Nationwide

How To Abolish Unpayable Medical Debt

Must-Read New Book Reveals Actual Causes, Possible Cures

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Co-Author Jerry Ashton

By W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Publisher

endmedicaldebt-bigNEW YORK – End Medical Debt is the definitive and new 196-page book by Jerry Ashton, Robert Goff, and Craig Antico, founders of the national charity RIP Medical Debt, which has eliminated numerous instances of the medical debt that ruins families in America.  RIP Medical Debt is a 501 (c) (3) charity that buys long-term and debilitating medical debt for about a penny on the dollar and then forgives it, releasing the torment that too many Americans face.

RIP (rest in peace) first came to America’s attention in 2016 when HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” used the charity to abolish $15 million in medical debt.  By the end of 2018, RIP will have abolished a half billion dollars in medical debt for 250,000 people in communities nationwide. Associated Press calls RIP End Medical Debt the “Secret Santas.”

PrintThe real national crisis for a growing number of Americans is healthcare debt. A person becomes ill and suddenly his life saving are destroyed, and oftentimes, even worse than that illness, he accumulates a debt load that will haunt him the rest of his life.

The founders of the non-profit and the authors of the book are industry insiders who wanted to bypass political posturing to look clearly and realistically at the actual causes and possible cures for more than $1 trillion in unpayable medical debt in America, a figure that is growing. They believe that medical debt causes hardships for individuals, families, communities, and the country. To enact a cure, they decided to take action, which prompted the publication of their book which tells the all-encompassing story of how the medical profession, with its offshoots like insurance companies and big pharma, have changed the landscape.

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Jerry Ashton (Kevin Sturman photo)

In an interview with The Iconoclast, one of the authors, Jerry Ashton, explained the mission of the charity, how it works, and the importance of people reading the book End Medical Debt to become educated in what has happened and how it can be corrected.  As a show of dedication to the cause, the authors are donating all royalties from the book toward paying off medical debt for individuals throughout the country. The sale of one book, they say, will eliminate $500 in medical debt.

According to Ashton, “The charity has as its sole mission that of accepting donations from people to go out to the debt market to locate and buy unpaid and unpayable medical debt, generally for about a penny on the dollar, and then once we get that debt in our possession we eliminate the credit report mark and then we forgive the debt so never again will that person be called by the bill collector.

“As far as getting out the word, one of the things we decided to do, the three people who started RIP Medical Debt, myself Jerry Ashton, Craig Antico, and Robert Goff, was to write a book because everything that we’ve learned, both in our careers as well as in this process of forgiving medical debt, has taught us that people don’t know enough about this disaster that we call the healthcare system and the roadkill that it creates in families’ lives – we had to get that down in print. So that’s what the book called End Medical Debt is all about.”

When The Iconoclast asked if everything is going as planned, Ashton said, “Look at RIP Medical Debt as a charity. In December we were finishing off our year. We had a pretty good year of donations, but  it ended up spectacular. We had one anonymous donor family step up because they wanted to bring attention to the inequities of the healthcare system and get it into newspapers, get it publicized. They donated enough money for us to abolish a quarter-billion dollars of medical debt before the end of December 31st, 2018. A quarter billion dollars, and $50 million of that was for unpaid medical debt for military veterans.

“Now since that time, we’ve had many different organizations that have stepped up that want to be able to make a difference in their local communities,” explained Ashton. “Faith-based organizations are favorites of ours. These are the people, the churches, that call us and they say, ‘We want to be able to make a difference in our communities, and have programs, campaigns which for as little as $15,000 we can abolish almost $1 million worth of medical debt. Now, when you think about the return on the investment, every penny is a dollar, every dollar is a hundred dollars, every thousand dollars is $100,000, and being able to actually abolish a million dollars’ worth of medical debt for your neighbors, your community, that’s pretty exciting action to take.

“And then there’s also nurses. Who doesn’t love a nurse? We’ve had nurses associations come to us just recently who want to abolish all the debt that they can find in the state of South Dakota. And they’ve already done that in Minnesota and they’ve already done it in Michigan. So does that give you an idea of the enthusiasm and the importance of this work?”

The Iconoclast asked, “If someone from a small rural community wants to raise the barn for people in that area who have extreme medical debt, can RIP Medical Debt work a specified region?”

Ashton answered, “You’ve heard the statement ‘charity begins at home.’ We are able to locate that within any geographical area down to the zip code. If there is enough debt that is available to buy, what we do is they approach us and we do the research to find out what debt is available and then we go back to the donors and we say, ‘Well, this is what’s available and this is what we can buy it for’ and then they decide if they can come up with the money, and most of them do.

“There are also special groups of people that are designated as recipients of this generosity. Veterans, for example. Very few people understand that our veterans are under a significant burden financially for medical care. No one would guess that I am a former Navy man myself and I go to the VA, but I never realized that a lot of veterans and a lot of military are, by some hook or crook, not able to get medical expenses paid. My partner Craig Antico and I went down to D.C. and we met with a House subcommittee on Veterans’ health and what we learned there flabbergasted us. We learned that there’s $6 billion worth of unpaid ambulance and emergency services that are on the backs of veterans that have been unpaid for the past 10 years. Is that horrible?”

When asked if his charity has a position on high pharmaceutical prices, he said that the charity is, by statute, “politically agnostic” and as such it “sweeps up after the parade.”

However,  he explained that “as authors of a book that intends to educate people, to alert them to the inequities that the system creates, there’s nobody safe, whether it be hospitals, physicians, big pharma, insurance companies that delay and deny – when you consider that 60 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical debt that that 65 percent of all the people declaring bankruptcy actually had insurance, that gives you an idea of how moth-eaten our safety net is.”

Ashton said that the public must come to realize that “everybody’s gaming us and that there are no saints among us, that you have to follow the money. Once you follow the money and find out who’s on the take you will never look at your local congressman in the same way again. Who are they working for? Are they working for you and me as citizens or are they working for someone who is going to fund their next campaign?

“Look at these people that are funded by big pharma. Take a look at the ones that get big donations from insurance companies. Look at the ones that hospitals support. Just follow the money.

“And then get real about it and realize that unless people get educated and act on their education, we’re not going to have anything different for years to come.

“As authors of the book, we’re just plain sick of it. Each one of us, by the way, in case you think the book is some form of a diatribe or propaganda machine, all three of us see medical debt differently. We see the industries differently and we are even of different political persuasions, so it’s not like we’re telling people something that we want to spoon feed them. We want them to be just as curious as we are and just as inquisitive as we are and respect us for what we are. Even though the three of us may not agree about particular directions or programs to follow, all three of us believe that we need to make a change and it has to happen soon.”

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Co-Authors Craig Antico and Robert Goff

Each chapter of the book was written by a different author on a rotational basis and based on their own historical perspectives. Jerry Ashton has more than 40 years of experience in the credit and collections industry.  Robert Goff recently retired from 40 years in healthcare administration management.  Craig Antico has 30 years in collections, debt buying, outsourcing, and consulting.

When The Iconoclast asked what’s next, Ashton said that his charity’s mission and the publication of the book is a wake-up call. “You talk about a national emergency. It’s within the four walls of a hospital, with medical debt hanging over our population.”

Ashton explained that building a wall where a few illegals slip through is a “perverse misdirection of time, attention, and money. One trillion dollars’ worth of medical debt. Do you know that 15 million Americans will exhaust their life savings to pay medical debt? Do you know that people have to make decisions as to whether or not as they are sitting at the kitchen table, do I pay this bill collectors’ bill for medical, for the doctor, or do I have my prescription filled?”

Ashton’s message to the public to spur involvement included reading the book End Medical Debt as a start.

“They also need to learn how to protect themselves. We wrote an earlier book, The Patient, the Doctor, and the Bill Collector, a medical debt survival guide. The more that people are educated, here are the steps that have to happen.

“Number one – awareness. And thanks to you and the work you are doing people will become aware of this that’s happened before.

“Now, once people are aware of things, then in our particular case, it has to resonate.” Regarding medical debt, “some would be compassionate enough to step up and say, ‘This isn’t right and I want to help,’ if someone wants to be politically oriented and start rounding up the community, get out the pitchforks, we’re going to storm the castle.

“If it touches people like that, that’s great, but the next most important thing is education. The more people educate themselves as to this system and how horrible it is, how dangerous it is to our health, that we are the only industrial nation that will allow its population to go bankrupt as individuals just because they got sick or because they got injured, so get yourselves educated.

“And lastly, action. And that action could be people who call you up and ask you for a donation, who they need to talk to locally, which legislator should be talked to about this, at this hospital was there a policy about charity care? That’s action.

“That would be my wish. If people would educate themselves and get active, I will feel that all the time we spent in putting out the book was worth it. And another thing about the book. It has a $15.95 price tag on Amazon. All three authors are donating our royalties. Every single purchase will abolish $500 worth of medical bills. How is that for bang for your buck?”

The Iconoclast asked how do people get involved or make donations. Ashton said that to make a donation to the charity go to RIPmedicaldebt.org. “We have plenty of directions there for people who want to either create a campaign or just want to do a random act of kindness.”

In the book, the authors lay bare the inner workings of our healthcare system. They show how it produces medical bills that people cannot ever pay, including insured middle-class people who think they are covered. They tell how the early hospitals that focused on patient health evolved into today’s healthcare conglomerates focused on patient revenue. They dissect the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) to show where theory and reality do not match. They expose how veterans get laden with medical debt that effectively tells them, “No thank you for your service.”

The book provides a glimpse into the big picture:

Medical debt destroys financial stability among large segments of America’s most vulnerable communities: The sick, the elderly, the poor, and veterans. It mostly targets the middle class, driving into poverty too many families already barely getting along, who cannot afford any unplanned illness or injury. An unexpected $500 out-of-pocket medical bill can cause hardship. One in five U.S. adults have medical debt on their credit reports, some with tens or hundreds of thousands in bills  Medical debt on a credit report prevents one from buying or renting a home and vehicle, or even getting a job to pay those medical bills. Millennials at age 27, who often carry little or no insurance, carry more medical debt on their credit cards than any other age group. Patients with medical debt tend to avoid adding more debt by ignoring health problems, which worsens their health and increases their costs for care. The doctor of last resort becomes the expensive emergency room, which just compounds medical debt.

Flip to the other side of the picture. For health care providers, “uncompensated care” or bad debt drives doctors away from private practice. Almost half of all U.S. physicians are now employed by hospital-owned practices, where business margins often overrule health missions.

Unpaid and uncollectible medical bills threaten the fiscal viability of community hospitals, chiefly those providing charity care. A local hospital with massive medical debt may be saved by a community bailout, but taxpayers foot the bill. Higher local taxes make any community less desirable to businesses. Less local affluence attracts fewer talented care givers. Medical debt contributes to both urban and rural communities turning into “healthcare deserts” without affordable care.

Ashton believes that medical debt permeates American society and has become a crisis. “We cannot ignore it. We need to talk about medical debt.  Voicing decades of experience in debt collections, debt buying and healthcare management, the authors of End Medical Debt bring deep expertise to the problem of medical debt.”

12 MEDICAL DEBT FACTS

  1. The United States spends more per capita (per person) on health care than any other nation on earth.
  2. The USA is the only industrialized country reliant on commercial insurance instead of universal healthcare.
  3. At least 20 percent of all working-age Americans with health insurance have trouble paying medical bills.
  4. An unexpected $500 out-of-pocket medical bill is too much for many people to pay or pay in a timely way.
  5. More than 60 percent of all insured Americans will deplete most or all of their savings to pay medical bills.
  6. About 10 percent of adults delay or skip medical care due to costs; worsening health costs more to treat.
  7. At least 43 million Americans have about $75 billion in past-due medical bills on their credit reports.
  8. Medical debt on a credit report generally prevents people from buying or renting homes and cars.
  9.   Medical debt on a credit report can keep people from getting a job to pay off their medical bills.
  10. Only ten percent of all unpaid medical bills appear on credit reports; at least $1 trillion exists. 
  11. Medical debt drives middle class and lower-income families into poverty or homelessness.
  12. Medical debt is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.

RELATED MEDIA COVERAGE:

 New York Times: (December 5, 2018)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/nyregion/medical-debt-charity-ny.html

NBC4-TV Los Angeles  (November 2, 2018)

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/RIP-Medical-Debt_Los-Angeles-499468981.html

Becker’s Hospital CFO Report (November 8, 2018)

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/couple-s-donation-will-forgive-250m-in-medical-debt-nationwide.html

NBC Nightly News (May 21, 2018)

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/former-medical-debt-collectors-using-expertise-to-help-the-neediest-patients-1238749763555 

KIRO7-TV Seattle (February 18, 2018)

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/1-million-in-medical-debt-forgiven-in-washington-by-kiro-7-jesse-jones/695985538

HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (June 5, 2016)

“Debt Buyers” Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxUAntt1z2c 

Partial Clip: https://www.ripmedicaldebt.org/#whatWeDo

Arbor Music Video Aimed At Saving Dreamers

don arbor bigBy W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Editor

SAN FRANCISCO – Don Arbor, with assistance from filmmakers and noted musicians, has created a music video, “Everyone Comes from Somewhere,” that encourages the welcoming of immigrants into the United States. The video includes the tracking of his own immigrant roots.

Arbor says he was inspired to write “Everyone Comes from Somewhere” to counter a disturbing tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that is in opposition to U.S. history. He says that although “we have our faults, we have mostly kept the doors open and the light of liberty shining, and that’s what truly makes us great. Today’s Dreamers are tomorrow’s citizens, just as our parents and grandparents became the patriotic Americans of today.”

San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers Charles Koppelman and Irene Young assisted in weaving a tapestry of images that portray America’s immigrant history, past and present, along with live footage from a 2017 live performance. The track includes musical performances by Barbara Higbie (of Windham Hill fame); lead guitarist Stef Burns; and Huey Lewis and the News.

Early reviews of the musical video have been positive, such as “a powerful statement in an unforgettable form” and “pristine vocals and a heartfelt message.”

The link to the musical video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AAAHX5w7S0

Arbor consented to an interview with The Lone Star Iconoclast, which follows:

don arbor youngICONOCLAST — I have watched your music video several times and find it very persuasive. What I find interesting is that your personal story forecasts today’s Dreamer issues. When composing “Everyone Comes from Somewhere,” what came first, the lyrics or the tune?

ARBOR – The first thing that came was the title and a conversation with an immigrant who was actually my mother’s caregiver when my mother was 90 years old and in her decline. Her personal story of the animosity she was feeling as an immigrant struck me as unfair, unsafe, and inappropriate, and triggered for me that everyone comes from somewhere as a way of saying we’re all kind of the same.

Common humanity was the theme I was trying to express to her. She said, ‘You should write a song about that.’ She knew I was a songwriter. I thought that’s a good idea. So, that title came without any melody. It just came as a thought. I was trying to express a common humanity as opposed to divisiveness that was affecting her personally and was affecting our society as a whole as the divisions are exacerbated by harsh rhetoric.

So then after that, it was a long period of time, really a year-and-a-half of writing. Whenever something struck me about the difficulties of coming to a new place, I would keep a file and I had a very hard time trying to narrow it down to the things that finally made it into the song.

I would say that the first verse came out pretty much whole. “Let me be the very first to welcome you” came out with the melody and the lyrics at the same time. The others I wasn’t sure that all fit into the same song or not, but it works.

ICONOCLAST — How long did it take to write and what was your methodology, and did you envision a video version from the start?

don arbor 2ARBOR – I didn’t envision a video exactly, but I am a very visual writer, so oftentimes when I am working on a song I do see images in my mind, but what happened with that, going back to your question about how long it took to write and what was my methodology, I basically set a deadline for myself for a show my band was doing. That was in the spring of last year, April of 2017.

I thought if I set a deadline that’ll make me come up with how to make these ideas fit together, and that worked, and then at the show one of my good friends who’s a filmmaker was there and he came up after the show and told me how much he liked the show and I said that maybe we could work up a video together.

Once we met and talked about that, a lot of the images that were already brewing in my mind started to come up to the foreground instead of being way in the back.

ICONOCLAST — Songs are written for different reasons, some merely to entertain and others to enlighten.  How would you categorize yours?

ARBOR – I have written some songs that are mostly just to entertain, but it’s really not the main goal I have. Even when I’m writing songs that are lighter in subject matter I’m usually trying to say something that’s true. I’m not writing to fill four minutes or three minutes of air space.

If you go to my website there’s a recent song I did. It’s called “It Should Have Been Me.” It’s very lighthearted. I wrote that after my wife told me about a great trip she had taken many years ago with an ex-boyfriend. I just thought it’s a great story, but it should have been me. That song was a true feeling and everything that I put out there I try to make it a true feeling and not just entertainment.

With a song like “Everyone Comes from Somewhere” there’s a more over-arching awareness of the world around me. I’m trying to make a personal statement that reaches other people in a way that communicates how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking and hopefully their reaction will be encouraging, positive, thoughtful and it communicates something to them.

ICONOCLAST — I once interviewed classical pianist Van Cliburn who said that classical music is not to entertain, but to nurture and expand the mind. Do you feel that your song falls into that category, as well, what with the political issues that are ever-present today?

ARBOR – I almost have to laugh that I am included in the same sentence as Van Cliburn who I admired growing up. I knew that he was a world-renowned, prize-winning prodigy. I don’t consider my musicianship being in that category, but I appreciate the sentiment and I do hope that my songs will open some avenue of thought and experience that the listener hasn’t had before or that gives them a new perspective on.

ICONOCLAST – One thing about Cliburn is that he didn’t write his own songs.

ARBOR – No, he didn’t.

ICONOCLAST – I asked him if he had ever considered doing a score for a movie, and he said no, but he might think about that, but he never did.

ARBOR – How long ago did you interview him?

ICONOCLAST – It was in 1995.

ARBOR – I have this memory of him back in the 60s, getting recognition for winning some prize in a competition. Was that part of your interview?

ICONOCLAST – I think the competition was in Moscow. The reason I interviewed him was that his grandfather founded the newspaper that I was publishing, so he had family history that went back. We had a centennial edition and he invited me to his mansion in Fort Worth. We were there about two or three hours.

ARBOR – That’s quite an experience.

ICONOCLAST — You noted that your family immigrated to the United States, which compares to the founding of our nation, made up largely of immigrants. Do you think the description of America’s being a melting pot is a viable argument for the Dreamers?

ARBOR – Another very complex question. The simple answer is yes.

The more complicated answer is that in our history as a nation of immigrants, we’ve gone through historic tensions between the instinct to welcome strangers to our shores on the one hand, and competing instinct to protect what people feel as their homeland against the same immigrants and we’re experiencing that on a magnified level currently because of our president and what he has to say.

So, the idea of building a wall is a waste of money and won’t be effective. I think of the wall as a physical symbol of division, which is much more relevant on a social and psychological plain by the tweets and the insults, using expletives to describe certain countries and looking for immigrants who are from white Nordic countries the negative stereotypes that are blatantly false, about immigrants from Central America and Mexico.

I’ve done some research on this and the fact of the matter is that immigrants are less likely to be involved in criminal activities than native-born U.S. citizens and that’s been documented by our own National Academy of Sciences.

When someone in leadership comes up and compares immigrants to rapists and drug dealers, that’s just so wrong and it’s not true. It’s intentionally divisive to create a voting block among those who feel they want someone else to look down on.

The idea of a melting point that you are asking about suggests that everyone goes into the same stew and comes out in one bowl. But there are people who are trying to make that not happen, so yes, I do think that overall America is a great melting pot and that example is why you have a reputation as a magnet for people from other cultures who think that America is a shining beacon, but once you get here, the reality is that there’s going to be a lot of feelings going both ways and the people in leadership really should be encouraging what Abe Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and not the worst demons.

ICONOCLAST — I assume that the big question lies in the influx of immigrants who did not follow laws set forth for immigration and will perhaps now be deported, leaving children behind. Do you think that illegal aliens who have ignored these laws should be provided the same rights as legal aliens?

ARBOR – I don’t know if you want to talk about the Dreamers, who came as children when they had no choice in the matter and have already been granted some form of legal status. I do think it’s a good starting point because 80-90 percent of the country thinks that those Dreamers should be allowed to stay. They didn’t come by choice, they didn’t break any laws. They were children.

The Dreamers have to be either in school or have a diploma. They can’t have any serious criminal records. They are teachers and doctors and ministers and they are in the military and there’s no reason that I can see to be deporting or ending the semi-legal status of the Dreamers. We should be looking for a way to solidify what is already a strong contribution to the fabric of our society.

So the idea of using them as a bargaining chip – we’ll give you the Dreamers if you give us reducing the immigration quota by 50 percent and if you give us no more family unification – to me, those are not fair trade-offs.

That being said, I do acknowledge that there is a logic to giving some preference to people who have come into the country legally, but if you look a layer back from that, you have to look at what are the laws and why are those laws in place and are we enforcing them in a selective or fair manner.

If, for example, you have immigrants that are being targeted for deportation if they are people of color or they are from Central America whereas, as a prime example the President’s in-laws, Melania’s parents, are here on a green card, as far as what I read in the papers, although they don’t answer all the questions.

I do think there is an issue of fairness the selectivity of enforcement, so I wouldn’t want to see the idea of deporting undocumented immigrants as an excuse to exacerbate those tensions I was talking about earlier.

ICONOCLAST – I recently read that the top three surnames in Texas have changed from Smith, Johnson and Jones to Garcia, Smith, and Martinez, due in large part to illegal immigration. Do you think this is a good thing?

ARBOR – I don’t know all the details you’re talking about. Certainly California also has a lot of immigration, both legal and illegal and I don’t want to claim knowledge of statistics that I’ve never read about. One thing that I did read about recently is a book by Dennis Carroll. He is a seminarian from Colorado with a Guatemalan parent and an American parent and one of the things I read there, I’m pretty sure, is that there are a very large number of legal citizens of Spanish language descent.

So, I would want to know before assuming too much about that which you talked about, how many people named Garcia or Martinez are already legal citizens from generations past. The balance could be a very large number of illegal immigrants or could be just a very small number that happens to be on top of those who are already here legally and some from generations past. So I can’t comment whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing in absolute terms.

ICONOCLAST – Do you think your movement on behalf of Dreamers will ultimately impact a positive outcome, given lawmakers who want to build a wall?

ARBOR – I think that the answer is going to depend on November 2018. We have a minority government. We like to think of ourselves as a democracy and in some ways we are because we get to vote, but when you look at the fact that every branch of the government was elected by a minority of the United States population, that’s a problem.

Every state gets two senators. We have 37 million people like California or 600,000 people like Montana or Wyoming. I’m sure they are actually larger now, but I have a memory of driving through Montana when I was 11 years old and the Chamber of Commerce had put an ad on the radio that says Montana is Big Sky Country and we’ve got 600,000 people and room for 600,000 more.

The point of it is that it takes 20 states to add up to California and those 20 states have 40 senators and 30 of them are Republicans and 10 are Democrats. So when you look at the map of it the senate is a 51-seat majority of Republicans who represent a minority population-wise.

When you look at the President, it is well known that he lost the popular vote. When you look at congress, you have gerrymandered districts, for example Pennsylvania where the vote was 50-50, the result was 13 Republicans and five Democrats because they pack the Democrats into a small number of districts and get fewer representatives. So the Democrats have some tough walls to climb – that’s just a metaphor – some obstacles to get over to get into a position where they can either set policy or swap the policies that are currently being promoted.

Now how that affects the wall is that Trump is trying to use the Dreamers as a bargaining chip to get the wall that he thinks somehow would help us. There’s pressure on the Democrats to agree to that because they are so supportive of the Dream population being admitted that they might give something up, something like these walls. If the Democrats prevail in the House of Representatives in the fall of 2018, I think that’s history for the wall.

ICONOCLAST – Your music video is somewhat like an “anthem,” just like “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an anthem based on immigrants settling in the new world. Do you see “Somewhere” and its message catching on among the millennials and perhaps aiding in awareness and ideologies that support the Dreamer population for future generations?

ARBOR – I have had a lot of very popular response to the song and the video. Some of it is from younger people, some of it is from older folks like me. I didn’t aim it at the millennials. To the extent it reaches them, I’m very happy about that. I do like the songs that communicate. I do write because I feel strongly about what I’m saying, so whatever group responds to it I’m happy about it and I have two millennial sons, a 21-year-old and an 18-year-old, and certainly they are very much more open to immigrants than some of the older population. I do think that is the wave of the future.

ICONOCLAST – Are there any other comments you would like to make?

ARBOR – I guess I’d like to say that one of my inspirations is a poem by Maya Angelou called  the “Human Family” that has a great line in it where she says that we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. “I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

That is how I feel. No matter what policy we wind up with, we should administer it with an eye toward our common humanity instead of divisiveness, even if the policy is to enforce the immigration laws to the letter or more strongly than they are currently. It shouldn’t be done selectively and with hatred. It shouldn’t be done in a way that promotes division. To the extent we can focus on our common humanity, the prospects for a better future will be increased.

Does 55 Save Lives? And Gas?

AUSTIN — With a state the size of Texas, getting from point A to point B can be time-consuming.

gas bigDuring the Nixon years, with Arab oil embargoes in place, it became illegal to drive 70 mph, the former standard. The new speed limit was 55 mph. A common slogan was “55 Saves Lives,” which was printed and broadcast everywhere in the Lone Star State.

Another offering was that the reduced speed saved on fuel, which was the reason for the change to 55 mph in maximum speed on Texas roadways. Waiting lines were common at gasoline stations and quite often the pumps were empty. Slowing down was the patriotic thing to do.

Today in Texas, the speed limit is commonly 75 mph, often going up to 85 mph in some areas, what with an abundance of extremely expensive fuel.

According to various officials, driving at 55 mph is considered safer, although it takes longer to reach a destination and it infuriates other drivers who are in a hurry and are traveling at the speed limit or beyond. In Texas, motorists tend to exceed the speed limit in droves.

As far as fuel savings goes, several sources, including the San Francisco Chronicle, have indicated that fuel economy drops about one percent for every mile-per-hour increase in speed past 55 mph, the number increasing even more after 65 mph is reached. A lot of factors go into this broad assessment, but these numbers are commonly stated.

The Chronicle did a study in 2005 that can be found at http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drive-55-save-gas-get-flipped-off-Trip-2600719.php.

Employing the general rule, the 85 mph speed limit in Texas can reduce the mpg rating of a vehicle by 20 miles per gallon when compared to traveling at 55 mph.

TCRP Says ‘SB4 Has Got To Go!’

tcrp bigAUSTIN – In a post issued on June 27, Efren Olivares, Racial and Economic Justice Director of Texas Civil Rights Project, said that “Yesterday, alongside more than 600 community members, we fought for justice, for dignity, and fought against discrimination both inside and outside of the courtroom. I was proud to be in the courtroom with the support of our community behind us.”

He said that every Texan deserves to live with dignity and that the discriminatory “show me your papers” law, Senate Bill 4, is a threat to millions of immigrants and people of color in the state.

According to Olivares, “SB4 violates several rights enshrined in our Constitution. At its core, the law violates the 14th amendment because it was adopted to target immigrants, Latinos, and people of color in Texas. The disparate impact is a direct threat to the guarantee of equal protection under law.”

He asked that Texans support the cause of the Texas Civil Rights Project by visiting www.texascivilrightsproject .org.

Retirement: Just A Dream For Many

Six Of 10 Workers Think They Will Never See A SS Check

retire509 featWASHINGTON, DC — America’s workers are too busy looking for jobs to think much about the prospects of retiring.  One of the longest, slowest and weakest post-recession recoveries has decimated the work force.  Record numbers of people have stopped looking for jobs out of despair, skewing government unemployment reports.  And, a recent Gallup poll reported that 60% of those currently in the workforce don’t believe they’ll ever receive Social Security when they come of age.

“It’s been a depressing, a tedious and worrisome so-called recovery over the past five years and we’re still not out of the woods.  Individuals who once had good paying jobs are hard pressed to find employment that allows them to make ends meet, let alone put some money aside for the future.  America lost nearly 9 million jobs during the Great Recession that lasted from 2007 to 2009.  Statistically the country has regained the bulk of those jobs.  But, for the most part, those who have gone back to work are making less money,” according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens.

Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, which issued its annual retirement survey this week, pointed out that more than a third of the country’s workers expect they’ll have to continue working well past their hoped-for retirement age.

“The long-held view that retirement is a moment in time when people reach a certain age, immediately stop working, fully retire, and begin pursuing their dreams is more myth than reality,” she said.  The survey showed that only 21% of the workers who were interviewed expect they’ll be able to “fully retire” when the time comes.  The rest expect to work, full time or part time.

Weber said that many seniors have gone back to work because they can.  They are living longer, healthier lives and enjoy the camaraderie of the workplace.  But most of them need the jobs in order to get by.

“The net worth of all Americans declined sharply during recession and its aftermath. But seniors have been hardest hit.  And, the proof is in the numerous surveys that show there are more post-retirement job seekers out there than ever before.”

But for many elderly Americans, finding work to supplement their incomes is not an option.  Social Security is what puts food on their tables.  “It’s their principal source of income, meager as it might be, and they would face cruel hardships if they their monthly checks were cut.  For them, the fact that Social Security faces major fiscal challenges in the coming years is a scary prospect.  That’s why it is one of the reasons AMAC has put its primary focus on the fate of Social Security in the association’s meetings with lawmakers in Congress,” Weber noted.

‘Guardianship’ Can Ruin Your Life!

New Book: Guardianship: How Judges and Lawyers Steal Your Money

By W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Publisher

guardianship-bigWant to give up all your rights and become a “thing” instead of a person?  Then guardianship could be in your cards.

A new book authored and compiled by M Larsen exposes an under-the-radar trend that targets Baby Boomers to have their retirement funds, their freedom, and their lives depleted.

Guardianship: How Judges and Lawyers Steal Your Money explores case studies of individuals whose lives were ruined at the hands of greedy lawyers, judges, and guardians who take over the financial assets of the elderly and disabled, drug their subjects to prove incompetence, and totally rule their lives, even when the person under attack is normally healthy and mentally fit. Targeted are the wealthy whose estates are drained for profits to benefit the attackers.

According to the book, “Appointed by courts for various reasons, guardianships strip an otherwise sane, engaged older adult of their freedom while depleting their resources in an ugly loop that seems to mostly benefit lawyers. The book is the definitive road-map of solutions for concerned relatives who try to correct the crimes against a loved one’s estate, health, and even life.”

Larsen explains that the compilation of articles was written by journalists, attorneys, and other advocates across the nation. “Our collective goal is to make this serious crime public since the process needs to be changed.”

In danger are the 76 million Boomers who, at the whim of a court, can have their personal freedoms stripped away, have their assets taken forcibly, and are subject to abuse in many cases.

According to Dr. Sam Sugar of Florida, “Professional guardians are a cottage industry that is becoming more organized and powerful as lawyers and probate judges realize what a gold mine it is to take over the lives and assets of elderly Americans to the detriment of their heirs. Once a court-ordered guardianship is established, the elderly person’s finances are under complete control of the appointed guardian who may or may not be a loving family member.”

“It’s just another indication of how this racket has infiltrated and corrupted our most sacred judicial process and turned it into a cash cow for the stakeholders in this predatory legal system, which threatens every single older adult in America,” he added.

In an interview with The Lone Star Iconoclast, Steve Miller —  an investigative journalist who has studied guardianship fraud for over 10 years and is a former Las Vegas city councilman, former Clark County Regional Transportation commissioner,  chairman emeritus of Goodwill Industries of Southern Nevada, and president emeritus of Opportunity Village, a charity — was questioned by Iconoclast publisher W. Leon Smith.

Miller said, “What I’m trying to tell people is just stay where you are. Don’t move until we get this straightened out.”

Miller explained that many of the elderly are targeted when “moving to the Gulf Coast in Texas, Arizona, lakes in Arkansas — there’s a million places elderly people are being enticed to go with their money. The vultures are circling in those areas.”

He said the “Sun City communities, the lakeside communities, the ones that are making a big effort to bring in wealthy retirees are the target areas. I don’t think its happening in Alaska, I guess, because most people want to move to warmer climates. I’m just noticing it mainly in warm climates.”

When asked about appropriate vetting of guardians at the Center for Guardian Certification, especially since much of the certification is handled online, Miller said, “It’s a sham. We have been investigating them. We registered people who are not alive. We’ve registered a dog. So, it’s a sham.”

Larsen’s book lists 14 points of checks and balances that need to be put into place as a means of the elderly avoiding becoming subjects of fraud. Miller described these as  prescribed laws that need to be activated. Currently they are not.

“It depends on where you are,” he said. “Nevada is rapidly changing its laws. Some of these laws that were designed to help guardians to steal” are being tested. “We think it all started here, so whatever we are doing needs to be spread around the country. As an investigative writer, I’ve been looking at this and writing about it since 1999. We’ve had other complaints all the way back into the 80s and 70s.”

He said that “specifically, one guardian shaper has written all the laws and encouraged all the states and assemblies to pass these laws through the use of their outdoor advertising company. They donate money to respective family court judges, assemblies, and state senators” who are seeking free advertising come election time. “He’s managed to endear himself all over the state and got the horrible laws enacted at our state capitol. Now he gets all the judges down here to do his bidding.”

Miller explained that no one is safe. “A lot of times we found that helpers in the home are sources of bad information that the court uses.” Families need “to stay put. I don’t care if its freezing where you live, you shouldn’t be moving because you got a brochure in the mail” that offers the benefits of warmer climates. “Stay put,” he repeated, “because if you come up to Nevada, Texas, Arizona, or Florida or some other places, you don’t know who these people are. They’re watching you and as soon as your spouse dies, that’s when they come and get you.

“That’s always the trigger. They’ve done it with a few ‘couples’ if they have enough money. The criteria is how much money do you have. If you have enough money, they’ll do whatever they want.”

Miller noted that the speed in which the courts act and guardians are appointed coincides with the amount of money in trusts and financial accounts the elder victim possesses. He said that the predominate bank that keeps popping up during investigations is Wells Fargo, which turns its back “when guardians want to leave the trail.”

When asked how long it normally takes for elder care to be stripped from family members, Miller said, “Within weeks. You’d be surprised how quickly the judges will respond to a motion by your professional guardian to take away the rights that the wealthy elderly or disabled person can have. Oftentimes, the victim and the family are not even aware when it does happen.

“We’re going to change the laws so that they have to be informed and that their family can be there and that a judge must appoint a taxpayer-funded lawyer to represent the elderly or disabled person and their family. They can’t come to court without a lawyer while they sit there with a bank of attorneys working for the guardian.”

Miller said that what is disgusting is that the “guardian is trolling the money from the Wells Fargo trust to be able to pay for the overpriced attorney while the family members have to pay out of their own pockets. It gets to be ridiculously expensive and the elder person usually passes away during the middle of this battle. You don’t hear much about this; it’s not sexy. The elderly are dead and can’t testify, so it’s the perfect crime against the weakest of the weak.”

According to Miller, the cadre of guardian vultures “and their judges covered every base and they did it through the state assembly and the state legislature for 30 years. Nobody paid attention. It gives them absolute power to do what they’re doing.” He noted that now the state supreme court in Nevada is looking at changing the laws, based on investigations that revealed the results of the bad laws.”

Under consideration are the constitutional rights of elderly victims and their family members, because the elderly lose the right to vote and the right to make life choices. It is all decided by a stranger, not even a member of the family.

Miller mentioned a case that is in federal court about an elderly man. “After he got freed by his daughter from the captivity that he was in, he filed a federal lawsuit which right now is in our federal court system rapidly progressing.” Miller mentioned the bank, the guardian, enablers, and others who caused the problem for the man. “We need one case to succeed before we can start to bring in all the others,” he said. “In the meantime, this will be the test case.”

“What’s happening here is horrible,” said Miller, “and it’s just now starting to make news around the country. Prior to this, we were just screaming from the rooftops, but nobody was listening.” He described the acts of illicit guardians as “the most pervasive crime in the history of our country. It’s scary, really scary.”

He said that quite often family members of the elderly are falsely derided in court by guardians who label the family members as unfit to care for their parents. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the most wonderful person. You can go to court here and the judge is going to deem that you are an exploiter in some way and unfit to care for your own parent. He puts a stranger in your place and the stranger is a professional and they immediately have total power of attorney over your parents. There goes your inheritance. There goes the house. Houses are often transferred with the title over to the guardian and the nicer the house, the quicker it happens.”

Miller said that the elderly become wards. “I compare it with the B-movie ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ The guardians are the body snatchers. They come and take you and become you and put you away. They medicate you. They give you a psychotropic drug. They take you out of your home after your husband or wife dies, and they put you in a rest home. They keep you so drugged you don’t even know what’s going on while all your money’s being taken and your family is screaming, trying to stop it. They can’t and if they do try and stop it, a warrant will be issued for their arrest.”

He described a case where a woman was able to help her father escape to another state, which elicited several lawsuits. After the 90-year-old man was taken off drugs he “was completely lucid. The only thing wrong with him was he was a war hero and has a 95 percent hearing loss. That’s why they did it to him. That’s why they made him a ward in the court when his wife died. When I sat with him, even though I had to yell in his ear, he was such an intelligent man he could do anything we wanted to at 90 years old.” But he had been “made into nothing but a ward, just a thing, waiting for him to die.”

At the conclusion of the interview, Miller wanted to stress one thing. “My only last words to people are until this is straightened out at the national level, stay home. Don’t be enticed by color brochures you get in the mail or on the Internet and move away from the people who love you to some strange far-away warm climate, living on a golf course or a lake and riding around in golf carts or three-wheel bicycles thinking that this is a safe environment. You’re actually moving to the worst ghetto in the United States. It’s unsafe because of these predators waiting for the Las Vegas strip watch.

“They move here and they’re watched. The predators know how much money you’ve got by the fact that you paid cash for the house you got. As soon as your spouse dies, they send one of these guardians to your house to make sure you’re okay. No matter how okay you are, they still say you’re not okay and the judge rules you need a guardian and then that guardian needs to come in temporarily and you don’t even know it’s happened. You’ve got this guardian sitting in  your house when you fall asleep. They troll your valuables. They go to your bank vault. They take everything you own and your family is left thinking ‘Who is this stranger?’”

Miller said that often these strangers alter their names to better psychologically sell themselves, like April Harps or Acacia Bristol. “They know your wife has died and you’re at home and you haven’t really had a good meal and you haven’t shaven for maybe a week or so. People think it’s because you are mourning and ‘knock, knock, knock,’ here’s a really pretty middle-aged woman named Acacia or April at your door smiling, saying, ‘I’m here to help you. Have you had anything to eat? Can I take you to lunch?’ And then it begins.”

Once under guardianship, a person has fewer rights than a criminal. Lost is the right to marry, to vote, to apply for government benefits, to have a driver’s license or identification, to travel, to contract, seek or retain employment, to sue and defend lawsuits, to manage property, to make any gift or disposition of property, to determine residence, to consent to medical and mental health treatment, and to make decisions about his or her social environment. All social aspects of their lives are stripped. Any health care surrogate, durable power of attorney, or pre-need guardianship is nullified and the laws protecting those advance directives are trampled.

The book is available through Amazon, Kindle, and www.guardianabusecases.com.

Will Your Vote Be Stolen?

New Greg Palast Film Explores 2016 Voter Theft

By W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Publisher

palast-bigInvestigative reporter Greg Palast and his staff have been researching the recent charges of “voter fraud” as loudly parlayed by political candidates this season and have found that instead of people voting twice, valid individual voters — usually minorities — are being systematically removed from the voter rolls to control the elections.

This theft, says Palast, will come to fruition on Nov. 8 when a huge number of voters visit the polls and find that their registrations have been voided, thereby prompting their being given “provisional” ballots. According to Palast, provisional ballots usually are not counted. He terms them “placebo” ballots, aimed to make the voter feel good for participating in the election process even though the votes will not be tallied in the election.

Screenings of a newly released documentary entitled “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits” are being played at select theatres in advance of the presidential election. DVDs and video-on-demand copies are available to the public, as well. According to theatres which have shown the screenings, at its conclusion the film always receives a standing ovation.

Palast, who is an investigative reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, is known as the investigator who busted former Florida Governor Jeb Bush for stealing the 2000 election for his brother George W. by purging Black voters from Florida’s election rolls.

During the 2016 election, the purge is being enabled by Crosscheck, which Palast says  is controlled by Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who claims his data program has identified 7.2 million people in 29 states who may have voted twice in the same election — a felony crime. This list of names has been kept secret, identified as “confidential.” However, Palast’s undercover contacts were able to obtain a copy and learned that the list is filled with discrepancies and errors.

In the film, Palast and co-worker Leni Badpenny do what is takes to get their hands on the data, analyze it, and actually attempt to visit with some of these 7.2 million Americans tagged as “suspects” and “potential duplicate voters” whose votes are threatened this November. The film features Palast and Badpenny, along with entertainers Ed Asner, Rosario Dawson, Ice-T, Richard Belzer, Shailene Woodley, and Willie Nelson.

Palast urges the American public to see this film, for it explains, step-by-step, what his intensive investigation has unearthed.

His non-profit company has released simultaneously with the film a DVD and book of the same name that intends to bring to harsh light the efforts to wrongfully purge 7.2 million registered voters from eligibility in the November 2016 election. Palast is quoted as saying, “There’s no such thing as a victimless billionaire,” since it is the billionaire elite who are behind this deception.

The voting public is encouraged to visit thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com, http://thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com/  in order to learn the latest on the investigation. A trailer for the film is located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg2gCgFMBOg.

The film will screen in 200 African American churches just prior to the Nov. 8 election, as the film “exposes the theft-in-progress of the 2016 election via a racially-biased vote-purging program called Crosscheck,” says Palast.

palast-mugIn an interview with W. Leon Smith of The Lone Star Iconoclast, who commented, “I saw the film three times; it’s really impressive,” Palast confirmed that Crosscheck was used during the primaries in some locations, but not in California, Texas, and New York, except in six counties experimentally.

 “Remember, once you remove, you remove. It obviously will affect the big states of North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, and Hawaii,” Palast said. “This is where the Senate is going to be decided.”

When asked if an individual is removed from the election roll, does the individual have to re-register, Palast said, “Yes. Absolutely, the one way — the magic bullet — to save your vote is to just re-register. They don’t knock you off a second time.

“It is kind of odd,” he continued,  “They are accusing you of registering more than once or voting more than once, and then the key to save your vote is to register again. They kicked you off because what they do is technically mark you inactive, so if you’re inactive that means you’re dead. It could also mean they have evidence that you’re no longer a proper voter in that district,” but this is rare.

Palast went on to say that if a person is knocked off the voter roll, he or she is not notified.

The Iconoclast asked if Palast was aware that Cambridge Analytical was recently paid $5 million by presidential candidate Donald Trump as an investment in voter data, of which the company brags they have 5,000 data points on over 220 million Americans. Would this have links to Crosscheck?

He said that the company is “owned by your Texas friends of Donald’s, the Mercers (hedge-fund magnates).”

 He said that the Mercers got behind Trump, so he is using their polling company. “Cambridge has enough information on everyone so they could tell you every ‘rigging’ order.  The weird thing about Crosscheck is why do they need this system when for a small fee they could actually get Cambridge or i360, or data trust to get Democrats out of  big polling opportunities, where you can get a thousand data points and know exactly if you got the right guy? But they don’t want the right guy. If they wanted the right person they wouldn’t ignore the mismatched or the low call data that found ‘Junior’ and ‘Senior’ to stay inclusive. They don’t want the right information. That’s the whole trick. They are not hunting for double orders. They are hunting for a way to knock off as many minority orders as they can handle that they can possibly get rid of. That’s the story.”

He said that people are not being arrested because the knock-offs are bogus. Palast said that Virginia “would chop off 41,000 people,” as an example, and in North Carolina, they “didn’t get anyone as far as we could tell after removing 35,000 and it looks like it was in the thousands of new data that was used. This is how they jam up the voting lines, too, because people in there say, ‘Hey, where’s my registration?’”

Palast was critical of the mainstream media in that reporters are complicit in the illegal voter removals, when they report that “Trump says the elections are rigged and he’s obviously crazy. No one’s every rigged a U.S. election. Well, they do it all the time. In that, Trump is correct, because his buddies are rigging it through Crosscheck.” The other side of the equation being worked are reporters and commentators who are constantly praising the system, “talking about the wonders of Crosscheck to prevent double voters.”

Palast explained that “they run the list of the primaries each year, but it’s up to each state to do a panel their own way. They are not supposed to remove people within 90 days of the election, but they usually do it anyway. One of their excuses is that if you’re a criminal, they’ve got to remove you and there’s no limit on removing people who are committing illegal or fraudulent voting. You are removed before you vote. Since you can’t actually vote at the voting box, they’ll give you a provisional ballot. Here’s the thing. If you’re not a legal voter, you cannot get your provisional ballot counted. It doesn’t matter if you were wrongly accused of being a felon, wrongly accused of moving away or something, if you’re not on the registry they cannot count your provisional ballot, so there’s no point in challenging it because they cannot count it, period. So with Crosscheck, you’re toast. You can get all the provisional ballots you want, I call them placebo ballots, because remember in the cartoon (part of his film), they just throw them in the garbage.”

“The point of the provisional ballot is to stop people from bitching at the polls when they get fucked,” he said. “So they say, ‘Oh, we’ll give you a provisional ballot,’ well for what? Because, no matter what, if you’re off the roll, you can’t vote.”

In the film, Palast and his staff “follow the money” up the trail of companies, foundations, and billionaire individuals who he says want to control the elections for their own profits and power, much of which is done by them purchasing elected officials to do their bidding. This is why in many states Crosscheck has been approved.

At the conclusion of the interview, Palast paid compliments to his staff, some of whom work 20 hours a day, often going undercover to obtain information, because they believe in awakening the public to the truth about unscrupulous individuals and the theft of votes. He hopes that Americans will watch the film that can be downloaded from Amazon, or buy the DVD or his book on the subject.

AMAC Protests Invasion-of-Privacy Rule

TOILET BIGWASHINGTON, D.C. – President Obama’s “invasion of privacy rule” that would force children to share bathrooms in schools has sparked widespread protests across the nation.

“Dissent is rampant on this issue and the Association of Mature American Citizens wants to do something about it,” according to AMAC president Dan Weber.  “Our 1.5 million members demand an end to such blatant abuse of power.  The government wants to regulate every aspect of our personal lives including our biological need to use the toilet.”

Elementary schools, high schools and institutions of higher learning that receive federal funding are now required to allow boys and girls who seek transgender identities to use whichever toilet facilities they choose under the new federal decree.

“By directing the Department of Education to force schools to allow people of the opposite sex to use whatever bathroom, locker room or shower room they feel like using, President Obama has overstepped his authority and has assumed dictatorial powers.  The President has absolutely no ability, according to the Constitution, to pass laws by himself,” Weber said.  “But he continues to completely ignored Congress and the checks and balance that are part of our Constitution.”

AMAC is giving away wristbands with the single word, Privacy, on them to anyone who wishes to express their resistance to the government’s latest proclamation.  “We want to protest the edicts and regulations issued by this administration that fundamentally change our way of life and take away our individual liberty.  Whether the issue is illegal immigration, religious freedom, the I.R.S., or personal modesty.”

The new regulation will likely be tested in the courts.  But commentator Larry O’Connor posted an article online that noted: “Regardless of how this gets worked out in the courts, every parent in America will wake up this morning having to deal with an issue they probably never thought they’d have to face several years ago. Parents now have to decide how they will deal with the reality that their child will not enjoy a basic level of privacy when they use a restroom or locker room when they go to school. Will this bring about a rise in private school attendance? Will it inspire more parents to home school their children?  Will states flirt with the idea of refusing federal education funds?  Either way, if anyone wondered what President Obama meant when he promised to ‘fundamentally transform the United States of America,’ now they know.”

AMAC president Weber said that the association’s wristband give-away is open to anyone who wishes to express “displeasure” at the administration’s action.  To order a wristband go to https://amac.us/privacy/ or call 888-262-2006 and ask for “Wristband”

ABOUT AMAC

The Association of Mature American Citizens [http://www.amac.us] is a senior advocacy organization that takes its marching orders from its members.

 

Iconoclast Readers Mourn Loss Of Aldo Vidali

aldo bigAldo Vidali, one of The Iconoclast’s main editorial contributors, passed away April 11, 2016, due to heart failure and complications from a recent hip replacement surgery. He was born on Feb. 12, 1930, in Bruxelles.

According to Vidali’s wife, Viktoria, his passing “was quick and without prolonged pain, the way he hoped his death might be.” She was with him at the physical therapy center where he had been transferred after the operation when the first symptoms occurred. She was by his side in the emergency room later that day when he took his final breath. He told her before dying, “I have had love in my life, the only thing that truly matters.”

An adventurer, Vidali spent much of his life championing human rights, which was evident in his numerous writings for The Iconoclast. The newspaper published his biography in a July 5, 2006 edition that focused on a film he was directing called “Deflating The Elephant.” Below are parts of the feature he penned along with his biography that was published at that time.

Vidali is survived by Viktoria and two sons, Orlando and Lorenzo.

Bio: Aldo Vidali, Published July 5, 2006

Production is under way on Deflating the Elephant, a film based on George Lakoff’s bestseller “Don’t Think Of An Elephant.”

Producing the film is Aldo Vidali, an Italian documentary film director who lives in Northern California and teaches at the Fellini-Antonioni Acting Studio.

Vidali, an outspoken champion of individual rights, embarked on the film to illustrate how conservatives are using frames to negatively sway public opinion and to encourage the public to make a stand against  tyranny while the opportunity remains.

The film is styled in the tradition of famed Italian director, the late Federico Fellini, with whom Vidali collaborated on films years ago.

aldo 02Born in Ixelles, Belgium, Vidali was educated in Rome, Italy.

He and his family joined the Resistance Movement against fascist and Nazi forces during World War II.

When he was only 13 years old, he was captured by the Nazis during the Fosse Ardeatine Nazi dragnet in Rome, but was released shortly thereafter because of his age. At the time, his family members were sheltering several Jewish refugees in their apartment to prevent their deportation to death camps in Germany.

At age 18, Vidali explored the tropical wilderness of  the Brazilian interior selling Coleman lamps and stoves to primative villages as a way to earn college tuition.

He came to the United States to study geology at the Colorado School of Mines in 1950 and later prospected in the Mexican states of Sonora and Durango.

After selling his interest in his Mexican mineral discoveries, he returned to Europe to do documentary film work. It was here that he collaborated with director Fellini on a project entitled The Stange Voyage of Mr. Mastorna and learned directing and cinema acting during the Fellini creations of 8-1/2 and Boccaccio 70. He had a brief professional relationship with Luchino Visconti.

Vidali also dealt with government and entertainment industry VIPs such as President Johnson, Jack Valenti, John Mecum, and Peter Sellers.

His documentary works originated a new genre, superimposing fiction on real-life documentary backgrounds.

Straw Hat and the Crown, shown on the Italian R.A.I. Television Network, received recognition even from the Vatican for its subtle moral theme set off by contrasting a fairy tale on a background of real life events.

In 1963, Vidali went to Africa as Second Unit Director of the feature documentary Good-bye Africa, a Rizzoli Production. He covered South Africa, Southwest Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Zanzibar, Congo, and Angola.

This exposed him to a wide range of human beings, both as a film director as well as the liaison officer between the South African government and the Italian film unit.

Back in the U.S. in 1965, Aldo wrote and directed Sunset at Dawn, a predictive environmental film essay on the worsening ecological crisis, followed by Trail to the Stars, a film view of the NASA space program contrasted with America’s pioneering past. These were followed by a series of minor commercial works.

In 1970, he began construction of a 57 ft. sailing ketch in Malibu, California. Simultaneously, he opened a New Age café supporting the flower children revolution in the Topanga hills. The café operated during the years of Aldo’s boat building.

In 1978, Vidali participated in the environmental-political campaign in Kauai, Hawaii, to save the island’s pristine shorelines at Nukoli’i from yet another tourist development.

In 1980, after years of boat building, the Arcana was launched. Sea trials began around California’s Channel Islands. Outfitting and shakedown cruises went on to prepare for a major bluewater voyage in the Eastern Pacific.

In 1984, Aldo, his wife, Viktoria, and their two-year old son Orlando set sail for the Eastern Pacific. They explored the West Coast of Mexico, Baja California, Sea of Cortez, Marquesas Islands, Tuamotus Archipelago, Society Islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Bora-Bora, the Hawaiian chain, British Columbia, and the Northwest Coast of the Americas. Their voyage covered approximately 40,000 nautical miles.

This adventurous chapter of their lives includes the wild experience of Hurricane Ima, when the Arcana rushed to find refuge in Moorea’s Cook’s Bay in the Society Islands. Later, in a final adventure of their four-year voyage, Aldo, Viktoria, and Orlando survived an attack on the high seas by a North Korean fishing ve ssel by cat and mouse out-maneuver. The Vidalis left Puget Sound immediately after the birth of their second son, Lorenzo.

So, in 1987, the Arcana sailed down the West Coast and landed in San Diego, California. The Vidali family, while happily raising their sons, worked to preserve the remaining natural resources of the Golden State.

A champion of the environment, Vidali later challenged Republican Interior Secretary James Watt, when Watt opened vast sections of Federal lands to exploitation. Vidali developed a plan to preserve the wilderness by rushing to the Denali region of Alaska, forming the Alaska Capital Corporation (ALCOR), and leasing thousands of acres of federal oil lands.

Explained Vidali, “The Watt Administration had assumed that small entrepreneurs could not afford to drill in the Arctic, thus leaving the course clear for major players. ALCOR deliberately proceeded to subdivide the leases into impractical 40-acre parcels, which would oblige major oil companies to buy out each and every one from far too many owners before they could move in and drill. One single holdout lease could stall exploration for years.”

Vidali hired and trained agents to successfully distribute tiny oil lease parcels across the nation. This maneuver caught the oil industry by surprise, and by the time they pressed the government to impose a minimum parcel size of 2,500 acres, it was too late. Big Oil tried to make the law retroactive. Vidali blocked that illegal attempt by notifying all leaseholders to demand their rights against this undemocratic scheme of Big Oil. This tactic was successful, and thus prevented major exploitation of the Denali for 10 years.

Vidali returned to the mainland in late 2000 where his family created a film with students under the UNECO label entitled Life & Liberty in the Balance, protesting the court-appointed Bush administration.

Vidali is currently in pre-production of a full feature documentary: Toward a Global Open Society, a dialogue between great contemporary minds and the American people. This film addresses the urgent need of all citizens to participate directly in dialogue and action to restore their Constitutional Republic.

Reviving the motion picture work developed under Fellini’s guidance, Vidali is now teaching and preparing productions dedicated to promoting the restoration of American Democracy, defense of the Bill of Rights, and openly denouncing the neo-fascist “Patriot” Act and the neocon imperialistic scheme against America.

Vidali currently lives with his wife and two sons on California’s Central Coast. He volunteers as Chairman of UNECO, a nonprofit environmental and humanitarian corporation, and is active in the United Defenders of Liberty Movement.

He speaks English, Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and is a public lecturer on social, educational, and environmental subjects.

Excerpts From His Feature On “Deflating The Elephant”

aldo elephant piFew clearly perceive how dangerous the world situation is becoming.

Inhuman money controls mass media and deliberately broadcasts as many frivolous distractions as possible to keep people from noticing the fascist beast closing in on millions of unsuspecting victims.

Current diabolical schemers make Hitler and Stalin look like dilettantes.

Their skills at diverting attention by frequently sounding terror-lurking-under-every-bush alarms have been honed to perfection. A movie can expose them with scandalous evidence.

As a boy, I experienced arrogant Italian Fascism and the evil of rightwing fanatical religionism.

In December 2000, when America was flagrantly betrayed by five black-robed hypocrites, shivers of horror went  down my spine. Our grassroots organization immediately net-published a large front-page headline: “DAY OF INFAMY – Fascist Coup in the United States!” which was printed over a photo of marching Nazi SS troopers.

Friends objected that to use the word “fascist” was an exaggeration.

Now, six years later, most are as outraged as we were then and have been ever since.

In 2004, a second national election was stolen by the same fascist cabal and American democracy de facto ceased to exist, except in the deluded minds of sleeping TV network audiences.

That year, University of California Berkeley Professor George Lakoff ’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, appeared and was an instant bestseller.

What it revealed is how linguistic frames influence social conditions.

Reading Don’t Think of an Elephant was a stunning clarification for me of how evil ideas throughout history are framed to allow “the few” to control and oppress “the many.” Indeed, ideas projected through invisible linguistic frames can transform the mind.

Lakoff ’s scientific explanations brought back memories of working with Federico Fellini and learning from him how cinematic images change society.

For example, after Fellini’s Casanova and City of Women, I had watched downcast Italian males leaving theaters, stunned. Exaggerated Italian machismo was crushed by these great films and never fully recovered.

Fellini’s demolition of century- old prejudices and Lakoff ’s linguistic art of framing suggested to me a potential cinematic cure for America.

It was my good fortune to share Federico’s thoughts about dreams and metaphysical questions while he was conceiving his mysterious story, The Voyage of G. Mastorna. This work contains some of his visions and speculations about the human state in this world and after death.

During that unforgettable experience, Fellini explained how cinematic images liberate, dissolve fear, and open our lives to perceiving the subtlest aspects of the world. That “sceneggiatura”— The Voyage of G. Mastorna — is now known as the most famous never filmed-screenplay in the history of cinema.

Fellini’s insight on the magic of light gives us a glimpse of the profundity of his art.

He said:

What is light? If cinema is images, light is its evident essence. In cinema, light is idea, sentiment, color, profundity, atmosphere, style, narrative, poetic expression. Light is the magic power that adds, cancels, softens, suggests, exalts, alludes, underscores, and renders the fantastic credible and acceptable, or, on the contrary, creates

transparencies through which the gray daily reality becomes rich, fairytale like. With a single reflector and a pair of lights an opaque face, with as much expressiveness as a bare knee, appears intelligent, mysterious, fascinating; an open, benevolent, peaceful face becomes sinister, menacing, frightening.

The poorest scene — squalid, shabby — can with light reveal enchanting or ominous aspects…barely moving a 5000-watt light and lighting up an opposite light, all the feelings of anguish vanishes and everything is serene, comfortable, homey. Finally, film is written with light; the style of an authentic filmmaker is expressed with light.

THE MOVIE

Uneco Productions’ Deflating The Elephant owes much to The Strange Voyage of G. Mastorna. Like Mastorna, it is a voyage into past and future … in this world and in an imaginary world where humanity is at last cured and  grown to maturity and sanity … a satirical, historic, amusing, and symbolic movie.

Like Moby Dick, Deflating the Elephant is about hunting large beasts that incarnate evil. It will bring down the rogue pachyderms that are devastating our world (just as Twentieth Century fascists and Bolsheviks devastated theirs) by unmasking the secret class war the rich are waging against the American people.

The hunting weapon this film delivers to the people is a Fellinesque-Lakoffian bow with arrows that can pierce soft, bloated underbellies of the fascist beasts and deflate them of their foul, hot air.

George Lakoff exposed the fact that conservatives spent 40 years and billions of dollars to grow, feed, and empower these land-roving Moby Dicks. False conservative frames have just about destroyed our 230 years of progress toward a vision of democratic culture and equality before the law and have nearly extinguished the American dream.

It is especially important and urgent that millions of Americans clearly understand why sharply framed and well-aimed progressive ideas can instantly bring down the ugly beasts.

The speed of change possible through strategic use of visual frames must be understood by all those liberals who wring their hands and worry that the deceitful conservative frames erected over four decades by lavishly funded, right-wing think-tanks may take just as many years to demolish before our Constitution can be restored and “We The People” take our country back. This is not so! If we had to wait 40 years, there’d be no country left to take back and no environment to restore.

HOW THEY STOLE OUR COMMONWEALTH

Exposing how we have been robbed is sobering. Conservatives used many deceiving frames to steal from us. We’ll tackle here just a few of the metaphors they employed to deform one of democracy’s most fundamental pillars: justice.

Mixing Fellini’s cinematic secrets with Lakoff ’s scientific brilliance is like mixing nitro and glycerine — which makes up dynamite. Liars and thieves are in for a big surprise.

The neo-crooks have been fanning the flames of a still unexplained 9/11 tragedy into a fabulously profitable perennial frame: “war-on-terror.”

What should have been an international police hunt by civilized nations has turned into a deadly, trillion-dollar con job.

In reality, there is no war. The phony “war” frame provides a legalistic and pseudo-moral justification for flag waving, criminal wars of aggression, and the dismantling of our Constitution.

The 9/11 Commission colluded with Bush and Cheney so that the inseparable twins were conveniently questioned together – to avoid contradictions — behind closed doors, and not under oath for fear of future indictments for obstructing justice.

The questioners were all tail-wagging administration’s lap dogs.

Lights and cameras will capture the criminal activities of the national security organizations that colonize the world with prisons, torture chambers, and concentration camps. The horrors of so-called rendition (criminal

kidnapping with torture outsourcing) and the deployment of massive domestic electronic spying networks that outrageously violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens and intrude even on their attorney-client privilege will be exposed.

What was once a country of laws is now a country run by a self-declared fundamentalist despot claiming the privilege to violate any law he chooses.

From: “The Most Evil People in the World,” by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

In his book: Gangs of America [download a copy at http://www.gangsofamerica.com], Ted Nace reveals the preposterous way the U.S. was taken over by big business.

Historically, it was the battle between democracy and corporations that started the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party was an action to block the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation that ever existed, from monopolizing the American commodities markets, starting with tea. The American Revolution was a pragmatic economic rebellion against an overbearing corporation and an oppressive government thoroughly intertwined with it.

The East India Company had planned to replace independent local merchants with a company-owned distribution system, i.e., an early version of what we now call “vertical integration,” like, for example, oil companies owning wells, refineries, and gas stations.

Boston pamphleteers — we had a free press then — laid out the scenario in detail, warning that if the British were to succeed in bringing the tea distribution system under sole control of the East India Company, they would inevitably repeat the same scheme for other imported commodities.

Sound familiar? Think of the WTO.

The East India Company, if once they get Footing in this (once) happy country, will leave no Stone unturned to become your Masters. They are an opulent Body, and Money or Credit is not wanting amongst them. They have a designing, depraved, and despotic Ministry to assist and support them. They themselves are well versed In TYRANNY, PLUNDER, OPPRESSION and BLOODSHED. Whole Provinces labouring under the Distresses of Oppression, Slavery, Famine, and the Sword, are familiar to them. Thus they have enriched themselves, thus they are become the most powerful Trading Company in the Universe.

Excerpt from a broadside signed “A Mechanic,” Philadelphia, December 4, 1773.

Imagine a private company so unaccountable that it conducts its own criminal trials and runs its own jails; so dominant it possesses a 250,000 man army, twice the size of Britain’s, to fight company wars; and so predatory that for more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled white.” A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes 10% of the government’s revenues. Even the King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company!

When the cargo ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, approximately 150

men assembled at the home of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal’s founder. They came from many backgrounds: some were apprentices, some tradesmen, some wealthy owners of businesses. By dawn, the entire shipment of tea had been destroyed. The American Revolution would soon be under way.

One glaring example in a long record of uncontrolled corporate evil was unleashed against this country in 1936:

[C]onsider this unpunished crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B. F. Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing.

In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation.

Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel powered General Motors buses.

By 1949, more than 100 electric transit systems in 45 systems had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit anti-trust violations. But the judge set the fine for each company at $5,000. Seven executives were fined one dollar each. After the conviction,

the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. Gangs of America, Introductionp. 7.

As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once observed, “Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.”

In 1882-83, Judge Stephen Field’s Ninth Circuit Court, with twisted judicial sophistry, established the personhood of corporations in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. This self-evident absurdity has proven to be a menace to democracy and humanity.

Judge Field’s tortuous legalese behind the creation of immortal, frankensteinian corporations coincided with the

view of Professor John Norton Pomeroy, namely: “The truth cannot be evaded that, for the purpose of protecting rights, the property of all business and trading corporations IS the property of the individual corporators.

A state act depriving a business corporation of its property without due process of law, does in fact deprive the individual corporators of their property.

 In this sense, and within the scope of these grand safeguards of private rights, there is no real distinction between artificial persons or corporations, and natural persons.”

Ted Nace explains why an understanding of this is critical:

As simple as this false argument sounds, it was a significant departure from established legal doctrine, which had always made a distinction between corporate property and individual property. The most crucial distinction is that owning shares in a company allows a person to own property without being subject to the sort of accountability to the community that normally attends the ownership of property [emphasis

added]. For that reason, courts had never assumed that shareholders in a corporation should expect equal  rights; on the contrary, the enjoyment by corporate shareholders of privileges such as limited liability justified applying special restrictions to corporations and their owners. Gangs of America, p. 118.

It is self-evident that giving legal personhood to a corporation, while enjoying all other rights, also creates the right to do wrong and escape responsibility.

In the 2006 California primaries, the residents of Humboldt County said enough is enough and successfully challenged corporate personhood.

THE NEAR FUTURE IN LIGHT OF HISTORY

America won its greatest victory against Italian fascists, German Nazis, and Japanese imperialists while fighting for democracy under the leadership of liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After WWII, humanity renewed its hope in the flowering of a great civilization founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a world in which nuclear holocausts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never again happen; where war, death-camps, fascist oppression, and gulags, would forever be mere memories of past insanity;

where international law would settle disputes and people everywhere would become self-governing; where victorious nations would cease selling instruments of death and instead spread the profitable tools of healthcare, economic prosperity, and environmental conservation.

However, the realization of this hope, this beautiful dream, never did come to pass. Bloodshed and destruction quickly resumed and continue to this day: Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, Africa, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, and Iraq.

So, who are the Oids!? They are that recurring percentage of psychotics throughout history that makes peace and justice impossible. It is imperative that Oids be exposed if we are to cure humanity and create a progressive world.

By way of explanation, adding “oid” to any word alters its meaning to: “made in the form of ” or “pretending to be.” For example, when “oid” is affixed to the word “sphere,” it becomes the word “spheroid,” which means “made in the form of a sphere” (not a real sphere).

“Oid” is, therefore, a label for “hypocrites” and for all those who pretend to be something they are not.

A Christianoid can then be defined as “a pseudo-Christian” or anyone pretending to be a follower of Jesus while at the same time supporting war, torture, and the death penalty.”

Let’s be creative here.

A patrioid is a flag-waving idiot who forgot that the flag represents the Union established by the U.S. Constitution.

“Monkeys can wave flags, but that does not make them patriots!” noted Scott Ritter (who is a real patriot).

All evildoers can be lumped under a single label: “humanoids” — that is, beasts made in the shape of humans.

EMOTIONAL HONESTY vs. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Recently Senator Murtha – who is to be highly commended for is outspokenness against the war — protested criminal military actions in Iraq. While he deserves praise for this, it is evident that Senator Murtha is unfortunately still a victim of political correctness.

After the Haditha massacre committed by U.S. troops, he said: “One woman, as I understand it in talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over her child, pleading for mercy, and they shot her in cold blood. That’s the thing that’s so disturbing.”

What an astounding hyper-understatement!

As much as Senator Murtha must be admired for his courage, in following the Washington-accepted PC communications style imposed by the conservative culture of hypocrisy, he failed to galvanize public condemnation.

How can murder in cold blood be referred to as simply “disturbing”— is such a satanic crime not outrageous beyond belief? Diabolical? Insane? Nauseating? Evil? Does it not call for Divine vengeance?

To bring it home, just imagine yourself finding your own family slaughtered in cold blood and hearing someone politely saying: “I am troubled” or “I’m disturbed.”

Emotionally honest people express their pain and anger openly and directly.

One trick satanic corpo-media use is to make justified outrage and righteous indignation look like hysteria. Any sincere expression of shock and revulsion in the face of a crime is treated as excess so insistently by criminal media whores, that all truth is neutralized and soon forgotten.

This is how the odious mediaoids subliminally train decent people to restrain sincere dismay, disgust, and rage to grotesque levels of apparent indifference to the suffering of others.

We are told by inhuman monsters never to “lose our cool,” never to let anger roar to the level of rage in our voices, never to dare call killers murderers, especially if they are a part of our own despicable government.

 

Patriot Act Conflicts Arising

PATRIOT ACTWASHINGTON, D.C. — Portions of the Patriot Act are set to expire this month, which has political conspiracy agencies scrambling.

Advocacy groups from all sides of the political spectrum have joined forces to attempt to make changes to the expiring portions of the act instead of having it rubber-stamped to continue.

In question is the re-authorization of the portion that allows the government to spy on millions of innocent Americans, since these types of surveillance programs are deemed unconstitutional, they destroy global confidence of security, and they have been proven unnecessary for national security.

Opponents to the three provisions slated for expiration say that they invade people’s privacy, while intelligence officials say it is useful in tracking suspected terrorists and foreign spies.

Next week, the House will vote on the USA Freedom Act that could end the NSA’s bulk records collection program, but it is undetermined whether the Senate will consider it or provide a short-term extension to renew the law for a few weeks.

Oldest Building At Alamo To Get New Roof

Gov. Rick Perry Indicted

perryAUSTIN —Texas Gov.Rick Perry was on Aug. 15 indicted on two felony counts that charge he abused his power when he attempted to persuade Rosemary Lehmberg, Travis County district attorney, to resign from office and, via threat, vetoed funding for the public corrption unit of her office. Lehmberg is Austin’s top prosecutor and oversees a public corruption unit that investigates local, state, and federal officials.

This unit paved the way to the 2005 indictment of former Republican Congressman Tom DeLay who was charged with violation of campaign finance laws.

Lehmberg, a Democrat, last year was arrested on a drunken-driving charge. She says that upon her arrest, Perry and his aides threatened to veto $7.5 million in state funding for the public corruption unit in her office unless she stepped down.

Lehmberg did not resign and continues to hold that office.

Following the veto, Perry said that he could not support “continued state funding for an office with statewide jurisdiction at a time when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”

Perry is awaiting arraignment at the county criminal courthouse a few blocks from the governor’s mansion. According to Michael McCrum, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, procedure calls for anyone charged with a felony to “be booked in,” which includes the governor. The charge of official capacity carries a prison sentence of five to 99 years, while the charge of coercion of a public servant is a two- to 10-year prison sentence.

Perry, who has been considering another run for the Presidency, says he will not seek another term as governor, an office he vacates in January. He has been traveling the country lately in regard to that potential bid.

The criminal investigation began when Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit government watchdog group, filed a complaint accusing Perry of offenses related to the veto threat. Special Prosecutor McCrum, a San Antonio attorney and former federal prosecutor, in April began presenting his case to a grand jury.

Texas, Florida Bankers Sue Treasury, IRS

Challenge Foreign Deposit Reporting Requirement

AUSTIN – The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations filed suit recently against the Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging a new IRS regulation requiring that U.S. banks report to the IRS annually on interest payments made to non-resident aliens.

The IRS rule, which went into effect in January, requires banks to report the interest payments beginning in 2014 even though interest paid to non-resident aliens is not subject to federal taxation in the U.S.

The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations are seeking a declaratory judgment holding that the amendments are invalid since they were promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and Regulatory Flexibility Act, which require new regulations to be based on factual analysis and relevant benefits in relation to costs.

The complaint argues specifically that Treasury and the IRS failed to adequately consider the economic impact stemming from the significant outflow of bank deposits from the United States, which will (and already have) been the result of the new regulation.

Many foreign bank customers would rather withdraw their deposits and close their U.S. accounts than be subject to a rule requiring that their personal accounts and investments be reported to the IRS and shared with their home governments as is specifically planned under the new regulation.

Foreign account holders place money in U.S. banks for several reasons: fear about crime/security in their home countries; lack of trust in their governments or financial institutions in their home countries; and their view that the U.S. is a reliable place to keep their money. For Mexican nationals, there is a fear of their financial information getting into the wrong hands, resulting in kidnapping, extortion and other crimes.

“For banks, a drain in deposits would significantly reduce funds available for lending and investment,” said TBA President and CEO Eric Sandberg. “This reduction in deposits will further weaken the economy by making it difficult for community banks to make loans at a time that our economy can least afford it.”

A TBA survey found the outflow in non-resident alien deposits to have already reached approximately $100 million. In addition to significantly decreasing available bank funds, the compliance costs associated with this new rule will be considerable because of the paperwork that has to be filed to stay in compliance with the rule.

The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations are being represented in this case by Jones Walker, LLP.

TBA represents the Texas banking industry—with members ranging from the smallest bank in the nation to the largest bank in the nation. This includes 85 percent of Texas banks, 5,200 bank branches and 95 percent of Texas deposits.

 

Grocer To Require Labeling Of GMO Foods

Whole Foods Market will be the first major retailer in the U.S. require labeling of all genetically modified foods sold in its stores. Photo By Kari Sullivan

AUSTIN, Texas – With genetically modified ingredients now deeply embedded in the U.S. food supply, it’s a decision that many in the industry are calling a game changer. Whole Foods Market plans to require labeling of all GMO foods sold in its stores by 2018, becoming the first major retailer in the nation to do so.

The decision was led by customer demand, according to Whole Foods executive global grocery coordinator Errol Schweizer.

“The rise of fair trade, the growth of organic, of farmer’s markets, all point to the fact that our customers want to know where their food is coming from, what it’s made from, who is making it,” Schweizer said. “The more information we can give our customers, the better it is for us and them, as well as for our producers.”

The Food and Drug Administration has deemed GMO products safe. Some are concerned that the labeling could mislead consumers about the potential risk, but Schweizer said the company is simply offering transparency.

“We’re not making a value judgment, and we’re not interpreting the science one way or the other,” he explained. “We’re just saying the customer has the right to make an informed choice on what they are feeding themselves or their family.”

Whole Foods already sells more than 3,300 products that are verified non-GMO.

Schweizer will be among business leaders from around the country coming together later this month for the spring conference of the Social Venture Network. Schweizer said his message there starts with cooperation.

“Mission-oriented businesses of various scales, big and small, can work together to further the values and mission of what they’re doing. So, it’s really about partnering for the greater good and running a business in the meantime.”

The Social Venture Network conference is set for April 25-28 in San Diego.

 

Farm Program Funding Priorities Out of Step

There is still no new Farm Bill, and the Center for Rural Affairs says there needs to be a change in funding priorities. Photo By Jason Riedy

AUSTIN, Texas – The Center for Rural Affairs is calling for a change in priorities in how the nation’s farm programs are funded. Executive director Chuck Hassebrook said those programs that invest in rural America have seen dramatic cuts.

“Small-business development programs, beginning farmer programs, several of them now are completely put on hold with no money,” he said. “In some other places, there have been no cuts.”

One place where Congress should look to cut but has not, Hassebrook said, is crop insurance premium subsidies.

“For example, right now if one corporation farmed your entire state,” he explained, “the federal government would pay 60 percent of its crop insurance premiums on every acre, every year – good years and bad.”

Putting a cap on those could save $1 billion a year, Hassebrook said, adding that those savings could be used for deficit reduction and to fund conservation and rural development programs that he calls vital for the future prosperity of rural America.

“There should be a higher priority on investing in the future of our small towns and rural communities, through small-business development and beginning farmer programs, than there should be on multimillion-dollar, unlimited premium subsidies to ‘mega farms,'” he said, “yet Congress is doing the opposite.”

The last Farm Bill expired in the fall, but has been temporarily extended by Congress.

LBJ Library Opens New Exhibits

AUSTIN – On Saturday, Dec. 22, the LBJ Presidential Library will unveil innovative, state-of-the art exhibits giving visitors a contemporary experience relating to one of the most significant presidents and eras in our country’s history. Following a massive yearlong renovation, new exhibits have been installed on the three public floors of the Library.

By incorporating the latest technology and interactive elements used in museums today, the Library has a completely new look and feel.

“Our goal is for visitors to better understand this largely misunderstood president,” said Mark K. Updegrove, LBJ Library Director. “The redesigned Library will provide meaningful context to the vast and sweeping legislation passed during the Johnson Administration and visitors will learn how those laws impact us today. Exhibits will explore all aspects of Johnson’s presidency, including the Vietnam War. President Johnson insisted that the LBJ Library present an unvarnished look at his Presidency– the triumphs and the turmoil. Now we share this story with new generations.”

New features of the LBJ Presidential Library include:

  • A downloadable app and handheld guide which give visitors the choice of several different tours, including a tour in Spanish
  • Unprecedented access to private telephone conversations of the President
  • An interactive Vietnam War exhibit where visitors experience elements of the President’s decision-making process
  • The ability to join the conversation through social media as visitors tour exhibits
  • An interactive look at how legislation passed under LBJ affects visitors today
  • New theaters and films on President Johnson, civil rights, LBJ’s legacy, and the First Family

The redesign offers visitors a rich cultural and historical destination. Until now, the LBJ Library has been the only one of the 13 presidential libraries that has not charged admission. The LBJ Library will charge admission for the first time in its 41-year history when the new exhibits open in December.

This decision was made by the LBJ Foundation Board and has the support of the Johnson family.

“The redesign is an exciting new chapter in the history of the LBJ Library as a dynamic, forward-thinking organization,” said Larry Temple, chairman of the LBJ Foundation. “President Johnson wanted the Library to use the best technology available, giving visitors a comprehensive, engaging experience. The Board strongly believes he and Mrs. Johnson would approve this decision.”

For details on admission fees and the many free holidays, go to www.lbjlibrary.org.

In keeping with President and Mrs. Johnson’s commitment to transparency and objectivity, the new exhibits will showcase materials from the archives and museum collections that have never before been seen. To ensure accuracy, independent interpretation, and impartiality in the redesign of the exhibits, the LBJ Library consulted with, and sought the participation of, esteemed historians in presenting the history of Lyndon Johnson. Those include Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek, Robert Caro, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, as well as many of those who worked in the Johnson Administration.

Renovation of the LBJ Library is funded by private donations through the LBJ Foundation. Kicking off the capital campaign were lead gifts totaling $1 million from Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb, daughters of President and Mrs. Johnson. Former Texas Lt. Governor Bill Hobby and Austin civic leader Ann Butler each pledged $1 million to the redesign.

Significant contributions have also been made by Eleanor B. Crook of San Marcos, Texas, Diane Connell of Killeen, Texas, and the J. B. Fuqua Foundation of Atlanta.

“Through these new exhibits, the political and personal lives of Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson come alive for visitors,” said Elizabeth Christian, president of the LBJ Foundation. “They will learn about the decisions President Johnson faced, the impact of his social programs, and his passion for critical issues such as education, civil rights, the environment, health care, and the arts.” 

About the LBJ Presidential Library
The LBJ Presidential Library is one of13 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Its mission is to preserve and protect the historical materials in the collections of the library and make them readily accessible; to increase public awareness of the American experience through relevant exhibits and educational programs; and to advance the LBJ Library’s standing as a center for intellectual activity and community leadership while meeting the challenges of a changing world.

The Library is open daily from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. (except Christmas Day). For more information about the Library, visit www.lbjlibrary.org.

‘Victory or Death’ Letter To Return To Alamo

El Niño Has Fizzled – Winter Not Wet

Texas Voter Photo ID Law Quashed

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. District Court in Washington has blocked a law requiring voters to show photo identification before casting ballots in Texas. The argument suggested that the proposed law could curtail the ability of minorities to vote, with emphasis on African Americans and Hispanics, who often live in poverty, according to Cicuit Judge David Tatel.

He explained that the underlying docutments needed to obtain an ID could be costly and discourage poor voters, the administration resembling an illegal poll tax.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott responded that he would appeal the decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court since the states of Georgia and Indiana have similar integrity safeguards and thsee have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

The requirement that Texas voters would have to present one of six forms of photo ID before casting their ballots was adopted in 2011 by the Republican-dominated Texas legislature.

Although Texas Governor Rick Perry called the federal court ruling “another victory for fraud,” Elise Boddie, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund pointed out that “The whole point of our democracy is to make sure that voters have the opportunity to vote, and that’s what today’s ruling does.”

Peace Group Boycotting Chik-fil-A

WACO, Texas — The Waco Friends of Peace at a meeting in August voted to endorse the boycott of Chik-fil-A restaurants.

According to Alan Northcutt, a leader in the peace group, reports indicate the restaurant chain uses its profits to work against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (KGBT) community rights and donated $4 million to anti-gay groups in 2009-2010.

Northcutt says the chain donated to the Eagle Forum which believes LGBT people should be considered criminals.  Chik-fil-A donated to the Family Research Council (FRC), which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  The FRC spent $25,000 in an effort to stop the U.S. Congress from condemning the Uganda “Kill the Gays” law.

Gays and lesbians in the United States are frequently treated as second-class citizens and are able to marry in only a few states.

“As a result of cruel treatment directed at gay people, one-third of gay/lesbian teenagers have attempted  suicide,” noted Northcutt.  “Therefore, the Waco Friends of Peace will support the boycott of Chik-fil-A restaurants.  We will not allow our dining dollars be spent to support efforts to deny LGBT people human rights that all people should equally receive.”

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