WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS
YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01
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Jan. 02, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02
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Jan. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03
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Jan. 15, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04
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Jan. 24, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05
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JAN 30, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06
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Feb. 06, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA
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Feb. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07
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Feb. 13, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08
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Feb. 21, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-09
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Feb. 27, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-10
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Mar. 08, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11
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Mar. 13, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11 EXTRA
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Mar. 15, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-12
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Mar. 21, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-13
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Mar. 29, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-14
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Apr. 03, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-15
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Apr. 12, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-16
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Apr. 19, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-17
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Apr. 26, 2014
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Agenda
1.
Note from Floyd.
2.
Koch Brothers addiction.
3.
Jury awards $3M in first fracking case.
4.
Wall Streets secret weapon in Washington
5.
American Democracy - now an Oligarchy.
6.
Protection racket for the one percent.
NOTE FROM
FLOYD
This posting has some of the most
forward thought of, what I think, is truth opinions based on facts, about our
present and future. Folks, there is a
great deal of material here that warrants your time. You have plenty to read and digest during
this next week.
It seems as though I am not getting
these posting out any before Saturday recently.
I am going to try harder to get them out at least on Friday. Have been having a lot of trouble with
medical insurance. It doesn't have
anything to do with ObamaCare.
Read and seriously think about what
you see here.
~~~
KOCH BROTHERS ADDICTION
The Koch Brothers profit from producing toxic chemicals, harmful pollutants, carcinogens, and greenhouse gases, and they are funding climate deniers in Congress.
Only 3% of scientists worldwide reject climate change science, but in Congress, 56% of Republicans deny that climate change is real.
The oil baron Koch brothers have funneled over $30 million so far into 2014 Senate races to make sure that they will continue to profit from polluting our environment.
Join Daily Kos and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in telling the GOP to get off their Koch addiction – climate change is real – and we won’t let climate deniers try to buy a Republican Senate!
~~~
Updated: BREAKING: Jury awards $3 million in first fracking
case
When
you present the evidence to six people who know nothing about fracking, they
find fracking guilty.
I wrote a diary on Daily Kos
when
Lisa Parr's doctor found drilling chemicals in her blood and lungs. That was back in 2010 when I still had hope
that fracking could be done right. I've learned since then that it can't.
Today, a jury of their
peers awarded Bob and Lisa Parr $3 million dollars in their fracking lawsuit
against Aruba Petroleum. The Parr's attorneys said this was
the first fracking case to ever go to trial. I'm trying to verify that.
Bob and Lisa Parr were neighbors to Tim and Christine
Ruggiero in Wise County Aruba gas wells on her property.
Like Tim and Christine, Bob and Lisa shared all their
information with me and I developed it into a case study for presentation to
the EPA at Research
Triangle Park
Later the Parrs were
highlighted in Gasland Part 2. Today's
decision might take some of the wind out of the fracking windbags who prattle
on endlessly about how inaccurate Gasland is. SIX regular people who knew
nothing about fracking were presented with the facts and awarded the victims $3
million dollars. It's going to be hard to spin that.
This is a picture of Bob,
Lisa and Emma Parr on their wedding day on the 40 acres where Bob built a
beautiful custom home.
This is a picture of what life became for the Parr's
shortly after.
They were surrounded by gas wells. Lisa’s suffered from
Breathing difficulties Nausea, Rashes that left her
scarred with pock-marks. She had
biopsies of the oozing welts on her scalp and the 4 ping-pong-ball-sized lumps
on her neck.
Testing showed drilling chemicals in Lisa’s blood and lungs that match chemicals detected by the state in air testing outside her home. She had a whole host of other ailments. Bob and Emma also suffered various health impacts.
Tonight Lisa told me they
won't have to end up in the Cycle of Fracking Denial
so
they can speak openly about what happened to them. She said, "This was never about the
money. This was about our land."
I have blogged
extensively about the sins of Aruba Petroleum.
From
my view, they are one of the most irresponsible and reckless companies in a plethora
of reckless and irresponsible.
Aruba intends to appeal the jury's decision money.
HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!
~~~
Meet the Banking Caucus, Wall Street’s Secret Weapon in Washinton.
Daniel Wagner
Center for Public Integrity / News
Investigation
Published: Friday 25 April 2014
The lawmakers were at an impasse.
More than two hours into a meeting of the House Financial
Services Committee last month, the members were bickering over two versions of
a bill designed to ease a new regulation that affected banks, part of the
sweeping 2010 overhaul of financial laws known as the Dodd-Frank Act.
The dispute? Whether to give
the banks everything they asked for, or whether to give them even more.
Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., asked to postpone a final
vote so he could contact “stakeholders,” code for the bankers who wanted the
change. Then Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, the committee’s ambitious chairman,
attempted to retake the discussion with what passes for a joke in the
oxygen-starved air of the wood-paneled hearing room in the Rayburn House
Office Building
“Occasionally we have been
accused of trying to undermine aspects of Dodd-Frank,” Hensarling said with a
chuckle. “I hope we’re guilty of it.”
Hensarling was being modest. With a 29-person committee staff, dozens of
congressional colleagues and legions of lobbyists lined up to beat back any
attempt to impose new discipline on the industry, the 56-year-old from Dallas
Bankers’
best friends
Every business sector has its friends in Washington
Less than six years after a massive financial crisis
drove the U.S.
There are more than 2,000 lobbyists for financial firms
and trade groups and many are spreading money around Washington, enlisting
like-minded members of Congress to write letters, propose legislation, hold
hearings and threaten agency budgets as they pressure regulators to ease up on
banks.
Regulators say they try to treat input from lawmakers
like that from anyone else.
However, “there are all these other factors, like the
budget, like the fact that they can call you up to testify, and they can make
your life pretty miserable,” said the former head of one regulatory agency who
asked not to be identified, as did many of those contacted for this story.
The campaign is working. While Hensarling’s committee can’t move
legislation on its own — the Senate Banking Committee supports Dodd-Frank — the
House panel can work its will in other ways. And it has. Almost four years after Dodd-Frank became law,
community banks face lower capital standards than originally proposed and are
therefore more likely to fail; fewer derivatives traders have to register with
regulators and they face lower hurdles in booking trades than they otherwise
would have, partly undermining the law’s aim to make this corner of the
financial system more transparent; and big banks may soon have a green light to
keep investing in potentially risky securities that regulators tried to limit.
In the current election cycle, employees and political
action committees of financial companies have donated nearly
$149 million to congressional candidates, more than any other
industry, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than two-and-a-half times the $57
million donated by the health care sector, the second-most-generous industry.
“It’s an exceedingly rich industry with a lot at stake,”
said Brad Miller, a member of the House financial
committee from 2003 until he left office in 2013 and currently a lawyer with
the firm Grais & Ellsworth. With
lawmakers under constant pressure to raise money, Miller said, deep-pocketed
lobbyists “don’t have to worry about having access to members, because all you
have to do is wait for the phone to ring — and you don’t have to wait very
long.”
ABOUT Daniel Wagner
Daniel Wagner came to the Center in 2013 from The Associated Press in
Washington, D.C. He was honored with two Best in Business awards from the
Society for American Business Editors and Writers (2010) for stories on banks’
use of bailout money and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s close relationships
with bankers. Dan won a third SABEW award for feature writing (2013) for
profiling a little-known Treasury Department office that oversees and protects
the alcohol and tobacco industries. rior
to the AP, Dan was a business reporter for Newsday, covering real estate, land
use and the mortgage industry. His team’s early work on the mortgage crisis in
2007 won a National Headliner Award (2008).
Dan, a native of West Virginia, graduated from Harvard College
~~~
American
Democracy
Now an Oligarchy
Joel S. Hirschhorn
NationofChange
/ Op-Ed
Published: Friday 25 April 2014
History has been made. But few Americans are
aware of it or angry about it. I say: Wake up
Americans. A war has been waged against US
If you are not totally brain dead, distracted by pain or
pleasure, or consumed by narcissistic obsessions, face the ugly, painful truth.
Republicans with political power in Congress and the
states and, even more appallingly, on the Supreme Court have succeeded in
turning their beloved republic into a-money-buys-power
oligarchy. One person, one vote was the enemy and it is being
defeated. One dollar, one vote is the new Republican political
value. American democracy is more delusional than
ever. To think otherwise is even more delusional.
I present three arguments supporting the conclusion that
there has been a conversion of US
First, Republicans controlling
the House of Representatives and many controlling state governments, together
with their rich supporters, have steadily and successfully eroded voting and
election laws. Their goal has been simple: Fight the demographic
advantages of Democrats that give them more voters by making it more difficult
for those citizens to actually vote. This has been documented in a
New York Times top story and many
other places. Republicans see the obvious. Namely that their
older,-largely rural, white male shrinking proportion of the population is
insufficient to win many elections and, even more significant, that many of
their policy positions will never prevail with many demographic groups.
As Damon Linker observed about this
statistical reality, this is a “tacit acknowledgement by the Republican Party
that it's in dire demographic straits — and that one of the key pillars of its
ideology over the last half-century is crumbling right before our
eyes.” Their solution, besides vicious gerrymandering of House
districts, is to make it ever more difficult for groups likely to favor
Democrats to vote in all elections. This direct assault on electoral
democracy depends considerably on money coming from the wealthiest people to
finance the actions to change election law.
Second, the Supreme Court is now
controlled by a Republican majority that has been successfully producing
decisions to remove limits to money dumped into the political system by the
richest Americans.
For example,
recently the McCutcheon decision continued
the Roberts Court
As Robert Reich correctly noted: “The court said
such spending doesn't corrupt democracy. That's utter baloney, as
anyone who has the faintest familiarity with contemporary American politics
well knows.” Political money is used to greatly impact lawmaking and
elections. Political power obtained through political spending is,
of course, essential for the richest Americans to maintain and perhaps
intensify the economic inequality that now distinguishes American
society. It is how an oligarchy is obtained and sustained.
I hope that Brent Budowsky is
correct. Namely that “Roberts and his four conservative Republican
brethren will ultimately be impeached by historians who will condemn, and
future courts that will reverse, politically illegitimate and constitutionally
deformed rulings that would turn America into a constitutional
oligarchy.” But change “would turn” into “have turned.”
Third, as still more proof of the profound historic change in the US , a recent study from Princeton University that
analyzed considerable data concluded that the US United States U.S.
Furthermore, “Americans do enjoy many features central to
democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and
association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is
dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent
Americans, then America US
Americans, especially younger ones, need to understand
the historical path from democracy to plutocracy to oligarchy. Most
Americans are suffering because of economic inequality and they need to
understand that the economic system is under the control of the perverted
political system. Anyone who is not in the Upper Class or proverbial
top one percent who votes for Republicans is living in some fantasy
world. Such voters have been brainwashed and manipulated by, for
example, FOX News and blowhards like Limbaugh.
Republicans want even more power. And if they
get it, what would you expect from those working so hard to make US
Finally, make no mistake and think this condemnation of
Republicans equates to advocacy for Democrats. The ultimate solution
if a better, more democratic US system is to be obtained is not to rely on
putting Democrats in control who also have some billionaires on their
side. No, what is required is a number of constitutional amendments
obtained through an Article
V convention that are necessary to structurally reform the political system,
especially getting rid of the power of political money. In recent
months there has been a historic increase in support from important people for
constitutional amendments and greater public support is desperately needed to
finally use the constitutional option given by the Founders to the nation.
ABOUT Joel S. Hirschhorn
Joel S. Hirschhorn has been widely published; his previous book is Sprawl
Kills - How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money. He has published many articles
and oped pieces in major newspapers (Washington Post, New York Times, Baltimore
Sun, Chicago Tribune) and on progressive web sites such as CommonDreams, The
Progress Report, SmirkingChimp and Opednews; Google Joel S. Hirschhorn to see
his writings and achievements and see link below. Before becoming a
writer and consultant, he was a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress (Office of
Technology Assessment), Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources
at the National Governors Association, a full professor at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, and head of an environmental consulting company. He
is the Chair of the Independent Party of Maryland
~~~
Government = Protection Racket
for the One Percent
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Campaign for America’s Future / Op-Ed
Published: Friday 25 April 2014
The evidence of income inequality just keeps mounting. According
to “Working for the Few,” a recent briefing paper
from Oxfam, “In the US
Our now infamous one percent own more than 35 percent of
the nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, the
bottom 40 percent of the country is in debt. Just
this past Tuesday, the 15th of April — Tax Day — the AFL-CIO reported that last
year the chief executive officers of 350 top American corporations
were paid 331 times more money than
the average US worker. Those executives made an average of $11.7 million
dollars compared to the average worker who earned $35,239 dollars.
As that analysis circulated on Tax Day, the economic
analyst Robert Reich reminded us that in addition to
getting the largest percent of total national income in nearly a century, many
in the one percent are paying a lower federal tax rate than a lot of people in
the middle class. You may remember that an obliging Congress, of both
parties, allows high rollers of finance the privilege of “carried interest,” a
tax rate below that of their secretaries and clerks.
And at state and local
levels, while the poorest fifth of Americans pay an average tax rate of
over 11 percent, the richest one percent of the country pay — are you ready for
this? — half that rate. Now, neither Nature nor Nature’s God drew up our
tax codes; that’s the work of legislators — politicians — and it’s one way they
have, as Chief Justice John Roberts might put it, of expressing gratitude to
their donors: “Oh, Mr. Adelson, we so appreciate your generosity that we cut
your estate taxes so you can give $8 billion as a tax-free payment to your
heirs, even though down the road the public will have to put up $2.8 billion to
compensate for the loss in tax revenue.”
All of which makes truly repugnant the argument, heard so
often from courtiers of the rich, that inequality doesn’t matter. Of course it
matters. Inequality is what has turned Washington
Recently, researchers at Connecticut ’s
Trinty College
ploughed through the data and concluded that the US Senate is responsive to the policy preferences of the
rich, ignoring the poor. And now there’s that big study coming out in
the fall from scholars at Princeton and
Northwestern universities, based on data collected between 1981 and 2002.
Their conclusion: “America
Last month, Matea Gold of The Washington Post reported on a pair of political science graduate students who
released a study confirming that money does equal access in Washington
One guess as to which emails got the most response.
Yes, more than five times as many legislators or their chiefs of staff
offered to set up meetings with active donors than with local constituents. Why
is it not corruption when the selling of access to our public officials upends
the very core of representative government? When money talks and you have
none, how can you believe in democracy?
Sad, that it’s come to this. The drift toward oligarchy that Thomas Piketty
describes in his formidable new book on capital has become a mad dash. It will overrun us, unless we stop it.
~~~
If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you
again next week.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United States of America
In accordance with the information
above we really need God's help. Remember
though, God helps those who help themselves.
Floyd
