Student health insurance cancelled by Obama

Welcome to Obamacare Socialism

The Democrat Party is forcing colleges to cancel thousands

of low cost student health insurance policies.

While millions of Americans are watching their individual polices get canceled due to ObamaCare regulations, the new health care rules are also having a major impact on college campuses.

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For decades, universities and colleges have offered students bare-bones policies. But because of the Affordable Care Act, those policies no longer cut it – and universities are forced to decide whether to offer significantly higher-cost plans or cancel coverage altogether.

The new rules affect a broad swath of American schools, especially the small ones.

At Bowie State University in Maryland, the cost of student health insurance policies went from roughly $100 a year to $1,800 a year reports Fox News.

The cancelled plan offered $5,000 worth of medical coverage to students for just $54 per semester. University administrators said an acceptable replacement under the Affordable Care Act would have cost $900 per semester, a 1,500 percent increase.

Students who need individual coverage are likely to find a better deal for themselves on the Maryland Health Connection insurance exchange, University spokeswoman Cassandra Robinson said.

In the end, the school decided to drop the policy for all of its 5,500 enrollees. Students were notified of the dropped coverage on the school’s website.

"Bowie State University has suspended offering health insurance for domestic students for the 2013-2014 academic year," according to the school's official website. "Due to new requirements of the Affordable Care Act which will go into effect on January 1, 2014, the cost of insurance for domestic students will increase to approximately $1800 per year."

The sticker shock didn’t sit well with some students who spoke out against the price hike.

“You’ve haven’t done anything Obama and I am disappointed in you,” one student said. Another told Campus Reform, “We don’t have that money. We can barely afford books.”

The frustration has been felt across the country as colleges and universities have to decide whether to cut coverage or offer sky-high plans that in some cases triple the cost of premiums.

In New Jersey, students who enrolled in this past semester were the first class that had to shoulder the higher premium costs. Many community colleges in Bergen and Passaic counties were forced to cut student coverage altogether.

In Cranford, N.J., Stephen Nacco, the Union County Community College Vice President of Administrative Services, says the cost of health insurance is now “more than a thousand dollars per students and that it is dramatically different” than what it had been in the past.

Students were paying so little before because the coverage they received was so scant. The costs have gone up because under ObamaCare, plans must offer coverage for services like annual checkups and alcohol abuse treatments. Because they offer a wider range of services, the premiums also increase.

According to the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, students at nine schools in the state saw the cost of their policies triple, Paul Shelly, a spokesman for the organization told North Jersey.com.

It’s been a similar story across most of the country.

According to a 2008 study by the Government Accountability Office, about 6,000 students or about 7 percent of the total number of 18-to-23-year-olds in college, bought their own insurance, usually through plans arranged with the school.

The same study found that 60 percent of schools’ plans had coverage of $50,000 or less for specific conditions, and almost all the rest had some sort of payout caps that they will have to do away with by 2014.

In the past, students at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kan., were offered a one-year plan that cost students $445, with payouts capping at $10,000. For the 2012-2013 academic year, the payout cap was increased to $100,000 per the new health care overhaul, which meant students at Bethany would have to shell out more than $2,000 for coverage. It apparently was too much in the end.

Bob Schmoll, Bethany’s vice president for finance, told The Wall Street Journal, the school “decided not to offer coverage for our students next year” given the proposed increase in premium. Schmoll says the school could have kept the limited-coverage plan but that it would have financially not been feasible.

Administrators at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, Cornell College in Iowa and the University of Puget Sound in Washington also told students they would be dropping school-sponsored coverage. The three schools say student premiums would have gone up 10-fold.

AT&T is on the CIA payroll

Business + Government = Big Brother

Government gets around the Bill of Rights by having so-called "private" companies spy on their customers for them.

The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls, according to government officials.

The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, according to the officials. The C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates, the officials said.

The company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers reports the New York Times.
      

 

The program adds a new dimension to the debate over government spying and the privacy of communications records, which has been focused on National Security Agency programs in recent months.

 

The disclosure sheds further light on the ties between intelligence officials and communications service providers. And it shows how agencies beyond the N.S.A. use metadata — logs of the date, duration and phone numbers involved in a call, but not the content — to analyze links between people through programs regulated by an inconsistent patchwork of legal standards, procedures and oversight.

 

Because the C.I.A. is prohibited from spying on the domestic activities of Americans, the agency imposes privacy safeguards on the program, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it is classified.

Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, but when the company produces records of international calls with one end in the United States, it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and “masks” several digits of their phone numbers, the officials said.
      

Still, the agency can refer such masked numbers to the F.B.I., which can issue an administrative subpoena requiring AT&T to provide the uncensored data. The bureau handles any domestic investigation, but sometimes shares with the C.I.A. the information about the American participant in those calls, the officials said.

      

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the C.I.A., declined to confirm the program.

 

Red Lobster wants to give our jobs to illegal aliens - Corporate America betrays the nation

A Giant Fuck You from Corporate America

• The Republican Party's Corporate Masters have gathered to pressure House Republicans to cave on immigration in order to increase their profits.
• With over 90 million people not in the workforce, with record food stamps, poverty and under employment, corporate America wants 30 to 40 millions new workers legalized and/or imported into our economy.

Editor's Note - My wife's company outside of Los Angeles is an example of the screwing of the American worker.  All of the American citizens on the 3rd floor were fired and their jobs sent to the Philippines.  On the 1st floor all of the American citizens were "phased out" and the entire floor is now filled with temp agency tech workers imported from India.  My wife and the few Americans left on the 2nd floor await their fate . . . and the screwing of America goes on and on.


The Democrats are fully on board with impoverishing American citizens by legalizing and importing 30 to 40 million citizens of foreign nations as new workers.  Now the business community is pushing the GOP to join in on the fun.  Don't worry they say.  We will pony up all the campaign money you need in case of an election challenge.

In a public statement released post-government shutdown on Oct. 23, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) wrote that it thinks Congress should focus on immigration reform efforts before the end of the year.

“Now that Congress can refocus after the showdown over the budget and debt ceiling, we are hearing calls from both sides of the aisle to go back to immigration reform,” EWIC wrote. “The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) is looking forward to continuing to work with the House of Representatives as it deliberates the important issue of immigration reform,” reports Breitbart News.

Among other groups, the EWIC represents the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR). According to the group’s website, its board includes a who’s who of fast food restaurant executives.

For instance, NCCR’s chairman is Chip Kunde of Darden Restaurants--which owns brands like the Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, Seasons 52, the Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, Eddie V’s, and Yard House. Other members include:

• Vice Chairman: Mary Schnell of Wendy’s
• Treasurer: Cicely Simpson of Dunkin’ Donuts
• Secretary Lynn Liddle of Domino’s Pizza
• Past Chairman: Mike Starnes of Denny’s 
• Board members: Donald Balfour of Waffle House, Steve Hilton of McDonald’s, Craig Prusher of Church’s Chicken, James Richardson of White Castle, Patrick Sheehy from Cracker Barrel, Mark Simpson of Texas Roadhouse, Dan Colegrove of DineEquity, Inc., which owns IHOP and Applebee’s, and Joe Taylor of Brinker International, Inc., which owns Chili’s and Maggiano’s brands
• Chairman Emeritus: Steve Brigandi of Jack in the Box

 

Conservative Socialism
The politicians double cross the American people and line the pockets of their
corporate allies with cash with an endless flow of cheap imported labor. 
After all, it is only "fair" to legalize 30 million new workers to compete
directly with American citizens for the limited number of jobs.
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As a bonus, businesses rake in the money when they provide "free"
Obamaphones and when EBT card money is spent in their stores.  For
businesses more poor people means more money in their accounts.
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Conservative Socialism.  Using taxation the wealth is re-distributed
through the state's welfare system and into the pockets of
Corporate America.

The EWIC argued that despite unprecedentedly high unemployment rates, the industries it represents somehow need more workers. According to the September report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in America stands a 7.2 percent and has not dropped below 7 percent since President Barack Obama took office.

“There is currently no effective process by which lesser skilled essential workers can immigrate legally other than a guest worker in a seasonal or temporary period position,” EWIC wrote in its statement. “Our American-born workforce will increase only 1% over the next 10 years. The restaurant industry alone projects a need for 15% more workers. There are simply not enough American-born workers to fill the jobs we expect to be created by a vibrant economy in the coming years.”


House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has publicly stated he wants a conference committee with the Senate bill. "A lot of people are saying, just pass the Senate bill," Ryan said in July. "That's not what the House is going to do. I think we can make it better.”

Other industry groups the EWIC represents include:

• American Health Care Association
• American Hotel & Lodging Association
• American Immigration Lawyers Association
• American Meat Institute
• American Nursery & Landscape Association American Staffing Association
• Associated Builders and Contractors
• Associated General Contractors of America
• Federation of Employers & Workers of America
• Greenberg Traurig, LLP 
• ImmigrationWorks USA
• Independent Electrical Contractors International Franchise Association
• National Apartment Association
• National Association of Home Builders
• National Association of Manufacturers National Club Association
• National Multi Housing Council 
• National Retail Federation
• National Roofing Contractors Association Professional Landcare Network
• Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council 
• Small Business Workforce Alliance

EWIC is hardly the only group representing fast food restaurants pushing for amnesty. The National Restaurant Association (NRA) has participated in the campaign to lobby the House of Representatives as well.

The New American Dream
Just keep reloading my EBT card please.

 



Boycott Domino's Pizza
With America sinking into a giant shit-hole of poverty and under
and unemployment we have corporate American pressuring Congress
to fuck over the American people and legalize 30 million new workers
in order to drive down wages.

The Goldman Sachs Bribery of Hillary Clinton - Everyone is Lining their Pockets with Cash

Retroactive Bribery

• If Goldman Sachs handed an envelope with $400,000 in it to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for "services rendered" both sides can go to jail.
• But if Goldman Sachs handed an envelope with $400,000 in it to ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for past "services rendered" then it is legal.
• Corporations and unions have discovered a legal way to bribe politicians  -  monstrously huge fees for making a boring, short and forgettable 30 minute speech.  
• Line the right pockets of the special interest groups with taxpayer cash and they will make you wealthier that your wildest dreams.

"Corruptus in Extremis"  -  A now "retired" Hillary Rodham Clinton has plunged into the lucrative world of paid speechmaking, joining a branch of the family business that has brought the Clintons more than $100 million since her husband left the White House in 2001.

Hillary Clinton spoke at two separate Goldman Sachs events on the evenings of Thursday, October 24 and Tuesday, October 29. As both Politico and the New York Times report, Clinton’s fee is about $200,000 per speech, meaning she likely netted around $400,000 for her paid gigs at Goldman over the course of six days.

Last Thursday, Clinton spoke for the AIMS Alternative Investment Conference hosted by Goldman Sachs, a closed event exclusively for Goldman clients. AIMS is an annual conference that explores the latest strategies and products available to financial advisers.

At the event, Clinton offered what one attendee described to me as “prepared remarks followed by questions,” reports National Review.

On Tuesday, Clinton spoke at the Builders and Innovators Summit, devoted to discussing entrepreneurship and how to help innovators expand and grow their businesses.

According to Politico, Clinton conducted a question-and-answer session with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the subject of her remarks or why Mrs. Clinton in particular was invited to the events.

Keeping close to the investment world, Clinton also made visits to private-equity firms KKR in July and the Carlyle Group in September.

At KKR’s annual investor meeting in California, Clinton answered questions from firm co-founder Henry Kravis on the Middle East, Washington, and politics. At Carlyle Group, Clinton made a speech to shareholders moderated by Carlyle founder David Rubenstein.

Clinton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Magic money falls from the sky

"Magic" special interest money just falls from the sky and somehow manages to land

right in the wallets of the corrupt politicians.

The $100 Million Couple
Bill and Hillary did not have jack shit in the way of money because Bill worked a lifetime as a low paid Arkansas elected official.  But "very grateful" special interest groups have paid the Clintons more than $100 million since they left the White House in 2001.
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Now everyone in Washington is sucking hard on the special interest teats.  Congressmen, Senators and hack appointees alike are legally "rewarded" for past services rendered with jobs on corporate boards, speaking fees or being hired as lobbyists.

Hollywood funds Obamacare propaganda

Left wing group given $500,000 grant to help work Obamacare into TV and movie scripts

If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows.

For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.

As Newsmax reports, the Obama administration is “turning its focus on prime time television series, using the influential platform and the power of celebrity to spread the word about its healthcare initiative.”

With the White House’s blessing, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Norman Lear Center, which has something called a “Hollywood, Health & Society program,” has accepted a $500,000 grant from the left-wing California Endowment to help TV producers condition the masses into supporting Obama’s Soviet-style health care program.

USC will aim to keep producers, writers, and directors up to speed so they can incorporate the latest information into their storylines. It will also generate public service announcements to match the TV shows’ storylines.

“Our experience has shown that the public gets just as much, if not more, information about current events and important issues from their favorite television shows and characters as they do from the news media and online resources,” said Martin Kaplan, who heads the USC program, in a statement. “This grant will allow us to ensure that industry practitioners have up-to-date, relevant facts on health care reform to integrate into their storylines and projects.”

Half of the funding will be devoted to Spanish-language programming.

The USC program's advisory board contains several influential television executives, Deadline Hollywood found. Among them Jennifer Cecil, co-executive producer of "Hostages," Vince Gilligan, creator of "Breaking Bad" and Chris Nee, the executive producer of Disney Jr.'s "Doc McStuffins."

They join several high profile actors and actresses who have stepped up to lend their names and time to promoting the Obamacare message to a mass audience. Most recently, Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson completed a viral parody video of the popular "Scandal" series, which is set in a fictional White House, for Will Ferrell's "Funny or Die" online spots.

In July, a group of celebrities, including Hudson, visited Washington to meet with the president and his staff and to learn what they could do to assist in advance of the program's rollout, The Hollywood Reporter, said at the time.

"The president stopped by the meeting to engage artists who expressed an interest in helping to educate the public about the benefits of the health law," a White House official told the Hollywood Reporter. "The reach of these national stars spreads beyond the Beltway to fans of their television shows, movies and music—and the power of these artists to speak through social media is especially critical."

Visa Goes Anti-Gun - Restricts Transactions

VISA - An arm of the Democrat Party 

Gun grabbing socialist pigs attack gun stores

by preventing them from using credit cards.

The assault on the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment continues.

This time big business is getting into the mix and they’re aiming for gun stores right at the source of their revenues – their transaction processing facilities.

According to Larry Hyatt, owner of the largest gun brokerage firm in the United States, Authorize.net, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa USA and one of the world’s largest credit card processing gateways, has terminated their relationship with the firm reports the Washington Examiner.

After four years in business with the Visa owned Authorize.net, Larry Hyatt, owner of Hyatt Gun Shop, received an email indicating that the company would no longer provide its services due to “the sale of firearms or any similar product.”

The email reads:

Dear Hyatt Gun Shop Inc, 

Authorize.Net LLC (“Authorize.Net”) has determined that the nature of your business constitutes a violation of Section 2.xiv of the Authorize.Net Acceptable Use Guidelines and Sections 3.3 and 11.3 of the Authorize.Net Service Agreement (the “Agreement”). 

These sections include, but are not limited to, the sale of firearms or any similar product. 

Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4 of the Acceptable Use Guidelines, your ability to access and use the Authorize.NetServices will be terminated on September 30, 2013.

Hyatt’s massive online store will be unable to process credit card transactions, giving the store only a few days to find a new processing company before Authorize.net terminates their business relationship. 

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Hyatt Marketing Director Justin Anderson told the Washington Examiner.

All of a sudden, after four years of doing business together, Authorize.net declares that Hyatt Gun Shop is in violation of their terms of agreement.

An odd coincidence to be sure, but not if you consider that many top executives at Visa have donated to President Obama’s election campaigns. With President Obama renewing his push for gun control in the wake of the Navy Yard shooting last week, and Americans ardently opposing any legislative action that would further restrict the ownership of firearms, it looks as if anti-gun politicians are now calling in favors with their connections in big business.

For the full article go to Infowars News.

Hyatt Gun Shop

Why did the chicken cross the ocean? - So Obama could sell out American workers

Coming Soon  -  Communist McNuggets.

"Corruptus in Extremis"

The corrupt Obama regime cut a deal with China
to process American chicken without any
U.S. government food inspectors.

What the fuck???  -  In a corrupt deal with the Communist Chinese the Obama regime has now exported American food industry jobs from the U.S. to the People's Republic.

Despite China’s disgusting food-safety record, the feds for the first time are allowing American chickens to be sent to China for processing — and then imported back to the United States.

On-site US inspectors will not be required at these Chinese sites so there is simply no guarantee that food safety laws are up to United States standards.  The chicken also won’t have to be labeled as coming from China.

The prospect of US grocery stores selling Chinese chicken nuggets laced with insecticide or substituted with rat meat prompted Sen. Chuck Schumer yesterday to demand aggressive action by US Department of Agriculture food inspectors.

“Given Chinese processors’ poor track record with regard to food-safety standards, the USDA should be taking every possible step to ensure that the chicken that ends up on our plates and in our McNuggets is safe,” Schumer (D-NY) said at a press conference reports the New York Post.

Some trade experts said the chicken deal could have been an effort by Washington to offer something to Beijing as U.S. officials keep pressing the Chinese on the value of their currency and other trade issues. The U.S. runs a bigger trade deficit with China than any other country.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) sponsored an amendment to the 2007 agricultural spending bill to block any government spending that would support implementing the new rule.

"Despite warnings from the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service's own inspectors of the safety of Chinese plants, and the possibility that we could bring a pandemic into our borders, imports will soon be coming into our country," DeLauro said in a statement.

Schumer said the U.S. must take two immediate steps: (1) increase the number of on-the-ground audits and inspections of the Chinese inspection system and all Chinese facilities where meat is processed and (2) increased inspection of chicken meat shipped back to the United States with the highest level of scrutiny and frequency, to ensure meat is safe for consumption and originated in the United States.

He pointed to the numerous and disturbing incidents of tainted food exported from China, including arsenic in calamari and rice, maggots in pasta, glass chips in pumpkin seeds reports the Staten Island Advance.

Is it really chicken under the orange goo?
On-site US inspectors will not be required at these Chinese sites so there is simply no guarantee that food safety laws are up to United States standards.  The chicken also won’t have to be labeled as coming from China.

Other examples of Chinese tainted foods include:

• Police in China apprehended a group of criminals who have been selling rat, fox or mink meat as lamb for the past four years to markets in Shanghai and surrounding areas and made up to 10 million yuan ($1.6 million)
• At least 175 people had been sickened by insecticide-tainted dumplings from China, prompting supermarkets to pull Chinese-made meat products from their shelves while Tokyo pressed Beijing to improve food safety.
• The FDA effectively blocked the sale of five types of farm-raised seafood from China because of repeated instances of contamination from unapproved animal drugs and food additives. The F.D.A. said it decided to take the action after years of warnings and even a visit to Chinese fish ponds that resulted in no signs of improvement.
• Uncooked pork was found glowing in the dark due to a phosphorescent bacteria. An unsuspecting woman bought the pork in a Shanghai market only to find it radiating later that night on her kitchen table. The ghostly pork returned to normal meat color by morning.
• Hong Kong food inspectors found eggs imported from northeast China to be contaminated with high levels of melamine, toxic industrial additive at the heart of an adulteration scandal in Chinese milk products.
• Hundreds of other parents in central China unwittingly bought bad baby formula, in which nutritional supplements had been replaced with starch or sugar. Nearly 200 other babies, including at least 13 who died, now have what local residents call ''big head disease.
• ‘Cadmium’ rice -  Research published in February claimed that up to 10 per cent of rice sold in China was contaminated with heavy metals, including cadmium. Data collected by Nanjing Agricultural University found that the problem was most acute in Southern provinces, where in some areas 60 per cent of samples were contaminated, some with up to five times the legal limit.

Schumer said that these measures should be required because of the serious history of food-borne illnesses stemming from food products originating in China. He also pointed out that because no USDA country-of-origin labeling is required for food that is simply processed in another country, consumers will have no idea that their food has been processed in China.

Food contamination prompts milk smuggling in China

Pork Glows Blue in Shanghai
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After years of nerve-racking food scares from "melamine milk" to "glow-in-the-dark" pork and "exploding watermelons" urban China is starting to embrace the shoots of a new, green revolution and is going organic.
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  China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. In April this year, police seized 40 tons of beansprouts which had been treated with dangerous growth promoting chemicals and hormones, while this month, watermelons started exploding in the fields because they had been treated with too much accelerant.
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In March health officials discovered pork that glowed and iridescent blue in the dark because it had been contaminated by a bacteria.
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See more at the UK Telegraph.
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And more fun at Top 10 Chinese Food Scandals

My Chinese chicken comes with extra mercury.

Chinese Communists buy U.S. pork giant

Communist Bacon

The top executive at Shuanghui is a high-ranking member

of the Chinese Communist Party.

Around the world so-called "private" Chinese businesses that are connected to and funded by the Communist Party are buying up massive amounts of farmland and natural resources for shipment back to China.

The next Chinese target is the American company Smithfield Foods which won national security clearance for its proposed $4.7 billion sale to a Chinese meat processor, overcoming one of the biggest obstacles to a takeover.

The approval by an important government committee came despite the deep-seated skepticism of a group of lawmakers, who professed concern over a Chinese company owning Smithfield, America’s biggest pork producer.

The acquisition, which must still receive approval by Smithfield shareholders, would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm.

Analysts, however, are expecting Smithfield and its suitor, Shuanghui International, to prevail. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, commonly known as Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us), has historically reviewed acquisitions involving key industries like energy and technology. But it has little precedent in examining them in the food sector. Both companies have argued that their combination poses no danger of compromising American food safety standards reports Farmland Grab News,

Smithfield, America’s biggest pork producer, to be sold to China.

Indeed, they have contended that the goal is to export more Smithfield pork to China, satisfying rising demand for high-quality meat in that country. “This transaction will create a leading global animal protein enterprise,” Zhijun Yang, Shuanghui’s chief executive, said in a statement on Friday.

“Shuanghui International and Smithfield have a long and consistent track record of providing customers around the world with high-quality food, and we look forward to moving ahead together as one company.” But the takeover, the largest ever of an American company by a Chinese counterpart, was almost certain to attract scrutiny.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and chairwoman of the committee, said in a statement: “It remains unclear what factors the committee took into account in making its decision. We still do not know if the potential impact on American food security, the transfer of taxpayer-funded innovation to a foreign competitor, or China’s protectionist trade barriers were considered. It’s troubling that taxpayers have received no assurances that these critical issues have been taken into account in transferring control of one of America’s largest food producers to a Chinese competitor with a spotty record on food safety.”

Washington lawmakers have expressed concerns that the purchase of Smithfield by a Chinese company could squeeze U.S. pork supply as more of the meat goes overseas while leaving the U.S. susceptible to food safety concerns that have plagued Chinese companies, including Shuanghui. They also have worried that the acquisition would lead to additional takeovers of U.S. food companies by Chinese firms.

See more at USA Today.com / Business

Connected to the Communist Party.
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Two witnesses called by the committee — Usha C.V. Haley, an expert on Chinese business strategy at West Virginia University, and Daniel Slane, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group appointed by Congress — expressed multiple doubts about the transaction.

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Ms. Haley said that pork was a “strategically important industry for China” as the growing ranks of the middle class demand more sources of high-quality protein. “The same patterns that occurred in other strategically important industries,” like paper, steel and glass, she said, “will repeat in this sector and the United States will lose its competitive edge in food, becoming dependent on China.”

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Mr. Slane said that the fact that Shuanghui was effectively controlled by the Chinese government meant that it presented a national security threat to the United States.

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The top executive at Shuanghui “is a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Slane said, and he was appointed to that job by the party. “If he does not do what they say, they will remove him or worse.”

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In addition, the transaction is being financed in part by the Bank of China, Mr. Slane said. “The Bank of China does not finance any transaction unless it is told to do so by the Chinese government,” he said. “By any measure, this is a Chinese-controlled company.”

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See more at New York Times.

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A Serf bows to his Lord.
Free men own private property. Serfs own nothing and serve as tax slaves,
working the land and forced to turn over the wealth they produced to
their Lords and Masters in Government in return for "protection".

The Road to Serfdom Series
.
The world is moving toward a modern form of Neo-Serfdom where everyone works for the all-powerful State or businesses controlled by the State.  A world where individual property rights and freedom do not exist.

Freedom is slowly vanishing.  What happens when the major employers are owned by government backed investment groups, or your food comes from government owned farms, or your news is delivered by so-called "private" corporations that are in reality connected and interconnected to governments?

George Orwell had a name for it:  Big Brother.  Benito Mussolini had a name too: Corporatism or Fascism.

Please check out other stories in our Serfdom series.

THE FEDERALIST - "A Massive Theft of Cambodian land by Europe"

THE FEDERALIST - "Private property confiscated in Ethiopia & sold to multi-national corporations."

THE FEDERALIST - "Tax Slavery American Style - Feds Profit off Student Debt."

THE FEDERALIST - "Slavery returns to Europe"
.
THE FEDERALIST - "China to buy up the Australian dairy industry."

THE FEDERALIST - "China Buys Up the United States."

THE FEDERALIST - "750,000 Chinese have Colonized Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "Korea secretly buys Australia."

THE FEDERALIST - "Australia and Africa become Arab Food Colonies."

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys Australia (For Cheap Too)"

THE FEDERALIST - "The Chinese conquest of Africa"

THE FEDERALIST - "China buys New Zealand - The Road to Serfdom, Part XVII"

THE FEDERALIST - "Arab Food Colonies in Black Africa."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese colonization of New Zealand blocked."

THE FEDERALIST - "Chinese "Slavery" in Africa - The Road to Serfdom, Part XIV."

 

Government attacks on media signalling rise of fascism

Liars, Thieves and Whores, Oh My

It is illegal for the Media to tell the truth, but whore politicians are rewarded with money and power for crushing our Liberty.

We live in an upside down world.  Whistleblowers who dare speak the truth are chased around the world by the Secret Police of Big Brother government and condemned by the government-media complex that is allied to the liar politicians.

The truth is being told almost exclusively by the new Internet Media.

The latest scandal with the Guardian is an escalation against the freedom of the press that WikiLeaks predicted years ago, but it won't stop whistleblowers and journalists from fighting for freedom of speech.

It was revealed by Alan Rusbringer, editor of the Guardian, that the British government threatened them with legal action unless they handed back or destroyed material given to them by former NSA agent Edward Snowden.

The revelation comes after David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s partner, the Guardian journalist who published Snowden’s material, was detained and questioned for nine hours at London’s Heathrow airport under anti-terrorism laws.

Wikileaks’ Kristinn Hrafnsson talks to RT News.


RT News: Was Wikileaks surprised by the Guardian editors revelations about the British government pressuring them to give up or destroy the data related to Snowden’s leaks?

Kristinn Hrafnsson: I was not surprised at all and actually, we have been warning about this for years. Let me remind you that three years ago when Wikileaks was under a massive attack even under death threats and journalists in the main stream media did not come to our defense or even were directly against us. We said you should think twice because you are next. That is exactly what has happened on [in] the escalation on war on journalism. We see phone records of AP journalists in the states being seized, we see an attempt to prevent journalists in the US who are working with whistleblowers and are called co-conspirators and could be prosecuted and now we see this recent development in the UK. This is a part of the escalation against the freedom of the press and we warned about this years ago.


Wikileaks Kristinn Hrafnsson

RT News: The Guardian was one of the first papers to publish Wikileaks documents when they emerged. Have you heard about any similar tactics carried out by the government before to pressure the Guardian or any other paper from publishing them?

KH: We know of course about both the direct intimidations and acts of self-censorships even by media that we’ve been working with, even The New York Times and that has been reported on and admitted by the former editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller. This is a concentrated attack on the media, not just the media that we have been working with but to [on] all media and it is a very serious issue that people have to think carefully about because in essence this is a signal of a rise of fascism in the UK, in the US and western countries. I even see traces of that in my own country, Iceland, under the new conservative government.

RT News: Also we know that a few years ago, Wikileaks posted a mass of so-called insurance data which could be decrypted should something happen to Julian Assange or Edward Snowden. Would you add journalists working with whistleblowers to that list?

KH: Journalists that are working with whistleblowers are under attack. Whistleblowers have been under attack for years, now it’s journalists that are under attack. Every journalist should stand up in defense of journalism. Unfortunately we are seeing some journalist cowards who are not doing that and even calling for an attack on Julian Assange, which is appalling. This is a very serious issue; we are seeing a trend here as I said earlier that people have to respond to very urgently and with strong measures.

RT News: In light of what is happening many seem to feel that the UK government’s actions are aimed at warning journalists against working with whistleblowers and releasing sensitive data. What effect do you think it will really have?

KH: It is not going to stop whistleblowers, more and more will come forth because people are appalled by the situation and the crackdown on journalism and the attempt to silence everybody who is exposing the wrongdoings of governments. There are people out there with enough bravery to take decisive steps and let’s hope that there are enough journalists out there brave enough to respond to that. Of course we have Wikileaks and the ideals we stand for and all the organizations that hopefully will come forth endorsing the same idea. This is a part of a big picture - a fight for the basic principles of freedom of speech and privacy. We have to fight against all attempts to suppress that.

From RT News.

 

Trash cans gather your Smartphone info

1984 Trash Can Spying

British officials are "shocked" that the company they

hired is doing what they hired it to do.

Officials demanded Monday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London's financial district.

The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the hulking receptacles to measure the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of "cookies" -- tracking files that follow Internet users across the Web -- to the physical world.

"We will cookie the street," Renew Chief Executive Kaveh Memari said in June.

But the City of London Corporation insisted that Renew pull the plug on the program, which captures smartphones' serial numbers and analyzes signal strength to follow people up and down the street.

The captured data – which encompassed 4,009,676 devices in just one week of testing – was to be sold to advertisers in “raw form.” Shop owners, for example, could find it very useful for analyzing their customers’ visit time and loyalty reports RT News.

Renew didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on whether it would comply with the authorities' demand reports the Associated Press.


Bigger Brother: Total surveillance comes to UK
In the UK, the chances are you're being watched. It has more CCTV cameras per person than almost any other nation on earth. And now the government is planning to cast its intrusive eye over online activity, phone calls and text messages, all under the guise of an anti-terror law.

George Orwell - A Final Warning

The trash cans join a host of everyday objects from televisions to toilets that are being manufactured with the ability to send and receive data, opening up new potential for interaction -- and surveillance.

It's unclear how Renew had planned to use the data, which were gathered by its reinforced, shoulder-height pods stationed near St. Paul's Cathedral and Liverpool Street Station.

But if a company could see that a certain smartphone user spent 20 minutes in a McDonald's every day, it could approach Burger King about airing an ad on the bin's video display whenever that user walks by at lunchtime. Or it could target its commercials in real time by distinguishing between people who work in the area and visiting tourists.

The prospect drew comparisons to the creepy "Good evening, John Anderton" ads from the Tom Cruise thriller "Minority Report."

Renew first tested the technology using 12 trash cans in May, but the story didn't get traction until an article on news website Quartz led to a burst of media coverage.

"Anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public," read a statement from the City of London Corporation, which is responsible for the city's historic "square mile," home to financial institutions, law firms and tourist landmarks.

A spokesman for the body said it had been blindsided by the tests, which he said it learned about through the press only last week.

Britain's data protection watchdog said it would investigate, while Nick Pickles of the privacy advocacy group Big Brother Watch said questions need to be asked "about how such a blatant attack on people's privacy was able to occur."

In a recent statement, Memari said media coverage of the "spy bins" had been a bit breathless.

"A lot of what had been extrapolated is capabilities that could be developed and none of which are workable right now," he said.

What the Fuck!
Now Big Brother is rolling out computerized toilets that are connected to the Internet.  It appears the All-Powerful-State wants to measure ever inch of crap and every drop of urine.
(Boston Globe.com/business)

 

Irony - Big Brother cameras watch George Orwell's home.

 

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where George Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.