Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (256652)	6/24/2010 11:51:45 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Poor bastard. I can not get one to STFU.-g-

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (256652)	6/25/2010 12:18:56 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 306849

Retarded Milwaukee 'supervisor' says Arizona is not a border state County Board Delays Vote on Arizona Boycott By Jon Byman 06/24/2010 todaystmj4.com MILWAUKEE - The Milwaukee County Board spent part of the day debating a measure that would call for the county to boycott doing business with companies in Arizona. , , , There was an odd moment during the debate when Supervisor Peggy West stood up and seemed to be confused about her geography. "If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this. But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border," West said during debate. Her colleague, Joe Rice, quickly corrected her, "I just want to assure my colleague that Arizona does in fact share a border with the country of Mexico." While speaking at the meeting, West did go on to talk about National Guard troops on the border in Arizona. West points to that as she tells us that she simply misspoke. "I did get a passing grade in Geography in high school and in college and I do obviously know that Arizona is on the border," West said in an interview after today's meeting. West claims that the point she was trying to make is that because Texas has a much larger border with Mexico, she might feel differently about such a law in that state. "Had Texas come out with the legislation, having the largest border, I think that I would be more receptive to the fact that there was a problem. But having it be Arizona, having it be the second largest boarder and knowing there are troops on the border in Arizona, it didn't seem to me that this legislation was particularly necessary at this moment in time," West said. The board sent the measure back to a committee, taking no action on it today. Click the video link to see raw video of Supervisor West's comments followed by the comments from her colleague, Joe Rice.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (256652)	6/26/2010 2:38:34 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Disgraced Fannie Mae deep in carbon scheme Mortgage giant set to collect millions marketing homeowners' energy savings June 25, 2010 By Jerome R. Corsi wnd.com With the Obama administration pushing for cap-and-trade legislation, former Clinton and Obama adviser Franklin Raines has positioned the government-sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae to make millions by selling carbon credits from American homes. Two patents applied for by Raines as one of several "co-inventors" – Nos. 6904336 and 7133750 – create a "method for identifying, quantifying, and aggregating reductions in residential emissions into a tradable commodity." The patents are identically titled "System and Method for Residential Emissions Trading." Be the first to see the full documentation of how your life could be changed by climate-related laws, taxes and regulations, in "Climategate" The idea appears to be for Fannie Mae to create "Collateralized Carbon Obligations," or CCOs, by utilizing a methodology similar to its system for combining individual home loans into Collateralized Loan Obligations, or CLOs. The patents give Fannie Mae the methods for identifying and measuring energy savings in homes that can be packaged and sold to carbon polluters as credits on a carbon exchange. Instead of selling the Collateralized Loan Obligations to institutional investors, including financial institutions and banks, the energy savings in thousands of U.S. homes would be packaged by Fannie Mae and sold as Collateralized Carbon Obligations on a carbon exchange, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange. The buyers would be carbon emitters who emit so much carbon dioxide they are required to buy carbon offset credits. Fannie Mae owns patents WND reported Raines and Fannie Mae have both stated in e-mails that Raines has no ownership of the two carbon emission patents he filed as "inventor" while he was CEO of the government-sponsored mortgage giant. "Mr. Raines has no continuing interest in any patent for residential carbon emissions," Corrine Russell, a spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Financing Agency, the new regulatory agency now overseeing Fannie Mae, concurred in an e-mail to WND. By obtaining the patents, Fannie Mae has effectively blocked others, including Wall Street investment banks, from utilizing the methodology without compensating Fannie Mae, explained Joshua D. Isenberg, a patent and trademark attorney in Fremont, Calif., who is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "In effect, Fannie Mae has cornered the market for aggregating carbon credits from U.S. homes," said Isenberg in telephone interview with WND. "A patent typically becomes a business tool that excludes others, including big players, from asserting their right to the invention." Isenberg explained that obtaining the patents on household carbon emissions effectively puts Fannie Mae into the position of "Let's make a deal." Rights to energy savings in your home? How would Fannie Mae obtain the carbon credits from American homes? The patents appear to explain that Fannie Mae will identify and measure energy savings in residential households that can be "quantified as an emissions reduction" and "aggregated into a tradable commodity." The patents authorize Fannie Mae to create either "a system" or "a computer-implemented method" for converting household energy savings into tradable credits. The patents discuss "replacing older appliances with more energy efficient appliances; upgrading hot water heating systems; upgrading heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems; modifying lightening; fuel switching and renovating the entire home." The patents further explain that appliance upgrades "may include, but are not limited to: refrigerators; stoves and ovens; clothes washers and dryers; and dishwaters." Improving hot water heating systems for showers, baths and other household uses "may result in substantial energy savings," the patent explains, noting "an oil-fired boiler might be replaced with a natural gas hot water heating systems." The patents also recommend that homeowners participating in the program should consider "installing insulating insulation in attics and exterior walls; installing more efficient windows; and reducing infiltration." Once Fannie Mae establishes an energy baseline on a home, the patents describe a methodology in which regulators can measure on-going energy use through the installation of new meters and by regulators visiting homes as part of Fannie Mae-specified field monitoring. Nowhere in the patents is there any discussion of compensating homeowners for making the energy improvements or for sharing with homeowners any of the revenue Fannie Mae might derive from packaging their energy savings as carbon credits to be sold on a carbon exchange to carbon polluters. Nor do the patents discuss financial or legal repercussions Fannie Mae might take on homeowners who "default" on energy savings that it identified in their homes, quantified and packaged into tradable carbon credit commodities. In addition to Fannie Mae, the two patents are also assigned to Cantor CO2e, a spin-off subsidiary of Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald that reflects the participation of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Carlton Bartels as a "co-inventor" in the original development of the household carbon emissions patent idea. After Carlton Bartels was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack, his wife, Jane Bartels, took legal ownership of his property interests in the patents. Cantor CO2e is currently listed as an "offset aggregator" on the Chicago Climate Exchange, suggesting the company could cooperate with Fannie Mae utilizing the Franklin Raines-filed patents to combine household energy credits to be sold as tradable carbon-credit commodities on the CCX. Robert Hubbell, managing director of global communications and marketing for Cantor Fitzgerald, told WND the Patent Office lists both Fannie Mae and CantorCO2 as owners. He said Cantor has no involvement with Raines, and his company has no working relationship with Fannie Mae to implement or use the patents. A letter sent May 25 by Fannie Mae general counsel Alfred M. Pollard to Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jason Chaffetz, R- Utah, of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, explains that Fannie Mae is not using the first patent nor has it earned any revenue on it. In her e-mail to WND, Corinne Russell of the FHFA claimed Fannie Mae sent a similar letter to Issa and Chaffetz in June, denying Fannie Mae had used or was earning any revenue on the second patent. Russell did not respond to WND's questions asking whether FHFA or Fannie Mae would deny categorically that Fannie Mae would ever implement the household carbon emissions programs specified in the patents, or whether Fannie Mae would consider assigning the household carbon emission patent rights to another government agency for implementation. Russell also did not respond to WND inquiries about the percentage of ownership interest in the two patents that was assigned to Cantor CO2e or to a request to define the working relationship, if any, between Fannie Mae and CO2e.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (256652)	6/26/2010 9:50:37 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Inside the Black Panther case Anger, ignorance and lies By J Christian Adams June 25, 2010 washingtontimes.com On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case. The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney. The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam. Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo. The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal. Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina. Mr. Perez also inaccurately testified to the House Judiciary Committee that federal "Rule 11" required the dismissal of the lawsuit. Lawyers know that Rule 11 is an ethical obligation to bring only meritorious claims, and such a charge by Mr. Perez effectively challenges the ethics and professionalism of the five attorneys who commenced the case. Yet the attorneys who brought the case were voting rights experts and would never pursue a frivolous matter. Their experience in election law far surpassed the experience of the officials who ordered the dismissal. Some have called the actions in Philadelphia an isolated incident, not worthy of federal attention. To the contrary, the Black Panthers in October 2008 announced a nationwide deployment for the election. We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. In any event, the law clearly prohibits even isolated incidents of voter intimidation. Others have falsely claimed that no voters were affected. Not only did the evidence rebut this claim, but the law does not require a successful effort to intimidate; it punishes even the attempt. Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases. Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section. Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed. J. Christian Adams is a lawyer based in Virginia who served as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department until this month.