Showing posts with label monopoly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monopoly. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

At the start of 2019, fewer than 2,000 active satellites circled Earth...

At the start of 2019, fewer than 2,000 active satellites circled Earth. By June 2026 there were 15,711 — and nearly two out of every three belonged to a single constellation: SpaceX's Starlink.

A June 2026 traffic index counted nearly eight times as many working satellites as existed at the start of 2019, with Starlink making up 65.97 percent.


A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink 6-78 mission launches from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Nov. 20, 2025. Credit: U.S. Space Force photo by Gwendolyn Kurzen, public domain.



By Deep Field · Edited by Lachlan Brown

Published August 17, 2026 · How we edit


Look Up’s quarterly space index, released on 2 June 2026, counted 15,711 active satellites in Earth orbit. It assigned 10,365 of them to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. That is 65.97 percent, making “nearly two out of every three” the arithmetic of this particular catalog.

The same index put the active population below 2,000 at the start of 2019. The total had therefore grown almost eightfold in a little more than seven years. That interval is unusually revealing because the first full batch of 60 Starlink satellites launched in May 2019.

These are dated operational counts, not permanent facts. “Active” is judged from tracking and operational evidence, and different catalogs can reach different totals. The June numbers should be read as a coherent snapshot from one provider, not a universally standardized census.

The 15,711 figure came from a commercial traffic index

Look Up is a French space-situational-awareness company operating tracking radars and a data platform called SYNAPSE. Its second-quarter 2026 index, produced with the French magazine Le Point, reported 15,711 active satellites as of the start of June. The previous edition three months earlier had counted 14,389.

That is an increase of 1,322 active spacecraft in roughly one quarter. The index attributed 3,320 new active Starlinks to the preceding year, while also recording growth in Chinese fleets. It listed China at 1,286 active satellites, including the developing Qian Fan and GuoWang systems, and Eutelsat OneWeb at 651.

The denominator matters. The report was counting working satellites, not every human-made object overhead. It separately said that more than 33,000 cataloged objects were being tracked, including active payloads, rocket bodies and debris. A piece of fragmentation debris does not become a satellite in the 15,711 total simply because it circles Earth.

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Trademark and Logo Usage THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST NAME


Trademark and Logo Usage

THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST NAME

Church trademarks, such as “Seventh-day Adventist,” “Adventist,” and “Ministry,” may be used only in connection with denominational ministries and non-commercial activities of approved lay and professional groups. Use of these trademarks shall be controlled by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists through its Trademark Committee. Church trademarks shall not be used in any manner that will jeopardize the Church’s tax-exempt status.
THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST LOGO

The registered trademark may be used by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, its entities, institutions, and churches, as authorized by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, its divisions, unions, and conferences.

Trademarks shall not be utilized in commercial endeavors.
REGISTERED TRADEMARKS

ADVENTIST®

ADVENTIST BOOK CENTER®

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ADVENTIST-LAYMEN’S SERVICES AND INDUSTRIES® (ASI)

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Sunday, March 03, 2013

Conflicts Between Trade Confederacies and Labor Unions


The work of the people of God is to prepare for the events of the future, which will soon come upon them with blinding force. In the world gigantic monopolies will be formed. Men will bind themselves together in unions that will wrap them in the folds of the enemy. A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men.

Letter 26, 1903. {CL 10.3}

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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Conflicts Between Trade Confederacies and Labor Unions



The work of the people of God is to prepare for the events of the future, which will soon come upon them with blinding force. In the world gigantic monopolies will be formed. Men will bind themselves together in unions that will wrap them in the folds of the enemy. A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men.—Letter 26, 1903. {2SM 142.2}

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Monday, June 18, 2012

What is Carlos Slim up to?

June 15, 2012 1:09 pm by John Paul Rathbone

Most other investors might be selling assets and hoarding cash, but not Carlos Slim. The Mexican telecoms tycoon and world’s richest man is on a shopping spree. This week alone he has bought a 21 per cent stake in Telekom Austria, while simultaneously pursuing a bigger stake in Dutch telecoms operator KPN. He’s also emerged as the surprise acquirer of an 8.4 per cent stake in Argentine oil company YPF. Using market prices, those two deals alone are worth around $1.3bn. What’s going on?

The Mexican billionaire has always been an astute buyer of distressed assets: good timing is one of the trademarks of his value-based investment philosophy. It drew him to invest in Brazil in 2002, when fears of a socialist government under Lúiz Inacio Lula da Silva crushed market prices. It also led him to invest in Argentine telecoms in 2001, shortly after the country defaulted. Now he’s doing exactly the same again – only in different arenas.

In Europe, the eurozone crisis has trashed asset prices – so that’s a chance for Slim to swoop. In Argentina, meanwhile, an eccentric approach to economic policy-making has trashed YPF’s share price. Furthermore, Slim has apparently picked up his YPF stake from banks that had been pledged the shares as collateral on now defaulted loans. Banks, generally, don’t like hanging onto such stakes for longer than they possibly can – which also makes them more-than-willing sellers, and often at good prices too.

Although these are risky bets, which may or may not provide a return, the fact they are hard assets, available at a good price and in areas he already understands, provides the margin of safety that every value investor likes to have. Warren Buffet, another billionaire value investor, would surely approve.

In Europe, there is also the prospect of growth – from the emerging market operations of Telekom Austraia. And as for Argentina, there may be political synergies to take into account. Slim’s Argentine mobile telecoms operation, Claro, a unit of América Móvil, accounts for the third of the national market, with sales of $2.6bn last year. That’s a position worth protecting – even if it means stumping up for YPF to keep Buenos Aires sweet.

Should others take Slim’s moves as a buy signal? Not necessarily. With a personal net worth of $67bn, Slim can ride out the ups and downs these investments will likely experience over the next few years, in a way most other investors cannot. Slim is also suffering at home. Competition is ratcheting up on both his mobile and fixed line telecom companies. As an asset allocator par excellence, it therefore makes strategic sense for Slim to switch into assets elsewhere that have a chance of a better return.

Two hundred years ago, the financier Nathan Rothschild, who made a fortune by trading ahead of the competition on early news of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo, coined the investment adage: “buy on the canon, sell on the trumpets”. As there are a lot of metaphorical financial canons firing at the moment, that also means the possibility for a lot of deals – at least for Slim, if not for everyone else.





Monday, February 06, 2012

Elena Kagan could reshape the US Supreme Court


For the first time since it was set up 221 years ago by America's Protestant founding fathers, the US Supreme Court is poised to have a bench without a single Protestant justice, if Jewish candidate Elena Kagan is chosen.

President Barack Obama introduces Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his choice for Supreme Court Justice in the East Room of the White House in Washington
Barack backing: President Barack Obama introduces Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his choice for Supreme Court Justice in the East Room of the White House in Washington Photo: AP

If the Senate confirms Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's choice to replace retiring justice John Paul Stevens, she will join two other Jewish justices and six Roman Catholics serving on the highest court in the land.

The thought of a Protestant-free Supreme Court bench was too much to bear for some.

"I'd like to offer here... a lament for the passing of American Protestantism," American religion scholar Diana Butler Bass wrote on BeliefNet.com about Obama's decision to nominate Kagan, a Jew.

"There will be no one with Protestant sensibilities on the court, no one who understands the nuances of one of America's oldest and most traditional religions - and the religion that deeply shaped American culture and law."

The United States was, after all, once the largest Protestant nation in the world, she noted. Protestants currently make up the country's biggest religious group.

To Frances Kissling, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, a changing Supreme Court was the natural reflection of demographic developments in US society.

"The image of America as Kansas - wheatfields and farmers and European Protestant stock - is no longer what America is," she said.

"Most of our presidents, our justices, our powerful people have been mainline Protestants but that has changed and we have an America now with a president who has combined Muslim-Christian roots, a Supreme Court with six Roman Catholics and what will be three Jews," she added.

"I think that's marvelous."

Not too long ago, having all Jewish or Catholic justices and zero Protestants on the high court was just as unthinkable as an African-American president of the United States.

"Can you imagine going back in time and telling the founders that the day would come when there were no Protestants on the Supreme Court?" Rod Dreher wrote on Beliefnet.

"Can you imagine telling someone born 50 years ago that within their lifetime they'd live to see a SCOTUS (Supreme Court) populated exclusively by Catholics and Jews?"

Both Catholics and Jews have fought to overcome discrimination in the United States, including exclusion from plum jobs at law firms and quotas on numbers for admission to Ivy League colleges, which were in place until the second half of last century.

"Prior to the 1970s, no Catholic or Jew got high enough in the law profession that they could be considered for the Supreme Court," said Kissling.

"The opening of employment and education opportunities in 1960s is a dominant factor in this change in the court."

Catholics already hold 67 per cent of the seats on the Supreme Court and Jews will hold 33 per cent, if Kagan passes muster with the Senate as expected.

"Some anti-Semites will see something dangerous about having three Jews on the Supreme Court but I think it's a real tribute to how far one can go in America, whatever one's religion or ethnicity, on the basis of hard work if barriers are removed," Dreher said.

Bass, meanwhile, expressed sadness at seeing a Protestant-free high court.

"I can't help but think that losing the lived memory of American Protestantism will be a loss for all of us," she wrote.

A survey released two years ago by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that barely 51 per cent of Americans were Protestants, compared to nearly two-thirds in the 1960s, and predicted that Protestants would no longer be in the majority in the United States by the middle of this century.

Catholics made up a quarter of the US population and Jews less than two per cent, the 2008 survey showed.

At the time the survey was released, Pew fellow John Greene foretold what is playing out today at the Supreme Court.

"So many of the values and institutions in American public life came out of Protestantism," Greene said.

"I think you're likely to see a change in those institutions and the cultures that support them" as the religion of the founding fathers loses ground in America, he added.


Source

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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Jesuit priest and professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross

Today, I turned on the radio to listen to the news and what I got instead was Jesuit indoctrination. Boy, those guys are being promoted even when you're not looking, or listening as in this case.

As I listened to the local Public Radio station (NPR) there was a program on called Bob Edwards Weekend from PRI; While listening I experienced another 'wonderful' vignette on how selfless the Jesuits are, and how dedicated they are to help the disadvantaged people of society. What propaganda?


This reminds my of Adolph Hitler's Propaganda Chief - Joseph Goebbels' quote:

"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".


Arsenio.




THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW SCHEDULE

Friday, January 13, 2012

Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, while most of the nation was shocked at the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Jesuit priest and professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross canvassed the East Coast in search of African American students to admit to the university, students who would play their part in America’s racial integration. Diane Brady’s book Fraternity tells this story from the perspective of the students who would later become defense attorneys and activists, a Supreme Court Justice, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Literature. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Dave Stewart. After Stewart grew tired of his career in manufacturing, he bought a farm in New Hampshire. He grows vegetables and raises, chickens, sheep, pigs, and cows. Stewart’s grandfather was a dairy farmer, and now he has found the same pleasure in the simple routines of milking and grazing.

Source: http://www.bobedwardsradio.com/bes/

Visit Bob Edwards Weekend on PRI’s website to find local stations that air the program.

The Bob Edwards Show

The Bob Edwards Show is an American radioprogram presented by Sirius XM Satellite Radio every weekday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern, with repeats at 8 a.m. Central, 7 a.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Mountain, and the next morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. The program can be heard on the XM Public Radio station at XM channel 121 and Sirius channel 205, and is also available 24/7 on XM Radio Online and Sirius Internet Radio.

The show is hosted by Bob Edwards, a Peabody Award-winning member of the National Radio Hall of Fame. Edwards was once the co-host of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and hosted NPR's Morning Edition from the first episode to April 30, 2004 when he was re-assigned to another position within NPR, despite email objections from more than fifty thousand listeners. Edwards left his new assignment almost immediately, as Hugh Panero, CEO of XM Radio, offered Edwards a daily show.

The Bob Edwards Show continues the tradition of interviewing interesting people in all walks of life that Edwards exemplified on Morning Edition, but now in long form. Edwards told the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Terrance Smith, "The longest interview I could do on the air for Morning Edition was eight minutes. Now I can interview someone for up to an hour. So it's a freer, more open, more relaxed and enjoyable conversation. The program's really about conversation." The show's first broadcast was on October 4, 2004, staffed by experienced public radio veterans. The first program included weekly political commentatorWashington Post columnist David S. Broder, USA Today Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic, formerCBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, and Eugene Robinson, author of Last Dance in Havana.

In 2006, interviews with musicians earned The Bob Edwards Show the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP. The program also received a Gabriel Award from the Catholic Academy for Communication Arts Professionals for an interview with Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with Latino gang members in east Los Angeles. The show earned a second Gabriel Award in 2007 for "Exploding Heritage," a documentary about mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. "Exploding Heritage" also received the National Press Club's Robert L. Kozic Award for environmental reporting, a New York Festivals Gold World Medal for best program on the environment, and an award from the Society of Environmental Journalists. In 2008, The Bob Edwards Show received an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association and a New York Festivals/United Nations Gold Award for a documentary called "The Invisible--Children Without Homes." "The Invisible" also was honored by the Journalism Center on Children and Families and by the Catholic Academy for Communication Arts Professionals. In 2009, the show received a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for the documentary, "Stories from Third Med: Surviving a Jungle ER." The documentary also earned a Gabriel Award.

XM Radio also produces the compilation program Bob Edwards Weekend, distributed by Public Radio International for use by "terrestrial" public radio stations. It premiered on January 7-8, 2006, consisting of re-edited interviews from the weekday program. Bob Edwards Weekend is also available online via podcastat the program's website.


Description above from the Wikipedia article The Bob Edwards Show,..

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Owner of FOX News, Rupert Murdoch, also owns almost all Australian media.


His press keeps Australia's dirty secret about its treatment of aboriginal people hidden from Australia's population



John Pilger

The illegal eavesdropping on famous people by the News of the World is said to be Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate. But is it the crime by which Murdoch ought to be known? In his native land, Australia, Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press. Australia is the world’s first murdochracy, in which smear by media is power.

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

Political power in Australia often rests in the control of resource-rich land. Most of the uranium, iron ore, gold, oil and natural gas is in Western Australia and Northern Territory – on Aboriginal land. Indeed, Aboriginal “progress” is all but defined by the mining industry and its political guardians in both Labor and coalition (conservative) governments. Their faithful, strident voice is the Murdoch press. The exceptional, reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s set up a royal commission that made clear that social justice for Australia’s first people would only be achieved with universal land rights and a share the national wealth with dignity. In 1975, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general in a “constitutional coup”. The Murdoch press had turned on Whitlam with such venom that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street.

In 1984, the Labor Party “solemnly pledged” to finish what Whitlam had begun and legislate Aboriginal land rights. This was opposed by the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, a “mate” of Rupert Murdoch. Hawke blamed the public for being “less compassionate”; but a secret 64-page report to the party revealed that most Australians supported land rights. This was leaked to The Australian, whose front page declared, “Few support Aboriginal land rights”, the opposite of the truth, thus feeding an atmosphere of self-fulfilling distrust, “backlash” and rejection of rights that would distinguish Australia from South Africa. In 1988, an editorial in Murdoch’s London tabloid, the Sun, described “the Abos” as “treacherous and brutal”. This was condemned by the UK Press Council as “unacceptably racist”.

The Australian publishes long articles that present Aboriginal people not unsympathetically but as perennial victims of each other, “an entire culture committing suicide”, or as noble primitives requiring firm direction: the eugenicist’s view. It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear. The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward.”

This is also the government’s view. In railing against what it called the “black armband view” of Australia’s past, the conservative government of John Howard encouraged and absorbed the views of white supremacists -- that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism; indeed, whites are the victims of “liberal racism”. A collection of far-right journalists, minor academics and hangers-on became the antipodean equivalent of David Irving Holocaust deniers. Their platform has been the Murdoch press.

Andrew Bolt, columnist on Murdoch’s Melbourne Herald-Sun tabloid, is currently the defendant in a racial vilification case brought by nine prominent Aborigines, including Larissa Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies in Sydney. Behrendt has been an authoritative and outspoken opponent of Howard’s 2007 “emergency intervention” in the Northern Territory, which the Labor government of Julia Gillard has reinforced. The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified – about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.

The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained -- a form of apartheid.

The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralizing mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.
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Source
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Thursday, September 30, 2010

Masters Of The Universe



madcownews March 29, 2007
-The Secret Birth Of The Federal Reserve -

Was there a takeover of the US by international bankers?

Visit the scene of a crime so perfect that, for thirty years, no one knew it had even taken place. Investigate the birth of a criminal conspiracy to rob each and every bank vault in
America.

The true, behind the scenes, story of the birth of the US Federal Reserve.
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Monday, March 29, 2010

With Every Intervention, Concerns Build Over Size of Federal Government

Updated March 29, 2010

FOXNews.com

Health care. The auto industry. Real estate. Wall Street. As the Obama administration increases regulation and pumps up taxpayer aid in these sectors and beyond, critics say the president is expanding the federal government to unprecedented levels.




President Obama speaks at the White House in Washington March 26. (Reuters Photo)





Health care. The auto industry. Real estate. Wall Street.

As the Obama administration increases regulation and pumps up taxpayer aid in these sectors and beyond, critics say the president is expanding the federal government to unprecedented levels.

Sure, protesters have been on the National Mall for months holding signs about bloated budgets. But it's not just the Tea Party crowd that's concerned. With every step, like the signing of the health care bill last Tuesday, the view that Obama is making historic shifts in the role of Washington becomes more widespread.

"There is a shocking laundry list of interventions by this administration and this Congress in the economy," Republican consultant Jason Roe said.

"This administration seems to want to bail out anybody who'll give it some votes. Chrysler, homeowners, whoever has an open hand," said Peter Morici, business professor at the University of Maryland.

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll out last week found an overwhelming majority of Americans think the government is bigger than it's ever been -- and for most, that's a problem.

The poll of 900 registered voters, taken March 16-17, found 78 percent of people thought the federal government had reached historic proportions. Sixty-five percent said the government is now too big and is restricting freedoms. Among Republicans, that number was 84 percent. Among Democrats, it was 43 percent.

Overall, just 30 percent said they were comfortable with the size and role of government.

But the White House has fought back against Republican attempts to paint the health care overhaul as a "government takeover," and defenders of the Obama administration argue that the expansions that have taken place under his watch were done to counter unprecedented problems in the economy, such as the near-collapse of the financial markets. Action was necessary, they say.

"The goal is not to exercise control over the economy. The goal is to help people who don't have jobs, are in danger of losing their homes and can't have access, don't have access to health care," Democratic strategist Susan Estrich said.

And even conservative critics say it was the Bush administration's response to the financial crisis -- the $700 billion bailout -- that started this ball rolling.

"Bush handed the keys to Obama when he opened the bailout floodgates -- and so it made it possible for Obama to do this $787 billion stimulus," said Tim Carney, author of "Obamanomics." "You say $787 billion, are you crazy? But just a couple months before, we did $700 billion."

Some Democrats say shrinking the government would actually be more popular -- if only Obama were in a position to do that.

"I'm sure he would like to shrink the size of government. We all would as Americans. It is a very American notion," said Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Clinton. "But when you are faced with these enormous economic and social problems we face in this country, you have little alternative but to in some ways expand the role of government in fixing them."

Fox News' Jim Angle contributed to this report.
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Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/29/intervention-concerns-build-size-federal-government/
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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man




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The World's Billionaires
#1 Carlos Slim Helu & family03.10.10, 06:00 PM EST

Telecom tycoon who pounced on privatization of Mexico's national telephone company in the 1990s becomes world's richest person for first time after coming in third place last year.

AP Photo
Net Worth: $53.5 bil
Fortune: Self Made
Source: telecom
Age: 70
Country Of Citizenship: Mexico
Residence: Mexico City
Education: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Marital Status: Widowed, 6 children



Telecom tycoon who pounced on privatization of Mexico's national telephone company in the 1990s becomes world's richest person for first time after coming in third place last year. Net worth up $18.5 billion in a year. Recently received regulatory approval to merge his fixed-line assets into American Movil, Latin America's biggest mobile phone company. His construction conglomerate, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo, builds roads and energy infrastructure. Son of a Lebanese immigrant also owns stakes in financial group Inbursa, Bronco Drilling, Independent News & Media, Saks and New York Times Co. Newspaper outfit's stock popped in early March on talk he might buy a controlling stake; he denies the rumor. Donating $65 million to fund a research project in genomic medicine with American billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.


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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Fed quietly posts record $46.1-billion profit in 2009


By Jim Puzzanghera

January 13, 2010

Reporting from Washington - The Federal Reserve reported a side benefit to its massive intervention into the financial system -- a record profit of $46.1 billion last year on the central bank's investments.

But experts said that gain, which will be paid to the U.S. Treasury, could be offset by losses in the future when the central bank starts selling the Treasury bonds and other assets it has purchased in unprecedented amounts to try to stabilize the economy.

For that reason, the Fed did not make a big deal out of the news Tuesday, announcing it in a short news release, said Vincent R. Reinhart, former director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs.

"Any other entity that had record profits would have hired a band or had a parade," said Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "Why would the Fed downplay that? They don't want you to focus on the current profits because when it comes to tightening policy they'll probably get losses on that same portfolio."

Federal Reserve officials said Tuesday that they believed all the investments they made were safe, including loans to help facilitate the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns and rescue insurer American International Group Inc. But that does not preclude some losses.

The Fed's balance sheet, the value of all of its holdings, has more than doubled to $2.2 trillion as it has tried to keep the financial system afloat since the financial crisis began in 2008. Its huge investments in securities led to much of its increased profit, said Christopher S. Rupkey, chief financial economist for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

"It's the interest on over a trillion dollars of securities," he said of the Fed's profit. "They have an enormous balance sheet, and those assets are contributing more to their earnings, putting more money in the kitty for the Treasury and helping to lower the budget deficit."

But he noted the profit was relatively small given the size of the balance sheet and the $1.4-trillion federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. "It may be a drop in the bucket . . . but every little bit helps," Rupkey said.

The Fed's profit last year was $14.4 billion more than what it paid into the Treasury for 2008 and more than it has ever earned since it began operations in 1914. The previous record was $34.6 billion in 2007.

But Federal Reserve officials stressed that the goal of the central bank is stabilizing monetary policy, not earning profit. The Fed is funded by its earnings, and profit is turned over to the federal government.

"The significant increase in earnings on securities was primarily due to increased securities holdings as a result of the Federal Reserve's response to the severe economic downturn," the central bank said. As of Dec. 30, the Fed held $1.85 trillion in Treasury bonds and other securities, up from $496 billion at the end of 2008.

As the Fed stepped up its efforts to prop up the faltering financial system, it bought large amounts of securities from the U.S. Treasury and other entities, including mortgage-backed securities held by government-sponsored home loan financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were taken over by the federal government during the crisis.

Those purchases have helped push down mortgage rates. Mortgage-backed securities pay a higher rate than Treasury securities, helping account for the increased profit.

"They lend at a higher rate than they borrow. The rate they borrow at is approximately zero" percent, Reinhart said. "Central banking is a really good business, and if you have a big balance sheet you can make a lot."

As part of the $46.1-billion profit, the Fed earned $2.6 billion on currency swap arrangements with central banks in 14 countries and other investments in foreign currency. The Fed also earned $700 million from fees for services it provided to banks.

But the Fed's profit probably will decline in the future, Reinhart said, although the central bank is unlikely to post annual losses.

"The Federal Reserve is not the new Goldman Sachs. They're not a profit center for the government," he said. "Their profits are small in the scheme of things, and they should be properly viewed as offset by potential future losses."

jim.puzzanghera@

latimes.com

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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan DA, Retires After 35 Years

JENNIFER PELTZ 12/30/09 03:40 PM



NEW YORK — Robert Morgenthau has been cast in many roles during his decades in office.

The inspiration for the district attorney on TV's "Law & Order." A taker-on of mobsters, misbehaving celebrities and corrupt CEOs. A Democratic powerbroker who grew up among Roosevelts and Kennedys and helped launmanhch careers, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's.

A local prosecutor who used his office's prominence to stretch the long arm of the law where he saw fit. A savvy, wry and indefatigable New York institution who happens to be 90.

In short, "DA for life."

But Morgenthau closes the curtain Thursday on his 35 years as Manhattan district attorney with little time for reminiscing. In the last week of his term, he was still holding news conferences to announce a flurry of prosecutions and guilty pleas.

"You think I'm going to go quietly?" he joked.

Morgenthau is stepping down from one of the nation's biggest and most prestigious prosecutor's offices, with about 500 lawyers handling 100,000 cases a year. As Manhattan's top federal prosecutor for eight years before being elected as the borough's DA in 1974, he symbolized the criminal justice system for generations of New Yorkers, not to mention TV viewers.

"Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf calls Morgenthau "the greatest district attorney in the history of New York" and used him as the template for pragmatic-but-principled DA Adam Schiff, played by actor Steven Hill in the series' first decade.

Sotomayor, one of Morgenthau's former assistant prosecutors, said in videotaped remarks for a recent event honoring him that he "set a standard of unparalleled prosecutorial excellence and integrity."

Morgenthau quipped in a recent interview with The Associated Press that he's retiring because, "I looked at my birth certificate, and I said, 'It's about time.'"

In other words, his departure, like his tenure, is very much on his own terms.

Morgenthau is hard of hearing and walks slowly but otherwise shows few symptoms of his age. He also remains a key player in the city's legal and political scenes. After handily defeating a former judge who tried to unseat him in 2005, Morgenthau helped his chosen successor, defense lawyer Cy Vance, beat the same jurist and a third contender this year. Vance, one of Morgenthau's assistant prosecutors in the 1980s, has pledged to build on Morgenthau's "outstanding legacy," though he already has shaken up the office's top staff.

The caseload reads at times like an awards-show guest list: A single morning in 2007 brought rappers Busta Rhymes, Ja Rule and Remy Ma to court in separate cases.

In the last four months, Morgenthau's office charged a TV producer with trying to blackmail David Letterman, reached a plea deal with rapper Lil Wayne in a gun-possession case and put "Spider-Man" actress Kirsten Dunst on the witness stand in a trial involving the theft of her $2,000 handbag.

Over the years, Morgenthau's office also prosecuted mob boss John Gotti, acquitted on state charges of ordering a hit on a union official; former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski, convicted of fraud and larceny in a case seen as an emblem of corporate excess; and vigilante subway shooter Bernhard Goetz, acquitted of the shooting charges. The office also produced guilty pleas from "Preppie Killer" Robert Chambers Jr. and John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman.

Meanwhile, Morgenthau became known for pursuing sweeping financial crimes and other cases outside the purview of many other local prosecutors. He even once measured the distance from Yankee Stadium's home plate to the Bronx-Manhattan border to pursue a ticket-scalping probe under a state law giving district attorneys limited jurisdiction in neighboring counties.

Federal officials and others have suggested he overreached at times. But Morgenthau says he makes cases only when others don't, and he casts his pursuit of white-collar crime as a social imperative in the nation's financial capital.

"If you want to have a fair and impartial system, and you want people to respect the law, you have to investigate people who have positions of trust in the society and the economy," he said. "I think (financial) crimes are every bit as serious as the man with a gun."

Morgenthau's image – and influence – are such that it's hard to find critics, even among his natural adversaries: The state Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is honoring him at its annual dinner next month.

He faced questions about diversity in his office and attention to minority communities in the 1980s, culminating with public complaints in 1990 from a group of black legislators that included then-state Sen. David Paterson, now New York's governor.

In response, Morgenthau noted a rising number of minority prosecutors – 125 today, up from 11 when he took office. These days, Paterson praises him for "a life of great accomplishment and service that many of us can only hope to one day achieve in our own lives."

Defense lawyer Ron Kuby says Morgenthau's stature and tenure make his staff overconfident and says the office is loath to consider evidence of wrongful convictions.

"He's become the victim of his own myth, and the myth is that the (Manhattan) district attorney's office is special," Kuby said.

One of Morgenthau's former assistant DAs, Daniel Bibb, told The New York Times last year he felt prosecutors were so slow to acknowledge questions about the convictions of two men in the 1990 killing of a Palladium nightclub bouncer that he tacitly worked to help defense lawyers. The men spent more than a dozen years in prison before prosecutors dropped charges against one; the other was acquitted after a judge ordered a new trial.

In one of Morgenthau's most notorious cases, five men spent years in prison for the 1989 rape of a woman jogger in a Central Park "wilding" spree before DNA evidence and another man's confession prompted him to ask a judge to throw out the convictions in 2002.

Morgenthau says he regrets such cases.

"You just have to be alert, constantly alert, to perjury, to mistaken identity, but the system's not foolproof," he said. But, he said, "it's the best system around."

Morgenthau came from a prominent political family. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., was an ambassador to Turkey; his father, Henry Morgenthau Jr., was secretary of the treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A decorated World War II veteran, Robert Morgenthau was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1962, losing to Republican Nelson Rockefeller; he unsuccessfully sought the nomination again in 1970.

Morgenthau says he hasn't decided what he'll do next. His interests include pressing for immunity from deportation for illegal immigrants who help in immigration-fraud cases.

Simply retiring, however, is out.

"I don't intend to sit on a park bench and vegetate," he said. "New York's been good to me and my family. I'm still in the payback stage."

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Friday, December 04, 2009

The Council on Foreign Relations And the Trilateral Commission


The Council on Foreign Relations

And the Trilateral Commission

________________________

The two organizations that run the United States



by Melvin Sickler

_________

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There are two groups of elite men and women in particular that most American people do not know about, but which are a clear threat and danger to the freedom of the American people. These are the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission.

Right now the United States is completely under the control of those who run these two organizations (David Rockefeller in particular). It is therefore important to understand these organizations if we wish to understand what has been taking place in the United States since the early 1900’s.

The resource material I am using that explains in depth what these two organizations are all about was written by Jack Newell and Devvy Kidd ("Why A Bankrupt America?", Project Liberty, P.O. Box 741075, Arvada, CO 80006-9075). Please allow me to share the main ideas with you.

Edward Mandell House

The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921 by Edward Mandell House, who had been the chief advisor of President Woodrow Wilson. Actually, he was more than just a prominent aide of the President; he dominated the President. He was referred to as Wilson’s "alter ego" (other self), and was credited for being the most powerful individual in the United States during the Wilson Administration from 1913 until 1921.

House was a Marxist whose goal was to socialize the United States. In 1912, House wrote the book "Philip Dru: Administrator" in which he stated that he was working for "Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx." In this book, House laid out a plan for the conquest of America, telling how both the Democratic and Republican Parties would be controlled, and be used as instruments in the creation of a socialistic government. And he asked for the establishment of a state-controlled central bank, which were both proposed in "The Communist Manifesto". And it was in 1913, during the very first year of the House-dominated Wilson Administration, that both of these proposals became law. The Federal Reserve Act was passed, which brought into power a private central bank to create the money of the United States, taking this power away from the united States Congress. And the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the graduated income tax as proposed by Karl Marx, was also ratified.

The Council on Foreign Relations

In 1921, House and his friends formed the Council on Foreign Relations whose purpose right from its conception was to destroy the freedom and independence of the United States, and to lead the country into a one-world government.

Right from its beginning, in 1921, the CFR began to attract men of power and influence. In the late 1920’s, important financing for the CFR came from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation. In 1940, at the invitation of President Roosevelt, members of the CFR gained domination over the State Department, and they have maintained this domination ever since.

Its intentions

The late Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor), Professor of History at Georgetown University, member of the CFR, stated in his book, "Tragedy & Hope":

"The CFR is the American Branch of a society which originated in England, and which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established."

Rear Admiral Chester Ward, a former member of the Cfr for 16 years, warned the American people of the organization’s intentions:

"The most powerful clique in these elitist groups have one objective in common — they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereingty of the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government."

And Dan Smoot, a former member of the FBI Headquarters staff in Washington, D.C., summarized the organization’s purpose as follows:

"The ultimate aim of the CFR is to create a one-world socialist system, and to make the U.S. an official part of it."

In other words, the CFR’s activities are treasonous to the U.S. Constitution. Their goal is to put an end to the United States of America, and to make the country a part of their global government scheme.

Its influence

In 1944 and in 1948, the Republican candidate for President, Thomas Dewey, was a CFR member. In later years, Republicans Eisenhower and Nixon were members of the CFR, as were Democrats Stevenson, Kennedy, Humphrey, and McGovern. (Note: We believe Kennedy became disloyal to the CFR prior to his assassination.") The American people think that they have a choice when they vote for a President, but the truth of the matter is , with few exceptions: Presidential candidates for decades have been CFR members.

In one of the CFR’s annual reports, published in 1978, it listed a membership of 1878 members. Eleven of its members at this time were United States Senators, with even more Congressmen belonging to the organization. 284 of its members listed in this report were United States Government officials. And the Chairman of the Board of this immensely powerful pyramid was stated as being none other than David Rockefeller himself.

The CFR not only has its members in the United States Government, but its influence has also spead to other vital areas of American life. According to Newell: "Its members have run, or are running, NBC and CBS, ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Des Moines Register’, and many other important newspapers. The leaders of ‘Time’, ‘Newsweek’, ‘Fortune’, ‘Business Week’, and numerous other publications are CFR members. The organization’s members also dominate the academic world, top corporations, the huge tax-exempt foundations, labor unions, the military, and just about every segment of American life."

Barry Goldwater states in his book, "With No Apologies", on page 231:

"Does it not seem strange to you that these men just happened to be CFR and just happened to be on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that absolutely controls the money and interest rates of this great country without benefit of Congress? A privately owned organization, the Federal Reserve, which has absolutely nothing to do with the United States of America!"

and Newell continues to write: "Not every member of the CFR is fully committed to carrying out Edward Mandell House’s conspiratorial plan. Many have been flattered by an invitation to join a study group, which is what the CFR calls itself. Others go along because of personal benefits, such as a nice job and a new importance. But all are used to promote the destruction of U.S. sovereignty."

All aspects of American life are dominated

The members of the CFR dominate almost every aspect of American life, yet most Americans have never even heard of the Council on Foreign Relations. One reason for this is probably because there are over 170 journalists, correspondents, and communications executives who are members of the CFR, and who do not write about the organization. Also, it is an express condition of membership that no one is to disclose what goes on at CFR meetings.

Congressmen John R. Rarick had warned:

"The CFR, dedicated to one-world government, financed by a number of the largest tax-exempt foundations, and wielding such power and influence over our lives in the areas of finance, business, labor, military, education, and mass communication-media, should be familiar to every American concerned with good government, and with preserving and defending the U.S. Constitution and our free-enterprise system. Yet, the nation’s right-to-know machinery, the news media, usually so aggressive in exposures to inform our people, remain conspicuously silent when it comes to the CFR, its members and their activities.

"The CFR is the establishment. Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also finances and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitution Republic into a servile member of a one-world dictatorship."

The CFR now has its main headquarters at the corner of park Avenue and 68th Street in New York City, in a building given to the organization by the Rockefeller family in 1929. Its main goal is still to create a one-world government by destroying the freedom and independence of all nations, especially the United States. And David Rockefeller continues to be its Chairman of the Board.

The Trilateral Commission

Unfortunately, the Council on Foreign Relations is not the only group proposing an end to the sovereignty of the United States. In 1973, The Trilateral Commission was founded to work for the same goal: a one-world government.

The Trilateral Commission's roots stem from the book, "Between Two Ages", written by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1970. In this book, Brzezinski praised Marxism, thought of the United States as obsolete, and praised the formation of a one-world government. His thinking closely parallels that of CFR founder Edward Mandell house.

Marxism

On page 72, Brzezinski writes: "Marxism is simultaneously a victory of the external, active man over the inner, passive man and a victory of reason over belief."

On page 83, he states: "Marxism disseminated on the popular level in the form of Communism, represented a major advance in man's ability to conceptualize his relationship to his world."

On page 123, we find: "Marxism supplied the best available insight into contemporary reality."

What Mr. Brzezinski fails to tell his readers is that approximately 100 million human beings have been murdered under Marxism "in the form of Communism" just in this Twentieth Century. It has enslaved a billion more, and has been responsible for those who live in Communist-dominated countries. There is nothing like being brainwashed!

For world government

Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Between Two Ages" was published in 1970 while he was a professor in New York City. David Rockefeller read the book and, in 1973, launched the new Trilateral Commission, whose purposes include linking North America, Western Europe, and Japan "in their economic relations, their political and defense relations, their relations with developing countries, and their relations with Communist countries."

As Newell writes: "The original literature of The Trilateral Commission also states, exactly as Brzezinski's book had proposed, that the more advanced Communist States could become partners in the alliance leading to world government. In short, David Rockefeller implemented Brzezinski's proposal."

Rockefeller appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski to be the Director of The Trilateral Commission.

Jimmy Carter

In 1973, Jimmy Carter became a student of Brzezinski, and a founding member of the Trilateral Commission.

On March 21, 1978, "The New York Times" featured an article about Zbigniew Brzezinski's close relationship with the President. In part, it reads: "The two men met for the first time four years ago when mr. Brzezinski was executive director of The Trilateral Commission… and had the foresight to ask the then obscure former Governor of Georgia to join its distinguished ranks. Their initial teacher-student relationship blossomed during the campaign, and appears to have grown closer still."

To think that the teacher in this relationship praised Marxism, and wanted to form a one-world government. And the student was to become ghe President of the united States.

During the 1976 political campaign, Carter repeatedly told the nation that he was going to get rid of the Establishment Insiders if he became president. But when he took office, he promptly filled his Administration with members of the Council on Foreign Relations (284 to be exact) and The Trilateral Commission, the two most prominent insider organizations in America. Included in this list of members of The Trilateral Commission were Walter Mondale and Dr. Henry Kissinger.

Beginning with Jimmy Carter, all the recent presidents, including president Clinton, have promptly filled their administrations with members of the Council on Foreign relations and The Trilateral Commission.

The effects

The common everyday American citizen does not need to be told that there is a controlled government running the United States. But when we understand exactly what the Council on Foreign Relations and The Trilateral Commission are, and how its members hold key positions in the Government, it becomes all the more clear.

As Newell writes: "The effects of the Council on Foreign Relation and The Trilateral Commission on the affaires of our nation is easy to see. Our own Government no longer acts in its own interest, we no longer win any wars we fight, and we constantly tie ourselves to international agreements, pacts, and conventions. And, our leaders have developed blatant preferences for Communist U.S.S.R., Communist Cuba, and Communist China, while they continue to work for world government, which has always been the goal of Communism…

"The real goal of our own Government’s leaders is to make the United States into a carbon copy of a Communist state, and then to merge all nations into a one-world system run by a powerful few."

Barry Goldwater once stated on this subject:

"The Trilateral Commission is international, and it is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power – political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical."

As with the CFR, not all the members of The Trilateral Commission are fully committed to the destruction of the United States. Some just go along for the ride, to obtain fame, comfortabel living, and constatn flattery. But some, of course, really do run things and some, of course, really do run things and work against the independence of the united States.

In conclusion

The American people may think that they live in a free country when, in reality, things could not be more controlled. The American public must be made aware of what is really taking place in the united States.

The key to obtain our freedom, to have a true independence, is to free ourselves from the yoke of International Finance. How true it is to state that those who control the money of a country control everything in that country.

The first step is prayer: to kneel down before Almighty God and to ask Him to save America, to shower His blessings on this great land.

And second; to educate the population. Every citizen of the United States should become informed about these inside organizations, and make it a point not to vote nor to promote those, who are members for these organizations. And to demand a reform of the financial laws of the country, especially to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and to implement the philosophy of Social Credit into the laws of the country.

Make it a point to subscribe as many people as possible to the "Michael" Journal so they could become educated as to how the financial system of the United States could actually be corrected. Then the United States Government would no longer be under the control of the Bankers, but would become a servant of the American people.
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Saturday, November 07, 2009

House passes health care bill


House passes health care bill
(AP) – 32 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — The Democratic-controlled House has passed historic health care legislation to provide medical coverage to millions more Americans.

Most Americans would be required to carry insurance and large employers would be obliged to cover their employees.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Triumphant Democrats steered landmark health care legislation to the brink of passage in the House late Saturday night, spurred by a summons from President Barack Obama to "answer the call of history" and expand coverage to millions who lack it.

After months of struggle, Speaker Nancy Pelosi projected confidence and likened the bill to the creation of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

"It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it," said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

In the runup to a final vote, conservatives from the two political parties joined forces to impose tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be sold to many individuals and small groups. They prevailed on a roll call of 240-194.

Ironically, that only solidified support for the legislation, clearing the way for conservative Democrats to vote for it.

Passage would clear the way for a Senate debate expected to begin in several days. Democratic leaders have been working on a self-imposed deadline for passing a final compromise, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid signaled recently that may slip.

United in opposition to the health care bill, minority Republicans cataloged their objections across hours of debate on the 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, `this is making me sick,'" jabbed Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., adding that Democrats were intent on passing "a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding" bill.

But with little or no doubt about the outcome, the rhetoric lacked the fire of last summer's town hall meetings, when some critics accused Democrats of plotting "death panels" to hasten the demise of senior citizens.

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government's mandates.

Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. In a further slap, the industry would lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price gouging, bid rigging and market allocation.

At its core, the measure would create a federally regulated marketplace where consumers could shop for coverage. In the bill's most controversial provision, the government would sell insurance, although the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that premiums for it would be more expensive than for policies sold by private firms.

The bill is projected to expand coverage to 36 million uninsured, resulting in 96 percent of the nation's eligible population having insurance.

To pay for the expansion of coverage, the bill cuts Medicare's projected spending by more than $400 billion over a decade. It also imposes a tax surcharge of 5.4 percent on income over $500,000 in the case of individuals and $1 million for families.

The bill was estimated to reduce federal deficits by about $104 billion over a decade, although it lacked two of the key cost-cutting provisions under consideration in the Senate, and its longer-term impact on government red ink was far from clear.

Democrats lined up a range of outside groups behind their legislation, none more important than the AARP, whose support promises political cover against the cuts to Medicare in next year's congressional elections.

The nation's drug companies generally support health care overhaul. And while the powerful insurance industry opposed the legislation, it did so quietly, and the result was that Republicans could not count on the type of advertising campaign that might have peeled away skittish Democrats in swing districts.

Over all, the bill envisioned the most sweeping set of changes to the health care system in more than a generation, and Democrats said it marked the culmination of a campaign that Harry Truman began when he sat in the White House 60 years ago.

Debate on the House floor had already begun when Obama strode into a closed-door meeting of the Democratic rank and file across the street from the Capitol to make a final personal appeal to them to pass his top domestic priority. While the session was private, he later said he had told the rank and file "that opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation.... This is their moment, this is our moment, to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us..."

"I urge members of Congress to rise to this moment. Answer the call of history, and vote yes for health insurance reform for America," he said.

Participants also said Obama had referred to this week's shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. His remarks put in perspective that the hardships soldiers endure for the country are "what sacrifice really is," as opposed to "casting a vote that might lose an election for you," said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J.

As drafted, the measure denied the use of federal subsidies to purchase abortion coverage in policies sold by private insurers in the new insurance exchange, except in cases of incest, rape or when the life of the mother was in danger.

Democratic abortion foes, joined by Republicans, won far stronger restrictions that would rule out abortion coverage except in those three categories in any government-sold plan. It would also ban abortion coverage in any private plan purchased by consumers receiving federal subsidies.

Disappointed Democratic abortion rights supporters grumbled about the turn of events, but appeared to pull back quickly from any thought of opposing the health care bill in protest.

One, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., detailed numerous other benefits for women in the bill, including free medical preventive services and better prescription drug coverage under Medicare. "Women need health care reform," she concluded in remarks on the House floor.

Republicans offered an alternative that relied heavily on loosening regulations on private insurers to reduce costs for those who currently have insurance, in some cases by as much as 10 percent. But congressional budget analysts said the plan would make no dent in the ranks of the uninsured, an assessment that highlighted the difference in priorities between the two political parties. It fell by a near party line vote of 258-176.

It was a theme of Obama's remarks to Democrats at midmorning.

The president said Democrats have a 70-year history of creating and defending programs like Social Security and Medicare, Andrews said afterward, adding Obama had said the day's vote "is going to define the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties for decades."

Associated Press writers Phil Elliott, Alan Fram and Erica Werner contributed to this report.




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Monday, October 05, 2009

The Money Masters. How International Bankers Gained Control of America

THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure.
Synopsis - The Money Masters

The Money Masters explains the history behind the current world depression and the bankers' goal of world economic control by a very small coterie of...
The Money Masters
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtlbl_the-money-masters-part-1-0f-2_businesshttp://


The Money Masters Part 1 0f 2
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The Money Masters Part 2 of 2
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