Communists Seize Private Property in Venezuela



Government re-distribution of the wealth just in time for election day.

 

Communism - Stealing Private Property

"This is more like government-sanctioned looting."

Welcome to Communism and Poverty  -  Thousands of Venezuelans lined up outside the country's equivalent of Best Buy, a chain of electronics stores known as Daka, hoping for a bargain after the socialist government forced the company to charge customers "fair" prices.

President Nicolás Maduro ordered a military "occupation" of the company's five stores as he continues the government's crackdown on an "economic war" it says is being waged against the country, with the help of Washington.

Members of Venezuela's National Guard, some of whom carried assault rifles, kept order at the stores as bargain hunters rushed to get inside reports USA Today.

"I want a Sony plasma television for the house," said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator, who had waited seven hours already outside one Caracas store. "It's going to be so cheap!"

Televisions were the most in-demand item in the line outside one Caracas store, though people waited more than eight hours for fridges, washing machines, sewing machines and other imported appliances.

The Communist Party of Venezuela is a partner of the late Hugo Chavez
and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela

Water and snacks were being sold outside the store by savvy Venezuelans keen to profit from the commotion. Happy customers weaved giant television screens and other items back to their cars through the crowds.

Images circulating online as well as reports by local media appeared to show one Daka store in the country's central city of Valencia being looted.

"I have no love for this government," said Gabriela Campo, 33, a businesswoman, hoping to take home a cut-price television and fridge. "They're doing this for nothing but political reasons, in time for December's elections."

Maduro faces municipal elections on Dec. 8. His popularity has dropped significantly in recent months, with shortages of basic items such as chicken, milk and toilet paper as well as soaring inflation, at 54.3% over the past 12 months.

Economists are expecting a devaluation soon after the election, likely leading to even higher inflation.

The opposition, which has long struggled to gain ground against the country's socialist government, is hoping that the elections will be seen as a referendum against Maduro

"This is more like government-sanctioned looting," said 42-year-old Caracas-based engineer Carlos Rivero. "What stops them going into pharmacies, supermarkets and shopping malls?"

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been
civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism
arrived and finished off the planet."
Hugo Chavez (2011)

The GOP Punts - And the road to Greece gets closer and closer

The Debt Can Gets Punted Again

• Congress allows an UNLIMITED increase in the debt until February 7th.
• The budget measure that ended the partial government shutdown allows for a 1% raise for Federal employees in January.
• GOP abandons the Constitution.  Allows the Senate alone to dictate all government spending.
• For TV both parties pretend to focus on Obamacare, but work together behind the scenes to keep other spending programs fully funded and out of the debate.

By Gary;

Both parties have kicked the Socialist spending-debt can down the road yet again.

With the Democrats you get up-front honest Marxism, wealth re-distribution and an unconstitutional centralized 1984 Surveillance State.

My beef is with the Republicans.  I have Blogged from day one that the GOP is effectively a radical New Deal Leftist political movement.  The party has adopted as their own, voted to fund and has protected every Liberal wet-dream spending or police state program ever conceived by FDR or LBJ plus a few the GOP dreamed up on their own.

So we have a nation without an opposition party.

The GOP talks a good game about small Constitutional government, but the party members eagerly latch on to the public teat.  We are already seeing GOP Governors around the nation jumping on the Obamacare train in order to cash those Federal checks.  In 2014 those Republicans will campaign for re-election that they "brought home the bacon" to their districts and states.

The GOP lost the public relations moral high ground in January, 2011.  Except for holding hearings in the House to embarrass the other Big Government faction, the GOP has not fought to cut one single dime.  They voted again and again to protect re-distribution of wealth spending programs and increase the debt limit. 

In a world gone mad, the now capitalist Chinese are condemning U.S. big government spending. A Chinese ratings agency downgraded its US sovereign credit rating Thursday despite Washington's resolution of the debt ceiling deadlock, warning that fundamentals for a potential default remained "unchanged".

Dagong lowered its ratings for US local and foreign currency credit from A to A-, maintaining a negative outlook.

Look out Greece, here we come.

The "Billionaires" of Zimbabwe know full well
about the endless printing of money.

Bread and Circuses - The EBT Nation of America

Bread and Circuses

• Senators in ancient Rome kept the perpetually unemployed masses pacified with free bread and circuses.  The only difference today is the free bread the Senators hand out comes in the form of an EBT card.
• As the EBT card system imploded this last weekend we saw the modern "bread riots" as the teat sucklers went wild in stores.
• The real question is what happens when the government teat finally dries up and there is no more sweet socialist milk?

The Roman Emperor Augustus was well aware of the risks of the unemployed masses and was keen to keep the poorest plebeians happy enough and reasonably well fed so that they would not riot. He began the system of state bribery that the writer Juvenal described as ‘bread and circuses’.

Free grain and controlled food prices meant that plebeians could not starve, while free entertainment – such as chariot races and gladiators in amphitheaters and the Circus Maximus – meant that they would not get bored and restless. Bribery it may have been, but it often worked. 
.

Sucking on the teat of government beats working for a living.

Flash forward to today

The EBT card system implodes around the country 

The perpetually unemployed masses suck furiously on the re-distributed wealth of the public teat.  When that teat is threatened they react much like their ancient cousins in Rome.

When the federal EBT food stamp system suffered a critical failure on Saturday, local retailers were disconnected from the federal food stamp database that keeps track of how much credit is left on each individual EBT card.

Seizing the opportunity provided by the glitch, EBT card holders in Louisiana ransacked their local Wal-Mart stores, stuffing their shopping carts full of groceries and “paying” for them with near-empty EBT cards that essentially had unlimited account balances because all accounting was offline.

The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended reports KSLA News.

Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says Walmart was so packed, "It was worse than any black Friday" that he's ever seen.

Lynd explained the cards weren't showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman  said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn't press charges if she left the food.

Lynd says at 9 p.m., when the cards came back online and it was announced over the loud speaker, people just left their carts full of food in the aisles and left.

"Just about everything is gone, I've never seen it in that condition," said Mansfield Walmart customer Anthony Fuller.

This image, posted on Facebook, shows empty shelves at the Springhill
Walmart store after a run on meat and other food products.

American Empire vs Roman Empire

Monetary history repeats itself as the American dollar collapses.  The economic 

liberty of the Roman people was destroyed by government policy.

EBT Marxist Pizza
Why work for a living when both parties in Washington will re-distribute the wealth and buy you a pizza with an EBT card and give you a free Obamaphone.
.
But this is a "special" Marxist pizza.  Both poor Democrats and GOP business owners get to suck on the EBT card.  Everyone wins except the taxpayers.

Conservative says the rich are too rich

Conservatives Adopt Socialism

The Conservative Party Mayor of London attacks the

"evil" rich for passing wealth to their children.

Small government Classical Liberalism and Conservatism is dead.  In Britain, Germany, France or the U.S. those who claim to be Conservative are adopting the language and wealth re-distribution programs of the Socialists they claim to oppose.

Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party Mayor of London, criticized well-off Britons who buy large houses to pass on to their children instead of giving their wealth to charity.

He said the country needed to adopt a culture of philanthropy like that of the US, where there is a ‘culture of giving and being recognised as givers’.

Despite owning a large house in Henley, Oxfordshire, and a £2.3million home in a fashionable part of North London, the father-of-five criticised those who ‘desperately’ aimed to amass property wealth to pass on to their offspring ‘for some unknown reason’, reports the UK Daily Mail.

Asked what he believed the barriers were to philanthropy in Britain, Johnson said wealthy Britons just wanted to buy the largest ‘schloss’ – a castle or manor house – they could, adding: ‘It’s a cultural thing.
.
'The trouble with the people in this country is – and I’ll get myself in terrible trouble here – is that what they really want to do when they’ve amassed colossal wealth in Britain, is buy the biggest possible house they can with the most colossal grouse moorland they can find and then try in some desperate way to perpetuate it and to pass it on to their children, for some unknown reason.'

‘In America they have a very different attitude in that they believe that if you have made a lot of money you should do something for society.

‘There’s still something in Britain which regards giving on a huge scale as somehow ostentatious – that is absolutely ridiculous.'

‘The sooner people get over their lust to buy great schlosses in the home counties – or indeed grouse moors – and give to great causes in London, the better.’

A poster for the British Conservative Party from the 1929 General Election.
.
Conservatism is Dead.
In the olden days Conservatives actually believed in small government, personal and economic freedom.  But those days are long, long gone and dead.  Today "Conservatives" have become the very Socialists they fought by fully adopting big government centralized controls and the 1984 Police Surveillance State.



USA - Blast from the past cartoon

While over in the U.S. the "Conservative" Republican Party has adopted as their own every Leftist New Deal and Great Society big government spending program ever created.

Obamacare will never be repealed - The pigs are at the trough

 

Thank You Ted Cruz!

With only 9 Senators at his side, Cruz showed

the GOP's true position on Obamacare. 

By Gary;

Senator Ted Cruz's mini filibuster preformed a public service for true Conservatives.

Cruz showed that Obamacare will never be repealed.

Only nine GOP Senators stood at the side of Cruz and spoke for repeal.  The other thirty-six Republicans hid under their desks or attacked Cruz from the sidelines.

Rule #1  -  Never listen to what politicians say.  Look at the results of what they actually do.

Some 75% of the so-called "Conservatives" in the Republican Party are eager as Hell to help in the Marxist re-distribution of the wealth as long as their friends and financial backers get a share. 

In the 12 years the GOP controlled Congress (1995 - 2007) they never cut the Federal budget by one cent or abolished a single meaningful New Deal or Great Society program.

True Conservatives should not be under the illusion that the rest of the GOP really cares.  They don't


The True Saint of the GOP.
It should come as no surprise that only 9 GOP Senators
backed Ted Cruz.  The GOP is a radical New Deal
pro-FDR political party that has voted to fund every
big government program ever created.

A Washington Times analysis of speaking times shows Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, stayed near Cruz’s side throughout the night. 

Lee talked for 3 hours and 21 minutes of the filibuster, giving Cruz breathers to sip water, chat with his staff, check his iPhone for messages and do leg exercises.

Senator Marco Rubio helped out by consuming 96 minutes of floor time, including one 51-minute question at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning.  Cruz ended up speaking for 13 hours and 15 minutes.

The seven other Senators who came to the floor and spoke for Cruz were:

• David Vitter
• Jeff Sessions
• Pat Roberts
• Jim Risch
• Rand Paul
• James Inhofe
• Mike Enzi

 Three Political Parties in Washington

The official party labels have no real meaning.  Congress breaks down into three political parties.

• The Socialist Democrat Party
• The New Deal Republican Party
• and a Constitutional Federalist Party.

Based on those who stood tall with Ted Cruz, the "Constitutional Federalist" Party makes up only 10% of the U.S. Senate.

 

What will happen is the corruption of Obamarcare will come to a head.  The Socialist Democrats and the New Deal Republicans will come to an agreement to "compromise" and reform the system.  Both groups will claim victory while the Constitutional Federalists will vote no in helpless protest.

 

Welcome to socialized medicine. . . . Soon to be Medicare for all.

 

(Washington Times)

The Pigs are at the Trough

Follow the money trail.  Obamacare will not be repealed because both leftist American political parties have their snouts deep, deep into the trough of taxpayer cash.  In only a few months we have seen GOP Governors jumping into the trough to get their share of the cash.

It's not about racism. It's about Socialism.



The newly remodeled U.S. House of Representatives.
From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.

We are talking about the wrong "ism"

Statists beat the drum of racism to churn votes

for Socialism and the re-distribution of the wealth.

By Gary;

Pardon me.  But its is really hard to take seriously a Black Billionaire like Oprah Winfrey bitching about the horrors of "racism".  In fact, with so much racism out there I was shocked Oprah felt it was safe enough to leave her Santa Barbara estate to attend the anniversary event for Martin Luther King.

The same goes for our Black Socialist President, the Black Attorney General and all the wealthy and powerful Black entertainers like Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker who attended.

GOP Senator Tim Scott
was not invited to the MLK event.

The entire point of beating the drum of fear and racism is to advance the real agenda of Socialism and wealth re-distribution.

As usual, a compliant lap-dog Media covers the wrong "ism".

As proof the rally was not about progress in society, the nation’s only Black U.S. Senator, Tim Scott was not invited to the Let Freedom Ring event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

Scott, a Republican Representative appointed by S.C. Governor Nikki Haley earlier this year to fill former Sen. Jim DeMint’s seat in the U.S. Senate after he retired, was not invited to participate in the historic event, a spokesperson for the Senator confirmed to Red Alert Politics in an email.

Instead of Senator Scott you had so-called African-American leaders like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) – who participated in the original March – and MSNBC host Al Sharpton.

Leftist Rep. John Lewis blasted what he termed continuing American racism while paying tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. He said “invisible signs…form a gulf between us. Too many of us still believe our differences define us…the scars and stains of racism still remain deeply embedded in American society.” He cited stop and frisk in New York and Trayvon Martin in Florida as evidence of racism. He blamed the “mass incarceration” of millions of black men on racism.

MLK Daughter Bernice King urged vigilance if “Freedom is going to ring in Libya, in Syria, in Egypt, and . . . Florida".

Yes.  Race, race and more race.  That is the cover story, but it is really about stealing money from the producers of society to buy the votes of the lazy and unmotivated.

(Bernice King)

Original Obamaphone Lady

It's not about race.  It's about getting free shit that will be

paid for by some other guy somewhere.

Oprah Winfrey - Victim of "Racism."
Oprah Winfrey currently lives on "The Promised Land", her 42-acre estate (above) with ocean and mountain views in the 92% Anglo community of Montecito, California.
.
Oprah worked hard for what she has and was rewarded with the love and respect of people of all races.  Oprah worked and succeeded in life.  But even Oprah feels she must beat the racism drum for those who reject education, morality and hard work.
..
Winfrey also owns a house in Lavallette, New Jersey; an apartment in Chicago, an estate on Fisher Island, Florida, a house in Douglasville, Georgia; a ski house in Telluride, Colorado; and property on Maui, Hawaii and Antigua.

 

The Socialist Race Drum.
The Marxist race drum is beaten louder and louder in order to distract African Americans from ever increasing poverty, illiteracy, welfare, unemployment and Serf like dependency on government caused by Socialist policies. 
.
Here is your Obamaphone and food stamps, now shut up, vote Democrat and do not question your Liberal Puppet Masters.

Bobby Jindal Says No to Impeachment of Obama



The GOP - A Party of Giant Pussies.

Bobby Jindal joins the ranks of ball-less and spineless

Sheeple Republicans frightened to stand for anything.

Amazing.  The United States appears to be the only democracy on earth without an opposition party.

The Marxists are on the March to abolish the Constitution, start a race war, steal our property, re-distribute the wealth, bankrupt the nation, conduct unconstitutional wars and build a NSA 1984 Surveillance Police State.  And when the GOP is not actively voting with the Democrats to grow government they are sitting around sucking their thumbs trying not to look too fucking stupid.

Now GOP Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal comes out saying doing nothing is best.  He claims he disagrees with many of President Obama’s policies, notably Obamacare, but it’s not time to talk about kicking the President out of the White House through impeachment.

May I ask when will it be time?



Voters gather around to see a rare sight -
the nearly extinct Republican that believes in something.

“I reject that kind of talk. The reality is I didn’t like it when the left spent eight years trying to de-legitimize President Bush, call into question his election,”  Jindal, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I don’t think we should be doing that for President Obama. The reality is, one of the great things about this country is we do have a peaceful transfer of power.”
.
Jindal was responding to long-shot talk of drawing up impeachment charges against Comrade Obama.

The idea has surfaced among conservative lawmakers and constituents at town hall meetings involving the likes of Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Instead of talking about impeachment,  Jindal said, the party should focus on topics such as school choice and repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Yeah, school choice.  Meanwhile the Bill of Rights is being raped on live TV.


Read more: Washington Times.

The Castrated Sheeple of the United States.
The American Republic is dead.  The corpse just does not know it yet and still quivers at times.  There is not even an opposition party to fight against the March of Marxism. 
.
From massive spending to debt to unconstitutional spying to unconstitutional wars, the so-called "Conservative" Republican Party has just rolled over claiming they will fight later, in the fullness of time, when the conditions are right.  But years go by and somehow "later" never comes.
.
The American Sheeple of a once great nation eagerly report to Big Brother DHS castration centers to be "fixed", scanned, tagged like animals and then assigned the proper, politically correct amount of feed for the day.
.
An all-powerful Big Brother State tells the Sheeple, "Just give us your balls and you will be safe." And the American Sheeple bleat, "Yes Master. We obey Big Brother."

 

Government to subsidize marijuana for the poor

"Dude, thanks for the free pot."

From each according his ability, to each according

to his need to get high.

An unprecedented D.C. government program will require medical marijuana dispensaries to put aside 2 percent of their profits in order to subsidize pot purchases for poor patients.

Under the proposed rule, which was published in the D.C. Register last week and is in the midst of a 30-day review period, dispensaries will give at least a 20 percent discount on marijuana to low-income people at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Clinics often offer discounts to poor patients, and other states mention low-income provisions in medical marijuana legislation. But Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said no other states have inserted this type of provision into regulations reports the Washington Times.

“This rule is totally unprecedented in the medical marijuana community,” he said.

Medical marijuana sales in the District began last month at the Capital City Care clinic. Prices for marijuana range between $380-$440 per ounce, according to the clinic’s website.

The sliding scale program is intended to improve access to medical marijuana for the poor, which potentially comprise a large percentage of marijuana consumers. Often, marijuana patients do not hold full-time jobs due to the nature of their illnesses that qualify them to use pot medically, analysts say.

Medical marijuana cards issued to patients indicate whether they are low-income and eligible for discounts on the drug.

City officials in March proposed a subsidy program in which dispensaries would pay into a city-operated fund, but that proposal was amended. Under the new rule, dispensaries would have to reserve funds themselves to ensure that the discounts they give amount to 2 percent of their income. The city will audit the fund annually and can adjust the percentage of their profits that dispensaries have to reserve for subsidies.

Mark Levin - The Liberty Amendments

Mark Levin

"An Exercise in Political Masturbation"

A more honest title for Levin's new book.

Book Review

By Gary;

Mark Levin is a true patriot, an ally in the war against Statism and a defender of the Constitution.

But that being said his newest book is mostly a waste of time.  The book fails to address the one real problem in America today - the lack of free elections.

We would not be having this conversation if the politicians had any fear at all of the voters.  They don't.

Levin talks about passing new amendments to the Constitution. But that means nothing when the entrenched politicians financed by a bottomless pit of big Beltway money simply ignore the existing ones.

It is a little know fact that up until 1940 the U.S. was a multi-party Republic.  The people could easily form brand new political parties to overthrow the corrupt Elites in D.C.   Power came from the bottom up.  From the People.

We saw many parties elected to Congress:  Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, National Republicans, Democrat, Anti-Masonic, Free Soil, American, Republican, Greenback, Populist, Progressive and more.

Until free elections are restored we are doomed as a nation.

Levin has proposed a number of amendments he claims will save the county.

Term Limits

Levin proposes term limits as a cure for D.C. corruption.  Sorry.  That one is totally dead on arrival and misses the point that we no longer even have free elections.

As a resident of the People's Republic of California we have had term limits.  It has done absolutely nothing to change the corrupt nature of government.  The reason is, term limits does not change the way politicians are elected.

California resembles the US House of Representatives with monster, huge legislative districts.  900,000 people for the State Senate and 450,000 for the Assembly.  In a special election for State Senate last month both parties spent about $5,000,000 on the race.


Nathaniel P. Banks
Speaker of the House, American Party.
Banks was a Democrat, then the American Party,
then a Republican and finally Liberal Republican
Party.  With small House districts new political
parties can easily rise and fall striking FEAR
in the hearts of the D.C. Elites.
(Nathaniel P. Banks)

Because districts are so huge only millionaires or those willing to be bribed with millions in corrupt outside special interest cash get elected. 
.
Our "representatives" do not represent the People.  They really represent the big money cartels of unions and corrupt businesses wanting "payback" for their campaign money investment. 

Until the common man can again afford to run for office there will be no changes.

REFORM  -  Levin is wasting his time with amendments.  If there is any hope at all in saving the nation then we need to restore free elections. 

Here is a reform that only takes a majority vote of the US House - vastly expand the House of Representatives to help restore the Republic.

Article One, Section 2 of the Constitution says, "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand." 

Everyone could easily meet their Congressman face to face with next to zero campaign costs.  The House has ignored that number for 200 years causing the current House seats to balloon up to 700,000 people and increasing campaign expenses to the insane level.

The lower houses districts in Canada and Britain run about 100,000 in population and they are both multi-party democracies with free elections. 

About 100,000 is a good number for the US House.  Back when House seats were that size we had free elections with new political parties rapidly being formed, getting elected to Congress and often vanishing just a fast.

With huge districts the political class has no reason to fear the people at election time.

Taxes, Debt & Spending

Levin proposes a limit on spending, taxes and debt which includes a 60% vote of Congress to override.

Once again Levin is lost in intellectual theory la-la-land.

Since 1978 California had a two-thirds (66%) requirement to pass a budget.  The minority GOP had a total veto over all spending and debt.  What happened?  The Republicans simply cut deals with the Democrats to keep the spending-debt machine running at full blast.

Levin's amendment is a joke.  The GOP has the power to freeze or cut spending now with a 50% + 1 vote, but Republicans have not voted to cut even one cent from the budget since the 1920s. 

The money machine gets them re-elected.  Levin's amendment changes nothing.  Only election reform (above) will do that.

Supreme Court Term Limits

If find it interest that Levin attacks the one part of the Constitution that still operates just as our Federalist Founding Fathers wanted  -  the Federal Courts.


Justice Clarence Thomas
Mark Levin wants judges like Thomas
to be term limited.  Sorry Mark, I want
Thomas in there until he is 90 years old
and the EMTs have to pry him out of
his seat.

Again Levin demands those somehow "magical" term limits for those horrible men in black with their "evil" lifetime appointments to the Federal Courts.  Never mind that this is what the Federalists wanted when they wrote the Constitution. 
.
Our Founders wanted a judiciary as far removed from the tug of everyday politics as possible.  The Founders wanted judges to be appointed for life by a variety of Presidents to reduce the danger of dictatorship.

Both Conservatives and Liberals take their turns in attacking the Court.

The Conservatives praise the Court when it votes their way on cases like guns or voting rights and curse them with equal fervor when they dare to vote different. 

The same goes with the libs.  This standard hot air political BS has not changed since the founding of the country.

Also the last thing you want is a judge being term limited at age 60 instead of serving for life.  The judge could easily rule on cases looking ahead to being hired by the very firms or politicians he is making rulings on.

A New Constitutional Convention

Levin is correct that a new Constitutional Convention called by the states is needed.

The Federal government has become a bully dictating everything in our lives from school lunches, to local zoning laws and health care.  A new Convention could draw up an amendment putting serious limitations on the Federal Dictatorship.

Still, we have a 10th Amendment now and neither party pays attention to it.  Would a new amendment be any different?

For political junkies like myself Levin's book is a fun read.  But as a guide for political action I suspect it will be ignored by both parties.



COMMUNISM - Calif. city to seize private property

“From each according to his abilities, to

each according to his needs.”
― Karl Marx

The People's Republic of California  -  Marxist California Democrats are on the march looking to seize the money, the private property, of banks and private individual lenders and re-distribute that wealth to voter home owners.  Emphasis on the VOTER part please.

When you rob Peter and give the money to Paul, you will always get Paul's vote.

The Leftist Democrat city of Richmond, California, said on Tuesday it will use its power of eminent domain to seize private property mortgage loans to keep its residents in their homes, becoming the first U.S. municipality to adopt such an approach.

The northern California city sent notice to the holders of more than 620 underwater home mortgages in the city, asking them to sell the loans to the city. It would buy the mortgages for 80 percent of the fair value of the homes, write them down and help the homeowners refinance their mortgages.

In the event the owners of the loans would not cooperate, the city would seize the loans using eminent domain, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said in the Virginia Gazette.

"Residents here in Richmond have been suffering for years thanks to the housing crisis Wall Street created and which Wall Street refuses to fix," said McLaughlin in a statement.

Numerous groups, including the National Association of Realtors, the American Bankers Association, and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, have already voiced fierce opposition to using the threat of eminent domain to buy mortgages.

"It is very, very discouraging to see a municipality begin the process," Timothy Cameron, managing director and head of SIFMA's Asset Management Group, said in an interview. "What this does is destroys the contractual rights of investors along with their trust and confidence in the capital markets. I wouldn't be surprised if a lawsuit is filed by investors, quite frankly."

Eminent domain is normally used by cities to force the sale of homes if they obstruct the construction of a project deemed beneficial to the wider community, such as a road or bridge.
.
Richmond is working with San Francisco-based Mortgage Resolution Partners, a private investment firm that has been pitching the plan to U.S. cities and municipalities for more than a year. MRP, raising money from private sources, would work with the city to obtain the financing to buy the distressed mortgages and restructure them. MRP would receive a fee for every troubled loan it restructured under the plan

Senate Control in 2014 Increasingly Looks Like a Tossup

The Phony Public Image
Before the election both parties pretend to the public that
they disagree with each other.

A close 2014 election - But does it matter?

The 2014 elections are coming.  But believers in small Constitutional government should prepare to be disappointed. 

There are some real differences between the parties on issues like guns or abortion.  But when it comes down to the core issues of growing centralized Big Government, spending and building an authoritarian unconstitutional Police Surveillance State, both Liberals and Conservatives eagerly work together.

Taking back the Senate is the major goal of the Republicans.  The G.O.P.’s task will not be easy: the party holds 46 seats in the Senate, and the number will very probably be cut to 45 after a special election in New Jersey later this year. That means that they would need to win a net of six contests from Democrats in order to control 51 seats and overcome Comrade Vice President Joseph Biden's tiebreaking vote.

Two years ago at this time, Republicans faced what seemed to be a promising environment and could have won the Senate by gaining a net of three seats from Democrats and winning the presidency. Instead, Mitt Romney lost to Comrade Obama, and the G.O.P. lost a net of two Senate seats.

A New York Times race-by-race analysis of the Senate, in fact, suggests that Republicans might now be close to even-money to win control of the chamber after next year’s elections.

________________________________



After the Election.
Once the votes are cast it becomes bi-partisan party time with both parties coming together to wallow in the mountains of taxpayer provided cash. 
.
The real battle in Washington is over which "faction" of society gets to line their pockets with trillions in centralized Big Government spending.  That is why no matter who wins the election not one single dime is ever, ever cut from the Federal budget.  Democrat or GOP, it does not matter, the Marxist re-distribution of the wealth goes on and on. 

________________________________

The best guess of the Times, after assigning probabilities of the likelihood of a G.O.P. pickup in each state, is that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 50 and 51 Senate seats after 2014, putting them right on the threshold of a majority.

The chart below reflects the Times current overview of the Senate landscape, including the probability estimates. (The estimates are not based strictly on a formula but instead are best guesses, accounting for the partisan lean of each state, the quality of the prospective candidates, and approval-rating or polling data to the extent that it might be informative.)

In a strong Republican year, the G.O.P. could win all of the tossup and “lean Democratic” seats and pick up one of the “likely Democratic” seats like New Hampshire, which would give them a net gain of nine seats and leave them with a 55-45 majority in the chamber.

In a strong Democratic year, the party could lose only West Virginia and South Dakota – and pick up New Jersey and one of Kentucky and Georgia – and hold their current 54-46 edge.




See more at New York Times.

Liz Cheney & the Slow Death of the Republic.
Increasingly we are seeing more and more politicians like Liz Cheney.  She has spent most of her adult life in her adopted home state of Virginia while working and socializing with the Elite in Washington D.C.  Cheney then moves back to her new "home state" of Wyoming for a few months hoping to become a Senator and then to return to her old home state of Virginia to live full time.
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Hillary Clinton did the same thing in moving to New York to become Senator and then moving right back to Washington.  Countless Congressional staffers have also used their corrupt Beltway connections to raise money to get elected in districts they hardly know any more.  Because of campaign costs, increasingly the centralized money machine of Washington selects and funds the candidates for the people.