August 31, 2009

The Swine Flu Vaccine

Who Is Going to Make a Killing from Swine Flu?

Mark S. Waston, Watson's Web
August 28, 2009

So who is going to make a killing from Swine Flu? GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company who resides in the nation that has been pushing hard for forcing vaccines on people.

GSK is an English company, and it looks to me that this scare is one way the Brits hope to fill up the coffers of one of its larger corporations.

So who owns GSK? Its major institutional investors include a major stock fund (Dodge and Cox), the Royal Bank of Canada, State Street Global Advisors, Wachovia, Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, to name a few. More here.

Now perhaps you can understand why this scare looks more and more like a stealth bailout and less and less like a legitimate health crisis, to those old eyes.

Who else is GSK tied into? How about the Sanger Chromosome 22 Institute. What do they do? They were the ones who did the work on the Human Genome. They know all the the soft points in a humans genetic makeup. You know who Sanger was, don't you?


Now you know.

If you are going to do a search to find the link between Sanger Chromosome 22 and GSK, you won't find anything. You will have to do one on the Wellcome Trust; or just go to Wikipedia and what you need to know is in the box in the upper right hand corner. There the link is perfectly clear, as GSK was founded by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham.

Who is the Wellcome Trust? The ones who own the Sanger Institute.

Perhaps now some of this artificial panic is more understandable.

Dead Microbiologists

By Mark S. Watson, Watson's Web
August 25, 2009

Who was killing all of these scientists and why? I do not know all the answers but I will leave you with some interesting thoughts that will change how many of you view the current Swine Flu crisis.

First, it is impossible to discuss this without talking about the development of bio-weapons. Most of your major powers have a biowarfare capability. Russia, China, U.S., UK, France, South Africa - they all have them, though they may vehemently deny it, as they are signatories to treaties that ban such weapons. But they have them. America has them. Do a word search on Ft. Detrick and bioweapons and you will get the encyclopedia. You can start with the much maligned Wikipedia.

So don't let anyone out there tell you these things don't happen in America. When I was young, I too believed in Santa Clause and the Sugar Plum fairy.

Then I grew up.

There are two viable explanations for the deaths of all of these men.
First is that they knew something and had to be gotten rid of (by their employer or own governments) or had outlived their usefulness.

The second explanation I think is more tenable. That is that certain nations with a geopolitical rivalry with the West wanted to ensure that the West's biowarfare capability remained inferior to their own, and thus began a program of targeted assassinations of brilliant minds. Some, whose knowledge and expertise were needed, were kidnapped and sequestered in secret laboratories; they will work there until they die.
What I am going to share with you now is some heavily redacted information that only a few are aware of but will help some of my wiser readers not to get swept up in the usual anti-government furor based on just a little solid, basic information but an overdose of imagination.

First, Swine Flu was not originated in the U.S. or any of its corporations. The source did not originate here. This is NOT a secret government disease used for ulterior motives. Yes it is was genetically manufactured and is artificial, but not made in the U.S.

For those of you who do not know, we are not the leaders in the development of these kinds of weapons - others are light years ahead of us. This does NOT mean that our government (rather, those in control of our government) won't use the crisis (and vaccines) for those same purposes. It only means that the cause (of Swine Flu itself) did not originate here.
I know that this is not what a 1001 conspiracy sites, blogs, and news groups are saying; and many of you have grown to trust them over the years. Many are hard working, dedicated people who are trying to get the truth out. But at times, their suspicion of the government (well deserved) and imagination gets the better of them. They do not have those critical data points that puts the picture together for them, and thus have to rely on that imagination. The sad part is that, usually, their imaginations are not far off the mark.
I cannot tell you which nations are involved. But here is what I will do. I will draw you a mental map to help you.
Nation X is the nation responsible for the delivery of the virus to Mexico, which was (hoped) to have been spread to the U.S.

This is a very dangerous virus; and while we have been lucky do far, it still has the potential to kill a lot of people.

So far the plan has not worked and has had a deliterious effect on nations that otherwise were not on Nation X's 'target list.' In other words, so far this has been a major blunder.
When tracking down this information, some extremely adept individuals had to travel to many lands to get this story and, sadly, a couple of people died soon after talking with these people. They came up with this.

Nation X has a long term plan to undermine America. The plan is not quite in its final stages, but is in its later stages. Nation X began kidnapping scientists years ago, and not all of them from the West.

The signatures of this virus are not typical of Nation X. They are very much more in keeping with some work done in Nation Y. In fact they are almost a carbon copy of work done by two men have been missing for years from Nation Y.

Nation X has these scientists working for them now under duress. So when people started to take the virus apart, it looked like it came from Nation Y. It did not; it came from Nation X.
How do I know this? Let us just say that a former cabinet level official confirmed some of these facts when he had a sample of the virus run through an electron microscope at one of America's most prestigious medical facilities. Another well-placed person who knows how to get hard-to-get information, got the rest. The evidence is pretty damning and almost incontravertable.

Now for the thousand dollar question. Does the President know this? The short answer is no, not officially anyway. He may have his own sources of information, but if he is relying on the intelligence community, the answer is no, he does not know.

This information was discussed in the National Security Council, but the decision was made not to pass it on. Why? Well, without giving away who Nation X is, I can say that nobody wants to offend Nation X; and if somebody did pass this along, a chain of events would ensue that would almost certainly lead to disaster, both personally for those that passed it on and for our nation as a whole.

Besides, Nation X has subverted a good portion of Obama's administration, though he is probably only vaguely aware of just who its agents are and may not be psychologically prepared for this information if someone told him. One look at his advisors tells me this is so.

So in short, I am telling you this so that you do not get swept up in some crazy anti-government furor. I know I have posted an enormous amount of information on these vaccines: it is because it is here that I see a threat as great as the virus itself... a real threat and possibility for serious abuse. The past has shown us that this can and does happen, even in America. This abuse need not be run or even be known by our government. Remember, these vaccines are made by contractors and corporations.

What kind of controls are in place to ensure that certain communities don't have 'special additives' in their doses? I do not know. I wish I did, but I don't.
What will happen to the people who find out 10 years after that their (now) 20-year old daughter is sterile, and that it affects kids who grew up and were inoculated in Watts, Compton or Harlem at staggering levels far exceeding the national average and thus reducing fertility rates? Nothing.
For all intents and purposes, the companies are immune. Thankfully Obama has not given them 100% immunity. They can be sued but only after the HHS secretary gives permission. Then and only them can the people sue. Given the fact that in 2012 the next President is likely to be a Republican, I doubt that Big Pharma would allow such a President to appoint a secretary of HHS that would even consider such a move. Thus the issue is really a moot point. There will be no lawsuits no matter what they put in those vaccines.

It is for these reasons that I caution you on these vaccines. I am most suspicious of the makers and the artificial hysteria that has been generated by this virus. I am even more suspicious of the deep links some of these companies have to the Nazis and in the manufacture of the poisons used in their death camps. I am suspicious of the fact that some of those who sat on the boards of those companies today guide UN health policy.

At the end of World War II, the Nuremberg-tribunal judged Nazis who had committed horrendous crimes against humanity and sentenced them to prison terms. One of those found guilty was the president of the megalithic corporation I.G. Farben, Hermann Schmitz. His company was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, and had extraordinary political and economic power and influence with the Hitlerian Nazi state. Farben produced the gas used in the Nazi gas chambers and the steel for the railroads built to transport people to their deaths.

While serving his prison term, Schmitz looked for an alternative to brute force for controlling people and realized that people could be controlled through their food supply. When he got out of prison, he went to his friends at the United Nations (UN) and laid out a plan to take over the control of food worldwide. A trade commission called Codex Alimentarius (Latin for food code) was re-created under the guise of it being a consumer protection commission. But Codex was never in the business of protecting people. It has always been about money and profits at the expense of people.

In 1962, the timetable was set for Codex to be fully implemented on a global level by December 31, 2009. Under Codex, committees were established to create guidelines on such topics as fish and fisheries, fats and oils, fruits and vegetables, ground nuts, nutrition, food for specialized uses, and vitamins and minerals. There were 27 committees in all, creating a huge bureaucracy. Under Codex there are over 4,000 guidelines and regulations on everything that can be put into your mouth with the exception of pharmaceuticals, which are not regulated by Codex. - Natural News
Say what you will, today's global health policy came directly from the Third Reich.

So when I see these big companies, many of them direct descendants of IG Farben, making vaccines that will be used around the world... and in many places it will be compulsory... I simply cannot understate my concern.

Well, enough on that for now.

Vaccines: By Dr. Len Horowitz
Dr. Horowitz is a Harvard educated medical professional and is no lightweight. This is a long (81 minute) audio file I have had on this site for a few years. Listen to this and you will understand why I am no fan of vaccines. Be aware, this is about 38 megs large and you will never look at your vaccine the same way again after hearing this ALL. - Mark S. Watson
WHO Admits to Releasing Pandemic Virus into Population via ‘Mock-Up’ Vaccines
Swine Flu: Biggest Scam of 2009 Begins
Tamiflu Developer: Swine Flu Could Have Come From Bio-Experiment Lab
Future News: Massachusetts makes disobedience vaccine mandatory
Taking aim at the growing spread of Obedience Defiance Disorder, Massachusetts health authorities have joined with the state legislature to make O.D.D. vaccine mandatory across the state.
Swine Flu Virus Not So New, Study Finds
The H1N1 swine flu virus may have been new to humanity in many ways but in one key feature its closest relative was the 1918 pandemic virus.

August 24, 2009

Revolution in America

Revolution Is Coming

By Mark S. Watson, Watson's Web
August 10, 2009

A revolution is coming to America... Yes, it will come, but I can tell you now that it will all end badly.

Know this, I am not in any way advocating it. I refuse to be pulled into acts that could mean violence, no matter how noble they may seem at first. What I am doing here is telling you what is going to happen, not what I want to have happen. (Like a doctor, I may not want to tell a patient that they will die in a month from pancreatic cancer, but that is what all my diagnostic skills are telling me - the patient is going to die, very soon.) Every economic indicator is flashing red, except the ones cooked up by the government.

America's economy is terminal. Nothing now can be done to stop it from one day soon collapsing on us all. There will be many causes of this revolution, but America's looming bankruptcy will be a major part of it. Granted, steps have been taken to calm and deal with future troublemakers, but the kind of prolonged, month-in and month-out, year-in and year-out economic trouble coming will lead to very serious unrest that will not be able to be dealt with effectively for a long period of time.

How bad can it get? Well, think of how many people rely on the government for their economic livelihood. Government employees and retirees (of which there are millions), Social Security recipients (of which there are millions), contractors in all manner of services (of which millions depend on for wages), military personnel (of which there are millions), and retirees (of which there are millions).

Let me say this now, as well - the government cannot keep printing the money indefinitely to pay for all of these things. Soon, something is going to give. Obama is going to try and raise taxes, sooner or later. He is not going to have a choice. This is going to cause some major trouble across America.

Millions are already at their financial wits end, and you can forget about all the talk of recovery. People are still losing their homes at near record pace, and those who have lost jobs cannot find another. We are in a major catch 22. There are no more magic rabbits in the government's hat.

Interestingly, you can go back to the French revolution and find two major events that were the sparks which led to revolution.
The Revolution: the Causes

France was stricken by financial problems for over a century. The wars of Louis XIV caused debts which grew when wars were fought in the 18th century. These debts were not exceptional, as Great Britain had the same debts. Why did these debts cause a bankruptcy in France but not in Great Britain? The cause laid in the tax system.

In Britain everyone, clergy, nobles and citizens, paid taxes. In France, where society was dominated by status, clergy and nobility were exempted from taxation. Because of this system, government couldn't levy enough taxes to fill up the deficit. Citizens were upset because they were the thriving spirit of the nation. The nobles did nothing, but were exempted. Peasants who had pieces of land just enough to feed themselves had the heaviest tax weight of all.

The second problem was food scarcity. Different crop failures in the 1780s caused these shortages, which of course led to high prices for bread.

The peasants were double stricken by the economical and agricultural problems.

Under the reign of Louis XV and Louis XVI different ministers tried to tax the nobles. This measures encountered much resistance from the parliaments (law courts), which were dominated by the nobility. When in 1788 all attempts failed, the King decided to summon the Estates-General, the first since 1614, which would met in May 1789. The King tried to make the Estates meet in a modern way, but the parliaments decided that the Estates-General would meet in the same way as it met in 1614: in different chambers for every class. But society had changed: the bourgoisie had grown in the last 200 years and were the persons who had the money. Now they had the chance to seize the power they wanted to have.
In place of 'nobles' put 'elite,' Wall Street and corporations. Naturally the parallels are not exact, but they are close enough for a serious person to sit up and take notice.

America has been drawn into major wars that have emptied its treasury. To top it all off, there is a group of bankers who have literally robbed the treasury of several trillion dollars; and no one knows where the money went, and the law courts are too weak and under the control of the nobles to compel an accounting.

Right now a few are waking up to what is happening. It will not turn into a mass movement of anger until people are hungry and homeless and cannot find heat in winter (this is coming). Unless our government changes its economic and spiritual course 180 degrees, these things in one form or another are an inevitability. There is no way to stop this train wreck from happening, nor the enormous and almost certainly violent social fallout that will ensue when it does happen.

You see, the thefts have already happened... I know many of you think this crisis is over and are listening to Bernanke. Well, this is the same guy who told us back in 2007 that there would be no recession! Why would you believe anything that guy says? He is the one not telling us where all the money went and who is fighting that revelation in the courts!

The reality is this: what we have had up till now was just a 'snack,' an appetizer, if you will. The main course of economic horror has just been prepared and is heading for the dinner table. Everyone has to sit down at the table for this meal; for drink, we shall have a cup of trembling. Want a second helping of homelessnes? A double portion of want? Two scoops of hunger? Don't worry, there will be plenty to go around. And this is when things will get ugly and new calls for major changes will be in the works.

I have long maintained that slavery (or some kind of serfdom) will return to America (they may advertise it as digital workplace enhancements). They will know where you are and what you are doing at all times. I see this happening to those who owe lots of money too; I do not think they will get a free ride as before.

I think the entire structure of American society could change in horrible ways that no one will really contemplate. Why?

Beyond the economic crisis that will soon run its course, we have no engine to drive our economy in the future. This is the real key. We cannot compete with slave labor in Asia, without having slave labor here. Free Trade are the holy words leaders of both parties are preaching. Obama keeps pushing science, but the kinds of people he has around him have histories of eugenics, and the whole tone of his administration appears to want to move American in that direction.

I know many will not agree. Your agreement is not needed. Do a little research yourself. We have a Black President putting people in charge of 'science' who have advocated tools historically used against blacks for the express purpose of reducing the black population. People don't want to internalize the fact that they may have been royally duped by this guy, Black Americans in particular. They are still sailing down the river of denial.

Some will say I am too pessimistic. Perhaps. The difference between me and the multitudes of people who never saw this crisis to begin with is this: they have put their faith in a future miracle, or in the magic talisman of the flag, or the mystical incantation of the word 'America' - say that word and debts and troubles just magically disappear, in their deceived minds.

I submit to you that America has become a form of religion for far too many people. It is an idol in the hearts of the people, especially church people; they are, for the most part, lost in space.

The real tragedy to me is that America started off on the right foot: we had devout men and women who built this nation into her present greatness. Yet now the spirit of Sodom and Gommorrah (and vile and twised men now run her once sacred institutions) and the populace are in revolt against the God who made us so very great. We will be punished for it in ways that not one American out of a thousand is aware of.
And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. (Leviticus 26:30-33)

Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. And I will lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars. In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know that I am the LORD. (Ezekial 6:3-7)
These are hard words, but words designed specifically for the House of Israel long ago. However, the principles of God have not changed.

When our leaders prayed openly to God and allowed for a society based clearly on the principles of God's Word, He honored those prayers and efforts with all the blessings that come with that obedience - there has NEVER been a nation as rich, free and powerful as ours. Now that we are in utter rebellion, we must now deal with all of the horrors of that rebellion.

This ultimately is not about our economy, but it is about our spiritual condition. I have heard it said half jokingly that if God does not judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, I can assure you that God is not going to apologize to neither Sodom nor Gomorrah. That will never happen.

What actually got the God of all things moving against Sodom were two things:
  • First, it was the fact that he could not find ten righteous souls in the 'twin cities of sin.'

  • Second, the Sodomites went out to attack God's people and wanted to gang rape them, them and the very messengers of God.
We saw the first signs of this behavior recently when churches were recently attacked by angry mobs of homosexuals. We are on the fast track to repeating the crimes of Sodom.

Bretheren, keep in mind what Christ said about this:
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. (Mark 6:11)
Today, Americans are not hearing the Gospel message, and even the churches are so far from God that most spirit-filled Christians avoid the vast majority of them. They are, for the most part, bound in marriage to the State in the form of their tax-free status. They are not betrothed to Christ; they are married to the beast!

So while I do see a revolution coming, whatever comes in after it will be worse than what we have now, and will only be a tool that God uses against this wicked and perverse generation.

Even so, come Lord Jesus!!

August 22, 2009

Martial Law in America

Rep. Paul Broun: Obama's 'Socialist Elite' Planning to Declare Martial Law

Cutting Edge Ministries
August 13, 2009

Our leaders have begun the necessary conditioning to prepare the American people for Martial Law!

According to Oracle Broadcasting:
The Athens Banner-Herald reports today that Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) told constituents yesterday that he thinks Democratic leaders are planning to declare martial law:

He also spoke of a “socialistic elite” – Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.
“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”
The Banner-Herald also notes that Broun told town hall attendees that they should tell friends and relatives in surrounding states to lobby conservative Blue Dog Democrats to fight progressive health care legislation, who are also the targets of the insurance industry’s campaign to make themselves the primary benificiaries of any health care legislation.
Martial Law IS planned and can be implemented just as this Republican Representative said it could: to "combat' either a pandemic disease or a natural disaster. However, we understand that the implementation of nationwide Martial Law will not occur until the planned World War III starts, that global war designed to bring Antichrist to the world scene.

Prior to this nationwide implementation, Martial Law may be declared in individual states and/or localities. But, the implementation of nationwide Martial Law will wait until World War III begins.

However, in this preparatory period prior to the appearance of Antichrist, it is necessary to begin conditioning the average citizen to the "need" for imposing Martial Law. What better script to write than having a Republican representative break the news, in "opposition" to President Obama. This ploy brings up a long-term, standard Cutting Edge understanding, which needs to be reiterated.
There is absolutely zero difference between Republican and Democrat Parties, as leaders on both sides of the political aisle are equally committed to the New World Order. When Republicans and Democrats publicly argue and oppose each other, that opposition is designed to make you think there is a difference in the political parties and to encourage you to feel as though you are a part of a political process.

Additionally, the Illuminati believes in the principle of the Dialectic Struggle, which holds that the best way to facilitate change is to provoke a battle between two parties - Thesis and Antithesis. When Thesis (Republicans) battle Antithesis (Democrats) and neither of them destroys the other, the outcome will be neither Thesis nor Antithesis, but a hybrid system, known as Synthesis (New World Order).

On the American scene, the "battle" between Republican and Democrat and/or Conservative/Liberal is the perfect outworking of this Dialectic Struggle.
Now you know the truth!

Obamacare a 'Rotten Fish,' Says Broun at Town Hall

Athens Banner-Herald
August 12, 2009

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, walked into a North Georgia Technical College auditorium Tuesday evening to a standing ovation, holding three thick white binders.
"Folks, this is Obamacare," he said, holding the binders over his head.

"Let me start this by telling you what I think of this bill and Obamacare," he said, and slammed the binders on the ground.
With that, Broun set the tone for a town hall meeting on health care reform. The Democrats' proposal is too expensive and will threaten millions of Georgians' jobs and lives, he said.
"This is a stinking, rotten fish, and they don't want you to smell it, and they want to shove it down your throat and make you eat it before you smell how rotten and stinky it is," he said.
At another point, Broun, who last year made national news by comparing Obama to Hitler, called Cuba's former dictator Fidel Castro and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Obama's "good buddy."

He also spoke of a "socialistic elite" - Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.
"They're trying to develop an environment where they can take over," he said. "We've seen that historically."
Many speakers in the senior-heavy audience honed in on a clause in the health care proposal that would require insurers to cover end-of-life counseling sessions to help healthy patients decide beforehand what types of treatments they want to keep them alive if they are about to die.
"(Obama) is going to let the old folks die, and I don't like that at all," Oconee County resident Gene Aycock said.
Young people who get sick would get preference over the elderly under the Democrats' plan, said Broun, a medical doctor who made house calls in the Athens area before taking office in 2007.
"Eventually, mama will be lying in bed until she gets pneumonia and dies," he said.
Citing a study by the Lewin Group, a consulting firm owned by the insurance company UnitedHealth Group, Broun said 114 million Americans will be forced off their employers' insurance plans and onto a competing government-run plan because small businesses will not be able to pay for the mandated insurance. The Democrats' plan would be a precursor to a single-payer system, he said.
"They want to take away your insurance and dictate what kind of health care you're going to get," he said.
A federal health care program for veterans and senior citizens' Medicare Advantage benefits also are at risk, he said.

Broun proposed an alternative to the Democrats' plan that includes allowing groups of people like University of Georgia graduates or Rotary Club members to band together to cut insurance costs, restricting malpractice lawsuits, expanding health savings accounts, offering Medicaid recipients a choice of private plans, making all health care expenses tax-deductible and expanding state insurance programs for people with pre-existing conditions.
"We can lower the cost of health care markedly by giving people more options and letting the market work," he said.
At some town hall meetings around the country during Congress' annual August recess, conservative protesters have clashed with Democrats and disrupted events. However, at Broun's Tuesday hearing, the crowd of 500 or so clearly was almost unanimously on Broun's side and relatively peaceful.

One woman attempted to ask a critical question about covering the uninsured while Broun was speaking, and Habersham County sheriff's deputies briefly removed her from the room before allowing her back inside. When she rambled for a few seconds during the designated question-and-answer period, Broun politely asked her to respect the people waiting to speak, but members of the audience shouted, "Cut her mike."

Attendance Tuesday was well short of the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 who came out to a similar meeting Broun hosted Monday in Evans, but enough people showed up that he split the group into two sessions. About 400 people packed into the 250-seat auditorium for the first meeting, and 150 stuck around for the second.

Broun assured the crowds he will vote against the Democrats' plan no matter what. He urged them to contact friends and relatives in other states to tell conservative Blue Dog Democrats to do the same.

An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect transcription that made it appear Broun spoke negatively about President Obama; he was referring to the administration's health care proposal.

August 21, 2009

Obama's Population Control Czar



Rockefeller Refers to Obama’s Science Czar as ‘Walking on Water’

By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNSNews.com
August 19, 2009

In a recent congressional hearing, Senate Commerce Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D.-W.V.) told John P. Holdren, President Barack Obama’s science czar, that he sometimes refers to Holdren as “walking on water.”

Holdren is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a top adviser to the president on climate-change policy.

In writings published in past years, Holdren has advocated “de-development” of the United States and redistribution of wealth both within and between nations.

In a 1973 book, Holdren said:
“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”
At a July 30 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee focusing on climate change, Sen. Rockefeller complimented Holdren, using terms that alluded to one of the miracles recounted in the Gospels.
“The president, I think, has surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant choices,” said Rockefeller at the hearing. “Dr. Holdren, I don’t want to embarrass you, but I sometimes refer to you as walking on water.”
The hearing specifically looked at the administration’s plans to coordinate federal efforts in researching climate change and the possible creation of a National Climate Service, which would make “forecasts and projections” about climate change. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke testified along with Holdren.
“Well, I think clearly a national climate service is badly needed,” Locke told the committee.

“And this agency or service must provide climate modeling in terms of forecasts and projections,” Locke said. “People need to understand what’s coming down the road and it needs to provide regional and national assessments of climate change so that people in different parts of the region can understand—can get as much as possible tailored scientific information as it pertains to them and their livelihoods and their future.”

Holdren said the administration favored the idea of a climate service.
“The administration recognizes the need to move forward with the climate services concept,” he said.
When Sen. Maria Cantwell (D.-Wash.) asked Holdren about the threat of “abrupt climate change,” Holdren said America should be ready for it.
Dr. Holdren, should we be planning for abrupt climate change, and what are the potential consequences of that?” asked Cantwell. “And how do we get the additional research that we need in that area?”

“Well, senator,” said Holdren, “the first thing I would say is we’re already finding climate change is becoming more abrupt than we expected, even a few years ago. Many different aspects of climate change are happening more rapidly than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in its recent reports.”

“It could become more abrupt,” Holdren said. “Nobody knows for sure. Our understanding of all the details is not adequate to say exactly which potential tipping point might be crossed that would cause some of the climactic changes that we’re experiencing to accelerate drastically, but we should be ready for it.”

At the end of the hearing, Sen. Rockefeller paid tribute to Holdren.
“The president, I think, has surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant choices,” Rockefeller said. “Dr. Holdren, I don’t want to embarrass you but I sometimes refer to you as walking on water.

“That may be the end of your career,” Rockefeller said. “But, you know, we brought that 5 percent carbon guy from New Hampshire and had him sit right where you are and he told us all about it because you told me about it. A really superb technical scientific team. And everything else: The questions we ask and how do Americans understand all of this and react to it is incredibly important. But what we need to know that is already in place and working is the top part of the team–spreading out and coordinating superb thinking, superb arguments and, you know, a superb policy.”

“So, I, frankly, it’s one of the most exciting things about this administration is just the presence of all of you,” said Rockefeller. “And on that dour note, the hearing is over.”

(The “5 percent carbon guy” Rockefeller referred to is Frank Alix, CEO of Powerspan, a Porstmouth, N.H., company developing technology to remove carbon from coal-burning emissions. Alix told the committee in testimony in March that the 36% of overall U.S. carbon emissions that come from coal could be reduced to 5% with deployment of technology that reduces the carbon in emissions from coal-burning facilities by 90%.)
Before joining the Obama administration, Holdren was director of the Woods Hole Research Center and a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He formerly taught at the University of California.

In 1995, Holdren co-wrote an essay with Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, in which he argued that mankind should face up to the need for a “world of zero net physical growth” and “population limitation.”

The essay is listed among “Recent publications” on Holdren’s curriculum vitae posted at the Woods Hole Web site. (Ehrlich is the author of The Population Bomb, a 1968 bestseller that made the case for zero population growth.)

The 1995 essay by Holdren, Ehrlich, and Daily was printed as the first chapter of a book published by the World Bank entitled, “Defining and Measuring Sustainability: The Biogeophysical Foundations.” The book is available online at the World Bank Web site.
“We know for certain, for example, that no form of material growth (including population growth) other than asymptotic growth, is sustainable,” wrote Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily. “Many of the practices inadequately supporting today’s population of 5.5 billion people are unsustainable; and [a]t the sustainability limit, there will be a tradeoff between population and energy-matter throughput per person, hence, ultimately, between economic activity per person and well-being per person.

“This is enough,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote, “to say quite a lot about what needs to be faced up to eventually (a world of zero net physical growth), what should be done now (change unsustainable practices, reduce excessive material consumption, slow down population growth), and what the penalty will be for postponing attention to population limitation (lower well-being per person).”
In this 1995 essay, the authors also argued for global wealth redistribution. “Table 1-1” in the essay was labeled:
“Ills That Development Must Address.” In this table, “excessive population growth” and “maldistribution of consumption and investment” were listed as among “driving forces” behind the ills that confront the human race.

“Excessive population growth,” the authors said, is “a condition now prevailing almost everywhere.”
In “Table 2-2” of the essay, Holdren and his co-authors listed what they called “Requirements for Sustainable Improvements in Well-Being.” Among these were “reduced disparities within and between countries.”
“The large gaps between rich and poor that characterize income distribution within and between countries today,” they wrote, “are incompatible with social stability and with cooperative approaches to achieving environmental sustainability.”

Human Ecology,” a 1973 book that Holdren co-authored with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, called for population control, de-development of the United States, and redistribution of wealth both within and between nations. The book is also listed under “Recent publications” on Holdren’s curriculum vitae posted on the Woods Hole Web site.

“Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote in the “Synthesis and Recommendations” chapter of this book. “Once growth is halted, the government should undertake to influence the birth rate so that the population is reduced to an optimum size and maintained there.”

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” the authors wrote in the same chapter of “Human Ecology.”

“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge,” they wrote. “They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
On page 235 of “Human Ecology,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs said the following about when a fetus develops into a “human being:”
“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being. Where any of these essential elements is lacking, the resultant individual will be deficient in some respect.”
When CNSNews.com reported on this passage in ‘Human Ecology” last month, the White House Press Office did not respond to emailed and telephoned inquiries about it.

At his confirmation hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee in February, Holdren was not asked about this passage in “Human Ecology” about when a baby develops into a “human being.”

When Holdren was asked in his confirmation hearing by Sen. David Vitter (R.-La.) what he believes the right population would be today for the United States, Holdren said his views on population control had changed since 1973.
“I no longer think it is productive, senator,” he said, “to focus on the optimum population for the United States. I don’t think any of us know what the right answer is.”
Holdren also said in his confirmation hearing that he did not think it was the proper role of government to determine the optimal population.



Limit families to two children 'to combat climate change'
Environmentalists pushing for two child limit, abortion to save environment
UK needs a two-child limit, says population report
Green Consultant Advocates Two Child Limit: Oy
Vietnam to tighten two-child rule
China One Child Policy - Overview of the One Child Policy in China
New York Times: Give Carbon Credits to Couples That Limit Themselves to One Child
Science chief argued for population control to limit ‘global cooling’
Is population control rationale being used in the climate change and healthcare debates?
Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Says Teach Respect for Homosexuality in Kindergarten
Planned Parenthood Teaches Sex Ed Classes in Cleveland Public Schools
UN Report Says 'Gender Is Not Static, It Is Changeable'
No men OR women needed: Scientists create sperm and eggs from stem cells
Estulin: After G20, Oligarchs Moving on African Union, Population Reduction
Population Reduction: Globalist Endgame Begins?
United Nations Says Having Children Contributes to Climate Change
Biotech expert says GM crops reduce CO2 emission
Man Quits Job Over Water Fluoride
Bill Gates Gives to Population Control Fund
Bill Gates Funding Population Control Again
Secret billionaire club seeks population control
Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton backs population control
Gates Foundation Commits $40 Million to Improve Reproductive Health in the Developing World
Bill Gates Commits $20 million to Create Institute for Population and Reproductive Health
The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health
Gates Makes $10 Billion Vaccines Pledge
Three Articles For Mass-Distribution: Rockefeller Depopulation Plans Exposed

Updated 9/4/10 (Newest Additions at End of List)

August 19, 2009

The Engineered Housing Bubble and Mortgage Scam: Americans Lost Over $2 Trillion in Retirement Assets and $2 Trillion in Home Value

By a huge margin, the largest owners of residential mortgages in the world are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Whether we like to admit it or not, the entire market for housing in the United States has been corrupted by government involvement. By subsidizing the availability of credit and by granting huge tax incentives to home speculators, the government helped finance the biggest bubble of all — the biggest bubble in history. - Historic Financial Collapse Underway?, Seeking Alpha, July 20, 2008

The GSEs, Fannie and Freddie had to be kept afloat to create the real estate bubble and to collapse the economy. They were used to stem lack of market liquidity and create the perception that plenty of money and credit were always available. This led to housing inflation... Our government, Wall Street and banking are perpetually engaged in fraud. We ask what do you call nationalization such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac five years after they were insolvent? Then the continual fraud of issuing mortgages to those who are unqualified to have them insured by Fannie, Freddie and the FHA. Our CFTC, SEC and other government agencies are all looking the other way as massive fraud is committed by JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others... The next fraud could be US property being given to foreign governments in exchange for worthless bonds from the US Treasury, Fannie, Freddie and the FHA... Crime will continue on Wall Street, in banking, government, insurance and among other elitist corporations until the dead system collapses. - Crime, Corruption and Collapse on Wall Street, The International Forecaster, March 11 2009



Americans have recently lost over $2 trillion in their retirement portfolios and $2 trillion in the value of their homes. It is no coincidence that loose lending standards started around 2001 and a new bankruptcy law went into effect in 2005. The easy money via loose lending was necessary to create the housing bubble from 2002-2007, and the new bankruptcy law makes it much harder for households to get out from under their consumer debt and is contributing to the rise in foreclosures across the country. The financial oligarchs have engineered a global economic collapse to usher in a global currency and global government under their control.


Banks Bungle Foreclosures, But We’ll Suffer

MarketWatch
October 12, 2010

There’s a joke I like to make to rookies before we go live on our News Hub shows. After the new participant counts to 10 for an audio check, I usually say, “You have passed the exam to become a mortgage banker.” Watch the News Hub. It turns out that’s closer to the truth than most of us ever realized.

Judging by the failure of big banks to get their foreclosures in order, someone who can count to 10 might be overqualified.

What other conclusion can one come to after the wave of moratoriums placed by major banks on their foreclosure proceedings? GMAC, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and PNC Financial Group Inc. have halted proceedings in 23 states. Bank of America Corp., living up to its desire to be a national bank, has stopped proceedings in all 50 states.

It’s a humiliating, time-consuming and costly mistake by the banks, and a kind of karmic justice. But their bungling is going to cost us and our economy, as the housing market and people desperate to start anew try to recover.

At issue is “robo-signing,” where bankers signed off on mortgage documents saying they’ve read and understand them — as many as 18,000 a month. Read story on the “robo-signer” controversy in the banking industry.

Sorry, but as judges have pointed out, no one can read a single mortgage document in a day, much less hundreds of them. Now, the banks have to go back and read those tomes of legal gobbledygook and try to make sense of it.

“We haven’t found any errors,” said Brian Moynihan, Bank of America’s president and chief executive. “It’s technical issues and we’re doing our homework.” See story on B. of A.’s decision to halt foreclosures.

‘Unrealistic gains’

Some say the foreclosure halt will be good for housing. Cheap homes won’t be flooding the market. Also, borrowers will be able to save money by staying in their homes as the process drags out, and other borrowers may be able to get current with added time.

But that’s a short-term view. For most borrowers, foreclosure is going to come eventually. Chances are, if a homeowner was unable to rework a loan, they’re not going to be able to do that now. Those homes are going to hit the market eventually, putting more pressure on home prices.

The reality is most Americans who bought during the last decade have an unhealthy amount of personal wealth tied up in their homes. A study by the Congressional Budget Office in 2007 found that rising home prices gave consumers confidence to spend even though household income was flat or falling.

The CBO’s report ominously warned:

A worse outcome for consumer spending is possible if housing prices fall significantly or if some current spending is based on unrealistically optimistic expectations of future gains in home prices.”
At the time, Americans were tapping into their homes like personal piggy banks and using home-equity lines like savings accounts. Borrowing from home values represented 10% of disposable income in 2005, compared with just 2% in 1995, the CBO said. Read the Congressional Budget Office’s report.

Three years after the report came out, it’s safe to say that the CBO understated the effect. Having lost wealth via their housing, Americans are spending less and saving more. The savings rate was 5.8% in August, up from just 1% five years ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In other words, there couldn’t be a worse time for bank blundering to gum up the housing market. Read WSJ story on foreclosure woes on economy.

Mortgage mess

But it shouldn’t surprise us. During the last 15 years, mortgages were put on steroids. Subprime, pay-go, ARMs and other easy-money loans washed over the country. Many borrowers never understood what they were getting into, even when mortgages were relatively simple.

“Consumers are often not able to use the available information to their advantage,” a Harvard study found in 1999. “In many cases, they do not understand financial transactions, or lack confidence about financial issues. Consumers are also likely to underestimate the risks associated with mortgage loans, despite the information they receive from the lender.” Read the Harvard University study on predatory lending.
The main culprit? The confusing, legal mumbo jumbo that home buyers are presented with when they buy a home. It may not be “predatory lending,” but it ain’t easy either.

Given that foreclosure is a costly process — and it could be very costly for banks should they be fined $25,000 for every mortgage using fraudulent paperwork, as many state attorneys general are recommending — banks need to consider alternatives.

One possibility suggested by Wharton Business School’s Alex Edmans would be to offer a bonus to borrowers who repay their loans. Another, proposed by Columbia University’s business school dean R. Glenn Hubbard and vice dean Chris Mayer, would be to offer a massive government-backed streamlined refinancing program. Read the Hubbard-Mayer proposal.

Homeowners should learn their lesson too. They should quit using their homes as credit cards to buy flat-screen TVs and trips to Disney World.

Ultimately, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should simplify the mortgage process. Everyone should know what they’re getting into.

Easy as 1-2-3 would be nice, but for a start, let’s see if we can get everyone to count to 10.

Homeowners Tell How Banks Failed to Modify Mortgages

By Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers
August 16, 2009

Nearly three years into the deepest U.S. housing slump in generations, lenders are modifying only a small number of problem mortgages, and rising foreclosures are restraining the economy's recovery.

The Obama administration has stepped up pressure on lenders and their mortgage servicers, who act as bill collectors on behalf of investors who own mortgage bonds. The administration on Aug. 4 unveiled the first of what will be monthly "name and shame" exercises, publishing data on the loan-modification efforts of about three dozen companies.

The administration thinks that about 2.7 million U.S. homeowners are at least two months behind on their mortgage payments, roughly equal to the population of Kansas. Yet only 9 percent of eligible borrowers had been offered trial loan modifications through June.

McClatchy's Washington Bureau received calls and e-mails from borrowers across the nation in response to a recent story about the "name and shame" effort. In subsequent interviews with them, a common theme emerged: Virtually all say they were encouraged, directly or indirectly, by their lenders to fall behind on their mortgage payments in order to qualify for loan modifications. Then the modifications never came, however.

These borrowers burned through retirement savings, destroyed their credit ratings and suffered mental and financial hardship. Here are some of their stories:

'I FEEL LIKE ALICE IN WONDERLAND'

A work-from-home psychotherapist and Realtor, Helen Rudinsky, who's now 53, bought property in the nation's capital in June 2004. At the height of the housing boom, she took out an interest-only loan, offered for pricier homes and marketed as virtually risk-free because of climbing home values.

A few years later, she gave birth to a boy who was diagnosed with autism. She's temporarily moved to Bend, Ore., seeking easier access to expensive testing and therapy for her child.

Rudinsky contacted Wells Fargo last October about mortgage options because her payment of $2,500 a month was set to leap by $1,000 this August. She said that a Wells Fargo employee advised her that only loans that fell behind on payments were reviewed for modification.

Rudinsky had never missed a payment, had a credit score of 770 — anything higher than 600 is considered good — and put down $130,000 when she bought her home, clear evidence that she was a reliable customer. She took the employee's response as a suggestion to miss payments, and as a solution to her problem.

"I got behind, and then it spiraled out of control," she said.
Assigned a loan negotiator, Rudinsky called many times a week but got nowhere. She followed a checklist to ensure that all necessary documents were with the lender, but it was never enough, she said.

"Every time I call them, they either say they need more documents or that I am fine and I should hear from them," Rudinsky said. "I've talked to over 50 Wells Fargo people around the country, and I am starting to wonder if I will ever get anywhere."
In May, she was told that she was approved for a program with interest payments potentially as low as 2 percent, she said. More documents, more back and forth, and Rudinsky said she was assured that things were on track and that the foreclosure process was on hold. To her shock, nearly 10 months after her initial call to Wells Fargo for help, her home suddenly headed for auction. Her frantic calls and e-mails were ignored.

The sale was scheduled for 10:15 a.m. Aug. 4. Rudinsky raided her retirement funds to pay $30,795 in a last-ditch move that saved her home minutes before the auction. Days later, Wells Fargo called again, demanding that she make good on her loan or lose her home, she said.

"I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, because whatever you do, it isn't enough," Rudinsky said. "It's so absurd. It feels like a Third World country. I can't believe this is happening here in the United States."
Wells Fargo had modified just 6 percent of its eligible loans through June. Kevin Waetke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo, declined to comment on the specifics of Rudinsky's case but denied that the company encouraged mortgage delinquency.

"I can assure you that Wells Fargo has comprehensive training in place, we have this guidance readily available and we advise customer service representatives to tell them to make their payments," Waetke said.
'I CAN'T START OVER'

In 2001, sales representative Cynthia Steigner, who's now 51, bought a three-bedroom 1927 home in Riverside, Calif., using a conventional 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. When the economy soured late last year, she lost her job and couldn't pay her bills. She contacted her lender, IndyMac, and was told that she'd get no help until she fell four months behind on payments, she said.

"I needed the help then, not four months later," Steigner said. Nevertheless, she followed instructions, fell behind and still got no help, she said. Instead, she filed for personal bankruptcy. Once the courts completed her case early this year, her lender sought her out to discuss a modification again.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. had seized IndyMac in July 2008. Its mortgage assets were transferred to OneWest Bank last March. The new lender sent Steigner a loan-modification agreement May 6. It offered a new mortgage payment of $1,093 a month, a reduction of almost $500.

Steigner sent two months of payments in a bank-drafted certified check dated May 22. On June 8, it was returned with a letter that said the bank draft had to say "cashier's check."

Steigner had the check reissued as an official cashier's check and sent it back. It was returned to her again on June 25 with a letter that said that the loan modification campaign had expired.

Soon after, a note was posted on Steigner's front door that said that her home would go to auction Aug. 13. She hired an attorney late last month and threatened to sue OneWest Bank for breach of contract. After that and queries to the bank from McClatchy, her home was pulled off the block on Wednesday, though it's still at risk of being sold.

"They gave me the loan modification, and then they reneged on it, and now my house is going to auction. And it puts me through the ringer," Steigner said. "It's the daily chase: What do I have to do to get them to hear me?"
OneWest Bank doesn't have its own spokesman; it hired the San Francisco-based public relations firm Sard Verbinnen for that.

"She was denied because she did not return a signed modification agreement," said Diane Henry, the hired spokeswoman.
"That's not true," said George Bosch, legal administrator for Edward Lopez Law Offices in Los Angeles. Bosch provided a copy of the signed letter and the FedEx receipt for when it was shipped.

Henry also said that Steigner's case was complex and was being "re-reviewed."

Meanwhile, if she loses her home, Steigner fears, it'll be the last one she owns.

"Am I ever going to buy another house? Am I going to be able to? I can't start over," she said. "There are no jobs, no nothing."
'A LOAN ... THAT WAS GUARANTEED TO FAIL'

Phil Stubblefield, 61, arrived in loan-modification hell quite by accident. His ex-wife died of heart failure April 20, and her Sacramento, Calif., home and Countrywide mortgage passed to their daughters, one of whom was in college and the other starting medical school. As students, each had limited income.

Stubblefield reached out in May to Bank of America, which had bought the disgraced Countrywide in January 2008, as it faced bankruptcy because of problems with its loan portfolio. Stubblefield sought to modify the loan on the property in order to stay current amid unusual circumstances.

"Virtue was met with no help at all. The only recommendation was, 'We can help you when the loan goes into default,' " said Stubblefield, an Amtrak train conductor in California's capital. "That's when I said, 'That's easy; then they'll talk to us.' "
After the mortgage payment became two months late in June, the girls started receiving what Stubblefield dubs "nasty-grams." Getting authorization to speak for his daughters, he tried to negotiate a lower interest rate to reduce payments enough for him to help, or to have some portion of the loan forgiven.

"I was waiting for them to turn around and say, 'What can you do for us?' There was no coming together, no negotiation," he said. "It was 'Sell the house,' and that's when I came back and said, 'Don't you read the newspapers? There are 40,000 foreclosures in Sacramento and a 19-month turnaround on (real estate) listings.' "
What especially irks Stubblefield, who worked for eight years as a mortgage broker, are the comments from lenders that they're doing everything possible to keep people in their homes and out of foreclosure.

"It comes off to me that it's just window dressing and speech that doesn't translate to anything," he said. "No action."
Stubblefield's ex-wife had a mortgage payment of about $1,850 a month, more than half of her take-home income from a state government job. Until lending standards became unhinged from 2004 to 2007, conventional wisdom was that lenders wouldn't underwrite loans with payments that exceeded 35 percent of borrowers' take-home pay.

"They put her in a loan to begin with that was guaranteed to fail," Stubblefield said.
A Bank of America spokesman took Stubblefield's loan information from McClatchy but didn't comment.

'I'VE BEEN PROMISED AND PROMISED AND PROMISED'

Frank X owns the "worst house in a nice neighborhood" in a New York suburb. He and his wife are Wall Street veterans, and they shared their plight only on the condition that their surname be withheld in order to protect their privacy. His wife didn't want her first name used, either.

The 40-something couple bought a three-bedroom ranch house in February 2004 on a "pick your pay" loan that allowed them to choose each month whether to pay just interest or principle also. The original payments were around $1,800 a month, but have ballooned to $2,908.

Three years ago they had a son, and his wife went on maternity leave. She later returned to work part time just as the bottom started falling out of the financial sector. Her hours were slashed. Frank, a financial consultant who works from home, also saw his income drop with the slump, and he feared that his wife might get laid off.

Late last year, they contacted Wachovia, a national bank based in Charlotte, N.C., that Wells Fargo purchased around that time, to see what could be done in case of a layoff.

A bank representative, Frank said, suggested that they miss a couple of payments in order to qualify for loan modification with an interest rate as low as 2 percent. With a credit score in the 700s, they found the suggestion unattractive.

However, they'd lost more than half their income, lacked enough equity in the home to refinance and their daughter was about to head to a state college, downsizing dreams of private school. The couple took a leap of faith and stopped paying; they haven't stopped falling yet.

"Every month that I called back, we're told something is going to happen," Frank said with a New York edge in his voice.
In June, they were told that programs were being set up for people "exactly like you with good payment histories."

What was offered, however, was a lower payment for only three months, followed by a big balloon payment and a drop in their credit score. They said no thanks.

In late July, Frank was promised that a new program would be out in days. Then it was to be August; now, maybe September. His wife asked the mortgage servicer to stop calling her office because she lacks privacy to discuss the matter, yet threatening calls keep coming to her there several times a week.

"I've been promised and promised and promised. I've robbed Peter to pay Paul, and we're still in this situation," Frank said. "If what their own representative told me (last year) was true, they would have already done something for me."
47 percent of South Florida homeowners underwater on mortgages
BofA, Wells Fargo get low marks on mortgage modifications
41 people indicted in Florida in scheme to inflate mortgages
Fed plans consumer-friendly changes to mortgage rules
Mortgage program helping few borrowers
Illegal Immigrants Used Fake IDs to Take Out Mortgages Now in Default
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering With a Federal Agency
Soldier in Iraq Loses Home Over $800 Debt
Frank Data: How Federal Policy Triggered the Mortgage Meltdown
Central Bank Hid Housing Market Crash Forecast
DOJ: Nearly 500 arrests in mortgage fraud probe

Updated 6/17/10 (Newest Additions at End of List)

August 17, 2009

Herding Americans into 'Human Settlements'

The second action plan (of Sustainable Development) is called Smart Growth. Smart Growth will increasingly herd Americans into regimented and dense urban communities. Smart Growth is Sustainable Development’s ultimate solution, as it will create dense human settlements subject to increasing controls on how residents live and increased restriction on mobility. In the words of one smart growth activist: “It will be the humans in cages with the animals looking in.” - Transforming America: Sustainable Development

President Obama's New Plan to Decide Where Americans Live and How They Travel

By Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation
April 14, 2009

President Barack Obama's early comments on his opposition to suburban sprawl and his intention to alter the way Americans live and travel took a step closer to reality when he created an interdepartmental initiative on housing and transportation costs.

A March press release issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a new interagency partnership to create "affordable, sustainable communities." Included among its many goals are projects to:
  • Develop a new cost index that combines housing and transportation costs into a single measure to better illuminate the true costs by "redefining affordability and making it transparent,"

  • Encourage "transportation choice," and

  • Require even more planning by the many federally funded regional planning entities that are already attempting to guide Americans toward a suppos­edly better life.
Rich in the sort of progressive euphemisms used to mask real intentions, the press release heralds a process that could likely lead to an unprecedented federal effort to force Americans into an antiquated lifestyle that was common to the early years of the previous century. More specifically, these initiatives reflect an escalation in what is shaping up as Presi­dent Obama's apparent intent to re-energize and lead the Left's longstanding war against America's suburbs.

The Liberals' Anti-Suburban Bias

Long ago, when it focused on the plight of low-income families, the American Left welcomed the suburbs as a healthy alternative to the airless tene­ments, congestion, and industrial concentration that characterized the cities and their working-class residents in the late 19th century.

By the 1950s, however, it had become more fashionable for liber­als to turn against the suburbs when a more pros­perous America looked outside the central cities for better housing and public services and, in the pro­cess, abandoned public transportation for the flexi­bility, mobility, and privacy of automobiles.

Today, approximately 75 percent of Americans live in the suburbs, and only a handful of older cit­ies that have not annexed suburban areas have pop­ulations exceeding their 1950 levels. Despite these near-universal preferences, however, many liberals continue to oppose the trend of suburbanization.

Their efforts bore some fruit in the 1990s when the environmental movement joined forces with the anti-suburban Left to create the Smart Growth and New Urbanist movements.
While both movements encouraged the concentration of people in denser communities that relied less on the automobile for transportation, both were quickly corrupted by the anti-growth, not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) factions that used the rhetoric (and acquiescence) of the Left to adopt exclusionary laws to upgrade their com­munities' demographic profiles by discouraging prospective homebuyers of more modest means (disproportionately ethnic minorities) from living in the community.

In implementing these anti-growth strategies, many communities adopted such mechanisms as exclusionary zoning, impact fees, involuntary prof­fers, mandatory amenities, growth boundaries, ser­vice districts, infrastructure concurrency, and large-lot zoning.

In the process, these regulations led to a significant escalation in home prices in target com­munities by limiting the supply of land for hous­ing. These Smart Growth laws also contributed to suburban sprawl as modest-income families looked for less-expensive housing farther away from the metropolitan centers in communities that had yet to adopt Smart Growth prohibitions.
Despite the imposition of the many regulatory obstacles to buying homes in the suburbs, and despite efforts by the nation's aesthetic elites to demonize suburban living, the vast majority of American households opted to live in the suburbs instead of the more fashionable, albeit still dysfunc­tional, central cities or the older close-in suburbs.

The latest U.S. Bureau of the Census population and migration figures indicate that this trend is continuing. Among the many reasons for this are the many benefits associated with owning a single-family detached house with some land, some equity, and some privacy, as well as the fact that Americans could buy "more house" if they were willing to move beyond the unaffordable, close-to-the-city communities.

Suburbanites also reaped the benefits of living in communities with functioning governments and quality public services, especially in education. While the commute to work was longer and the transportation costs greater, the several hundred thousand dollars in housing savings more than made up for the extra 20 or 30 minutes of addi­tional driving time.

Restricting Growth--Even More

Recognizing that their anti-growth strategies have failed to deter the millions of American families that still flock to the burbs, Smart Growth advocates have now enlisted the federal government in their war against the suburbs, and the HUD-DOT part­nership is the beginning of that effort.

Although there is no shortage of detailed information from many sources (including HUD) on housing costs for every state, metropolitan area, and municipality in America, Smart Growth advocates contend that these readily available data are incorrect because they overlook the many "hidden costs" of suburban lifestyles, an assertion that relies on unsubstantiated allegations of greater infrastructure costs, environ­mental degradation, and the high cost of auto­mobile operation.

To save Americans from these alleged higher liv­ing costs, the Smart Growth and New Urbanist movements want Americans to move into higher-density developments--such as townhouses and high-rise apartment buildings--which, the anti-suburbanists contend, can be better served by pub­lic transportation (hence the commitment to "trans­portation choice," a process whereby commuters are bribed or coerced into an inconvenient mode of transportation that most would not choose on their own)--thereby freeing the hapless American people from relying on their automobiles.

Other key bene­fits illuminated in this fable are the preservation of land, reduced carbon footprints, greater social interaction through forced proximity, and a higher aesthetic standard in community and housing design as government planners and politicians assume greater responsibility for artistic choices.

As with most other fables, the fundamental premise of the Smart Growth effort to restructure American lives rests on fabricated assumptions that have no support either in reality or in the copious housing and transportation data collected by the fed­eral government and other institutions.
As an earlier Heritage Foundation study using nationwide munici­pal data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census revealed, there is no evidence to indicate that infrastructure or other public costs in low-density suburbs are any greater than those in high-density communities.

As for the alleged savings in transportation costs that are predicted to occur by shifting from cars to mass transit, data from a 2004 DOT study reveal that public transit survives on massive taxpayer subsidies that are generally hidden and excluded from any discussions of the relative costs and bene­fits of different modes of travel. When all costs are considered, public transit is far more expensive than automobiles.

That 2004 DOT study was expected to become an annual assessment, but congressional opposition to DOT's exposure of the high costs of urban transit and Amtrak forced DOT to cancel any subsequent studies. In response to President Obama's newest call for greater "transparency" in transportation costs, this DOT compilation of federal subsidies by transportation mode should be revived and made available to the public by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Recognizing the importance of accurate and up-to-date cost data in making good policy decisions, The Heritage Foundation has assumed responsibil­ity for updating and maintaining this DOT series of federal subsidies by mode and will publish its find­ings this spring. Notwithstanding Smart Growth assertions to the contrary, public transit requires massive federal subsidies to maintain even its cur­rent mediocre and expensive service, which is used by less than 2 percent of the American population.

In 2006, the most recent period for which data are available, the federal subsidy for public transit amounted to $165.61 per 1,000 passenger miles, while automobiles earned the federal government a $0.93 "profit" per 1,000 passenger miles, in large part because federal fuel taxes paid by motorists are used to subsidize other projects, including transit. President Obama's commitment to transportation-cost "transparency" should include the compilation, calculation, and publication of this long-suppressed DOT data series.
Enhanced Central Planning by Government

Finally, the proposal exhibits a child-like faith in government planning, a concept that half the world quickly abandoned in the late 1980s when all of the formerly socialist countries (except, of course, for Cuba and North Korea) rejected state planning in favor of private-sector initiative, economic freedom, and market solutions. Nonetheless, and ever the optimist, the President proposes that the existing regional planning authorities be given yet more responsibility--and power.

At present, HUD requires states, counties, and cities to conduct five-year Consolidated Plans esti­mating housing status and needs, and DOT requires the federally funded Metropolitan Planning Organi­zations (MPOs) to develop Long-Range Transporta­tion Plans and four-year Transportation Improve­ment Programs.

Despite billions of dollars of spending on these entities, all of this costly planning coincided with what many believe has been one of the worst housing and transportation environments in U.S. history.
Over the past decade, housing became less affordable than ever, and this has con­tributed to the most severe housing recession since the Great Depression. While all of the MPOs were huffing and puffing away on their little transporta­tion plans, traffic congestion continued to worsen, and the quality of the transportation infrastructure continued to decline, despite record federal and state transportation spending on both.
Nonetheless, having failed separately to come anywhere close to performing the straightforward tasks assigned to them, the White House proposes that these two forms of planning initiatives be combined in a cooperative partnership, and that they be given even more responsibility and greater control over living and travel policies for the American people.

Conclusion

Despite the broad scope of this new DOT-HUD partnership, the press release announcing it was long on euphemisms and slogans and offered little or no substance as to what it intended to accom­plish beyond the enhancement of existing bureau­cracies and greater data manipulation. Nonetheless, the euphemisms it did embrace belong to those who want to force dramatic changes on how Amer­icans live their lives.

While some may hope this effort is nothing more than the President's attempt to use the White House as a bully pulpit to encourage Americans to mimic the urbane lifestyle he experienced in an upscale Chicago neighborhood, the record of past such efforts by the federal government is more troubling.

In January 1998, President Bill Clinton's Envi­ronmental Protection Agency threatened to with­hold federal transportation funds from the Atlanta region because it did not meet federal air-quality standards and said that it would agree to restore the funding only if the state of Georgia dramatically altered its land-use and transportation policies in ways similar to those characteristic of the Smart Growth polices that discourage single-family detached housing and encourage public transit use and investment. Georgia agreed to do this, at least through the waning days of the Clinton Administra­tion, but soon abandoned the policies when leader­ship in Washington changed. Carol Browner headed the EPA when the threat was imposed on Atlanta under Clinton. Today, she is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

With the prospect of even worse to come from this new DOT-HUD partnership on sustain­able communities, those who are skeptical of the President's grandiose efforts at social engineering should be on the alert.

Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Habitat II - The UN Plan For Human Settlements
Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), which met June 3-14 in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways - free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity - are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws," bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance" - meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism" as well as "appreciation" for the world's religions and lifestyles - is "not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement." - Berit Kjos, June 1996

The Habitat Agenda Goals and Principles (Exerpt from the Preamble to this UN Document)
We recognize the imperative need to improve the quality of human settlements, which profoundly affects the daily lives and well-being of our peoples. There is a sense of great opportunity and hope that a new world can be built, in which economic development, social development and environmental protection as interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development can be realized through solidarity and cooperation within and between countries and through effective partnerships at all levels. International cooperation and universal solidarity, guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and in a spirit of partnership, are crucial to improving the quality of life of the peoples of the world. The purpose of the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) is to address two themes of equal global importance: "Adequate shelter for all" and "Sustainable human settlements development in an urbanizing world". Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development, including adequate shelter for all and sustainable human settlements, and they are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.