Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

I hear the sound of a large “whoosh!” as things that sustain life are sucked out of the ethical unwealthy and siphoned into the shareholders by smart, and opportunistic private equity investors.

The poor used to be warehoused in HUD tenements (projects, right?), Ms. Fitts relates, but once the equity is sucked out of them, taxpayers can’t fork it over any more, and so here comes Privatized Prisons (CCA, etc.).  You KNOW at some level, right, this is the truth?  When I started seeing this?  I simply looked up the wealthiest Congresspeople in 2008 and where that wealth came from.  I saw Corrections Corporation of America (out of Nashville).   The Obama’s wealth was also listed and if you look closely, this involves real estate, including some projects, in Chicago.  HOW do we really think people get into politics and office?

THE HUD DEVELOPMENT GAME IS BEING REPLACED IN PART BY A PRISON PRIVATISATION AND DEVELOPMENT GAME THAT WAREHOUSES THE SAME FOLKS IN PRISONS…

We need to understand just how, and why, the “Rule of Law” is a Myth, and the Real Rules in Operation are simply How to Do a Financial Coup d’etat.

Now I see the signs of financial holocaust through the eyes of people who are being destroyed. Their currency is debased. Their children are targets of both “legal” and “illegal” drug trafficking and are condemned to learn in dumbed- down schools. Their small business equity is being extracted from under them. It is they who are carrying the burden of taxes without the benefits that government investment is supposed to provide. The cruel twist is that citizens are funding the financial ruin that is killing them and their children.

Now I understand the process by which the rich get rich and the poor get exhausted

My three years on this blog plus just observation of life pretty much led me to the same conclusion.  Not knowing this resource (yet), I posted (herein) that the for profit/nonprofit system was PER SE creating a caste system.  That was simply the truth.  I also had ample experience with nonprofits, i.e., seeking assistance from several of them.  Now I have better language to describe it, and some more “case histories” to demonstrate the matter.

FYI I still have not solved this problem.  I still have major economic struggles, no assets, a destroyed job history and a destroyed social support system (particularly since I quit using on-line groups for an emotional crutch, and/or trying to argue some sense into them.

How money works is not only essential to know — it’s interesting.  And it’s the current landscape – it’s here.  You might as well learn about it.  FAST!

Please take time to work through at least some of this material by Ms. Fitts and then keep your eyes opened.  The quote above is from “The Myth of the Rule of Law” — an elegant, and well-formatted 27page read.  Here’s the intro:

Note from CAF: This post was originally published here in February of 2009. In light of recent events,  I am republishing.]

By Catherine Austin Fitts

In the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment conference in London to give a paper, The Myth of the Rule of Law or How the Money Works: The Destruction of Hamilton Securities Group.

The presentation documented my experience with a Washington-Wall Street partnership that had:

• Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;
• Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
• Used “privitization” as a form of piracy – a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder.

Other presenters at the conference included distinguished reporters covering privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia. As the portraits of British ancestors stared down upon us, we listened to story after story of global privatization throughout the 1990s in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Slowly, as the pieces fit together, we shared a horrifying epiphany: the banks, corporations and investors acting in each global region were the exact same players. They were a relatively small group that reappeared again and again in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia accompanied by the same well-known accounting firms and law firms.

Clearly, there was a global financial coup d’etat underway. The magnitude of what was happening was overwhelming. In the 1990′s,

millions of people in Russia had woken up to find their bank accounts and pension funds simply gone – eradicated by a falling currency or stolen by mobsters who laundered money back into big New York Fed member banks for reinvestment to fuel the debt bubble.

Reports of politicians, government officials, academics, and intelligence agencies facilitating the racketeering and theft were compelling.

Ms. Fitts’ firm Hamilton Securities was targeted — she was targeted and almost destroyed.  A simple software program (I don’t know HOW simple) that connected the dots of HUD Frauds (or defaults) to PLACE — which then also revealed where the crime was happening — was called Community Wizard.  Her ideas for turning around drug-riddled neighborhood and keeping capital LOCAL seems to me were good ones.  They were also rejected.

On page 18 of the (above-linked “myth” document) — I got my validation from a top financial expert — and again, pretty close to the first time I had CAFRs explained to me (meaning, I read a blog or two and looked at some samples), it made sense.  I also realized that these were maps // diagrams — better than my narratives.  I then began reporting & publicizing it and next thing you know, I’m put off a forum of a city in Lackawanna County PA (where the FBI had raided the courthouse, and which city was going bankrupt), and told by the moderator to keep my nose out of the NON-family court thread, but not before I’d started a topic on CAFRs and literally dug up Scranton’s (which had been named kind of strangely on their business admin site).  Eventually I was bounced off the forum, which was fine by me — more free time for people who give a damn.

I POINTED OUT THE DANGED CAFRss.  Look at this, from p. 18:

That was one of the reasons I turned down the opportunity to serve at the Federal Reserve and instead started Hamilton upon leaving the Bush Administration. It was the reason why we at Hamilton built Community Wizard. The Community Wizard made it possible for anyone to put together a sources and uses statement for government activities (taxes, time use, spend- ing, credit, regulation, operations, and more) in their community. An easy step was just linking to the Consolidated Financial Reports (CAFRS). The shock of finding so much in the way of hidden assets and where the money was really going was always a pleasure to watch. Why should the finance committee chairmen of the political campaigns be the only ones to see the information on how the money works by place?

Luis Mendez, one of my partners at Dillon Read, visited me in Washington in 1996. He said that Wizard was a stupid idea, that would not work. Things were hopeless, he said. I showed Luis a printout of the CAFR for his community of Bronxville, New York. When he saw the figures, he exploded in rage. The first item was $4 million of flood insurance. This was the worst form of corruption, Luis said. Apparently, Bronxville was on a hill. The next day Luis spent two hours on the phone with the Deputy Mayor of Bronxville going through each item and informing him this was all going to stop. Apparently, things were far from hopeless, once one had the information. It just took one good map to see how to fix thousands of little things, one at a time

What Human Behavior can the UnWealthy Change to Quit enabling this Consolidation

Our Human Behavior — How Can We Change it to Counter this Consolidation of Wealth?

Instead of complaining about how corporations think and act, how about thinking and acting more, as individuals, about the “corpus” of our money?

When we give it up to others (including through wages) to pool, invest, and sell– is it out of sight, out of mind?  Where, really and to what purposes, are we putting it?

We essentially are saying, too many of us– I am not smart enough to invest and manage my own income.  In exchange for HOPE, including HOPE of some job security now, I will let you manage it, for which privilege, you will get from me the primary hours and energy of my days, and the prime years of my life, to help make widgets, or highly technical improvements to make society whirr and hum better (depending on what type of job we work), and I myself will gain a resume and some job skills.

This is very stressful, sometimes (although many of us love our work, and I still believe people are happier when they are engaged in productive work that has some meaning to it, and to them).

To relieve this stress then, when we are not working, we will participate in our local 501(c)3 community of faith and give more volunteer hours, warm bodies, tithes or support, sales for its products (books, downloadable), help recruit others, and receive in return some teaching on a book (we are not good readers, teach it to us, brother!) – and warm social connections around shared values, a few of which I just listed in this paragraph.  Many need an outlet to counter the  work week, and a sense of meaning in their life which may or may not come from work.  Others, who may work in leadership, like managing (or controlling, and sometimes abusing) indoctrination-ready people and expanding personal businesses (which participation in most faith corporations often entails supporting) — plus the government grants is a nice perk too, thank you GWB/2001 executive order!.

OTHERS who do not attend, subscribe or believe, may indeed be simply staying home and tending their own business (home, any land, children, clothes, food cooking, etc.) — or they will also be out patronizing other businesses, including businesses which arose around the fact that most people are working jobs, and fewer are running business; fewer yet are buying and selling those same businesses for serious profits, and while many people INVEST, I’m going to speculate that the majority of Americans do not understand investments, or how to manage their own. For one, they tend not to have much left TO invest — as a good chunk of their earnings is invested for their future retirements, and pension funds, etc. — which are as good as government, and as good as what those are invested in.

WHAT OTHER HUMAN BEHAVIORS DO WE HAVE, WHICH BENEFIT OTHER PROFITEERS?

Through ongoing taxes, we are told to and do pay for our local officials who do this, including judges, police officers, CPS, Child Support Enforcement Personnel, JAILS, jailors, bailiffs, leasing or owning the real estate in which judgements take place (i.e., who ever looked up who owned the local buildings where judgment takes place, and its costs?  I did this in Lackawanna County, PA — fascinating….).  This list is endless, and never researched or understood by most.

We also then send our kids to schools run by the same entity, essentially, government, to educate — and they are not being educated to understand how government, law, or business works, really!  

But full school days are taking up learning other things, and having values set, lest the parents be the primary values -setter.  

Why I’m pointing this out, as one of those whose parents set the simple value of go to school, get a profession, work the profession – and didn’t communicate business mindset to its children; did not transfer financial smarts or investment smarts to the next generation, which I assure you, being a member of, this generation is resistant to learning as well . . . . those are value systems, not just aptitudes . . . . .  my great work ethic and law-abiding mindset, plus having married before having children  . . . . . worked to complete detriment loss, and extreme trauma.  In fact, by being actually a professional and focused on this — which develops discipline, good work skills for sure, and is good in itself — I was not free to be politically active and constantly vigilant with what my own government was doing.  I mistakenly was simply watching something else, and not staying far ahead enough of the curve — as any prosperous business-owner has to, literally stay.

To survive as a country (IF that’s all so important as it’s made out to be, given what our country is now doing to its own people and with its people’s wealth) – — more people have to have the business and investments mindset rather than the earn/pay taxes and consume mindset.

Professions are great, and they help place one in a few different social niches.  All of which, however, exist in a government/business (religious) landscape. We need to understand the landscape.  Usually it’s the government/business group (which includes military/academic etc.) — that has access to the best tools with which to understand, organize, and view the landscape they themselves are structuring.

We need to get better at this — there is no option.  In this matter, the school system places a critical, values-setting role, and should be viewed as a business system whose primary business is setting values for the benefit of those who are running it.

WHY I BRING UP THE SCHOOL ISSUES SO HEAVILY ALSO, IN PART —

This post began after I discovered the Magnitsky affair, the Browder family, Hermitage Capital Management, Ltd. (specializing in emerging markets), and how an American-born man paired up with an international banker to raise capital ($25million initially) and invest in deregulated Russia, bringing astounding profits — until it turned sour, he was forbidden from entering the country, and the state (essentially) — or the criminal organization running free IN the state — stole the company’s assets, fabricated a tax bill, got a refund of ca $230 million . . . (I’m not relating this straight; it can be looked up, and I blogged some of it) — and eventually, when the innocent but diligent attorney Magnitsky continued to Do the Right Thing — he was imprisoned, tortured in prison for a while, and eventually beaten to death in a Russian prison.    

It’s about corruption in Moscow and the largest tax fraud? (probably) in its history.

= a 4/18/2011 article from “Business Insider”

Hermitage Capital’s Bill Browder has been living in London since 2007, when he was kicked out of Russia for accusing Moscow tax officials of embezzlement.

That’s just the beginning of a complex story, involving the death in jail of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, which boils down to the question of what happened to $230 million that was withdrawn one night from No. 25 tax office. Moscow says it was stolen by criminals. Browder says the money was embezzled by tax official Olga Stepanova and his associates.

And now Browder has proof.

Browder tracked down records of a $11 million payment to Stepanova’s offshore bank account. Stepanova, a minor civil servant, was also building a house in Dubai and Montenegro, while living in a $20 million Moscow mansion.

Browder filed a money-laundering complaint with Credit Suisse and Switzerland’s federal attorney general earlier this year, according to Barrons.

He released a devastating short documentary this week:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-browder-olga-stepanova-2011-4#ixzz2AEeC71mu

One thing Bill Browder was smart enough to do, at this point, was not start an American company in Hermitage Capital Management.  It’s based in the Channel Islands — and this is a tax decision I’m sure.  The IRS is thirsty.  And yet he does not have a problem (nor should it, really, given this situation) getting the matter in front of Congress and pushing for a legislative change specifically addressed to what happened to the business he decided to start from outside the USA, based outside the USA, his father having been an overt communist, and which, placing trust in Moscow & Russia, found that trust was misplaced.

While investors in the Hermitage company for a while got ROI in the thousand percentiles, which was then stolen by criminal and horrible to contemplate corrupt (we’d call it RICO) behavior overseas — people such as me, and women like me, and families and others I work/ed alongside for years — invested our lives in helping the poor (not the rich) of this country by contributing our talents to their futures.  We also invested time in our children, supplementing poor public education systems, and in — after realizing, in my case, that the reason my own government doesn’t prosecute criminals — but instead supports them, when the crime is against certain sectors of society — and does this for profit — I invested more of my TIME looking into this and blogging it.  And I do not have that time to spare, either!

However, somehow– the Browder family, below (with one Russian intellectual grandmother and politically active grandfather) figured out to send their sons into the “hard sciences” which — for one, teachers them reason, logic, and math at a minimum!

MY POINT BEING:

THOSE WHO HAVE WEALTH:

Those who have wealth tend to, seek to increase it and steward it.  They hang together with others and figure out how to make sure the situation continues.  Some give it away for a cause, having the ability to , and gain (not only lower taxes, but) the satisfaction of changing the world.  I hope that feels good inside…

THEY ALSO GIVE A LOT OF THIS WEALTH AWAY IN “PHILANTHROPY,” BUT THIS IS DONE WITH A VIEW TO PRESERVING ASSETS (FOR THEIR OWN FAMILIES) AND REDUCING TAX LIABILITY.  AND HELPING RUN THE PLANET.

THOSE WHO DO NOT, AND DON’T KNOW HOW TO RAISE CAPITAL TO GET SOME:

Others who do not have wealth, haven’t obtained sufficient wealth for the income from it to support their basic needs — instead figure out where tomorrow’s meal, or transportation is coming from, or next month’s rent or perhaps “mortgage.”

It’s harder than it may seem to switch lifestyles; it requires basically attracting some capital (something to invest) and then being disciplined and smart about where to put it, and able to handle the risk (there will be some losses).

If a person is not in a situation to handle losses, one is less prone to take risks, such person is a lot easier to manipulate and be convinced to do things which will drain his or her wealth (energy and time) away — and let it be absorbed, or simply taken — by those who do.

What I’m saying is, this is really a matter of time, mindset, and capital.

CAPITAL + PROFITS LEVERAGES TIME (and — what creates profits?  Something changes hands, or something changes in value.  This includes trusts that are invested, producing dividends and/or income (compound income on simple cash, i.e., interest income) — or when through outside forces, the value is artificially inflated).  Capital can be used as Security for a Loan to raise more money, hence “Securities and Exchange Commission” — the Securities are someone else’s debt, got it? They don’t pay the debt, you get whatever was security for that debt).

Multiple investments or income streams multiplies human effort.  Single investments — which a job usually is — are inefficient.

Then there is the matter of the black market, narco-dollars etc, which I’ve also raised.  ALL of this factors into our futures, individual and collective.  ALL of this is part of the landscape.

Now of that landscape, which is most important to pay attention to?  

For profits to happen, something has to either change hands at a profit, or increase in value.

To accumulate profits from wages over expenses while values of commodities are rising, overheads for working the job include child care, transportation, clothing (foods out) and things that sustain other businesses is one thing, particularly for families.  For these the hopeful contract may include an employee/employer contract (and the employer then pays into a US federal system, etc. “employment taxes”) and let’s hope the luck holds.

The other way to do business:

But for other families, they already have profits sufficient for them to not personally worry about clothing, housing, food, or transportation for a VERY long time, and their business is to maximize further profits and manage, steward, or increase that pool of wealth.

HOW COME?. . . .

Why is it that some people end up doing investments and sales of businesses — heading for this almost immediately out of the gate (out of a college degree)

— and others go into “professions” (which means either government, or some other business owner employees them, and/or they consult and set up as individual practices, then networking with their own kind to promote trade-specific interests…

— others get into it like this?

Bill Browder, Initial Gazprom profits // USA Privatization of Welfare…

From a fairly recent post, I discussed in some detail the fascinating situation of how Bill Browder capitalist grandson of the former head of the American Communist Party (d. 1973), investing behind the Iron Curtain, got his start (?) on a trip to Poland investing in state-owned factories:

Browder started this investing during a business assignment in Poland, where state-owned factories and businesses could be had for a pittance. He exchanged $4,000 in traveler’s checks for 38 million Polish zlotys and bought in. Within a year the $4,000 stake had turned into $40,000. “There’s a certain chemical that gets released in your stomach when you make ten times your money,” he says, accurately, except for the anatomic location. “And it’s addictive.

• He was in another country on business to start with
• He actually had $4,000 to spare (some of us have, or some of our families have, spent easily this much on one round of court hearings — i.e., for an attorney!)
• He knew about the situation and acted on it; he thought in terms of investing for a profit.
• WHY did the state own the businesses, and why were these business available for “a pittance”?
• Who is any state to sell businesses that cheap?

Right now, we have the US government contracting out ALL kinds of services to manage its poor.  would we all be so poor were it not for prior generations of this type of management?  Are those services being bought for a pittance? (Remember “FEDMINE.com” — always available to take a look!).

I just wanted to bring some of these points up and don’t claim they are well developed.  That would be the job of whoever has an interest.

From last March, Bill Browder commenting on elections (in Russia).  I think the point could be just as well made regarding the elections coming up REAL soon in the USA, at least from my point of view.  I don’t feel good about either candidate; both have connections to what I know to be a criminal enterprise run through the HHS + other private corporations/foundations, and it is TRAFFICKING IN CHILDREN THROUGH THE FAMILY COURTS, and exploiting religious views to justify doing so.

It is marketing pharmaceuticals to people who don’t like them, and we DO have a slave labor population — they are in prisons.  We have a high bureaucratic overhead who, if they confronted too much criminal behavior in government, would lose their jobs (and housing), however HUD itself and the Pentagon are themselves losing (per C.A. Fitts and others), at any given point, from $59Billion to a few trillion — and then selling how much in debt the US is to all of us.

We have too many generations of the Bush family in politics, which goes back to at least the World Wars, and too few of us understand that what wars are really about, is collecting on debt loaned to nations, and justifying further clampdowns on the economy.  Middle-aged and older men send young men to die, and then start social science engineering and psychological testing on the resulting orphans, etc. . . . . .

We have very serious issues, and too many of the “masses” of people not smart enough (lacking the business and math skills, accounting sense, etc.) to discuss them.  However, should they have or acquire those skills, they’d also have to set up a parallel and separate network to discuss things, as so many networks are already set up, and franchised, through our own government, i.e., federally funded.

This includes institutional churches, and even “home-based fellowships” when what they are doing is still marketing downloadable curricula tested by NIH (etc. ) grants, which I believe PREP Inc was.

Well, that’s enough.  Here’s the last paste of the post:  How close does this shoe fit USA?

BILL BROWDER (MARCH, 2012):

‘It Is Completely Naive To Think Anything Will Change After Russia’s Election’

REGARDING:

implementing real reforms would mean that Putin and the people around him could not be able to engage in all these financial crimes, which have made them so wealthy

There are only so many ways to create or obtain wealth and many (not all) of them are dishonest.  Browder is savvy, and I’m sure he and others know what many of these are.

Investing anywhere puts one at risk of the criminal element.  It seems he made remarkable progress forcing some reforms, but in the long run failed to see who he was really dealing with — which could happen to any of us.

I recommend that people living in the US and planning to continue doing so, figure out who WE are dealing with in this government — which is why I started another blog (see “vital links”) “Cold,Hard.Facts$” — and will be looking to form better networking to get this message out in a form people who were not born into this wealth or social circles which teach about business basics — can understand.  However, I am definitely not going to endorse any Amway or Pyramid Scheme. which is already in operation through evangelical, pentecostal, southern Baptist, reformed, Nazarene, Episcopal (like Trinity Cathedral/Sacramento, CA) and of course Catholic Circles.   Everyone has SOMETHING to sell, right?

What we have to mentally and intellectually consume is other substances than we have been force-fed.  And that takes developing an appetite for them.  Bill Browder stated above how he got his appetite — a small investment of $4,000, well placed — and notice, it was in another country.  Where do we think the United States has been investing?  Only in the USA?

Look at some of the largest pension funds around (CALPers).   The two largest Californian nonprofits around (per NCCSdataweb.urban.org) which I looked up recently, are Kaiser (health plans) and Stanford University.  A list of the largest nonprofits by state — below.  A quick look shows that most of the money is going into health-related organizations, and I’ll bet in every state, some form of higher (post K12) education.  For nonprofits to be this large, typically they have to tie into government (many of them) — meaning, WHERE did that money come from? — and will be extremely well-profiled on the web, meaning a profitable business to be in still consists of software systems, platforms and consulting.

Just more food for thought about the income tax (and nonprofit) system, which is only as good as its control systems, and on the “truth in accounting” of those participating.

Every honest system of accounting is going to have with it, and parallel to it, a dishonest system of NOT accounting — or falsely accounting, which is where criminals go when they want more profits (more ROI).   How realistic is it, seriously, to have someone tracking all the profits and alleging they are doing so anyhow?

With the parallel of criminal to legitimate business (and criminals running some legit businesses as well) — the criminal always has the advantage, and needs the cooperation, or incompetence, or participation of the enforcement agencies — right?  Criminal of course has its own methods of enforcement and accounting — to the public, and with each other.

The existence of both lines of work (criminal and legit) requires more people to make conscious decisions on how much they are willing to invest (or how much of their own privacy to sacrifice) in order for SOMEONE ELSE to monitor and restrict the criminal element.

No one’s about to – probably — eradicate the income tax (i.e., Ron Paul is not going to ever become U.S. President, etc.) — so then, what’s the end game?