elements of the offense. Third, adoption
of a default rule will assist in creating greater uniformity amongst the
various courts and their interpretations of statutes containing ambiguities as
to the mens rea element. Finally, such a provision will further the
goals of this Task Force by helping to ensure that individuals are not
prosecuted where they have not acted with a guilty mind.
. . .

It is important to note, of course, that
Congress could still limit the application of a particular mens rea term in a particular statutory or regulatory offense. In such cases, the specific legislation would
simply need to include a clear indication of Congressional intent to limit the
applicability of the mens rea term. The default rule as described above would
only apply in those cases where no such indication was present.

Adopt a
Codification of the Rule of Lenity

As
a second rule of construction, the Task Force should consider codifying the Rule
of Lenity, a doctrine with a long and respected history in American law. The Rule of Lenity states that “ambiguous
criminal laws [are] to be interpreted in favor of the defendants subjected to
them.” Recently, in the case of United States v. Santos, Justice Scalia remarked
regarding the Rule of Lenity:
This venerable
rule not only vindicates the fundamental principle that no citizen should be
held accountable for a violation of a statute whose commands are uncertain, or
subjected to punishment that is not clearly prescribed. It also places the weight of inertia upon the
party that can best induce Congress to speak more clearly and keeps courts from
making criminal law in Congresss stead.

Unfortunately,
the application of the Rule of Lenity by lower courts has not been
consistent. Therefore, the codification
of this important doctrine is necessary to ensure its uniform application
consistent with the doctrines that the government must sustain its burden of
proof and defendants are presumed to be innocent. Importantly, codification of the Rule of
Lenity alone is not sufficient to correct the problems emanating from
overcriminalization. Rather,
codification of the Rule of Lenity should be viewed only as an additional
safeguard in combination with the above proposed solutions.

Additional
Possible Solutions

In addition to the above three solutions to
the issue of overcriminalization and its impact on statutory and regulatory
offenses, I believe consideration should also be given to several other ideas. These include passage of a Congressional rule
requiring every law that adds or modifies criminal offenses or penalties be
subject to automatic referral to the relevant judiciary committee, enactment of
a law that would require the federal government to produce a public report that
assesses the justification, costs, and benefits of any new criminalization, and
enactment of a law that would require Congress to approve any new or modified
regulatory criminal offenses or penalties proposed by the Executive Branch.

Plea
Bargaining

In
closing, I would like to address one additional issue.

Today,
almost 97% of criminal cases in the federal system are resolved through a plea
of guilty. As the number, breadth, and
sentencing severity of federal criminal statutes increased over the last
century because of overcriminalization, prosecutors gained increased ability to
create overwhelming incentives for defendants to waive their constitutional
right to a trial by jury and plead guilty.
The power of the prosecution in this context has been made even greater
by the presence of vague and esoteric regulatory offenses that require little
or no mens rea. At the same time, the financial and emotional
costs to defendants and their families of proceeding to trial have grown into
often insurmountable obstacles.

Consider
the examples already described in testimony before this Task Force.

In
Mr. Lewiss testimony regarding allegations he committed a felony violation of
the Clean Water Act related to a blocked sewage line at work, he offered the
Task Force a clear glimpse at the options he believed he had after been accused
of a crime. He stated, “I wound up
pleading guilty to a federal misdemeanor because the prosecutors said that if I
pled guilty, they wouldnt oppose probation.
As a single dad, I was worried that if I went to prison there would be
nobody to raise my children or care for my mother.”

Ms.
Kinders testimony regarding allegations that she had committed a felony
violation of the Lacey Act related to the harvesting of paddlefish from the
wrong side of the Ohio river also included a discussion of plea bargaining. She stated, “We felt, and we still feel now,
that we did nothing wrong. But, on
January 17, 2012, we made the painful and humiliating decision to plead guilty
because we didnt think we had a choice.
We were facing a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison, a
$250,000 fine, or both, on each of four counts…
We couldnt suffer the emotional and financial trauma of a trial, and we
didnt want to risk losing our freedom as well as our property.” As a result, Ms. Kinder pleaded guilty to a
misdemeanor.

In
each of these cases, one is offered insights into the various issues that
prevent individuals from challenging criminal allegations today and exercising
their constitutional right to put the government to its burden of proof at
trial. These challenges include steep
sentencing differentials and penalties for proceeding to trial, along with
significant financial and familial considerations.

As
the examples offered by the witnesses before this committee demonstrate, we
must recognize that a symbiotic relationship exists between overcriminalization
and plea bargaining. Plea bargaining and
overcriminalization have perpetuated each other. Plea bargaining has shielded
overcriminalization from scrutiny. At
the same time, overcriminalization has provided the laws that allow prosecutors
such wide discretion in selecting charges and creating significant incentives
for defendants to plead guilty. This
relationship has lead us to our current state and created an environment in
which we have jeopardized the accuracy of our criminal justice system in favor
of speed and convenience.

And
this is not only occurring in regulatory cases.
It is occurring in all manner of criminal cases throughout the country.

Consider
for example, the nationally publicized case of Brian Banks. In 2002, Banks, who was sixteen years old at
the time, was a top college football prospect.
His world came crashing down, however, when he was wrongfully accused of
sexual assault and kidnapping by an acquaintance. After his arrest, Banks was offered a
choice. If he pleaded guilty, the
government would recommend a three year sentence. Should he proceed to trial, he could risk
receiving a sentence of 41 years to life.
Banks, who some reports indicate was given only 10 minute to decide his
fate, took the plea offer. After serving
five years in prison, Banks was contacted by the accuser who admitted that she
had lied about the incident. She
allegedly refused to inform authorities of the falsity of her original
allegations, however, because of a large financial settlement previously
awarded to her in the case. After
secretly taping the accusers admission that the assault had not occurred, Banks
was exonerated in 2012.

Consider also the case of Ada JoAnne
Taylor. In 1989, Taylor and five others were
accused of killing a sixty-eight-year-old woman in Beatrice, Nebraska. The options offered to Taylor were starkly
different. If she pleaded guilty and
cooperated with prosecutors, she would be rewarded with a sentence of ten to
forty years in prison. If, however, she
proceeded to trial and was convicted, she would likely spend the rest of her
life behind bars. The choice was
difficult, but the incentives to admit guilt were enticing. A sentence of ten to forty years in prison
meant she would return home one day and salvage at least a portion of her
life. The alternative, a lifetime behind
bars, was grim by comparison. After
contemplating the options, Taylor pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting
second-degree murder. In reality,
however, she was innocent. After serving nineteen years in prison, Taylor was
exonerated after DNA testing proved that neither she nor any of the other five
defendants in her case were involved in the murder.

Through
academic study, we now know that the actions of Brian Banks, Ada JoAnne Taylor
and many others are not anomalies. Factually
and morally innocent people facing tough circumstances, such as penalties for
proceeding to trial or a realization of the financial costs of challenging an
indictment, will falsely confess to something they have not done. As an example, in a recent article written by
Dr. Vanessa Edkins (Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Florida
Institute of Technology) and myself and published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, we discovered that more
than half of the innocent participants in our study were willing to falsely
admit guilt in return for a perceived benefit.

As
we now know the true power of plea bargaining from both actual criminal cases
and from academic research, we must begin to examine the impact that
overcriminalization has had on this most fundamental aspect of the American criminal
justice system. I hope, therefore, that
this Task Force and the Committee on the Judiciary will next turn its attention
to modern day plea bargaining, one of the many outgrowths of the
overcriminalization phenomenon.

Along
with plea bargaining, there are many other issues currently being debated in
the legal academy and legal profession that are appropriate for this Task
Forces review. Those might include
issues related to collateral consequences of conviction, mandatory minimum
sentences, forfeiture provisions, and conspiracy laws. While those are not the topics of todays
proceedings, I think they are topics ripe for investigation and analysis at
future hearings considering overcriminalization and the state of the American
criminal justice system.
Thank
you for the opportunity to testify today.
I welcome any questions the Task Force might have regarding my remarks."



The work of this bipartisan Task Force and theoverwhelming interest in finding a solution to the issue of overcriminalization give me great hope that meaningful reforms are on the horizon.

A copyof my full written testimony may be found here, along with a video link to the hearing.

Mike Butler No retreat on race-based funding

Mike Butler No retreat on race-based funding




Just eight years ago, the headline announced “Government in retreat over race-based funding”(1). The nation was heading for a general election. National Party leader Don Brash had delivered his nationhood speech on the drift towards racial separatism the preceding year that had sparked a surge in his partys support -- the biggest gain by a political party in a single poll in Colmar Brunton's polling history.


The “retreat over race-based funding” was part of the Labour governments strategy to recoup the ground lost to National in the February poll. The interesting aspect of the Herald report was that no one seemed to know a total cost of race-based funding.
The “retreat” report noted that race-based funding cuts or changes reported in 2005 involved 37 programmes. Those cut included: $57-million race component for cheap doctors' visits; $9-million to tertiary providers to enrol Maori and Pacific students; ethnically targeted public service scholarships; and Pacific Island Affairs secondary school scholarships.

An attempt to quantify this sort of funding in research for the book Twisting the Treaty; A tribal grab for wealth and power last year proved difficult to compile from Budget appropriations because apart from obvious amounts such as for treaty settlements, the operation of the Waitangi Tribunal, the Office of Treaty Settlements, and Te Puni Kokiri, no budgeted spending was clearly identified as racial.


Therefore I sent in requests under the Official Information Act to the Ministers of Health, Education, Social Development, Housing, and Maori Affairs asking for the full list of Maori service providers (tribal, urban, and other authority) contracted by each respective ministry in the 2012-13 financial year, and full details of funding that those providers had received in that year.


Tariana Turia as Associate Health Minister replied with a note to define a Maori health provider as “owned and governed by Maori and is providing health and disability services primarily but not exclusively for Maori” and listed 177 such providers in the 2012-13 year which received funding that totalled $95.23-million in that year.


But direct fund of the type Turia had listed is not the only government money that these providers receive and she did not provide details of how much government agencies paid Maori health providers for the various contracts for services through that year.


As an example of the annual revenue of these providers, the Hastings-based Taiwhenua O Heretaunga recorded a revenue of $11.05-million in the previous year (no current financial report could be found) and in 2012-13 received funding of $366,505. The balance presumable derived from contracts with government departments.


In this race-based-funding-meets-crony-capitalism arrangement, the amount of government money handled by Maori social service providers most likely far exceeds the stated funding. The payment for contracts delivered by Te Taiwhenua could be over $10-million in a single year.


Supposing 177 such providers had government contracts receiving a similar level of reimbursement from government departments, the total for all such contracts in a single year would be $1.7-billion.


The response from the Education Ministry revealed that the 72 registered Maori tertiary training providers received a total of $41.6-million, in 2012-13, the Maori tertiary education institution with multiple campuses and courses known as Te Wananga o Aotearoa received $170-million, Maori student achievement received $8.5-million, and Te Reo Maori received $5.7-million.


A couple of phone conversations with officials within the ministry failed to identify the amount that went to kura kaupapa (year1-13) Maori language medium schools, and figures from 2011-12 revealed that kohanga reo language nest pre-schools received $67.5-million with $2.64-million for administration.


Social Development deputy chief executive corporate and governance David Shanks replied that his ministry did not record external providers based on ethnic grouping and refused my request but did send a list of 13 providers that received a total of $5.13-million.


Housing Minister Nick Smith replied that five Maori organisations received a total of $6.36-million from the Social Housing Fund in the 2012-13 year.


Te Puni Kokiri provided information from the Maori Potential Fund for the 2012-13 year to social service providers which totalled $13.25-million. However, the total budget for TPK that year was $209.5-million that included $49-million for Whanau Ora and $75-million for Te Reo.


Vote Treaty Negotiations consumed $519.97. The Waitangi Tribunal took $10.7-million out of the Courts budget. Waikato River co-governance cost $16-million. Environmental accords and other co-management cost a further $6-million.


The grand total of race-based funding documented from these requests under the Official Information Act is $1.16421-billion. Add a further $1.7-billion in possible health contracts throughout New Zealand with Maori social service providers.


Core Crown expenditure for 2012-13 was $73.7-billion so the race-based funding revealed in the OIA requests represents around one 60th of that amount.


The amount of race-based funding that was carefully released in response to my questions is half a billion away from the $1.7-billion that went into bailing out South Canterbury Finance three years ago. But that bailout was a one-off and race-based funding is distributed year after year.


Sources

1. “Government in retreat over race-based funding”, NZ Herald, Friday June 24, 2005. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1objectid=10332435

INTERVIEW WITH COREY ATHOS (VOCALIST) OF FLESH CONSUMED

INTERVIEW WITH COREY ATHOS (VOCALIST) OF FLESH CONSUMED





Here f***in sick
brutal death metal from California-USA....the band is called FLESH CONSUMED
formed in 2003. With first members : Corey Athos : Guitars, Vocals, Curtis
Budetti : Bass, Alex Cortez : Drums and Jeff Russel : Guitars. They have released
some f***in sick Ep, Demo and Full Length Albums....such as : Inhuman Butchery
EP 2006, Demo 2007, ....Mutilated, Eviscerate, Decapitate Full Length 2008, New
Order of Intelligence EP 2009, Ecliptic Dimensions of Suffering Full Length
2010. And this time, theyre still preparing new f***in tracks for their new
album Hymn for the Leeches also with f***in sick new members. I bet the new
album will gonna be killer than before.....because the new members is really
f***in sick musician. Well....this time i have chance to do an interview with
Corey Athos as founder of Flesh Consumed, lets read it now ....John
Yoedi : Hi Corey, How are you there ? It has been long time.
We havent talked since i have ordered Flesh Consumed
t-shirt hahaha and thanks for giving me a chance and agreeing to this interview. Anyway, are there new news from your band
Flesh Consumed at the moment ? Corey
Athos : Hey John, whats up brother? Thank you so much for the interview. Flesh Consumed has a lot of stuff going on
right now. We are currently writing for
the new album “Hymn for the Leeches” and celebrating our 10-year anniversary.JY
: Would you like to introduce the new
line up from Flesh Consumed?
I see theyre all sickness musicians.CA
: We have Eric Cohen (ex-Arkaik), Brent Williams
(Atrocious Abnormality) on the kit, Shaune Kelley (Dim Mak, Ripping Corpse,
ex-Hate Eternal) on guitar, and myself doing vocals. This lineup is some of the most talented
musicians and I am honored to work with them.JY
: You formed the band in 2003 and there were many problem with your band especially
problems
with guitars, bass and drums…. And every album the members changed. Well, only you
as original member until now since Ep 2006 Inhuman Butchery. If you dont
mind, would you like to tell us what was
happened? And how confident are you feeling that this new lineup is the right
one?CA
: There have been many, many lineup changes with myself
being the only original member. Either
I have had problems with them or vice versa.
I am a very hard worker and when people dont reciprocate, I have had
the tendency to engage in conflict. Some
people cant take it, some people can.
Its hard running a band without stepping on peoples toes. Regardless I have slowly gained more patience
over the years and this new lineup are hardworking musicians and, most of all,
good friends.JY
: Well, I know
it must be very frustrating trying to
get an album together with a new team so often, intentional or not! For
instance, you have, I believe, had a
different drummer, bassist and
guitarist on every album. How do you manage to adapt to things and get the job
done?CA
: Im a madman…haha. I just do what I have to do. Its either that or the band breaks up. Not even the apocalypse can keep Flesh Consumed
down.


JY
: All albums
from Flesh Consumed have been released
by Sevared Records and Uniqueleader, as I know, they are really great labels for brutal death metal bands in the
world. And also they have an excellent distribution system. How far are you
into the contract your signed? And what kind of label would you consider
signing with ?CA
: Ive wanted to be on Unique Leader since 2001 and that
finally came to fruition. Barrett at
Sevared gave us a chance and got the band in the circuit and I am forever in
debt to him for the work he did for Flesh Consumed. We are currently signed to Unique Leader for
another album. Ive always liked Relapse
so I could foresee us going with them but I also like Unique Leader so we will
just have to see how this album goes.JY
: And who will be releasing for the new album Hymn For The Leeches? Sevared
Records or Uniquleader Records?CA
: Unique Leader, but we do have a Flesh Consumed
Collection coming out on Sevared. It is a collection of our EPs and some bonus
live tracks.JY
: How far do you have to prepare new songs for a new album then? How many songs
will be available for the new album? And are there a host of special guest on
the new album Hymn For The Leeches?CA
: It usually takes me about six months to prepare for a
new album, from inception to completion. There will probably be nine tracks
plus interludes. We will have Steve Tucker (ex-Morbid Angel) and of course,
Matti Way (Pathology, Abominable Putridity, Hydrocephalic, ex-Disgorge). We are also looking
for a third spot.JY : What kinds of things
inspire you musically and lyrically?
Would you say that there are any particular themes that you would like to talk about in your songs, and that
its important to have some sort of messasge to put forward in your music?CA
: This new album is about absolute power! Reining supreme over these sycophants. People
have leeched off me in the past so this is a song to them, “Hymn for the
Leeches”. Other themes in the past have
been psychosis, bloodshed, multiple dimensional reality, putrefaction, suicide,
sadistic torture, robots, the apocalypse, WWIII and WWIV, etc.JY : Did all the band
members throw ideas into Flesh Consumed music or did you have one uniform
concept from which you built the picture up gradually ?CA
: Some were fascinated by it. Some
didnt care too much about the lyrical concepts, just the music, which I can
respect either way.JY : Mostly brutal death
metal bands writing lyrical themes about gore, anti-religion, mutilation, torture, rape and
etc. Did you write the lyrical themes, as I said before, and whos responsible for writing the lyrics?CA
: I have written about all that excluding religion and rape. Those dont interest me. Most the straight-forward
gore stuff came at the beginning of my career.
Im responsible for all the lyrics. JY
: You have a good deal with Toshiro Egawa for artwork for the new album. As we
know, he is really great artist. How did the deal come about?CA
: Ive wanted to work with Toshihiro, for many
years. I heard he stopped doing band art
at one point. Anyway, I saw him on Facebook
and asked him. He said he was into our
stuff so we worked out a deal. I made a
concept in detail and emailed it to him.
Now hes working on it. Im
amazed that he was willing to work with us. Real excited.JY : And how important do
you think the artwork is ? Should there be a certain synergy between the
artwork and the music?CA
: Yes, the artwork is extremely important.
It is the first thing you see when sifting through CDs at your local
record store. In my opinion the art and
music should be intertwined.JY : I want to ask you
about you personally now. When did
you start or choose to play death metal? Which bands, back in the
day, inspired you to start
playing death metal?CA
: Morbid Angel, Grave, Cannibal Corpse, The Beatles.
JY : You arent only
playing in Flesh Consumed but if i am not wrong...you are also playing for some
bands like Hydrocephalic, Funeral Rust, Umbriel and Tortourus ?

CA : Hydrocephalic is an amazing band. I got seven of the sickest vocalists together
to do this one project. Its stressful
but the payoff shall be grand. Torturous
is a real fun project with my friend Junior from Peru and Bryan from Cerebral
Rot. Funeral Rust is on hold but I take a lot of influence from Immolation on
that one. Umbriel was just a project
back in the day. I am also working for
Hepi and Decomposed. There are a few
other bands, too, but my main band is always Flesh Consumed. Period.JY : Another thing i
wondered about with all your
years of experience within the music business are, what aspects of it you
particularly liked and disliked ?
CA
: I like mostly everything. Im not
the most patience human being on earth so sometimes that can get me in
trouble. I dont like getting a van
together for tour, thats about it.
JY
: Just as a side question, what do you think about
Busuk Webzine?
CA
: It fucking slays!!!
JY
: I know that the overall feedback from both fans and metal media has been
overwhelming. Do you really care what potential fans and musical critics like
me even think of your work ?
CA
: I just try to be true to myself, my ears, and my soul.
I dont write for anyone else but to tame the wicked beast who dwells
within. If its genuine, the fans will
feel that. If not, everyone is entitled
to their own opinion and I respect that.

JY
: Everyone knows USA is a great place to find metal bands and we can see lots
of the sickest
bands
from there. Are you involved with a scene in your local area? Tell us a bit
about this.
CA
: Yes, we were very involved in the local scene, going
to shows, playing shows. Recently I have
moved into the mountains and all the musicians live elsewhere, so its a little
harder to go to shows but I will always support underground death metal.
JY : Thats me all out of
questions. Thanks for your time and for answering this interview. Best of luck
for your band. Anything you wish to add to conclude this interview?
CA
: Thanks for the interview John. Youre awesome! Most of all,
thanks to everyone who has supported us and all our fans.(Interviewed by : John
Yoedi, November 29,2013)

Feds consider new gun regs (Networking for Gun Control)

Feds consider new gun regs (Networking for Gun Control)


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mso-bidi-language:#0400;}Feds consider new gun regsNovember 20, 2013, 12:18 pmBy Julian Hattemhttp://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/pending-regs/190919-feds-eying-rules-for-lost-stolen-guns
The Obama administration is working on new gun control regulations that
would target stolen and missing weapons.Police have a hard time tracking
firearms that disappear from gun shops, which “just feeds the sort of already
large and existing secondary market on guns,” said Sam Hoover, a staff attorney
with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.It is unclear precisely what the
draft regulations, drawn up by the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and under review at the
White Houses regulations office, would do.The ATF would not comment on the
draft rule, since it has not yet been released to the public, but a description
provided by the White House asserts that it would target cases where guns go
missing “in transit.”Currently, gun dealers with a
federal license are required to tell federal agents after they discover a
firearm has gone missing, but they arent required to do routine checks.“They can discover a gun missing
today and have no idea when it went missing, which really makes that
information useless to law enforcement,” said Chelsea Parsons, associate
director of crime and firearms policy at the Center for American Progress.The White House office has 90 days
to review the proposed rule before releasing it to the public and allowing them
to comment.The draft rule was sent to the
White House five months after the ATF completed a report that found that more
than 190,000 firearms were estimated to have been lost or stolen last year. The
report was one of 23 executive actions President Obama announced in January to
reduce gun violence in the wake of
last years shooting in Newtown,
Conn.That report helped to shine light
on an often unseen corner of the gun market, supporters of stricter gun laws
say.“I think that in the area of guns
and gun violence and gun commerce, we have had a complete lack of data and a
lack of information,” said Parsons.She wants the ATF to be able to
take stronger action to monitor and track guns that go missing.Since 2004, an appropriations
rider has prevented the ATF from requiring gun dealers to do periodic checks.
Gun rights advocates say that the measure protects innocent victims of crimes
from punishment by the government.Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF)Stephen McHale was
the chief counsel for the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and is a partner at Patton Boggs LLP.Note: Karen Marangi was
a lobbyist at Patton Boggs LLP, and
is a principal at the Raben Group.Melody
C. Barnes was a principal at the Raben
Group, the domestic policy council, director for the Barack Obama administration, the EVP for the Center for American Progress, and is Barack Obamas golf partner.Raben
Group is the lobby firm for the NAACP
Legal Defense Educational Fund, Mayors
Against Illegal Guns, and was the lobby firm for the Morehouse School of Medicine.Eric H. Holder Jr.
was an intern at the NAACP Legal Defense
Educational Fund, a board member for the American Constitution Society, is a trustee at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and the attorney
general at the U.S. Department of
Justice for the Barack Obama
administration.Robert
Raben was a director at the American
Constitution Society, an assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice, is the president of the Raben Group, and a director at the Alliance for Justice.Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Center for American Progress, the American Constitution Society, and the Alliance for Justice.George
Soros was a supporter for the Center
for American Progress, a contributor for the American Bridge 21st Century, a benefactor for the Harlem Children's Zone, is the founder
chairman for the Open Society
Foundations, and the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Center for American Progress, the NAACP Legal Defense Educational Fund, the Harlem Children's Zone, the Robin Hood Foundation, and Refugees International.Kathleen
Kennedy Townsend is the chair for the
American Bridge 21st Century, and a trustee at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Michael R.
Bloomberg was a benefactor for the Harlem
Children's Zone, a donor for the Robin
Hood Foundation, is the New York (NY) mayor, and a co-chair for Mayors Against Illegal Guns.NRA-ILA (Mayors Against Illegal Guns)http://nraila.org/search.aspx?s=Mayors%20Against%20Illegal%20Guns
The Truth About "Mayors
Against Illegal Guns"Frank
G. Wisner is a director emeritus at Refugees
International, and the foreign affairs adviser at Patton Boggs LLP.Stephen McHale is
a partner at Patton Boggs LLP, and was
the chief counsel for the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Citizen Cloud Free NSA Backup For All Your Data

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