The solar wind is a brisk 407 km/sec and there are 7 sunspot clusters on the Sun. This morning, the New Moon passed in front of the sun, producing a solar eclipse visible from the east Coast of North America to the western side of Africa. In North Carolina, the eclipse was underway when the morning sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean:

The sun has erupted more than two dozen times over the last week, sending radiation and solar material hurtling through space - and scientists say more eruptions may be coming.

This shouldn't be unusual. After all, we are technically at solar maximum, the peak of the 11-year cycle of the sun's activity. But this has been a noticeably mellow solar maximum, with the sun staying fairly quiet throughout the summer. So when our life-giving star suddenly let loose with 24 medium strength M-class solar flares and four significantly stronger X-class flares between Oct.  23 and Oct. 30, it felt like a surprise.

Many of the flares originated from sunspot AR1884, a particularly active region of the sun that is currently facing Earth, almost at the center of the star. If this region stays active, it will continue to hurl radiation and solar material our way for about another week until it rotates out of sight.

A sunspot is an area of the sun where the magnetic fields have gotten all twisted up. "You get a tangled bunch of magnetic fields, and they get too tangled and too stressed, they end up erupting," said Holly Gilbert, a solar physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  

The good news is that none of the rapid-fire solar flares of the last week have had much effect on life on Earth. Our atmosphere protects us from the sun's occasional powerful bursts of light and radiation, but solar flares do occasionally interact with our communications systems. The radiation can mess with an upper layer in our atmosphere called the ionosphere and cause radio signals to act funky.

Gilbert said the solar physicists at Goddard were glad to see more activity from the sun after such a quiet summer.

"It hadn't been active in months, so it's like it finally woke up," she said. "For those of us who study the dynamics of the sun, it is exciting because it gives us more events to study."

And for the rest of us it gives us the opportunity to watch cool videos, like the one above, of the sun erupting.

Obama’s Team Working to Repeal 22nd AmendmentBefore President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third and fourth terms in office, U.S. presidents had honored the limit established by George Washington that a president should serve no more than two terms.

Later, the 22nd Amendment formally restricted service in the Oval Office to two terms.

But now, U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and a supporter of President Obama, has introduced House Joint Resolution 15 to repeal the 22nd Amendment and thus abolish presidential term limits.

Serrano has introduced the bill before, in 2003, 2009 and 2011 with no success. H.J.R. 15 would require a two-thirds majority vote in favor in both the House and Senate and a majority of support from state legislatures.

With the debate over the fiscal cliff dominating most of the discussion on Capitol Hill of late, the legislation has managed to slip under the radar.

It was introduced on Jan. 4 and immediately referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Washington declined to run for a third term, despite his wide popularity. Thomas Jefferson later foreshadowed the need for a formal limit when, in 1805, he wrote to John Taylor that he would follow Washington’s example.

Two years later he warned that without term limits, U.S. presidents would become like kings, which the colonists had fought a bloody war to escape.

“If some termination to the services of the chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied in practice,” Jefferson wrote to the Vermont Legislature, “his office, nominally for years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance.”

Formal limits were established March 21, 1947, when Congress passed the 22nd Amendment. By Feb. 26, 1951, the amendment was ratified by the required number of states and was added to the Constitution.

The 22nd Amendment states, “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Serrano’s bill currently has no co-sponsors.

It states, “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as president.”

It continues: “Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification.”

WND reported four years ago when Obama was preparing for his 2009 inauguration gala, the same plan was before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

At that time, Serrano’s bill was H.J.R. 5, which proposed “an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as president.”

Eisenhower, Clinton and Reagan all were critical of the amendment at times.

The amendment limits presidents to a maximum of eight years in office or, under unusual circumstances, such as succession following the death of a president, a maximum of 10 years in office. Should Serrano succeed in repealing the amendment, Obama would be cleared to run for an unlimited number of terms, restricted only by the vote of the electorate.

To achieve repeal of the 22nd Amendment, Serrano’s proposal must be approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states’ legislatures.

“Gen. Washington set the example of voluntary retirement after eight years,” Jefferson wrote in an 1805 letter to John Taylor. “I shall follow it, and a few more precedents will oppose the obstacle of habit to anyone after a while who shall endeavor to extend his term. Perhaps it may beget a disposition to establish it by an amendment of the Constitution.”

In the same letter to the Vermont Legislature in which he warned of a presidential monarchy, Jefferson further explained why he refused to run for a third term.

“Believing that a representative government, responsible at short periods of election, is that which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind,” Jefferson wrote, “I feel it a duty to do no act which shall essentially impair that principle; and I should unwillingly be the person who, disregarding the sound precedent set by an illustrious predecessor, should furnish the first example of prolongation beyond the second term of office.”

BREAKING: Obama Will Seek Third TermRandPaulReview August 12, 2013 News, Politics 42

Earlier this week President Obama said in a speech to supporters that he wished to seek an unprecedented 3rd term as Commander in Chief. He cited his exemplary work at bringing the country back from the brink of economic catastrophe much like former socially minded, populist leader Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Flanked by a few of his most ardent Democrat supporters in Congress he announced the urgency to repeal a portion of the Constitution which forbids the president from seeking a 3rd term. Democrats are already pushing forth legislation which should accomplish just that.

Obama stated:

“I would put [my administration] up against any prior administration since FDR,” Obama said. “We didn’t ask for the challenges that we face, but we don’t shrink from them either.” He continued, “And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.”

Obama promised in his speech to finally fully implement vital portions of Obamacare (which has been delayed again until 2015), to ensure Americans understand the importance of sacrificing a small degree of privacy for vital security, and institute major Wall Street reform. Also on his agenda is a high speed rail system to be finished in 2020 and paid for by new stimulus money he will attempt to push through Congress in 2014. Socially Liberal Democrats and Progressives cheered the move as a major step forward to a more generous nation-state. Citing Republican obstructionism as the main culprit in his failure to implement these policies he promised us back in his campaign of 2008, he claimed a 3rd and possibly 4th term would give him more of the time he so desperately deserved

The Twenty-second Amendment of the United States Constitution sets a term limit for election to the office of President of the United States. Congress passed the amendment on March 21, 1947. It was ratified by the requisite number of states on February 27, 1951.

SECTION 1.

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

SECTION 2.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

According to historian Glenn W. LaFantasie (who was opposed to repealing the amendment) of Western Kentucky University, "ever since 1985, when Ronald Reagan was serving in his second term as president, there have been repeated attempts to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits each president to two terms."[4] In addition, several Democratic congressmen, including Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. José Serrano,[5] Rep. Howard Berman, and Sen. Harry Reid,[6] have introduced legislation to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment, but each resolution died before making it out of its respective committee. Other alterations have been proposed, including replacing the absolute two term limit with a limit of no more than two consecutive terms and giving Congress the power to grant a dispensation to a current or former president by way of a supermajority vote in both houses.[citation needed]

On January 4, 2013, Rep. José Serrano once again introduced H.J.Res. 15 proposing an Amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment, as he has done every two years since 1997.[7]

Interaction with the Twelfth Amendment[edit]

There is a point of contention regarding the interpretation of the Twenty-second Amendment as it relates to the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, which provides that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States."

While it is clear that under the Twelfth Amendment the original constitutional qualifications of age, citizenship, and residency apply to both the President and Vice President, it is unclear whether a two-term president could later serve as Vice President. Some argue[8] that the Twenty-second Amendment and Twelfth Amendment bar any two-term president from later serving as Vice President as well as from succeeding to the presidency from any point in the United States presidential line of succession. Others contend[9][10] that the Twelfth Amendment concerns qualification for service, while the Twenty-second Amendment concerns qualifications for election, and thus a former two-term president is still eligible to serve as vice president. The

practical applicability of this distinction has not been tested, as no former president has ever sought the vice presidency, and thus the courts have never been required to make a judgment regarding the matter

The Congress proposed the Twenty-second Amendment on March 24, 1947.[3] The proposed amendment was adopted on February 27, 1951.

A Democrat has now introduced legislation that would repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution - the prohibition against any President serving more than two terms in office.

Just like the Nazis, the Communists, and the Fascists, Obama and the Democratic Party are moving to posture the U.S. Presidency for succession by one President. That's how Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini became "Leaders for Life." Once the 22nd Amendment is repealed, the next step is to pass an Amendment to the (already emasculated) Constitution which permits a majority in the House of Representatives to designate a President as "President for Life."

Wake up America ! Contact your congressional representative and make it VERY clear that you oppose this proposed legislation.

H. J. Res. 5 - Repealing 22nd Amendment bill was referred to the House Committee on Judiciary on 1/6/09 and then referred to the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on 2/9/09.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y. introduced H. J. Res. 5, a bill that would repeal the Constitution's 22nd Amendment which prohibits a president from being elected to more than two terms in office, thus potentially paving the way to make Barack Obama president for life. Not surprisingly, the corporate media currently caught up in Obama-mania has not covered this story.

111th CONGRESS1st SessionH. J. RES. 5Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVESJanuary 6, 2009Mr. SERRANO introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTIONProposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is

proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:‘Article--‘The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.’.

Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service

An identity theft service that sold Social Security and drivers license numbers — as well as bank account and credit card data on millions of Americans — purchased much of its data from Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, according to a lengthy investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.

In November 2011, this publication ran a story about an underground service called Superget.info, a fraudster-friendly site that marketed the ability to look up full Social Security numbers, birthdays, drivers license records and financial information on millions of Americans. Registration was free, and accounts were funded via WebMoney and other virtual currencies that are popular in the cybercriminal underground.

Each SSN search on Superget.info returned consumer records that were marked with a set of varying and mysterious two- and three-letter “sourceid:” identifiers, including “TH,” “MV,” and “NCO,” among others. I asked readers who may have a clue about the meaning or source of those abbreviations to contact me. In the weeks following that post, I heard from many readers who had guesses and ideas, but none who seemed to have conclusive information.

That changed in the past week. An individual who read a story about the operators of a similar ID theft service online having broken into the networks of LexisNexis and other major data brokers wrote to say that he’d gone back and reviewed my previous stories on this topic, and that he’d identified the source of the data being resold by Superget.info. The reader said the abbreviations matched data sets produced by Columbus, Ohio-based USInfoSearch.com.

Contacted about the reader’s claim, U.S. Info Search CEO Marc Martin said the data sold by the ID theft service was not obtained directly through his company, but rather via Court Ventures, a third-party company with which US Info Search had previously struck an information sharing agreement. Martin said that several years ago US Info Search and CourtVentures each agreed to grant the other company complete access to its stores of information on US consumers.

Founded in 2001, Court Ventures described itself as a firm that “aggregates, repackages and distributes public record data, obtained from over 1,400 state and county sources.” Cached, historic copies of courtventures.com are available through archive.org.

THE ROLE OF EXPERIAN

In March 2012, Court Ventures was purchased by Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Experian, one of the three major consumer credit bureaus. According to Martin, the proprietors of Superget.info had

gained access to Experian’s databases by posing as a U.S.-based private investigator. In reality, Martin said, the individuals apparently responsible for running Superget.info were based in Vietnam.

Martin said he first learned of the ID theft service after hearing from a U.S. Secret Service agent who called and said the law enforcement agency was investigating Experian and had obtained a grand jury subpoena against the company.

The “sourceid” abbreviations pointed toward Court Ventures.

While the private investigator ruse may have gotten the fraudsters past Experian and/or CourtVentures’ screening process, according to Martin there were other signs that should have alerted Experian to potential fraud associated with the account. For example, Martin said the Secret Service told him that the alleged proprietor of Superget.info had paid Experian for his monthly data access charges using wire transfers sent from Singapore.

“The issue in my mind was the fact that this went on for almost a year after Experian did their due diligence and purchased” Court Ventures, Martin said. “Why didn’t they question cash wires coming in every month? Experian portrays themselves as the databreach experts, and they sell identity theft protection services. How this could go on without them detecting it I don’t know. Our agreement with them was that our information was to be used for fraud prevention and ID verification, and was only to be sold to licensed and credentialed U.S. businesses, not to someone overseas.”

Experian declined multiple requests for an interview. But in a written statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, Experian acknowledged the broad outlines of Martin’s story and said it had worked with the Secret Service to bring a Vietnamese national to justice in connection with the online ID theft service. Their statement is as follows:

“Experian acquired Court Ventures in March, 2012 because of its national public records database. After the acquisition, the US Secret Service notified Experian that Court Ventures had been and was continuing to resell data from US Info Search to a third party possibly engaged in illegal activity. Following notice by the US Secret Service, Experian discontinued reselling US Info Search data and worked closely and in full cooperation with law enforcement to bring Vietnamese national Hieu Minh Ngo, the alleged perpetrator, to justice.  Experian’s credit files were not accessed.  Because of the ongoing federal investigation, we are not free to say anything further at this time.”

WHO IS HIEU?

As I noted in my 2011 story, I’d found a scammer-friendly forum called talkgold.com where a user named “hieupc” was promoting superget.info as his site. Further searching showed that there was a fairly active Vietnamese hacker who used the nickname “hieupc;” That user appears to have gotten started defacing Web sites, even attacking the Web site of his former university in New Zealand after the school kicked him out for alleged credit card fraud. As it happens, the Web server address history for superget.info shows that it was hosted last year in Vietnam.

According an indictment unsealed last week by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Hieupc was none other than Hieu Minh Ngo, the 24-year-old Vietnamese individual named in Experian’s statement. According to court documents, Ngo resided in New Zealand and Vietnam, and operated superget.info and a similar ID theft service called findget.me, along with an unnamed co-conspirator, identified in the complaint only as John Doe One.

These services specialized in selling “fullz” or “fulls,” a slang term that cybercrooks use to describe a package of personally identifiable information that typically includes the following information: an individual’s name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of work, duration of work, state driver’s license number, mother’s maiden name, bank account number(s), bank routing number(s), email account(s) and other account passwords. Fulls are most commonly used to take over the identity of a person in order to engage in other fraud, such as taking out loans in the victim’s name or filing fraudulent tax refund requests with the IRS.

All told, findget.me and superget.info acquired or sold fullz information on more than a half million people, the government alleges.

The U.S. Secret Service declined to discuss the case, but a source familiar with the matter said undercover federal agents set up a phony business deal to lure Ngo out of Vietnam and into Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. The source said that Ngo was arrested upon his arrival in Guam and transferred to New Hampshire. There he is currently facing 15 separate criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit identification fraud, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud, among others.

If convicted on all counts, Ngo could be facing a very lengthy prison sentence. According to a statement on the Ngo case released Oct. 19 by the Justice Department and New Hampshire U.S. Attorney John P. Kacavas, the statutory maximum penalties are five years on the identity fraud and identity fraud conspiracy counts; two years each on the aggravated identity theft counts; 20 years on the wire fraud count and wire fraud conspiracy counts; 10 years on the substantive access device fraud count; and five years on the conspiracy to commit access device fraud count.

The unsealed complaint against Ngo is available here (PDF).

DATA BROKER BREAKDOWN

Meanwhile, it’s not clear what — if any — trouble Experian may face as a result of its involvement in the identity theft scheme. This incident bears some resemblance to a series of breaches at ChoicePoint, a data aggregator that acted as a private intelligence service to government and industry. Beginning in 2004, ChoicePoint suffered several breaches in which personal data on American citizens was accessed by crooks who’d used previously stolen

identities to create apparently legitimate businesses seeking ChoicePoint accounts. ChoicePoint was later sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an action that produced a $10 million settlement — the largest in the agency’s history for a violation of federal privacy law.

In 2008, ChoicePoint was acquired by Reed Elsevier, the parent company of data aggregator LexisNexis. Last month, KrebsOnSecurity published an exclusive story showing how the proprietors of an identity theft service that competed with superget.info had hacked into the networks of LexisNexis, as well as data brokers Kroll and Dun & Bradstreet.

Avivah Litan, a financial fraud analyst with Gartner Inc., said this latest exposure raises serious questions about U.S. regulators’ capacity to monitor the due care of extremely sensitive consumer data, in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  Litan said that under 15 U.S.C. 1681b (PDF) credit reporting agencies have strict guidelines regarding to whom they may distribute consumer reports.

While the government shutdown certainly affected regulator business in October 2013, where have the

regulators been for the last seven years when it comes to protecting sensitive consumer data? Have those efforts

been shut down as well?“It’s clear that criminal identity theft organizations are excluded from the list of users with ‘permissible purposes’,” Litan said. ” While the government shutdown certainly affected regulator business in October 2013, where have the regulators been for the last seven years when it comes to protecting sensitive consumer data? Have those efforts been shut down as well?”

There are signs that at least some federal regulators may be taking a harder look at the practices of the data broker industry. In an August 2013 keynote speech (PDF) at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said “the time has come for businesses to move their data collection and use practices out of the shadows and into the sunlight. In other words, with big data comes big responsibility. Firms that acquire and maintain large sets of consumer data must be responsible stewards of that information.”

Ramirez noted that the FTC can already bring actions under Section 5 of the FTC Act, and that it will continue to be active in punishing data brokers that fail to secure the information they collect. But she said stronger incentives to push firms to safeguard big data must be in place, and that the FTC has urged Congress to give the agency civil penalty authority against companies that fail to maintain reasonable security.

“Firms of all sorts are using consumer data in ways that may not just be contrary to consumers’ expectation, but could also be harmful to their interests,” Ramirez said. “This problem is perhaps seen most acutely with data brokers — companies that collect and aggregate consumer information from a wide array of sources to create detailed profiles of individuals. Their success depends on having more and better data than their rivals. The concern is that their mega-databases may contain highly sensitive information. The risk of improper disclosure of sensitive information is heightened because consumers know nothing about these companies and their practices are invisible to consumers.”

Last year, the FTC called on data brokers to give consumers access to their information through an easy-to-find, easy-to-use common portal. The agency also supported legislation to give consumers access to, and a right to dispute or suppress, data held by brokers. As it stands, Congress can’t even bring itself to pass a national data breach disclosure law, a relatively nonpartisan legislative effort that has enjoyed broad support from industry leaders for nearly a decade.

FTC Chairwoman Ramirez said the agency also issued subpoenas to nine data brokers, seeking information about the nature and sources of the consumer information the data brokers collect; how they use, maintain, and disseminate the information; and the extent to which they allow consumers to access and correct their information or opt out of having their personal information sold. The FTC said it expects to issue a report later this year with its findings.

What Else the Democrat Crony Express is Selling to Raise MoneyBy way of backstory: the Postal Service is being plundered through the device of a completely fabricated financial crisis. The mail provider has been widely declared to be broke, but that’s utter hogwash. Congress has created the appearance of financial ill health via a 2006 measure which astonishingly makes it prepay retiree benefits 75 years in advance. Yes, you read that right. It has to fund benefits now for workers who haven’t even been hired. The Postal Service is the only agency subject to this absurd requirement.

It gets worse. Much worse. It seems that an exclusive contract has been awarded to sell off more than 600 Post Office Buildings across the country. In June 2013, Postal Service Inspector General David C. Williams published a scathing audit of CBRE’s exclusive contract to manage all the sales and leasing of postal real estate. Williams noted that outsourcing these activities to a single firm is “a fundamental change from how the Postal Service previously managed its real estate portfolio.

And now even worse. That contract was given to CBRE, one of the largest real estate firms in the nation that happens to be chaired by and partially owned by Richard Blum, husband of Diane Feinstein, the Democrat Senator from California. The firm not only stands to make millions from the sale of the Post Offices, but one of their other companies, Goldman Sachs, is actually buying some of the most prime locations.

Oh, there’s more. In a clear violation of regulations, the properties are being sold at or above market price. And, who do you think is setting the price for these buildings that once belonged to the public? CBRE is also charged with appraising the fair market value of these properties and listing a reasonable sales price. It is important to point out that real estate appraisals are not customarily performed by the agent marketing the property. To avoid conflicts of interest, property appraisals are normally performed by professionals not involved in negotiating the sale.

So you can see that the fox is guarding the foxes in the henhouse. A FOIA inquiry was filed to try to obtain the appraisals. The Post Office refused, with the intelligence-insulting excuse that the appraisals were commercially sensitive and were comparable to national security secrets! Um, they are property specific and at a certain point in time, so their value after a sale is consummated is nil…except for audit purposes. But it appears that anything that might embarrass DiFi, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, by definition is a national security issue.

But what is in the public record is plenty damning. CBRE was routinely selling property at below assessed value. For anyone familiar with real estate in the US, “assessed value” is the value

used for real estate tax purposes and by convention, almost without exception is meaningfully below market value. Bryne recaps the record:

During the first two years of its contract, CBRE sold the 52 properties it had picked to market for millions of dollars less than their assessed values. For example, in Seattle, CBRE sold a post office building in 2011 for $8 million that was assessed at $16 million. And earlier this year, it sold a seventeen-story office building in St. Paul, Minnesota for $20 million under the 2009 value assessed for it shortly before it was put on the market by CBRE.

Details presented in the chapter “Following the Money” of this e-book show that from June 2011 through May 2013, CBRE sold 52 postal properties for $166 million. The total assessed value of this portfolio at the time of sale was $232 million. Subtracting out the nine properties that sold at a value higher than their assessed value, CBRE has arguably undersold its postal real estate portfolio by at least $79 million. And it undersold these properties even as the price of commercial real estate, especially for central downtown parcels, was approaching the pre-crash highs of 2007.

Interviews about standard real estate practices with two experts provided by the National Association of Realtors indicate that the sale of a property at or below assessed values most often occurs when it is located in a distressed or impoverished area. When there is shortage of commercial real estate in developable areas — which has been the general situation, nationwide, for several years — demand tends to push prices far higher than assessed values.

But the vast majority of the CBRE-negotiated sales did not involve distressed properties: They were mostly located in economically healthy neighborhoods. The sales were mostly of central downtown buildings, with parking, in wealthy or revitalizing neighborhoods that attracted restaurant, boutique, and residential developers, or modern, suburban office buildings and warehouses, also with ample parking that attracted high-tech industrial firms.

This is going on from top to bottom in this administration. Hundreds of Congressmen and white house officials are walking away with the peoples’ silverware. Obama has a $40 million presidential palace waiting for him in Hawaii, if he decides to leave office. After all, he isn’t even close to being finished with his plans for America.

What Happened when Obamacare Website Tried to Hide the Pricing?A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman

said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

As you know if you’ve been following this space, Obamacare’s bevy of mandates, regulations, taxes, and fees drives up the cost of the insurance plans that are offered under the law’s public exchanges. A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.

That raises an obvious question. If 50 million people are uninsured today, mainly because insurance is too expensive, why is it better to make coverage even costlier?

Political objectives trumped operational objectives

The answer is that Obamacare wasn’t designed to help healthy people with average incomes get health insurance. It was designed to force those people to pay more for coverage, in order to subsidize insurance for people with incomes near the poverty line, and those with chronic or costly medical conditions.

But the laws’ supporters and enforcers don’t want you to know that, because it would violate the President’s incessantly repeated promise that nothing would change for the people that Obamacare doesn’t directly help. If you shop for Obamacare-based coverage without knowing if you qualify for subsidies, you might be discouraged by the law’s steep costs.

So, by analyzing your income first, if you qualify for heavy subsidies, the website can advertise those subsidies to you instead of just hitting you with Obamacare’s steep premiums. For example, the site could advertise plans that cost “$0″ or “$30″ instead of explaining that the plan really costs $200, and that you’re getting a subsidy of $200 or $170. But you’ll have to be at or near the poverty line to gain subsidies of that size; most people will either not qualify for a subsidy, or qualify for a small one that, net-net, doesn’t make up for the law’s cost hikes.

This political objective—masking the true underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans—far outweighed the operational objective of making the federal website work properly. Think about it the other way around. If the “Affordable Care Act” truly did make health insurance more affordable, there would be no need to hide these prices from the public.

Subsidy verification created a traffic bottleneck

Comparable private-sector e-commerce sites, like eHealthInsurance.com, allow you to shop for plans and compare prices simply by entering your age and your ZIP code. After you’ve selected a plan you like, you fill out an on-line application. That substantially winnows down the number of people who rely on the site for network-intensive tasks.

The federal government’s decision to force people to apply before shopping, Weaver and Radnofsky write, “proved crucial because, before users can begin shopping for coverage, they must cross a busy digital junction in which data are swapped among separate computer systems built or run by contractors including CGI Group Inc., the healthcare.gov developer, Quality Software Services Inc., a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit; and credit-checker Experian PLC. If any

part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace.”

Jay Angoff, a former federal official at the agency that oversees the exchange, told the Journal that he was surprised by the decision. “People should be able to get quotes” without entering all of that information upfront.

Weaver and Radnofsky say that the core problem stems from “the slate of registration systems [that] intersect with Oracle Identity Manager, a software component embedded in a government identity-checking system.” The main Healthcare.gov web page collects information using the CGI Group technology. Then that data is transferred to a system built by Quailty Software Services. QSS then sends data to Experian, the credit-history firm. But the key “identity management system” employed by QSS was designed by Oracle, and according to the Journal’s sources, the Oracle software isn’t playing nicely with the other information systems.

Oracle hotly denies these claims. “Our software is the identical product deployed in most of the world’s most complex systems…our software is running properly,” said an Oracle spokeswoman in a statement.

‘It’s awful, just awful’

Robert Pear and colleagues at the New York Times have a piece up today detailing the serious problems with the federal exchange, problems that may get worse, not better. They confirm what we already knew: that the Obama administration refused to delay the implementation of the exchanges, despite the well-known problems, because they were afraid of the political blowback. “Former government officials say the White House, which was calling the shots, feared that any backtracking would further embolden Republican critics who were trying to repeal the health care law.”

As I documented last week, IT and insurance experts have been saying for at least eight months that implementation of the exchanges was going badly, that as early as February officials were warning of a “third world experience.” The Times’ sources are just as blunt. “These are not glitches,” said one insurance executive. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our [conference calls with the administration], people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’”

“We foresee a train wreck,” said another executive in a February interview with the Times. “We don’t have the IT specifications. The level of angst in health plans is growing by leaps and bounds. The political people in the administration do not understand how far behind they are.” Richard Foster, the former chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said last week that “so much testing of the new system was so far behind schedule, I was not confident it would work well.”

Henry Chao, the deputy chief information officer at CMS who made the “third world experience” comment, was told by his superiors that failure to meet the October 1 launch deadline “was not an option,” according to the Times.

1-General David Petraeus - Petraeus, who resigned his CIA post in November 2012 after admitting an extramarital affair

 2-Gen. John Allen US commander -  

Washington (CNN) -- Gen. John Allen, the former leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan who was nominated to become supreme allied commander of NATO, is retiring instead of continuing to pursue the post, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday

 3-US Army General Carter Ham -

4-Gen. William "Kip" Ward. - Nov 13, 2012 · Panetta stripped Gen. William "Kip" Ward of a star, which means that he will now retire as a three-star lieutenant general.

5- Brigadier Gen. Jeffery A Sinclair 6-Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford

7- Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette 8-Navy Cmdr. Joseph Darlak

9- LTC Paula Broadwell 10-Marine General James Mattis 11-Gen. David McKiernan

12-Gen. Stanley McChrystal 13-Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright

14-Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina

15-Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus

16- Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant

19-Maj. Gen. Michael Carey

20- Navy Cmdr. Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz

21-Army Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service

22-NSA Deputy Chief John "Chris" Inglis

23-Col. Daren Margolin has been relieved as head of Security Battalion at Marine Corps Base Quantico

24-Cmdr. Martin Arriola, commanding officer of the USS Porter

25- Capt. Antonio Cardoso, commanding officer of Training Support Center San Diego

26- Capt. James CoBell, commanding officer of Oceana Naval Air Station's Fleet Readiness Center

27- Cmdr. Joseph E. Darlak skipper of the USS Vandegrift

28-Cmdr. Franklin Fernandez, commanding officer of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion

29- Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette was replaced as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis pending the outcome of an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate judgment

30- Cmdr. Ray Hartman, commanding officer of the amphibious dock-landing ship Fort McHenry

31-Cmdr. Jon Haydel, commanding officer of the amphibious transport dock USS San Diego

32- Cmdr. Diego Hernandez, commanding offer of the ballistic-missile submarine USS Wyoming, relieved Feb. 4 after he was convicted in an admiral’s mast of dereliction of duty for mishandling classified materials.

33-Cmdr. Lee Hoey, commanding officer of the Navy Drug Screening Laboratory, San Diego

34- Cmdr. Dennis Klein, commander of the submarine USS Columbia

35-Capt. Marcia "Kim" Lyons, commander of Naval Health Clinic New England

36- Capt. Chuck Litchfield was relieved from command of the USS Essex

37- Capt. Robert Marin, commander of the USS Cowpens

38- Capt. Sean McDonell, commander of Seabee reserve unit Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 14 in Jacksonville, Fla.

39- Cmdr. Corrine Parker

40- Capt. Lisa Raimondo, commander of Naval Health Clinic Patuxent River, Md.,

41- Capt. Jeffrey Riedel, program manager of the Littoral Combat Ship program, "temporarily reassigned"

42- Cmdr. Sara Santoski, commanding officer of the Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron - Sept 1, 2012 The commanding officer of a Norfolk-based squadron has been removed from command after two incidents involving helicopters under her command, one of which resulted in the death of two sailors 

43- Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker, Army- April 5,2013 Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker of US Africa Command fired over alcohol, sex charges

44- Blaze Sources: Obama Purging Military CommandersBrigadier Gen. Bryan Roberts, ArmyBrig. Gen. Bryan Roberts Dismissed Amid Adultery Allegations

Obama’s Military Purge Removes 197 Officers (AND COUNTING) AS DHS TAKES OVER STREETS

After posting yesterday’s blog regarding two of the latest military leaders that Obama has purged, my friend Nena S. sent me the story beneath the videos.  It really helps to paint the bigger picture.

At the same time that Obama is purging the military, he has been busy keeping one of his campaign pledges, which is to create a “civilian national security force, just as strong, just as well funded as the U.S. military”.  There can be little doubt that DHS fits that bill.  This is the same DHS that has solicited for 1.6 billion rounds of hollow point bullets they claim are for “training”.  The question is, why train with hollow point bullets that are not only much more expensive but designed to do maximum

damage, and illegal for warfare? Perhaps Obama is one step ahead of his ‘friend’, the now deposed Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian President Morsi who was removed from power by the Egyptian military aft the people there rose up en masse.  My friends, we are witnessing what Rush LImbaugh recently called a “peaceful coup”.  How long it will remain peaceful seems to be the question: 

Earlier Forbes wrote:  “…at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month.  Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years.  In America.Add to this perplexing outré purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation.  As observed by “paramilblogger” Ken Jorgustin last September: 

[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the  Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”

 

These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”

 

Regardless of the exact number of MRAP’s being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to POLICE via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In a war zone… yes, definitely. Let’s protect our men and women. On the streets of America… ?”

How to Launder Money to Fund a Private Domestic ArmyVideoographer Liberty News discusses the debacle the Obamacare website and rollout has been, and suggests the reason it has been so disastrous is to distract the public with a tactical diversion, from the very real attack on our liberty. Not only is Obamacare being used to divert attention but it is also being used to fund the same attack on our liberties.

While all eyes are on the supposed incompetence shown in the Obamacare roll out, what is being called the biggest website failure in history, no one is paying attention to anything else the Obama administration is doing.

Consider this: The Obama administration had three years to prepare, plan and implement this healthcare.gov site and the failure after failure almost has to be deliberate….. no one is that incompetent.

Since the end of World War II, we have witnessed the insurance industry become the financial juggernaut that generated the cash flow from which the world’s largest banks acquired entire nations. The statement, “Insurance Companies Own everything,” is quite accurate. It is the same as house gambling.

Here is the difference. With ordinary gambling, you have a small data set with a well established probability of winning or losing. Sometimes, people get “lucky” and beat the odds and win, but the house never really loses. With insurance, the data set is huge. Each failure mode is well documented and assigned a risk factor that has been developed into a complex formula for making money.

The simple explanation is this. The insurance companies know very precisely how many people are going to die in car accidents each year. They know how many houses will burn down, how many earthquakes there will be, and how many people will slip and fall on icy sidewalks. They know the losses they will pay, because they set the maximum loss. All they have to do is figure out how much money they want to make, and establish the premium. That’s it. Year after year, decade after decade, they have accumulated trillions of dollars in cash while delivering an intangible product from which 85% of the people paying will never benefit.

This is the fatted calf of money on planet Earth. You don’t have to drill, farm, ship, or fabricate anything. You just sit back and gamble on pain, death, and crime. You set the odds. You demand the bet from the people playing, and you collect the winnings. Then, you start buying stuff. Simple and clean and fundamentally necessary to do business on planet Earth because there is another entire industry built upon that existence of money. Lawyers. Without insurance, there would be hardly any lawyers.

There has always been something in between the insurance companies taking everything on Earth. Lawmakers. Until now. Obamacare is designed not to provide health care. We have always had the world’s best health care. It is designed to gain access to the multi-trillion dollar cash flow of insurance premiums.

The proof is in the more than $600 million they have spent to design the Obamacare website, while only delivering an $89.95 embarrassment to the public. Does anyone believe that the same technical powerhouse that got a nobody from Chicago elected twice could not build a slick and functional website for the price of a Beverly Hills mansion? The answer is they could have done it in six months with one tenth the money. So, where is the money? The money is being used to silently form a new government agency.

Just as Monsanto owns the Food and Drug Administration, the new single-payer insurance industry will be a mega-corporate insurance company that owns the new Department of National Health Care. They will write their own laws, collect their own taxes, and conduct their own

enforcement. It will be mandatory to participate. They will abort those who they determine cannot be useful. They will euthanize the elderly, drug the aggressive, and lobotomize those who discover the matrix that drains them of their useful life energy. This is the height of tyranny, and we the people will fund it with 10, 20, or perhaps even 40% of our income.

Oh, there is one more thing. This new government? No one in it is elected. You have no vote. You have no representative. It rules your every movement and activity. You will not be able to drive a car without it. You will not be able to borrow money to buy a home. You will not be able to get a student loan to go to school. You will not see a tax refund check at the end of the year. You cannot retire and travel the world or play golf. You will not be able to have a large family. You will not be able to speak freely, move to another city or State. You will not be able to assemble or own a weapon with which to defend your life or property.

It is here. Now. The video you watch from the streets of Syria will be the same as that filmed from the streets of Omaha, or Boston, or Los Angeles. When the drones come, and they will, the conflict will begin. When a one gets shot down, the helicopters will arrive. When one of those gets shot down, the tanks will come. We will be shooting from the back of old Chevy pickup trucks at weaponized and armored vehicle developed to fight our enemies. Only now, we are the enemy of the State.

The NASDAQ completes the glitch beta test“Human error" caused an outage in Nasdaq index data for 44 minutes Tuesday afternoon, the exchange said.

"The disruption was caused by a human error performing an operational function which resulted in the incorrect delivery of data to the index distribution system," Nasdaq said in a statement.

Before the freeze, the Composite index last stood at 3,940.02. Once it resumed, it rose 3 points to 3,943.

(Read more: Nasdaq takes responsibility for August 'flash freeze')

Nasdaq also reported at one point that some options had halted trading because of a lack of index data.

The exchange said the problem stemmed from a data dissemination platform called GIDS 2.0, or Global Index Data Service. It launched in April 2012, according to technical documents on the Nasdaq website.

The last major outage, August's "flash freeze," had to do with a platform called the SIP, or security information processor. That is the network that carries the quotes and trades for Nasdaq. There are two computer setups that operate at such fast speeds, that an optical switcher is utilized between mainframes to share workloads. The first is the LIGO in Hanford, Washington and in Livingston , LA to process gravitational wave data files. The second is the Stock Exchange.

In the past three months we have seen “glitches” occur in power distribution, internet connections, bank wire processes, food stamp cards, and now the Stock Exchanges. If each incident is looked at by itself, it is meaningless. They’re glitches. When they are observed as a

pattern of beta-testing for cyber-larceny, we can clearly see the coordinated effort by someone to practice a cyber-warfare event of epic proportions.

It would sound like a Steve Clancy novel, except this is real. We have watched it happen almost on a weekly basis. One by one, the glitches are testing the feasibility of stopping the wheels of commerce to allow someone to slip between the cogs of the global economic and political machine and cause a global collapse. That coordinator holds all the keys to starting it up again, only perhaps with a few trillion dollars transferred in the minutes of silence to an untraceable account.

Martial Law in Effect SignsFEMA REGION III (DC, DE, MD, PA, VA, WV) — Major U.S. military equipment movements have been documented over the last week. However, surprisingly enough, it appears the build-up could potentially be for use in domestic martial law rather than the looming conflict in Syria.

According to one report, 3 large military trucks driving in a secure convoy delivered thousands of signs to a few various military installations reading, “Martial Law in Effect”. It was said that the 3 trucks traveled only in an organized convoy even after making several stops at local military bases to offload. It was reported that one leery military employee questioned his superior about the signs and got a response back that the signs were for use in another country. The employee then asked why the signs were written in english.[1] 

This all falls lockstep with major military vehicle and equipment movements spotted in Delaware on Monday.[2]

Some wonder if the recent activity somehow ties to the coming simulated cyber-attack drill which some believe will go live initiating martial law in America as a beta test. The drill is set to take place November 13-14, 2013. The NYTimes.com reported, “One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.”[3] [4] Although it is unknown at this time what may truly happen, all of this comes at an opportune time.

Arizona Secretly Funding Anit-Solar Campaign

An Arizona utility commissioner is asking for all the key players in a debate over a solar energy policy in the state to reveal any additional secret funding of nonprofits or public relations campaigns. The probe comes after Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility, admitted last week that it had been secretly contributing to outside nonprofits running negative ads against solar power.

As The Huffington Post reported Friday, APS recently admitted that it had lied for months about paying the 60 Plus Association, a national conservative organization backed by the Koch brothers, to run ads against current solar net-metering policy. APS is currently pushing the Arizona Corporation Commission to roll back the policy, which allows homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar energy systems to make money by selling excess energy back to the grid. Solar proponents say that the policy has facilitated a solar boom in the state, and that changing it could have a huge negative impact on future growth.

Several solar organizations called on the commission to investigate whether APS used ratepayer money in its secret funding of 60 Plus and another local group, Prosper. APS has denied that it did, but on Wednesday, ACC Commissioner Robert Burns sent a letter to APS and other groups involved in the debate over net metering, including solar providers, to disclose how much money and staff time has been invested in lobbying and PR efforts.

Burns wrote that he is "troubled by the magnitude and cost of recent public relations campaigns" around the net-metering question before the commission, and is "concerned that ratepayer money might be funding these campaigns."

"We're in the middle of a bitter political fight," he said in defense of funding the ads. "This is not a battle that we want to fight, but we cannot back down."

APS has maintained that it is not anti-solar, it just wants to change the net metering policy. "We've been painted as anti-solar," McDonald said. "That's just absolutely untrue."

But the ads and website from 60 Plus have been much more openly hostile to solar energy than APS has been in its public statements.

60 Plus is backed by the Koch brothers, and the Arizona Republic confirmed that the work against net metering in Arizona is being coordinated by conservative operative Sean Noble, who has been described as "the wizard behind the screen" in the Kochs' donor network.

Prosper, the other named group that received money for its ads, is led by former Arizona Speaker of the House Kirk Adams (R) and has campaigned against net metering and against the expansion of Medicaid.

On Thursday, two other nonprofits operated by Noble and Adams were fined $1 million for failing to appropriately disclose political spending in California's elections last year.

The revelations about APS' funding of the anti-solar campaign have sparked further debate. Solar proponents, including the Alliance for Solar Choice and the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association, are now calling on the state attorney general and utility regulators at the Arizona Corporation Commission to look into whether APS illegally used rate-payer funds as part of those efforts.

"APS knows how popular solar is," said Bryan Miller, president of the Alliance for Solar Choice and vice president of public policy at the solar energy company Sunrun. "Rather than owning up to their attacks, they set up shady organizations and worked behind them, and lied to the public and regulators for months and months. They owe the public an explanation."

McDonald told HuffPost that ratepayer money was not used to pay for the campaigns, but that the funds came from shareholders in APS' parent company, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., which is publicly traded.

The net metering fight has even boiled over into Arizona's electoral politics.

Last week Wil Cardon, a Republican candidate in the 2014 primary race for secretary of state, accused one of his opponents, Justin Pierce -- son of ACC commissioner Gary Pierce -- of soliciting campaign support in exchange for his father's influence on utility regulation. Cardon's campaign identified two individuals on the host committee for a Justin Pierce fundraiser as employees of firms that have done work for APS at one time. But both of those lobbyists told The Huffington Post that they do not currently and have never lobbied on behalf of APS.

In response to the criticism, Pierce announced that his campaign will be publicly funded.

The Huffington Post learned on Friday that APS' chief lobbyist, Jessica Pacheco, reserved a room at the Phoenix Country Club for a campaign event for Justin Pierce on Oct. 16. McDonald said that Pacheco, a club member, booked the room for Pierce because she is friends with Pierce spokesman Alan Heywood and because the campaign could not reserve the room directly.

"Jessica simply provided access to a venue at the request of a friend," McDonald said. "Jessica did not invite anyone from APS. She did not help organize the event." He said that any costs incurred for the event would by law have to be paid for by the campaign.

Reached for comment on Friday evening, Heywood said he was not aware of Pacheco's role in booking a room for that event. "I don't know anything about that," Heywood said. "How you get a room for an event there, I have no idea." Heywood did confirm that he is friends with Pacheco, but was unsure whether she or any other APS staff attended the event because he arrived late. He did confirm that the campaign paid for the event.

The Cardon campaign has also implied in public statements that a company like APS or a political operative like Noble or Adams could make outside expenditures in support of Pierce's campaign. Heywood told HuffPost that it would be illegal for the campaign to "coordinate on anything like that."

"He's not doing that and won't do it," said Heywood.

APS spokesman McDonald also brushed aside the suggestion. "APS is a company that has a reputation for dealing with everybody in a very upfront and open way. We have a reputation in this community that has been built over a hundred years," he said. "We're not going to do anything to jeopardize that reputation."

But the revelations about the previously undisclosed funding to 60 Plus and Prosper aren't helping that reputation. And renewables proponents are growing increasingly worried about where the senior Pierce might come down on the net metering question. They pointed to several recent letters from Commissioner Gary Pierce that they think indicate he might support APS' efforts to change the net metering policy.

In July, Pierce requested a study from commission staff to examine whether the net metering policy should be changed. In an Oct. 17 letter, Pierce requested additional information from all parties after the staff report recommended against APS' proposal and in favor of not changing the net metering policy at this time.

Pierce has denied suggestions that he's taken any position on net metering at this point. "I am still considering all of the arguments, which is why I am actively seeking more input," Pierce said in a written response to questions from HuffPost. "My goal is to get this issue right for all

ratepayers, and to have a sound policy that will work for years to come, not only for APS, but for the solar industry as well."

He also accused renewable advocates of "using the Justin Pierce Campaign to intimidate me on this important issue." "All parties are better served by continuing to meet with Commissioners to work out a solution which is fair for all APS customers," he wrote. "My door has always been open to all parties and they know it!"

Forty-three states and the District of Columbia have net metering policies in place, which has helped drive the growth in solar energy in the U.S. in recent years. But there have been attempts in at least four states in the last year to roll back those policies.

The ACC is expected to begin hearings on proposals to revise the net metering policy in November

Inside China: Nuclear submarines capable of widespread attack on U.S.Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People's Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

“This is the first time in 42 years since the establishment of our navy’s strategic submarine force that we reveal on such a large scale the secrets of our first-generation underwater nuclear force,” the Global Times said in a lengthy article titled “China for the First Time Possesses Effective Underwater Nuclear Deterrence against the United States.”

The article features 30 photos and graphics detailing, among other things, damage projections for Seattle and Los Angeles after being hit by Chinese nuclear warheads and the deadly radiation that would spread all the way to Chicago.

China’s sub fleet is reportedly the world’s second-largest, with about 70 vessels. About 10 are nuclear-powered, and four or more of those are nuclear ballistic submarines capable of launching missiles.

Enlarge Photo

Image for Yu column Inside China Source: Global Times more >

Heavily influenced by Soviet naval models that stressed underwater forces, China’s nuclear submarine development began with the reverse-engineering of a Soviet Golf-class conventional-powered sub in the 1950s.

In the 1980s, China developed its first ballistic missile sub, the Type 092 Xia-class, which has 12 launch tubes for the Julang (Giant Wave)-1 missiles. The JL-1 had a limited range and failed multiple test launches.

In 2010, a new class of missile sub, the Type 094 Jin class, entered the service. It is capable of launching 12 to 16 JL-2 missiles with a range of about 8,700 miles, covering much of the continental U.S. with single or multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicle warheads.

Chinese calculations for nuclear attacks on the U.S. are chillingly macabre.

“Because the Midwest states of the U.S. are sparsely populated, in order to increase the lethality, [our] nuclear attacks should mainly target the key cities on the West Coast of the United States, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego,” the Global Times said.

“The 12 JL-2 nuclear warheads carried by one single Type 094 SSBN can kill and wound 5 million to 12 million Americans,” the Global Times reported.

China also has developed land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles — notably the DF-31A, which has a range of 7,000 to 7,500 miles.

“If we launch our DF 31A ICBMs over the North Pole, we can easily destroy a whole list of metropolises on the East Coast and the New England region of the U.S., including Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Baltimore and Norfolk, whose population accounts for about one-eighth of America’s total residents,” the Global Times said.

All the state-run press reports stressed the point that the PLA’s missile submarines are now on routine strategic patrol, “which means that China for the first time has acquired the strategic deterrence and second strike capability against the United States.”

Obama Exec Order Uses Climate Change to Take more Control

Through the stroke of the pen, President Obama on Friday used his executive powers to elevate and take control of climate change policies in an attempt to streamline sustainability initiatives – and potentially skirt legislative oversight and push a federal agenda on states.

The executive order establishes a task force of state and local officials to advise the administration on how to respond to severe storms, wildfires, droughts and other potential impacts of climate change. The task force includes governors of seven states — all Democrats — and the Republican governor of Guam, a U.S. territory. Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force.

All but three of those appointed are Democrats. The task force will look at federal money spent on roads, bridges, flood control and other projects. It ultimately will recommend how structures can be made more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming temperatures.

“We're going to need to get prepared.  And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid,” President Obama said back in June, when he first launched a Climate Action Plan. “States and cities across the country are already taking it upon themselves to get ready… And we’ll partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.”

The White House added in Friday’s statement that even as the United States acts to curb carbon pollution, officials also need to improve how states and communities respond to extreme weather events like last year’s Superstorm Sandy. Building codes must be updated to address climate impacts and infrastructure needs to be made more resilient.

Critics of the order charge, among other things, that it groups together everything from forest fires to heavy rains as evidence of climate change - despite scientific testimony from both sides of the debate.

“The devil is in the details,” a former senior government official said to FoxNews.com earlier this month, referring to a recently released study that proposed the streamlining between Federal and State agencies. “Who gets to decide what sustainability is? Or what its outcome means?”

The chair of the study, Thomas Graedel, a professor of chemical engineering, geology and geophysics, and currently head of the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University said at the time of its release that the study “provides encouragement for parts of the government to get together on projects of concern. There is no formula for how it all works out.”

Officials for the EPA released a statement on Friday afternoon praising the order, saying it will be vital in their attempts to help local-level communities “adapt to a changing climate.”“To meet our mission of protecting public health and the environment, EPA must help communities adapt to a changing climate,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in the statement. “These Implementation Plans offer a roadmap for agency work to meet that responsibility, while carrying out President Obama’s goal of preparing the country for climate-related challenges.”

Inside the executive order is language that allows State and cities to be held hostage unless they comply with policies set by the new secretary of Climate Change.

•             Hold back money to communities unless they meet new standards on various items and agendas set by the Federal Government. This could force recipients to spend funds on certain things or in certain ways. Recipients will have a choice. Send the money where the Secretary demands, or you don’t get any funds. •             A possible mandate to bring sweeping new changes to land use and resource policies. These mandates are historically unfunded and result in higher local taxes to support federal regulations. A good example is the minimum wage law, or State funding for abortions, or a requirement for prevailing wage on all projects related to the funding.•             More control and refocus of climate change data and use of it to push a new agenda into every priority of the Federal Government. The major flaw is that there is no consensus, nor any historical data to confirm the nature or scope of climate change. Once the Department of Climate Change is established, it will never be disbanded or unfunded.

•             Create the need for a new internal organization for coordination efforts during a government sequestration and possible future shutdowns. This is more likely to the true purpose of this new Department. To create and set aside an enormous slush fund that can be robbed as needed to offset partisan efforts to stop the Agency Government from extending their rule over private property or their continued violation of civil rights.

The partisan task force builds on efforts Obama announced of his Climate Action Plan back in June which includes the first-ever limits on climate pollution from new and existing power plants. The plan is intended to reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020. The plan also would boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures. The 12 hottest years on record all have occurred in the past 15 years.

The truth is that there is no factual evidence confirming the effects of Climate Change, or even more importantly, whether mankind can reverse those changes or merely move back from the edge of the cliff. Indeed, Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, argued recently that -- heat waves aside -- there is little evidence for an increase in extreme events themselves.

Others find small links between climate change and some specific natural disasters, saying storms like Sandy were worsened by rising sea levels. But for other events, notably droughts and downfalls, there’s no evidence of a global warming effect. A Sept. 2012 editorial in the prestigious journal Nature urged caution in drawing any such connection: “Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.”

November 5th Anonymous DeclarationSince Edward J. Snowden began releasing the agency’s documents in June, the unrelenting stream of disclosures has opened the most extended debate on the agency’s mission since its creation in 1952. The scrutiny has ignited a crisis of purpose and legitimacy for the N.S.A., the nation’s largest intelligence agency, and the White House has ordered a review of both its domestic and its foreign intelligence collection. While much of the focus has been on whether the agency violates Americans’ privacy, an issue under examination by Congress and two review panels, the anger expressed around the world about American surveillance has prompted far broader questions.

If secrecy can no longer be taken for granted, when does the political risk of eavesdropping overseas outweigh its intelligence benefits? Should foreign citizens, many of whom now rely on American companies for email and Internet services, have any privacy protections from the N.S.A.? Will the American Internet giants’ collaboration with the agency, voluntary or otherwise, damage them in international markets? And are the agency’s clandestine efforts to weaken encryption making the Internet less secure for everyone?

¶ Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian and author of a 2009 book on the N.S.A., said there is no precedent for the hostile questions coming at the agency from all directions.

“From N.S.A.’s point of view, it’s a disaster,” Mr. Aid said. “Every new disclosure reinforces the notion that the agency needs to be reined in. There are political consequences, and there will be operational consequences.”review of classified agency documents obtained by Mr. Snowden and shared with The New York Times by The Guardian, offers a rich sampling of the agency’s global operations and

culture. (At the agency’s request, The Times is withholding some details that officials said could compromise intelligence operations.) The N.S.A. seems to be listening everywhere in the world, gathering every stray electron that might add, however minutely, to the United States government’s knowledge of the world. To some Americans, that may be a comfort. To others, and to people overseas, that may suggest an agency out of control.

The truth

is that nations have been doing this since before Biblical times. Until now, thia has been limited to the leadership only. The private citizen that never shows up on the radar screen with a violation of law has had liberty and freedom to pursue his or her dream as they see fit. Failure or success, wise or not, they could build their own lives and reap their own rewards.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the formation of a shadow government inside the United States. This government can tax you. It can fine you. It can confiscate your money, your farm, and even your children if it desires. It can interfere with commerce by preventing you from doing business. It can shut you down even after you have successfully overcome all the risks. This government has more than 1.3 million officials who are not elected. You have no representation in this government. Your elected officials are prevented by law from even visiting them or talking to them or inquiring on your behalf with them. This is the truest and finest definition of tyranny in history.

It seems the people of the world have had enough. The news media would have you believe it is the elected regimes with whom the citizens of the world have a conflict. It is not. It is the powerful bureaucrats that are not subject to laws. They have no accuser. They have no court system. They are the court.

It seems that this week, one of the most powerful and feared people’s organizations on Earth has made a declaration that should be heard. I have excerpted it from their youtube announcement so you get the just and truthful word from them directly.

Anonymous clip

The question is, are you ready? Have you been preparing the way we have been telling for the last year? If not, you have the most incredible opportunity in history to become involved.

There is no doubt what this unorganization can do. They have extracted $1 million from some of the shareholder accounts of the largest banks and given to charity. They have routinely exposed violent military police tactics. Virtually all police departments are being watched as closely as the NSA is watching us, and when they attack peaceful citizens as though they are the enemy of the State, they are exposed globally. Some of their work has received tens of millions of views in a matter of minutes and been responsible for legal and public prosecution of numerous law over-enforcement.

Activist hacker group Anonymous Philippines on Sunday hit another government website, defacing it with their logo and a letter calling on the public to join a November 5 protest.

The Office of the Ombudsman’s homepage appears normal but its latest update reads “Anonymous Philippines.”

Clicking on the said text redirects to a post with the hacker group’s animated logo and a letter blasting the government.

“We apologize for this inconvenience, but this is the only easiest way we could convey our message to you, our dear brothers and sisters who are tired of this cruelty and this false democracy, tired of this government and the politicians who only think about themselves,” it read.

“The government, in many ways, has failed its Filipino citizens…Let us remind the government that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words.”

The letter further calls on the public to join Anonymous and the protest on November 5 outside the House of Representatives.

On its Facebook page, Anonymous Philippines claimed to have hacked more than a dozen government websites , mostly from local government units, on Sunday. The pages also showed the letter and the logo.

Their latest post shows an invite for a “Million Mask March” at the Batasang Pambansa (House of Representatives) in Batasan Hills, Quezon City on November 5, 10 a.m.

It said the protest was a “peaceful march to meet and greet like-minded individuals.”

I caution you to wear some kind of method of blocking your face from being photographed by agencies who can identify and retaliate against you. I implore you to be peaceful and to protect yourselves by wearing a bike helmet and some sort of eye protection so you can see through the tear gas. If you see military-style police, then you should be prepared to run. Police cannot run when they are in riot gear. You can. If you get pepper sprayed, put on your goggles or swimming eyewear and protect your eyes. Make sure you take a fully charge cell phone so you can record everything..

Above all, be peaceful. You represent the Republic.

ISON UpdateHopi Prophecy:“The Fourth World shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the elders everywhere know. The Signs over many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left. “This is the First Sign : We were told of the coming of the white-skinned men, like Pahana, but not living like Pahana — men who took the land that was not theirs and who struck their enemies with thunder. (Guns)“This is the Second Sign : Our lands will see the coming of spinning wheels filled with voices. (Covered wagons)“This is the Third Sign : A strange beast like a buffalo but with great long horns, will overrun the land in large numbers. (Longhorn cattle)“This is the Fourth Sign : The land will be crossed by snakes of iron. (Railroad tracks)“This is the Fifth Sign: The land shall be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web. (Power and telephone lines)“This is the Sixth Sign : The land shall be criss-crossed with rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun. (Concrete roads and their mirage-producing effects.)“This is the Seventh Sign : You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it. (Oil spills)“This is the Eighth Sign : You will see many youth, who wear their hair long like our people, come and join the tribal nations, to learn our ways and wisdom. (Hippies)

“And this is the Ninth and Last Sign : You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this, the ceremonies of the Hopi people will cease.”

NASA says it will be beautiful with no danger. Remember, however, that the Hopi Prophecy does not say the Blue Kachina is the destroyer of worlds. It merely indicates that this is a marker of time. Here is what NASA officially says there nothing to worry about. Go back to the mall, and keep spending those holiday dollars.

NASA.GOV REPORT.

Silver today is $24.30 an ounce shipped to your house. Get yours today.

Shopping observations:

Malls are full of people, but not many shopping bags.

Restaurants that were full this last summer are empty on Friday night.

Gas sales are down by 25% over last year.

Credit card debt is at an all-time high in America.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had declined moderately in September, decreased sharply in October. The Index now stands at 71.2 (1985=100), down from 80.2 in September. The Present Situation Index decreased to 70.7 from 73.5. The Expectations Index fell to 71.5 from 84.7 last month. Consumers’ assessment of current conditions declined moderately. Those claiming business conditions are “good” decreased to 19.0 percent from 20.7 percent, however, those claiming business conditions are “bad” edged down to 23.0 percent from 23.9 percent. Consumers’ appraisal of the job market was less favorable than last month. Those saying jobs are “plentiful” was virtually unchanged at 11.3 percent from 11.4 percent, while those saying jobs are “hard to get” increased to 35.8 percent from 33.6 percent. Consumers’ outlook for the labor market was also more pessimistic. Those anticipating more jobs in the months ahead decreased to 15.3 percent from 16.1 percent, while those anticipating fewer jobs increased to 22.7 percent from 19.1 percent. The proportion of consumers expecting their incomes to increase rose to 15.8 percent from 15.1 percent, however, those expecting a decrease rose to 15.4 percent from 13.9 percent.

I can tell you that there is currently nothing to indicate a change in this slope of decrease. The dollar continues to be devalued by the Fed. The Chinese are working very hard to replace the petrodollar. The IMF is pressing very hard to revalue the Viet Namese Dong and the Iraqi Dinar to cause a war dividend in the amount of tens of trillions of dollars globally, which will free cash from the debilitation grip of the megabanker’s. If this can be done correctly, along with a healthy pruning of derivates trading globally, the global econony should take off like a rocket and end the threat of wars for the foreseeable future. Of course, those who profit from Wars R Us, are working behind the scenes to prevent this from happening.

Hundreds of thousands of private investors have been waiting for more than 5 years for these two currencies to revaluate. Don’t hold your breath. This is the largest and riskiest currency play in world history. I don’t know what is going to happen. No one does.

Inside The Dubious Dinar Revaluation Ruse

John Wasik, ContributorA few responses based on the comments I’ve received. 1) I never said that the dinar wouldn’t revalue. It may well do that, but no one quite knows when or h [...]71 comments, 1 called-out Comment Now Follow Comments

As followers of the Iraqi dinar know, there are a lot of “updates” out there on the various websites that either sell or track the troubled currency.Most of this “news” is much ado about nothing.Iraq is on the precipice of a civil war with some 5,000 victims this year alone. It doesn’t appear that the country’s woes — partially unleashed by the disastrous American-led war — will be resolved anytime soon.

Dinar-Like Dreams Can Be Nightmarish John Wasik Contributor

Dinar Deception Driven By False Hopes John Wasik Contributor

In the interim, untold millions have been spent on speculating in the country’s currency, which is not traded on any legitimate foreign exchange and is worth a fraction of a dollar.

The currency is so unpopular that many Iraqis prefer the buck. But that hasn’t stopped a plethora of internet-based “dealers” from selling the dinar as fodder in a get-rich-quick scheme.

The ruse is simple: Get dinar buyers to believe that the currency will be favorably revalued soon so they can sell their dinars at a huge profit.

While that may happen, it’s highly unlikely given the current political and economic situation. No U.S. bank will handle the dinar while dealers reap huge commissions and mark-ups.

Yet rumors continue to feed this market the way a stoker feeds a coal-fired boiler.

The latest rumor is that the Wells Fargo WFC -0.05% bank is setting up some kind of mechanism to buy the currency. I heard the rumor last year and it’s since resurfaced. But the bank wants nothing to do with the currency. Here’s a statement they sent me when I inquired (an email directly from Kate Ellis in Wells Fargo corporate communications):

“Wells Fargo does not currently buy or sell Iraqi dinar and has no plans to do so in the future. When we provide banknote services to customers, it is generally for travel related purposes and we do not foresee a high number of customers traveling to Iraq for business or leisure purposes in the near future.“

What was the origin of this rumor? Whoever spread it was desperate to signal that a legitimate regulated entity was getting involved in the dinar trade, which, thus far, has been completely unregulated and beyond the reach of bank watchdogs.

All over the web you will find plenty of investors who expect the Iraqi government will be forced to revalue its currency upward. Iraq has the world’s second largest oil reserves, and it is rapidly increasing its production and exports. The International Energy Agency recently projected Iraq's oil output to more than double in the next decade.So the revenue is there. Unfortunately, so is the spending. Remember, Iraq is still rebuilding from decades of dictatorship, war, and mismanagement. The economy is in shambles, and social services are appalling. Any money coming in through oil exports is quickly being spent on reconstruction and industry, not to mention its debt burden.This is why the CBI is going to such great lengths to control the amount of USD in circulation through auctions. It wants to keep the dinar cheap. Not too cheap so as to introduce hyper inflation. But cheap enough to maximize the value of its export income and get as much construction and labor for its money as it can.What if it takes another 5 or 10 years for that revaluation to come? Might there be better returns elsewhere? Investors have to weigh the pros and cons and make their own investment choices.If one still believes the global economy will once again run full steam ahead, then metals such as copper, iron, and steel will be in great demand, as will lumber.If one still believes the global credit crises are not over, then precious metals will also be in demand, such as gold and silver. Who knows, perhaps this recent pull-back is a good entry point; no one knows for sure.And there is always the stock market, which is remarkably resilient given the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy. Wealth Daily provides valuable trading information to help you make the right choices for you.Perhaps the most crucial variable in any investment formula is time. You can have a sure-fire bet in a stock, gold, or even the Iraqi dinar. But how much time will you be waiting for it to pay off? Could you score better returns elsewhere over that same period of time?

Enter Basel III:

Basel III" is a comprehensive set of reform measures, developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to strengthen the regulation, supervision and risk management of the banking sector. These measures aim to:

improve the banking sector's ability to absorb shocks arising from financial and economic stress, whatever the source

improve risk management and governance

strengthen banks' transparency and disclosures.

The reforms target:

bank-level, or microprudential, regulation, which will help raise the resilience of individual banking institutions to periods of stress.

macroprudential, system wide risks that can build up across the banking sector as well as the procyclical amplification of these risks over time.

Overall, Basel III aims to sharply deleverage the economy threatening economic growth at the same time as the debt crisis puts a pressure on governments to spend less. There is also some level of naivety in the provisions of the definition of “high-quality highly liquid” assets, which banks shall hold abundantly in their balance sheets to face their short term liquidity commitments. In fact the banks are pushed to hold huge amounts of sovereign debt… The need to deleverage the economy is obvious however the way Basel III is designed has led to that the corporate sector to a large extent must rely solely on funding and hedging from outside of the banking sector. The basic role of the banks to redistribute financial risk and fund trade has in fact seized. -

Channeling cash to the government sector The problem with Basel III and the other financial regulation is the constant favor of local and central government debt. All the years until the financial crisis the regulation stubbornly claimed that the least risky assets were government debt and therefore less capital was required from the banks (mostly 0% actually) to invest in it. On the other hand corporate debt was regarded at the other extreme requiring maximum capital from the banks. During the crisis we’ve experienced how crazy this assumption has been. After the Euro crisis, the global sovereign debt crisis when numerous countries have been balancing on the verge of bankruptcy and lately the city of Detroit collapsing, it’s no longer credible claiming government debt to be risk free. The Plan B strategy is instead to create a huge and growing demand for investments in government bonds. The regulators cunningly achieve this through requiring regulated financial institutions to mainly accept government debt as collateral from their clients. Meanwhile the regulation introduces requirements that almost all financial transactions have to provide collateral. This new strategy actually risks to increase the demand for government debt to such an extent that the enormous levels we already have won’t be sufficient. We should recognize that the problem is not the cost of capital, it is how the financial regulation steers the flow of capital. It clearly steers the capital away from financing global trade to instead finance government debt bubbles. How this will generate growth and jobs one may wonder.