NAACP, Al Sharpton and Detroit Leaders Play Race Card with Emergency Financial Manager Law

Earlier this month, Huffpo reported on the prospect of Detroit having an emergency financial manager. Judging by the article and some of the updates, you’d think the KKK was about to descend on Detroit. And it’s all because of Republican ‘dictatorial’ governor Rick Snyder.

For those of you who don’t know, Detroit has a corruption problem. Former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is a convicted felon after funneling state money to his wife and lying under oath in a civil trial about an affair. He also pled guilty to assaulting a police officer. He’s been ordered to pay 1 million in restitution to the city and was sentenced to further jail time when he was found to have lied about the state of his finances. Monica Conyers, former Detroit City Council member and wife of democrat Congressman John Conyers, is serving a sentence for receiving bribes from a contractor.

Those are just a couple of examples of a city besieged by corruption. Employees in the school system have also embezzled and misused funds for which former governor, Jennifer Granholm, called in EFM Robert Bobb. Bobb is black and Granholm is a democrat and oddly enough I don’t recall as much of a cry of racism when Bobb was called in, though his tactics to clean up the school system weren’t popular with school officials. Even the Detroit Public Library system thoughtlessly spent over 2 million on furniture all the while the threat of closing of some branches loomed.

With all of this going on, the city is in obvious financial straits. Mayor Dave Bing has been warning the city is near bankruptcy for months and says that without huge reform the city could run out of cash by April.

But for some, the concept that a city has to show it can be responsible with money and get rid of corrupt leaders or face the consequences isn’t reasonable. It must be racism. President of the Detroit NAACP, Rev. Wendell Anthony, compares Detroit having an EFM to going back to the plantation. And race baiter for pay, Al Sharpton, has made a predictable appearance claiming that the EFM law is racially biased and is used against cities with a predominantly black population. He and Congressman Conyers led a protest outside the home of Governor Snyder on Martin Luther King Day. Detroit’s religious leaders and other protestors showed up including members of the extreme leftist group By Any Means Necessary. The religious leaders apparently left to avoid being associated with such a radical element.

There is a lot of misinformation going around about Michigan’s Emergency Manager law. I find it ironic that the people balking the loudest about the state intervening in a financial emergency are the same type of people who think Obamacare and other big government concepts are okay. Public Act 4, the new version of this law, states:

“The legislature hereby determines that the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of this state would be materially and adversely affected by the insolvency of local governments and that the fiscal accountability of local governments is vitally necessary to the interests of the citizens of this state to assure the provision of necessary governmental services essential to public health, safety, and welfare. The legislature further determines that it is vitally necessary to protect the credit of this state and its political subdivisions and that it is necessary for the public good and it is a valid public purpose for this state to take action and to assist a local government in a condition of financial stress or financial emergency so as to remedy the stress or emergency by requiring prudent fiscal management and efficient provision of services, permitting the restructuring of contractual obligations, and prescribing the powers and duties of state and local government officials and emergency managers…”

The City of Detroit can barely take care of its own trash. It’s had enough of a loss in population that Mayor Bing has proposed moving residents closer together in order to save money on public services. Detroit’s downfall isn’t just bad for the city. It will have a far-reaching impact, especially to the suburbs. However, Detroiters do tend to forget that it’s not the only town around. Do people imagine that Governor Snyder doesn’t have enough on his plate with the rest of the state struggling as well? I have to wonder if they think he lies awake nights in his pointy white KKK hat dreaming of what he’s going to do when he finally gets his hands on Detroit.

I assume it’s the phrase “permitting the restructuring of contractual obligations” that upsets a lot of people in Detroit and cities that have already had an EFM.  Mayor Bing has already stated he needed the unions to be willing to compromise to help the city. Unions never want to hear they are part of the problem. At least one union official is spreading the rumor that the law takes away the right of citizens to vote which isn’t true. This short fact sheet explains the reality.

After demonstrating incredible levels of irresponsibility and corruption, it’s only reasonable that the state step in to help the city and possibly save the state from any further losses.  This already volatile situation doesn’t need race baiters coming in to preach hate. It needs someone from outside of Detroit to work with city officials in bringing the city back from the brink of the precipice of self-destruction it seems so hell-bent to run head on into which is the job of an EFM.

Fiesty! Female Newt Capaign Worker Beats Down Dirty Methed Out Hippy in Florida!

I love it. Though it actually didn’t happen. Some fey photographer was helping a dirty Squeaky Frome impersonator disrupt a Gingrich rally. Our blonde hero, who time has been very, very kind to, steps in to confront Squeaky about her con job to get close to Gingrich. The videographer was there I guess to catch Squeaky martyr herself at the hands of “rethuglicans” but when the blonde bomber didn’t take the bait he seemed to get fresh with her. She grabbed his camera, he whined in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Andy Dick then stopped filming and uploaded the video claiming he was assaulted. By a stunning middle-aged woman.

Can you say sissy?

If I wasn’t a happily married man I’d say that Gingrich staffer can come “strike” me anytime.

Julian Assange – Kremlin Stooge

Jeff Bercovici has an epic take down of everyone’s favorite radical Julian Assange who just signed a fat deal with Russian propaganda network Russia Today:

How foolish of me it was to question whether Wikileaks founder Julian Assange really had a deal to distribute his new talk show to hundreds of millions of viewers. It turns out he does: with Russia Today, the English-language news network launched by the Russian government to massage its international image.

That’s right: Assange, self-styled foe of government secrets and conspiracies of the powerful, is going to be a star on a TV network backed by the Kremlin. The same Kremlin that has done suspiciously little to investigate or prevent the killings and beatings of journalists that have plagued Russia for more than a decade. The same Kremlin accused of blatant fraud in December’s parliamentary elections. The same Kremlin whose control of the country’s broadcast media allowed it to suppress coverage of the massive protests mounted in response to that fraud. The same Kremlin whose embrace of corruption led to Russia being named “the world’s most corrupt major economy” by Transparency International in 2011.

And so on. That Kremlin is Julian Assange’s new patron. The same Julian Assange who accused President Obama of putting “a chill across investigative journalism” by prosecuting Army leaker Bradley Manning.

Actually, though, maybe it makes sense. After all, Assange has said “it’s an international disgrace that so few western journalists have been killed in the course of duty, or have been arrested in the course of duty.”

Read the rest.

Guess I Was Right to Stock Up – Double Digit Inflation Ignored by Media

Via CNS News we have some inflation numbers that the government has left out of their bogus CPI and the media studiously ignored. But the rest of us don’t have that luxury:

(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.

[…]

The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak.   (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)

Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)

[…]

Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.

Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.

One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed  $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.

Whole milk prices averaged above three dollars 33 out of the 36 months since Obama took office. In January 2009, the price for one gallon of whole milk was $3.58; but by December 2011, milk prices had slightly declined less than one percent (0.28 percent) to $3.57 per gallon.

The average retail price of Grade A eggs per dozen from January 2009 to December 2011 increased by less than two percent (1.30 percent) from $1.85 to $1.87.

Inflation is a stealth tax and right now it’s being caused by leftist loose money policy. How long can you afford to ignore these costs?

People laughed at me when I launched a survival blog and Hunter-Trader-Trapper with the message of becoming more self-reliant, especially when it comes to food. Who’s laughing now?

Ann Bernhardt on Banks Refusing Cash Withdrawals in California

I’m going to reprinting this piece from Ann Bernhardt in it’s entirety because her site has, as far as I can see, has no permalink function for individual posts. To bad she has some great blog posts. It comes from NC Renegade:

I have received enough calls and emails on this within the last few weeks to A.) cause concern and B.) merit a post.

People are having difficulty withdrawing cash from banks. I just received the SECOND call on this from California this week. The question is, do banks have the right to deny you cash withdrawals?

The answer is NO. They do not. And both of the men I have heard from in California were obviously being bee-essed by their bank. The bank couldn’t cite statute, and then started haggling over the amount of cash withdrawals they would allow. That’s your dead give-away. If there were ANY statute or actual rule, the bank wouldn’t set up a conference call and then start haggling. You don’t haggle over laws and rules.

What banks can do is ask for up to 7 days notice on a large cash withdrawal just so that they can order the cash in special and not completely drain their cash on hand. This is very logical and sensible. For transactions over $10,000 the bank also does have to file a transaction report. Again, this is standard. We may not like it, but that has been the law for a very long time.

Also, one chap in CA reported that his bank told him that if he took more than $20,000 out of the bank in cash that he would have to hire an armored vehicle and security. This is an abject lie. $100 bills are bundled in 1/2? stacks. a 1/2? stack contains 100 bills. Therefore $20,000 would be two standard 1/2? stacks of hundred dollar bills, which would fit in ANY purse or easily into the inside pocket of any men’s sportcoat. We aren’t talking bags and bags of cash. Cash is still shockingly compact.

For now, what I would recommend is setting up your new destination bank account FIRST, and then simply closing the old account with the mega-bank and taking the deposit in the form of a cashier’s check. Then drive the cashier’s check directly to the new bank and deposit it. BUT, if for whatever reason you want or need cash money, no, banks have no right to deny you cash provided you give them the sufficient 7 day notice.

Limiting cash withdrawals is a sign of an insolvent or failing banking system. These sorts of limits are happening in Italy as we speak. It is very telling that banks in the U.S. are now lying and dissimulating in order to avoid and thwart cash withdrawals by their customers.

I’m wondering if anyone else is having these problems. The banking system is basically insolvent so I’m betting there are lots of you out there having trouble withdrawing large amounts of funds.