Credit Trap - Corporate Fascism Harms Liberty

The #GOP has supported big business over small & effective government for years.

• They support liar loans.
• They support payday lenders.
• They support business's ability to wash debt away completely while NOT supporting the same for individual citizens.
• They DO NOT support the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enacted in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Bill.
• They DO NOT support removing the free market credit holders profiteering on federally backed student loans.

New entrants to our workforce graduate from trade schools or college burdened with educational debt. This debt is equal to the cost of some of our parents or grandparents 1st family residence.


This is where the financial credit trap begins.

Principle and interest accrued during the 4-6 year educational process requires decades to extinguish. This is followed by a barrage of credit card opportunities designed to get people stuck with making minimum payments on their credit line leaving them eternally indebted to revolving credit.


For the average person in America, their residence will be their biggest life investment. They take on great debt where the principle and interest of for the happy home is spread over the next 30 years. In recent history, there have been two significant housing bubbles, each supported by people who either mislead unsuspecting home buyers or people who committed out right fraud due to their unending greed.

Either way, the #GOP, against any federal regulation, allows government regulatory agencies to languish without sufficient staff to properly function. And in other cases, congress changed the law all together, removing the legal requirement to follow prudent regulations which managed the size and types of risk our commercial bank lending system was allowed to take on in their daily business practice.

During this period lending institutions are doing more with less employees while increasing charges and fees on their customers to line the pockets of the organizations shareholders.

Remember, most business's focus on maximizing shareholder value. I have no argument with the free market competition model here at all, my only argument to the sole focus on maximizing shareholder value is that this can not be the sole focus, a company has a moral and ethical responsibility to it's people, the community and the environment.

Throughout this period of time, the credit card industry offered consumer credit to folks. The best I'll say is the idea of a consumer credit line is excellent for emergencies, when an unexpected, unplanned, non-budgeted expense presents itself and people need to fund this event. Credit card rate of 25 - 30% APR sound reasonable to you, when the 10 year treasury rate is at 3.5% APR? Pay day lending services charge even worse interest rates and fees.

Allow me to digress, we appear to allow high school graduation without an understanding on how to balance a check book. We have no core curriculum to teach people the practical realities of how to budget a college career, a household,or manage a lifestyle. Many people going to trade schools and higher education institutes to learn a trade or obtain a bachelors and or master degree do not necessarily fare much better in their knowledge of the world of finance.


Why do so many people not understand the realities of our banking lending, credit facilities and overall financial system? Who was in the best position to see when the train roaring down the tracks was gaining speed in many different towns, communities, and states; the Federal Government. Why do republicans want to remove regulation?

 I live in a constitutional republic, where my forefathers envisioned the need for a strong Federal Government, to be certain that individual States would not harm the nation by racing one another to the bottom. They felt the need to provide a separation of powers in order to ensure the people were protected. And that is not said better than within our declaration of Independence.

 The Declaration articulates the highest ideals of the Revolution, beliefs in liberty, equality, and the right to self-determination. Americans embraced a view of the world in which a person's position was determined, not by birth, rank, or title, but by talent, ability, and enterprise.

The talent of a mason or a carpenter is no less valuable than the talent of a stock trader. The talent of a school teacher, policeman, fireman, is no more or less valuable that of the gourmet chef feeding the President of the United States of America or Mitt Romney's Campaign Manager. Talent, ability and enterprise says one is to be valued for who they are and not what family, neighborhood or social position they were born into. The talent, ability and enterprise of Special Olympics participants is no less valuable to our nation than the talents of any one of us.

Mitt Romney represents the worst of this financial system.

A system where the sole focus on maximizing shareholder value. And on extracting dollars from companies, hurting people, harming communities and often times damaging the environment while shipping what once were American Citizen jobs overseas to developing nations where companies pay slave wages to increase the return on their dollars invested.

• End the #GOP flirtation with corporate fascism for good in 2012. 
• Vote the existing Republican Party leadership out of congressional power.
• Give Barack Obama four more years

Fact is the economy is close to turning the corner after following the disastrous Republican Party Policies. Remember, George W. Bush held hands with a Republican controlled  for six of his eight years in the White House.

Remember the Republican Party has deregulated the banking industry and allowed a co-mingling of funds with investment firms. Trillions of dollars in derivatives are now held in commercial banking industry companies who have Federal FDIC Insurance protection.

Republicans support less government employees, want to make working for the government less attractive, stripping employees of their constitutional right to assembly and associate (form unions for representation).

And Republicans support the Supreme Court Decision that says money is speech and that corporations are people; creating a corporate fascism not seen in America for one hundred years!

It's no joke, Romney is Bush on steroids, Get out the vote in 2012.

#GOP Pattern of Behavior

1. Create a condition: 
2. Blame the Government or Democrats for the condition. 
3. Say it long enough and frequently enough to people unaware of their propensity to be snookered start to believe the lie.
4. Folks who believe the #GOP blame fail to understand that the #GOP actually created condition and propagate the lie.

Examples Include:

A. Created Tax Cuts Under Guise they would be Temporary (Sign pledge to never increase taxes)

1. Resulting in the following set of facts:

• Increase in the number of taxpayers not responsible for paying Federal Income Taxes
• #GOP Controlled Congress, 6 of 8 George W. Bush Years, Failed to Balance Budgets 
• Deficits rise from imbalance of income/expense

    
    2. Blame the government or democrats for the following conditions:

• Unsustainable Budget Deficits
• Irresponsible Debt Limit Increase
• Bad People: 43 Percent of Citizens Not Paying Federal Income Taxes 

 
   3. Motives:

• Create sufficient debt & deficits in order to create appearance that their goal of reducing the size of  our Federal Government is a legitimate objective
•  Hurt as many citizens as possible in order to have them feeling insecure about their families financial future so the #GOP can blame Barack Obama for how our citizens feel.

#Constitution [] Supreme Law of the Land

Q. What constitutes the supreme law of the land?

A. Art. VI, cl. 2 of the Constitution says: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shalt be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Constitution Questions & Anwsers

Facts to Dismiss #GOP Operative Fairy Tales

Average Rig Count in the United States of America By Year

 

Average Crude Oil Price in the United States of America By Month

Average Non-Farm Employment Count in the United States of America By Month

Average Retail Price Gallon of Regular Gasoline in the United States of America By Month

Americans for Making Decisions with Factual Information!

#Vote 2012

 

Keystone XL Pipeline

Canada has excess pipeline capacity and in our Department of Energy report reviewing the Keystone XL pipelines impact on U.S. energy supply over the next twenty years, the agency found that it will take decades for Canada to produce enough oil to fill existing pipelines. DOE's conclusion is the United States will import the same amount of crude from Canada through 2030 whether the Keystone XL pipeline is built or not.

Canada has a business risk issue to correct; they have a single marketplace for their oil production, the United States. A big the problem with existing pipelines is they all end in the U.S. Midwest and 97 percent of their energy is delivered to the United States. They need to diversify. Though even the Canadians remain balancing the environmental factors involved with the production of Tar Sands oil Production as the Canadian government has halted two pipeline proposals to export tar sands through its provinces due to the need to take more time to listen to its own public's concerns about water and safety.

The hidden benefit behind the Keystone XL pipeline is a 1st step for Canada to diversify it's energy marketplace. The pipeline would divert large volumes of Canadian oil from its present destination in the Midwest United States to our Gulf Coast, where it would be available for the first time to buyers on the world market. This goal is coveted since many of the refineries on the Gulf Coast happen to be located in foreign trade zones, where they can export Canadian oil to the world market without paying United States taxes.

Nothing is ever as it seems

 

Historically the Cushing, Oklahoma is the area in the United States where crude oil from the Gulf Coast came to Cushing for refining in order to and to reach out to America's northern consumers. Generally, Light Sweet Crude oil is stored in bulk here.

In 2006, with production increases from Canadian oil sands, one pipeline reversed direction, bringing crude into the Cushing Hub, rather than delivering crude from Cushing to oil refineries. Today the existing market for HEAVY Canadian Crude are oversupplied.

Light Crude oil is liquid petroleum that has low density and that flows freely at room temperature. It has low viscosity, low specific gravity and high API gravity due to the presence of a high proportion of light hydrocarbon fractions. It generally has a low wax content as well.

On the other hand, heavy crude oil or extra heavy crude oil is any type of crude oil which does not flow easily. It is referred to as “heavy” because its density or specific gravity is higher than that of light crude oil. Heavy crude oil has been defined as any liquid petroleum with an API gravity less than 20°. Extra heavy oil is defined with API gravity below 10.0 °API (API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water. If its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sinks. )

Light crude oil receives a higher price than heavy crude oil on commodity markets because it produces a higher percentage of gasoline and diesel fuel when converted into products by an oil refinery. 

Heavy crude oil has more negative impact on the environment than its light counterpart since its refinement requires the use of more advanced techniques an the use of contaminants.

The sweet light crude oil Western Texas Intermediate (WTI) is a benchmark in oil pricing in America.

The core refining process is simple distillation. Crude oil is made up of a mixture of  hydrocarbons, this first and basic refining process is aimed at separating the crude oil into its "fractions," the broad categories of its component hydrocarbons.  

Crude oil is heated and put into a still -- a distillation column -- and different products boil off and can be recovered at different temperatures.  

The lighter products -- liquid petroleum gases (LPG),  naphtha, and so-called "straight run" gasoline -- are recovered at the lowest temperatures.  

Middle distillates -- jet fuel, kerosene, distillates (such as home heating oil and diesel fuel) -- come next.  

Finally, the heaviest products (residuum or residual fuel oil) are recovered, sometimes at temperatures over 1000 degrees F. 

Keystone XL is a pipeline delivering Canadian Heavy Crude; an export pipeline. According to Keystone Investor Presentations, Gulf Coast refiners plan to refine the cheap Canadian crude supplied by the pipeline into diesel and other products for export to Europe and Latin America. Proceeds from these exports are earned tax-free. Much of the fuel refined from the pipeline’s heavy crude oil will never reach U.S. drivers’ tanks.

By distilling heavy Canadian crude oil in Gulf Coast Refinery's the United States Refinery Capacity for Light Sweet Crude will be reduced lowering supply of the very products on which American consumers rely.

By draining Midwestern refineries of cheap Canadian crude into export-oriented refineries in the Gulf Coast, Keystone XL will increase the cost of gas for Americans.

And the risk of environmental damage from the transportation and refinement process is a dramatic increase from that of our Light Sweet Crude with no appreciable benefits for the country.  

There might actually be an increase cost for the consumer for light crude products such as gasoline. Since we have limited Oil Refineries in America, if our existing refineries begin to process this dirty heavy Canadian crude oil there will be less capacity to process our own light sweet crude supplies.