Home Blog Page 2124

Florida Homeless Charity & Christian Pastor Finds Ingenious Way to Exploit the Homeless

By
Vandita
-
0

Written by: Vandita

 

New Beginnings of Tampa, one of Florida’s largest homeless programs, has found itself embroiled in controversy after a Tampa Bay Times report accused its CEO Tom Atchison of forcing the homeless people work as indentured servants at local events including state fairs, NASCAR races, Tampa Bay Rays baseball games, Bucs football games and Lightning hockey games.

In exchange for food and shelter, Atchison’s charity exploits the recovering alcoholics and drug addicts as unpaid labour in telemarketing, construction, landscaping, moving, and even grant writing.

Apparently, those who reject to be part of this illegal practice are charged $600 a month for meals and rent.

Some of the participants of New Beginnings’ work therapy program work at concession stands but they are unaware of how much they are being paid for their labour as the money they make goes to New Beginnings of Tampa.

Interestingly, businesses give donations to the charity in exchange for workers sent to games. Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team in February 2013, donated $50,000 to the charity.

In order to compensate labour with food and shelter, charities are required to show that the workers are being compensated with services that are equal to what they’d earn with the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Shockingly, Atchison does not document hours worked raising doubts that the workers could be overworked and underpaid.

The investigation into New Beginnings public records revealed that the charity does not have clinically trained personnel to work with addicts or the mentally ill while it claims to provide counselling to its homeless.

In addition, Tom Atchison reportedly took residents’ Social Security checks and food stamps even if they amounted to more than residents owed in program costs. He didn’t return the difference.

A New Beginnings contractor told the investigators that he overbilled the state for at least $80,000 of grant money, and then gave the money to the work therapy program instead of returning it.

“This is outrageous,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project. “These workers are doing a job. They need to be treated with dignity.”

A livid Florida county commissioner Kevin Beckner said he would contact local lawmakers to initiate investigation in this ‘practice of legal human trafficking’.

Legal or not, New Beginnings’ work therapy does raise ethical questions.

 

Police Brutality: Here’s Why Body Cameras Are An Eyewash

By
Vandita
-
32

Written by: Vandita

 

President Obama announced this week that White House will ask Congress for $75 million over three years to subsidize the purchase of up to 50,000 body-worn cameras for local police in an attempt to bring accountability.

Body cameras are expected to provide ‘evidence’ of encounters between police and civilians; however, whether they will end police brutality is a different question altogether.

Consider this:

  • A Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict the police officer Daniel Pantaleo who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold. The act was filmed by a bystander.
  • A St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in killing of teenager Michael Brown. The murder was video-taped.
  • A Greene County grand jury declined to indict police officer Sean Williams who shot John Crawford, 22. Surveillance cameras captured the homicide.

The recent murders of Garner, Brown and Crawford at the hands of police stirred public protests, inflamed communities across the country and raging anger against police brutality. Obama’s attempt to restore trust of the police in minority communities by making police wear body cameras is being met with mixed response.

While New York Mayor Bill de Blasio believes “body cameras are one of the ways to create a real sense of transparency and accountability”, the Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh believes “the body cameras aren’t going to help with the fundamental problems between community and police”.

Here’s what the common people feel about police adopting body cameras as an accountability and evidence-gathering tool…

https://twitter.com/DonxFigueroa/status/540227634148696066

https://twitter.com/handymariyah/status/540619540787257345


https://twitter.com/iN3RT_/status/540224594469478400


Even if Obama arms officers with body cameras to prevent police violence, nothing can be done if they never turn them on in the first place. And then, the body cameras are not pointed at the police officer so filming an off-camera brutality, confrontation or altercation seems next to impossible.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

References:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/12/02/mayor-walsh-area-police-offer-mixed-response-use-body-cameras/mKaYU3RJIqr32KnJXB5x6L/story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/nyregion/new-york-city-police-speeding-up-effort-to-give-officers-body-cameras.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

Detroit Blackout: EMP Behind The Massive Power Outage That Left Half-A-Million In The Dark Ages?

By
Vandita
-
9

Written by: Vandita

 

A major power blackout threw almost the entire city of Detroit into darkness for good seven hours on Tuesday (December 2). The cable failure at one of the power grids prevented power from being delivered to police stations, jails, schools, traffic lights and other city-run facilities and services.

While people got stuck in elevators and students were sent home, the power crisis prompted massive evacuation of downtown buildings.  Though, after seven hours, 33 per cent of power was restored, the outage forced unprepared residents of Detroit experience the dark ages.

The blackout reminded Detroit of Northeast blackout of 2003, the world’s second most widespread blackout in history.  The outage affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight US states.

The cause of the widespread power outage was a software bug; however at Detroit it could be due to some sort of a cyber attack by China as the Chinese have the capability to take down US power grids as explained in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhxqdBi1OZY

The magnitude of the power failure has brought the attention back on a possible massive nuclear EMP attack by North Korea that could turn the lights out on America for good and leave millions of Americans dead. A nuclear EMP is a burst of electromagnetic radiation which usually results from a high energy nuclear explosion that suddenly fluctuates the magnetic field. The EMP attack could wipe out everything electronic i.e. planes, trains, cars, computers, internet, and whatever you can think of, in a flash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYYP31th14

Detroit had major blackout today in public bldgs – trying to decide if we should blame N.Korea, China, Iran or Russia http://t.co/fZpT2w7rpr

— Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) December 2, 2014


_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/detroit-power-outage-downtown_n_6255160.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

http://www.heritage.org/issues/missile-defense/electromagnetic-pulse-attack

https://truthernews.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/north-korea-plotting-october-24th-nuclear-emp-attack-on-america/

 

Banks Sued For Manipulating Precious Metal Prices

By
EV
-
1

Written by: EV

 

Regulators have recently fined six major banks, including Citigroup (C.N) and UBS (UBSN.VX), a total of $4.3 billion for failing to prevent traders from manipulating benchmarks in the foreign exchange market. HSBC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L), JP Morgan (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) also face penalties resulting from the inquiry, and dozens of traders have been fired or suspended.

Switzerland’s financial regulator (FINMA) has found “serious misconduct” and a “clear attempt to manipulate precious metals benchmarks” by UBS employees in precious metal trade, mostly silver. In a report from Reuters:

“Swiss regulator FINMA said on Wednesday that it found a ‘clear attempt’ to manipulate precious metals benchmarks during its investigation into precious metals and foreign exchange trading at UBS…”

Commodity analyst Dimitri Speck has combined minute-by-minute data from 1993 through 2012 in his book, “The Golden Cartel”. It shows how gold prices move on an average day (see charts). The spot price of gold is seen to drop sharply around the London evening (10 a.m. New York time). A similar drop appears around the London morning fixing as well. These same declines can be seen in silver prices from 1998 through 2012.

banks sued 1

There were no other comparable price changes at any other time a day for both commodities. This sort of pattern is consistent with manipulation, and it was apparent in both markets. banks sued 2

A number of other markets have been manipulated as well, including Derivatives—in particular credit default swaps (CDS)—which were one of the main causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Congress has never fixed the problem, and has in fact made it worse. Reuters reported in September:

A Manhattan federal judge said on Thursday that investors may pursue a lawsuit accusing 12 major banks of violating antitrust law by fixing prices and restraining competition in the roughly $21 trillion market for credit default swaps.

“The complaint provides a chronology of behavior that would probably not result from chance, coincidence, independent responses to common stimuli, or mere interdependence,” [Judge] Cote said.

The defendants include Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc , Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG , Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc , JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG.

Other defendants are the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and Markit Ltd, which provides credit derivative pricing services.

U.S. and European regulators have probed potential anticompetitive activity in CDS. In July 2013, the European Commission accused many of the defendants of colluding to block new CDS exchanges from entering the market.

“The financial crisis hardly explains the alleged secret meetings and coordinated actions,” the judge wrote. “Nor does it explain why ISDA and Markit simultaneously reversed course.”

This means the banks are continuing to fix prices for CDS in secret. They’ve “torpedoed” the more open and transparent CDS exchanges that Congress mandated.

In addition to this, interest rates are being manipulated, as well as energy prices, oil prices, and commodities. In fact it seems everything can be manipulate through high-frequency trading. In the end, experts say the only way banks will stop manipulating markets is if their executives are all thrown in jail for fraud. This system is rigged to allow the big banks to commit continuous, and massive, fraud. They pay small fines that are merely considered the “cost of doing business”.

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz noted:

“The system is set so that even if you’re caught, the penalty is just a small number relative to what you walk home with. The fine is just a cost of doing business. It’s like a parking fine. Sometimes you make a decision to park knowing that you might get a fine because going around the corner to the parking lot takes you too much time.”

In related news, a suit has been filed in the Manhattan Federal Court by the Jewelers, Modern Settings, who allege the prices of platinum and palladium have been manipulated for eight years. The charges have been brought against Goldman Sachs, HSBC Holdings, BASF SE, and Standard Bank Group and HSBC.

The plaintiffs have accused the four banks of engaging in conspiracy since 2007 by fixing the prices of platinum and palladium and the prices of futures and options tied with those fixings. The manipulations have apparently cost purchasers millions of dollars.

The banks had been using inside information to rig the twice-daily platinum and palladium fixings, and they shared clients’ confidential information including sales and purchase data. They misused the information to manipulate client purchases and sale orders to profit from slight movements in the price of platinum group metals. Modern Setting claim they also violated US antitrust and commodities laws by illegally sharing customer data which enable the banks to undertake a “front-running” price manipulation with the help of fabricating “spoof” orders.

“This unlawful behavior allowed defendants to reap substantial profits, while non-insiders, which include plaintiffs and members of the class, were injured,” Modern Settings’ lawyers stated.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Australian News. Nov 26, 2014. (http://www.australiannews.net/index.php/sid/227996195)

Washington Blog. Nov 12, 2014. (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/11/banks-big-busted-massively-manipulating-foreign-exchange-precious-metal-markets.html)

 

 

Congressman Says Eric Garner’s Death is His Own Fault for Being Fat

By
hqanon
-
22

Written by: Cassius Methyl at theantimedia.org

 

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) appeared on CNN on Wednesday night as determined protestors filled the streets of NYC and cities across America to take a stand against the police killing innocent people with impunity.

 The Congressman disrespectfully and coldly blamed the unarmed man’s death on his weight.

He said “If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, he would not have died from this.”

An article from Think Progress says the congressman, “delivered an extended defense of the police killing of Eric Garner. King said that the officer, who employed an illegal chokehold to bring Garner down, was just doing his job. Ultimately, King pins says Garner was actually responsible for his own death.”

Watch the clip below:

congressman says eric garner too fat

1...2,1232,1242,125...2,207Page 2,124 of 2,207
© All copyright reserved, AnonHQ.com