A Con On Top Of Another Con?

For God's sakes....when will it stop?  I just read that mortgage brokers or going to become credit counselors.  Now, these are the same mortgage brokers that conned all of those home owners into the those sub prime mortgages that are causing them all of these problems?  Now you've got these con men going after the same people they scammed before.  What?  They didn't get enough of their money before?  I guess these con artists are going to keep going until they get every single penny the poor homeowner victim has, huh?  Or, maybe not.  Maybe these con artists (i.e. mortgage brokers/credit counselors) will keep the victim "alive" enough to keep their cash cow viable.  Are these guys now going to go into the credit counseling business, muddy up the water so much that when they victimize more people it will still be hard to determine who is at fault, who did what, etc.?  I'll bet my money that they will.  After all, they did it to the mortgage industry. 

I think that ANYONE who built their mortgage brokerage business primarily on selling sub prime loans should be forbidden from doing ANYTHING in the financial arena and forced to work for minimum wage in the fast food industry.

The Stupid Cow

Do you remember when you were in grade school you had that one classmate that would be the one to constantly run to the teacher to tell about something another classmate did? Well, that is The Stupid Cow in my workplace. I previously explained who The Stupid Cow was in my blog about The Estrogen Club.

The difference between that tattle-tailer classmate and The Stupid Cow is that the classmate didn't go running around to the others within their clique and tell them what they found that someone did "wrong" or offended them. The Stupid Cow does.

I just witnessed The Stupid Cow bitch and complain about something that The Stupid Cow perceived as being offensive to them. The Stupid Cow (I will refer to them as TSC from now on) made a point of going out of their way to tell The Hen (TH) and Miss Piggy (MP) all about it. TSC then proceeded to spend an hour bitching and complaining to another executive about the whole situation. Essentially, backstabbing the one person whose nature is not to offend and makes every attempt to work with everyone. This person has gone out of their way numerous times to help TSC out.

What was the offense? Well, the person (I will refer to them as The Victim) did nothing more then go into TSC's department to look up some information about a specific job that was stored company files that were in TSC's department. What was offensive was that The Victim did NOT ask if she could look in the COMPANY files, didn't fully explain what she needed and why, didn't give TSC the full scoop of what was going on. Never mind that The Victim was well within her job-rights and responsibility to access those files without having to ask permission (the file contents are NOT under any confidentially rule or such...the files are stored as back-up and for reference).

Interestingly, ALL of the members of the Estrogen Club feel and act as if they run the company. They manipulate, arrange, or do whatever it takes for the executives to believe ONLY what they tell them. Using whatever means they can. And the executives are too stupid to see any pattern or verify that they are running with valid information.

I pray every day that if there is a God that these people get everything they have coming to them. I just hope it happens before they destroy too many other people's careers or job paths.

WHAT COSTS MORE PER YEAR THAN THE IRAQ WAR?

Illegal Aliens Cause Massive Cuts For US Seniors (http://rense.com/general79/seniors.htm)

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL's for verification of the following

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report.http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12. The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States".http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

Total cost is a whooping... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

If this doesn't bother you then just ignore this blog, but on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, then let others know about it.

Snopes is provided for doubters:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp

Social Security Change For 2008

The United States Senate voted to extend Social Security Benefits to Illegal Aliens beginning in 2008. The following are the senatorswho voted to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits. They are grouped by home state. If a state is not listed, there was no voting representative.

Alaska: Stevens (R)
Arizona: McCain (R)
Arkansas: Lincoln (D) Pryor (D)
California: Boxer (D) Feinstein (D)
Colorado: Salazar (D)
Connecticut: Dodd (D) Lieberman (D)
Delaware: Biden (D) Carper (D)
Florida: Martinez (R)
Hawaii: Akaka (D) Inouye (D)
Illinois: Durbin (D) Obama (D)
Indiana: Bayh (D) Lugar (R)
Iowa: Harkin (D)
Kansas: Brownback (R)
Louisiana: Landrieu (D)
Maryland: Mikulski (D) Sarbanes (D)
Massachusetts: Kennedy (D) Kerry (D)
Montana: Baucus (D)
Nebraska: Hagel (R)
Nevada: Reid (D)
New Jersey: Lautenberg (D) Menendez (D)
New Mexico: Bingaman (D)
New York: Clinton (D) Schumer (D)
North Dakota: Dorgan (D)
Ohio: DeWine (R) Voinovich(R)
Oregon: Wyden (D)
Pennsylvania: Specter (R)
Rhode Island: Chafee (R) Reed (D)
South Carolina: Graham (R)
South Dakota: Johnson (D)
Vermont: Jeffords (I) Leahy (D)
Washington: Cantwell (D) Murray (D)
West Virginia: Rockefeller (D), by Not Voting
Wisconsin: Feingold (D) Kohl (D)

(note there are 9 Republicans, including Presidential candidate McCain!)

TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW. THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION, UNLESS THEY DON'T MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH FOREIGN WORKERS who didn't pay in a dime.

I emboldened 3 senator's names because...they are running for President of the United States!

Your Life For The Almighty Dollar

Have you heard?  The Red Light Cameras are working TOO well.  The cameras were meant to stop people from running red light.  Well, now it seems that drivers are taking heed of those cameras as drive more carefully and don't run red lights.  That is what was told to the public by the Fat Cat Politicians who were promoting the traffic light cameras as others who were concerned about the abuse of those cameras opposed their use.

According to MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23710970/), drivers are so careful now that the municipalities are not getting enough money from fines from tickets given to drivers for running those red lights.  But a federal study found a small but measurable reduction in injuries nationwide in accidents at intersections monitored by cameras.  You would think that this would be fantastic news for the municipal officials because their intersections are now safer and the potential for people to get hurt decreases.  Nope.  They find other studies that show the cameras are not as beneficial for safety as previously thought.  But the truth be known it is a case of money.  With less money collected from tickets the cash cow, the one they said didn't exist nor was the purpose of the cameras for collecting money.  So, what are they going to do?  They are going to shut down the cameras...again citing safety concerns, but the real truth is that they can no longer fleece any money from drivers. 

City officials in Charlotte and Fayetteville, N.C., recently turned off all of their red light cameras, concluding that a state law diverting much of the revenue they generate in fines to schools meant their general funds were actually losing money and in Bolingbrook, Ill., officials ended their red light camera program after statistics showed a 40 percent drop in ticketable offenses.

So, the Fat Cat municipal officials could care less if you live or die...just leave them your money.  That's ALL they care about. Because as long as they could get money out of you, they fought tooth and nail to get to put up the cameras.  Now that they're not able to get your money, they are shutting them down.  When they wanted them up they cited safety issues, now that they want to shut them down they are citing safety issues.  The fact is that they fought for the cameras when they thought they were a cash cow....and now that they aren't, they don't care for them.

 

Let's Just Crap on the Little Guy...We Got Ours!

I read an interesting news story today.  It had to do with the on-going saga of Bear Stearns and their debacle.  It seems that while the executives were propping up their companies stock value with the scams from the sub prime mortgage loans, they themselves were taking in large amounts of money in forms of compensation and bonuses for the great job they were doing with the sub prime loans.  Over five years, from 2002 through 2006, Chairman Cayne took home total compensation — salary, bonus, restricted stock, and stock options — worth a combined $156 million. Current CEO Schwartz made $141 million. Former Co-President Warren Spector, deposed after the hedge fund debacle, did the best of them all, reaping $168 million. From 2002 through 2005, Bear Stearns proxy statements show that Cayne and his lieutenants, Schwartz and Spector, took home bonuses of between $9 million and $12 million each.

And the executives weren't stupid.  In 2006 they eliminated the nine metrics for bonuses and moved to basing them entirely on one measure — return on equity, a number easily met by Bear's executives once they were on the sub prime bandwagon. Cash bonuses jumped to more than $16 million for Cayne, Schwartz, and Spector in 2006. So, while they their compensation went up based on "good" performance, there are no clauses calling for the return of Bear executive bonuses if their previous performance was deemed bogus or their compensation does not get reduced based on bad performance. Cayne, Schwartz, and Spector will get to keep their money, a circumstance decried by the Corporate Library. "If you don't have callbacks," said Corporate Library's Nell Minow, "it perpetuates a musical-chairs culture where you hope your check clears before the music stops."

Who gets hurt?  Bear's biggest shareholders. Money manager Barrow Hanley Mewhinney & Strauss, owner of 11.5 million shares, and investor Joe Lewis, with 11 million, can only smart over their enormous losses — and hope that the company winds up fetching more than $2 a share. But they don't care about the other people that will get hurt...the employees of Bear Stearns.  Even though the employees owned about 1/3 of the outstanding shares, they never received anything close to the compensation packages the executives did.  Everyone else will move forward and life will go on for them, but the employees that get laid off...they will need to figure out how they are going to live until they find another job.  After all, they didn't make millions scamming the shareholders and others. 

But if justice REALLY exists, all of the executives should have ALL of their wealth taken away (after all they acquired it through scams and deceit) and be forced to work at minimum paying jobs for the foreseeable future.  Because after everything is said and done, they really don't care.  They got theirs.  They don't have to worry about being thrown out on the street.  They don't need to worrying how they are going to put food on the table (how much better can the executives and their families eat with over $150 million?).  I can't think of anything that could be bad enough to happen to those executives.  But then they have enough money to buy whatever kind of justice they want.

The Hypocrisy of the Workplace

Has anyone else noticed that there is a hypocrisy in their workplace or is it just mine?  I just watch certain situations where the current person in a position gets all of these special dispensations to their errors, miscalculations, and general faux pas.  Yet, when I remember their predecessor and how every little minor error (i.e. they signed an authorization in the wrong place, they miscalculated a timeline by a day or so, etc.) got blown up by certain people and "reported" to top management. 

Now, the current person in the same position miscalculated by weeks, doesn't even sign authorizations sometimes (they say they forgot), etc. and no one says a word.  Why is this?  It could be that the current person is liked by all of the others and is part of that special clique.  I guess it's true....it's not what you know, but who you know.  And the person you know doesn't even have to be placed that high up, they just have to have a big mouth.  You get enough of these type of people behind you and you can ruin anyone else and get what you want (not necessarily what you deserve) while getting rid of those you feel stand in your way.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

On Friday, Bear Stearns was on the verge of collapse (read about it here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23638138/).  Their competitor, JP Morgan, will be buying them out.  Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost.  It makes one wonder if the right people and businesses are paying the price for the scam, called sub-prime loans, that was foisted on the public.  Oh, yes...the people that are currently in default got into homes that normally they wouldn't even be able to afford to even look at.  But someone had to have told and assured them that they could afford them.  Someone had to have told them that they would be able to come out ahead...be richer for it in the future, or at least not be damaged by this scam.  Yes, people bought into it...but when dfo you stop blaming the victim of the con job?  Yes, it was a con job.  People were enticed and manipulated using the 3 key focus points that all con jobs and advertisements have in common:

1.  Make offers appealing to people's greed.
2.  Make offers appealing to people's ego.
3.  Make offers appealing to people's fear of loss.

The sub-prime loan was a purely manipulative con job.  Someone was going to get burned.  After all, how long and far could home prices go up?  But the people who came up with this con were not the ones that were going to be on the losing end.  Con artists generally don't.  Now who might these people be that were the sole winners in the sub-prime scam?  Follow the money.  Who gained the most from it?  Don't stop at the actual business entity...a business entity does NOT make any decisions or take actions on its own.  Someone there had to make the decision and put things into action.  Look through the news archives and find out who was the BIGGEST proponent/champion for the sub-prime loans.  Who gained the most and lost the least?  I think that if you follow the money you may be surprised.  None of the governemnt regulators are interested in getting to the bottom of the con.  And the politicians are only interested in getting re-elected.