Tag Archives: government

Business/Economics, U.S.

Government Incompetence, What Economic Recovery? IRS fails to refund millions in taxes, blames postal addresses. Part of scheme to shut down U.S. Postal Service?

There are reports that the tax collector of the U.S. government, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), is holding back on refunding $153 million in overpaid taxes!

IRS officials claim it’s because of postal addresses they just don’t trust.  So they’re not going to mail them out!  99,123 U.S. taxpayers are waiting for those refunds!

Here’s the sinister answer the IRS has for solving the ‘problem’: Everyone needs to stop using the postal system and use direct deposit!

To check the status of your tax refund click on the “Where’s My Refund” at the IRS website.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Occupy America! U.S. Capitalist Airline industry is a big FAIL! History of bankruptcies and losses! Testimonies before Congress prove it! More proof that American Airlines can’t be trusted!

“The airline industry has the worst financial performance of any of our major business sectors. While the industry has enjoyed some profitable years, airline operators as a whole have lost money since deregulation in 1978.”– from Current Situation and Future Outlook of U.S. Commercial Airline Industry, September 28, 2005

In September 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Subcommittee on Aviation, heard testimonies on the economic viability of the U.S. airline industry.  It wasn’t good.

Here’s some quotes from the report:

“Historically, airlines have failed at a much higher rate than most other types of businesses.”

“In fact the U.S. airline industry has seen 150 bankruptcy filings in the last 25 years, an average of almost six per year.”

Bankruptcies don’t work because “…history has shown that the growth of airline industry capacity [a type of competition based on supply and demand] has continued unaffected even by major liquidations.”

“Over the past four years, U.S. commercial airlines have lost over $32 billion collectively and it is estimated that the industry will experience another $10 billion in loss in 2005.”

Don’t blame the September 11, 2001 attacks, the airlines were in trouble before that: “…well over 100,000 jobs have been lost in this industry since that time [the year 2000] and just recently, in concert with their announced bankruptcies…”

Don’t blame the cost of labor, like the CEO of American Airlines is doing: “Numerous factors have contributed to the problem and Mr. Kiefer mentioned some of them. I would say that three stand out in the current environment: very high jet fuel prices, intense price competition in the domestic market; and heavy debt and pension burdens.”

So they whine about fuel prices, but haven’t they been jacking up their ticket prices to cover that? They whine about competition! Isn’t competition the American Capitalist way? I think the mantra goes ‘if you can’t handle the competition then you should get out of the business’. And they whine about being in debt! You see, we individuals have been lectured for years about the sins of debt, yet the biggest debt offenders are the Corporations of America (after the Federal government)!

However, a professor from the Northeastern University Boston, and a senior fellow from the Brookings Institution, testified that in their opinion the three biggest costs to the airline industry is fuel, competition and labor.

Speaking of labor and American Airlines, the 2005 testimonies show that labor cost for the now bankrupt airline had already been reduced: “…airline employees have been asked to take substantial pay cuts, trim their benefits and in some cases, lose their jobs. Exhibit 5 in my remarks shows broad expense categories for AMR, parent of American Airlines, in 2002 and in the second quarter of 2005. Over that period labor costs declined from 41 percent of total expenses to 32 percent.”

Again, don’t blame the cost of labor: “…airlines have undertaken significant steps to trim their losses but these have so far been insufficient to restore profitability, largely because of the fuel prices.”

The nature of the industry makes it almost impossible to make a profit, it involves a lot of guessing and optimism: “The airline industry has always been a cyclical one because the demand for air travel is sensitive to the level of economic activity and carriers must invest in capacity well before they know the level of economic activity and demand.”

Airlines have always used bankruptcy to destroy union labor contracts, in the name of competition: “Legacy carriers have been cutting costs where they can and since labor is the largest category of airline costs, it has been the target
of cost cutting and enhanced productivity through negotiation as well as in bankruptcy as the legacy carriers seek to reduce costs to compete with low cost carriers.”

Some officials blamed the consumers for not being able to pay higher ticket prices, and blamed airline executives for not having the guts to pass on the true cost of fuel to their customers, again in the name of competition: “The airline industry however suffers from the burden of having to pay high prices without the flexibility of necessarily receiving higher fares. Historically, carriers have been loathe to pass on higher fuel costs in the form of any additional tariff for fear of being undercut by competition. This has led to a vicious cycle within the industry…” In other words, ticket prices haven’t gone high enough!

According to testimony from Moody’s officials, most airlines that go bankrupt don’t really change the way they do business: “Airlines operating in bankruptcy generally continue to pay airport rates and charges and in most cases do not radically downsize their operations.”

Testimony at the 2005 hearings foretold of American Airlines’ bankruptcy filing on November 29, 2011. The testimony was about what else American Airlines could do to further reduce their costs, and how to do it: Mr. MICA. “Again, pensions would still be sort of the big enchilada in obligations and fuel?”
Mr. BAGGALEY. “Actually, the largest portion of American and other airlines’ obligations are secured debt and leases. Pension deficits are significant but they are a minority of the total.”
Mr. MICA. “The only way you can restructure those would be through bankruptcy or negotiation?”
Mr. BAGGALEY. “Yes.”

Philip Baggaley, of Standard & Poor’s, also testified that many financial problems for the airline industry are “inherent” and go back before the 1990s.

Baggaley also explained that a major reason for legacy (airlines created before the 1978 deregulation) airlines filing bankruptcy was to destroy the pension (retirement) programs for their employees.  He admitted that financial institutions like to see companies destroy their employees’ retirement plans, and rewarded the companies with better credit ratings!

Baggaley also explained that wages and benefits are always the target of corporations, because it is the easiest to control.  Airline executives target labor as a way to offset the uncontrollable fuel costs. However, he showed that fuel costs have gone up so much that drastic labor cuts, without declaring bankruptcy, are no longer enough.  From 2002 to 2005 American Airlines gained, or saved, $1.8 billion in labor concessions, but they still lost $3.2 billion to fuel costs.

Baggaley also explained that while company mergers normally work for other industries, in reducing overall costs, history shows that mergers actually increase operating costs for legacy airlines.  He called it a “zero sum game”, and added that the only potential benefit for airlines filing for bankruptcy, and even merging, is that it’s a way of reducing competition: “…bankruptcy restructuring and mergers have the potential to improve the industry’s financial health, but only if accompanied by reduced capacity [a way of reducing competition] and, most important, by lowering operating costs.” Remember, competition is one of the three main reasons the airline industry is failing.

Mark Kiefer, of CRA International (economic and management consulting firm), testified that the problems with the airline industry go all the way back to the 1978 deregulation. He explained that the only time the airlines were really “profitable” was when they were being regulated by the Federal government!

Kiefer said government regulation kept ticket prices up, and limited the number of airlines allowed to operate (thus killing competition).  Since deregulation ticket prices dropped, and smaller more competitive airlines were born. Even after more than 30 years, the bigger, older (legacy) airlines just can not compete with the smaller younger Low Cost Carrier (LCC) airlines.  Under the traditional concept of capitalism, doesn’t that mean the legacy airlines should be allowed to die?

Kiefer also explained that the legacy airlines are still operating pre-deregulation when it came to wages and benefits for employees.  They tend to pay more than the LCC airlines, and offer company health and retirement benefits.  Kiefer says no LCC airline offers such benefits.  LCCs do offer “…defined contribution and profit sharing plans that have a much lower overall cost to the airline.”

Steven Morrison, Northeastern University Boston, and Clifford Winston from the Brookings Institution, say that, amazingly even after 30 years, the legacy airlines “…still needs time to adjust to its deregulatory freedoms by ridding itself of remaining cost inefficiencies…” In other words, the last hurdle to fully deregulating the legacy airlines is unionized labor.

But while the highly edjumacated college officials blamed labor for the airlines’ problems, U.S. Representative James Oberstar put the blame squarely on the legacy airlines: “Since deregulation, the legacy airlines’ revenue model has depended on extracting premium fares from a small percentage of passengers. That revenue model began to unravel in the year 2000…”

Of interest is the testimony from the executive director of the Air Carrier Association of America, Edward Faberman. Who better to explain to woes of the airline industry, and guess what, he did not blame labor!  He blamed, in order, fuel costs, homeland security costs, airport expenses, air traffic control expenses, Customs & Border Control service expenses, and finally cancelled flights.

Very interestingly, Faberman actually countered the claims of many of the experts mentioned above. Even though the airline industry was deregulated back in 1978, the legacy airlines are still getting subsidized by the government!  He basically said that in the name of competitive capitalism the big old legacy airlines should be allowed to die off, and that the LCCs should take over.

Finally, here’s what the airline officials in the United Kingdom think of the U.S. airline industry: “But America, land of the free, is turning itself into the land of the free ride. In the last four years, the airlines have soaked up $15 to $20 billion of public subsidy and loan guarantees. They’re operating in protected markets, they’re hoovering up public funds and they still can’t make a profit. They are dumping capacity on the North Atlantic, distorting competition and pricing for cash. They struggle to compete and, at some, the workforce has been demoralized. The more the government has tried to help, the worse things have become.”-Rod Eddington, CEO British Airways, September 22, 2005

 

 

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

Government Incompetence, What Economic Recovery? Reports say Congress will let Postal Service default on December 16

“It feels like Helena and Cosby are caught in the cross hairs. There is a big battle going on and we are the ones that are going to suffer.”-Marianne Price, Montana resident who relies on the U.S. Postal Service

Recently, the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Fred Rolando, said certain actions by Congress, or lack of action, could put the USPS into a “…death spiral…”.

A CNN Money report says political analysts have reason to believe the U.S. Congress will not consider any more bills to save the U.S. Postal Service, until after the 2012 elections.  That guarantees the USPS will default.

The U.S. Postal Service, which does not use taxpayer money to operate, employes 557,000 people directly.  Several companies, like FedEx, also provide service under contract.  South eastern Idaho postal workers told me that if the USPS defaults, at least 200,000 postal workers will immediately lose their jobs!  It will also mean cut backs for those contractors working for the Postal Service.

The USPS is actually a contractor itself.  Under President Richard Nixon today’s Postal Service was created (it was the Postal Department before then).  The Postal Service operates on money that comes from you and me buying postal products (not taxes).  Under President Ronald Reagan stamps were added to the list of products the Postal Service could make money from (before that the government got the money from stamp sales).  The only tax money used for postal services are for mail for the blind, for mail in election ballots sent from U.S. citizens living overseas, and, for providing address information to state and local child support enforcement agencies.

For reasons not publicly known, some elected officials, and the main stream media, are misleading the public into thinking that cuts to the USPS would save taxpayer money. It won’t!

A Cornell University professor says the U.S. Congress is fully to blame (as I’ve stated in past postings): “A lot of these decisions are fundamental business decisions about quality and frequency of service, and they should be in the hands of the executives running the Postal Service. But Congress won’t let them do that!”-Richard Geddes, Cornell University associate professor

While many officials blame the Postal Service management and the unions, the fact is that USPS management and unions have been working together to make drastic cuts. Their latest agreement could cut $20 billion in postal worker health care benefits, but Congress has to sign off on it.

Just a couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama extended the deadline for default by the U.S. Postal Service.  The new deadline is December 16.  If the CNN Money sources are right, then bye bye USPS (unless Obama just keeps extending the deadline)!

Fukushima

Government & Farmer Incompetence: More cesium contaminated rice, new farms affected!

Three farms in the city of Date, Japan, harvested rice that was found to be contaminated with cesium, up to 1,050 becquerels per kilogram.

Earlier in November as many as six farms in Oonami district were found with contaminated rice.  Those farms did not sell their rice, but the farms in Date did.

Now officials are trying to track down who bought the cesium contaminated rice.

Date, and Oonami are in Fukushima Prefecture, where the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant continues to emit high levels of radiation.  Originally officials were testing rice just from the 154 farms in Oonami, but will now test more than 2,300 farms in the prefecture.

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Radioactive Strontium found in Tokyo & Yokohama, for the second time!

A citizens group tested soil from three location in Tokyo and Yokohama, and found radioactive strontium, as much as 51 becquerels per kilogram.

The samples were taken at the end of October.  This is not the first time strontium 90 has been found.  At the beginning of October it was confirmed that samples taken on a building’s roof top, in Yokohama, was contaminated with 195 becquerels of strontium 90.

Strontium 90 has a half life of 28.8 years. It can cause bone cancer.

The citizens group believes the strontium 90 came from the disaster reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, which is about 170 miles from Yokohama.  However, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is claiming that it could not have come from Fukushima Daiichi.

The government officials say it would be more likely that strontium 89 would be coming from the failed nuke plant.  This doesn’t make sense, because strontium 89 is used medically, to treat bone cancer, and in rare cases to treat pain.  In my quick research I could not find anything that said strontium 89 is a by product of nuclear reactors.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency web site only said that it could be found around nuclear plants.

I can only conclude that the Japanese government officials don’t know what they’re talking about.  When you look up strontium 90 you’ll find that it is specifically a creation of nuclear fission, and found in nuclear fallout, so the citizens group is right!

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Global Economic War: New Greek & Italian Prime Ministers part of Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission’s push for one world government

News of who the new Greek and Italian Prime Ministers are, has calmed European stock markets, mainly ’cause these guys are part of the corporate team.

In an earlier posting I postulated that the European debt crisis is part of a plan by the Corporate World to take over Europe (it’s too late for the U.S., why do you think taxpayers were made to bailout the big banks? Think about it, in Europe it’s the other way ’round; the big banks are bailing out the governments).

Now there’s proof of such a conspiracy in the announcement of the new Greek and Italian Prime Ministers, both of whom have a sinister connection.

Meet the new Greek PM, Lucas Papademos.  He’s got all kinds of college education, including MIT.  He taught at Columbia and Harvard.  He’s worked for the U.S. Federal Reserve (a private bank), was the Governor of the Bank of Greece, and was the Vice President of the European Central Bank.

Meet the new Italian PM, Mario Monti.  He too has all kinds of education, including Yale.  He spent a lot of time with the European Commission in which he focused on internal markets, financial services and financial integration, customs, and taxation.  He’s also been pushing to turn the European Union into a true federal government of Europe.  He’s a member of the Bilderberg Group (that should worry you).

Here’s the sinister connection between the two: Both are members of the Rockefeller founded Trilateral Commission.  In fact, Mario Monti is the current European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission!

The Trilateral Commission was founded by David Rockefeller in 1973.  The official goal is to foster economic and political co-operation between Japan, North American countries and European countries (notice these are the regions that are currently in big economic trouble).

In 2000, the Japan membership was expanded to include many other Asian countries, and is now called the Pacific Asia Group.

The appointment of Mario Monti as Italian PM, and Lucas Papademos as Greek PM, violates a Trilateral rule.  The rule says no official member of the commission can hold public office  (I don’t think they actually enforce that rule).

Former Republican U.S. Senator, Barry Goldwater, said the Trilateral Commission is “…a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical…[in] the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation states involved.”

In 1975 a report was made for the Trilateral Commission. It was called: The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies.  The report criticized Democracy because the “…impulse of democracy is to make government less powerful and more active, to increase its functions, and to decrease its authority.” It also said the problem with the United States was that it had “…an excess of Democracy.” (looks like they’ve succeeded in turning that around)

Noam Chomsky said the report was “…the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite.”

Currently there are several credible conspiracy theorists who claim the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. were part of a Trilateral plot to take over the governments of the Western world.

If the appointment of two current members of the Trilateral Commission to the positions of Prime Ministers (in supposed violation of the Commission’s own rules) isn’t enough to convince you of a sinister plot to create a one world government (at least a one Western world government), then I don’t know what will.

 

 

 

U.S.

Ron Paul says Barack Obama’s inaction is the result of his ignorance, inaction is intentional default mode of our government, office of President now closer to becoming a dictatorship

Ron Paul posted on his RonPaul.com site that President Barack Obama’s seeming inability to get anything done is a result of Obama’s ignorance for how our government works.

Paul says the founders of this country meant for it to be that way, they didn’t want any one person to wield too much power: “Getting something done is proving to be a monumental task. This may be news to the supposed constitutional scholar who is now our president, but if the political process seems inconvenient to the implementation of his agenda, that is not a flaw in the system.   It was designed that way.  The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of government to be inaction.”

Paul also states that our Federal government was never meant to get big: “The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government.”

Ron Paul says President Obama’s use of Executive Orders has gone past Constitutional rules, pushing the office of the President even closer to becoming a dictatorship:  “Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation… …Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.”

The same can be said of the President’s increased use of the War Powers Act to go to war without Congress declaring war, but, Obama is not the first President to do so.  In fact, Ron Paul blames Obama’s predecessors as well: “Sadly, previous administrations have set precedents that the current administration is only building upon.”


International, Technology

Government Incompetence: Inspectors screw up approval of nuclear fuel rods

The Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization admitted it allowed nuclear fuel rods to pass quality checks using a faulty factory manual.

Government inspectors used the manufacture’s manual to inspect four sets of fuel rods.  They approved three of the sets.  The problem is that the approved sets did not match up with the length stated in the manual.  The rods were four meters (13 feet) long, the manual said they should have been 5 centimeters shorter.

Government officials say they will correct future inspections.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Overwhelming majority of people say the U.S. is doomed, Congress blocks Jobs Bill, Nobel Prize winning economists say we are screwed

On the night of October 11, the U.S. Senate blocked President Obama’s proposed Jobs creation bill.

In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 74% of people says the United States is going in the wrong direction.  32% said the economy will get worse.  45% said it will stay the same.

On October 11, the CBS Early Show interviewed two Noble prize winning U.S. economists.  They asked them what could be done to give the U.S. economy “a boost”.  There was a long pause before one tried to give an answer: “Ah, that’s a very difficult question to answer. There’s a lot of uncertainty now, both in Europe and the United States, about what future government policy is going to be. Um, and probably the best thing politicians can do is, um, quickly reach compromises, um, and have coherent plans going forward…”-Thomas Sergant, Nobel winning economist

Basically he said it’s completely, totally, up to our government!  Can you say we’re screwed?

The other Nobel prize winning economist, Christopher Sims, basically blamed the whole situation on the government.  Watch the CBS interview.

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Job Stimulus? Nearly half a million more people will lose their jobs! Just the beginning, more to come

Any job stimulus bill that gets passed by U.S. Congress will be much too little much too late.  That’s because the upcoming, publicly announced, layoffs will shut down nearly half a million jobs!

Chicago based Gray & Christmas Incorporated added up all the publicly announced future job layoffs, and it came to 480,000 jobs.  70% of those job cuts involve Bank of America and the U.S. Army.

Analysts say we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, not all layoffs are publicly announced in advance: “Bank of America is not the only bank still struggling in the wake of the housing collapse, and the military cutbacks are probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to federal spending cuts.”-John A. Challenger, CEO of Gray & Christmas

According to the Bloomberg article, it’s the biggest cuts in jobs in the past two years. A 212% increase from September 2010!

And don’t forget the intentional destruction of the U.S. Postal Service, by the U.S. Congress.  Happy upcoming Holidays!