Category Archives: Government

Stuff you may or may not know about your local, state, and federal government

Government

We Pay These People?

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Does anyone wonder if politicians are  sneaky and underhanded?  That’s a rhetorical question…

Let’s first look at a hypothetical situation.  Imagine that you went into a car dealership to buy a brand new car.  You haggled back and forth with the salesman to get the deal you wanted on that shiny new car, optioned just the way you wanted it, and with the right finance terms.  Just as you were about to sign the paperwork the salesman says to you, “You’re getting quite the deal on your new leather sofa”.  What?!?!

This is exactly how our elected officials operate!  This no joke. You can look up the history of California Assembly Bill 156 in 2015-2016 to see this process in action.

Assembly Bill 156 started as a Global Warming bill to subsidize communities affected by the Climate Change Act of 2006. The bill was introduced in Jan 2015 and started through the legislative process. AB-156 passed through several committees, in both the assembly and the senate, with minor amendments to get the approval of the committees.   Supposedly a bill as it passes through each committee, is scrutinized, discussed, amended as necessary to obtain consensus, approved, and then moved on to the next committee.  In August after all the WORK on the bill (read, money spent on the approval process), ALL, and I do mean ALL, of the wording in the bill was lined out and new words were substituted. Every single word was replaced!  Even though all the original words were replaced, this action was TREATED AS JUST AN AMENDMENT and all the previous committee reviews were considered completed and approved.  This hijacked bill was up for consideration as a new law.  What did the AB-156 become you might ask?  It is now all about ammunition purchases.   Global warming and ammunition purchases, yeah they’re as similar to each other as a car is to a sofa!

Here’s just the title straight from the current version compared to bill as it was introduced in Janunary 2015.

“AB 156, as amended, Perea McCarty. California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006: disadvantaged communities. Ammunition.”

There are all sorts of expressions such as pulling the wool over someone’s eyes.  Deceitful is the best word to describe how politicians operate.  And today I’m not talking about Hillybob and all her “short circuits”.  Every California State senator and assemblyman is paid $100,000 each year for these shenanigans.  What a country!

Here’s a link to the bill if you want to see for yourself what PAID politicians are doing for (to?) you.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/ab_156_bill_20160504_amended_sen_v91.pdf

There’s a term for all this.  BOHICA!  Bend Over, Here It Comes Again…

Business, Finance, Government

Stock Market Insanity, Part 1

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The Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, needs to immediately get rid of “shorting” and “high frequency trading”.

Today in Part 1 I’ll go over why we need to get rid of stock shorting.

What is a short? Plain and simple, a short is a BET that a company’s stock price will go down.

Let’s take a look at how this works.  A gambler (I refuse to call them an investor) sells a stock which he doesn’t own at market price.  Let’s say $100 as an example.  If the stock goes down, let’s say to $80 in this example, he buys the shares and then gives the stock shares to the person who bought them for $100.  He makes $20 on the deal.  Winner!  Now the strange part in all this is that the short gambler never actually owns the shares that are traded.  He just makes profit on the share price drop.  How is it that he never owns the shares?  A short is done in cooperation with a brokerage house that “loans” him the shares on the initial sale (the $100 sale in our example).  The repurchase (at $80) which is done by the brokerage house is payback to cover the “loan”.  Notice the the gambler never touches the shares.  The brokerage firm (big Wall Street that Senator Sanders complains about) is supposed to have the shares which are in reality owned by their clients.  Again in an oddity of shorts the real owners of the shares never know that their shares have been sold (“loaned” for the bet) and will be restocked at some later date.  And in yet one more oddity, the shares sold may not exist at the brokerage firm when sold which is a naked short.  In a naked short the brokerage firm “bets” that the short gambler will cover the bet with “real” shares before they get called to actually deliver the shares.

Is this lunacy?  How is this investing?  This is just GAMBLING!

Okay, you’ll hear from the SEC as well as the stock gamblers, that shorts allow for market liquidity and efficiency.  Those are fancy terms that mean lots of ups and downs in share prices.  Gamblers want market swings because that’s where they make their money.  It’s not about “investing” money into well run companies.  It’s about making money on churning money.

The SEC is two-faced on their position about shorts.  They claim that in all their studies there is no relationship between shorts and market downturns.  Strangely they have a rule in place that limits downward slides when short sales contribute to a down movement of 10% or more which seems to be their threshold of pain for “no relationship”.  They also eliminated the “uptick” rule in 2007.  The uptick rule was that you could only short after and upward price movement of a stock.  What is significant about 2007?  Golly there was this meltdown of the market right after that in 2008.  The Great Recession as it’s been called.

Many analysts have concluded that shorts and margins were a couple of major factors that caused the Great Depression in 1929.  Hmmm…

The SEC has the power to stop this insanity but won’t.  And why not?  Money talks.  Follow the money.  Shorts are a mechanism to hedge your bet on market downturns. (Did I say hedge?  Hedge fund?  Any connection?)  Big traders, big brokerages, hedge funds all make money using shorts.

As I heard a stock broker at a large Wall Street firm  once say, “If it wasn’t for the fact that we wear $3000 suits, we’d all be arrested as bookies”.

Government, Politics

Classified Documents Revealed

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Nothing here is classified. What I will reveal is little known information (by the general public) about how classified documents are created. Once you understand this process you’ll understand that FBI Director James Comey came to the wrong conclusion.

Documents are classified to protect our nation. There are three defined levels of classification, CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET. There are levels of classification beyond Top Secret known as Special Access. Access to ALL classified documents is by a “need to know” basis only.  There are penalties, including fines and imprisonment, for the mishandling of classified information.

Classified information can ONLY be created by the Original Classification Authority (OCA), which is The President of The United States. The President can legally grant OCA powers to other individuals. An OCA designee would be an EXPERT in understanding the classification process. Anyone who works with classified information and is not an OCA can only create DERIVED classified documents.

Who are designated OCAs? That is a very simple question to answer. President Obama issued Executive Order 13526 on 29 December 2009 of his presidency listing who he has granted OCA power to. In EO-13526, section 1.3 “Classification Authority” paragraph a-2, we can see that Agency Heads are given OCA powers. This includes THE SECRETARY OF STATE. If you read further in the document the Secretary of State is given SPECIFIC additional powers to determine extending DECLASSIFICATION dates.

How do we know that an OCA designee is an EXPERT? Read section 1.3 paragraph d., “All original classification authorities must receive training in proper classification (including the avoidance of over-classification) and declassification as provided in this order and its implementing directives at least once a calendar year.”  The paragraph describes in detail what this training requires of the OCA designee.  Every year the OCA designees MUST undergo training on the classification process and they certify that they have both taken the training and understand the material.

FBI Director James Comey stated that he did not bring charges against then Secretary of State Clinton because he believed she did not understand nor could she recognize what constituted classified information and documents!!! I believe the term Director Comey used was “not sophisticated enough”.  His conclusion about her guilt begs the question, does Director Comey himself understand the classification process?

Here’s a link to EO-13526 http://www.archives.gov/about/laws/appendix/13526.html