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France's trade unions staged a national strike protesting the economic downturn and causing a one-day stoppage in rail, air and local transport throughout the country on Thursday. Similar protests in the United States this summer are becoming increasingly likely, as tent cities for the homeless are springing up in dozens of U.S. cities, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.
More than 1 million people took to the streets throughout France Thursday as a national poll showed 74 percent of the French supported the protest.
This followed a one-day national strike in January that sent hundreds of thousands of French workers to the streets, protesting job cuts and demanding higher welfare payments to cushion the impact of the economic crisis.
The mass protests in France are evidence of the increasing economic distress being felt in the EU from the global economic downturn, Corsi wrote.
The French gross domestic product, or GDP, is expected to fall 1.9 percent this year, compared with drops of 2.8 percent in Great Britain and 2.5 percent in Germany, according to the Economist.
Meanwhile, protests in the U.S. are becoming more likely.
In Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports the City Council is considering a proposal to designate a piece of vacant land for the homeless as an alternative to the impromptu tent city that has persisted on Foremaster Lane between Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard North, despite repeated attempts by city officials to sweep the area clean.
In Sacramento, Calif., Mayor Kevin Johnson has negotiated with a coalition of property owners to move some 100 to 200 homeless living in a tent city camp north of downtown into apartments, shelters and other structures, according to the Sacramento Bee.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported homeless have begun spending their days in the state capitol in Madison, moving into the basement for warmth, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., when they are required to leave.
Red Alert expects that by this summer, street protests will come to the United States, as the U.S. middle class increasingly becomes squeezed by fear of losing jobs and homes.
"The Obama administration would be well advised to realize that President Obama's appearance on Jay Leno's late-night television show may not demonstrate the level of dedicated leadership or seriousness the American public expects of a president when the country is heading toward the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s," Corsi wrote. "The American public would also be well advised to take a close look at French bailouts before becoming too enthusiastic about supporting more Obama administration bailouts."
Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.
In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.
For more information on spreading economic protests and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation."
The state of Wyoming has adopted a resolution to inform Washington bureaucrats and bureaucracies of its opposition to any plans to hold a Constitutional Convention
that would recommend changes or alterations to the nation's founding document.
House Enrolled Joint Resolution 3 was signed recently by Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal.
The Wyoming Family Coalition said the measure, sponsored by state Rep. Bob Brechtel, R-Casper, is intended to announce the state's opposition to "any attempts to dismantle the United States Constitution which has generally served the country well for nearly 230 years."
"A Constitutional Convention would open a Pandora's Box in this country and would allow debate on our most precious rights," said the WFC's chairman, John Birbari of Lander.
"These rights come from God and are guaranteed by the lawful U.S. Constitution, they include our rights of free speech, the right to assemble, the right to practice the religion of our choice, the right to keep and bear arms and many others," he said.
"Given the current climate in Washington, the people of Wyoming do not want these rights or any of the basic provisions of the Constitution threatened by a Constitutional Convention."
The bill passed both houses with overwhelming majorities and was signed into law by the governor March 11.
"It takes 34 for states calling for a Constitutional Convention in order to have one,” Birbari said. "Until this action by our legislature, 32 states had issued the call including Wyoming. Now, it's down to 31."
Whether a rescission vote would be found valid, however, remains in question. Constitution expert John Eidsmoe, author of the book "Christianity & the Constitution," told WND earlier there isn't a clear constitutional directive on the issue.
A public policy organization recently issued an urgent alert that affirmative votes were needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which "today's corrupt politicians and judges" could formally change the U.S. Constitution's "'problematic' provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society."
"Don't for one second doubt that delegates to a Con Con wouldn't revise the First Amendment into a government-controlled privilege, replace the 2nd Amendment with a 'collective' right to self-defense, and abolish the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and the rest of the Bill of Rights," said the warning from the American Policy Center.
Changes also could include the incorporation of "rights" to abortion and euthanasia, as well as the "separation" of church and state, the group said.
As WND reported,President Obama has expressed the belief that the U.S. Constitution needs to be interpreted through the lens of current events.
The final vote from the 1787 Constitutional Convention
Tom DeWeese, who runs the APC and its education and grassroots work, previously told WND the possibilities stunned him when he discovered lawmakers in Ohio were considering a call for a Constitutional Convention. He explained that 32 other states already have taken a vote, and only one more would be needed to require Congress to name convention delegates who then would have more power than Congress itself. The Ohio vote later was delayed after DeWeese publicized its work.
Eidsmoe, who now is staff counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law, told WND the constitutional requirements for such an event are unclear.
"It leaves a lot of unanswered questions," Eidsmoe told WND. "Ultimately it would have to be resolved by a court, but a court has never considered this."
At the last Constitutional Convention, in 1787, the proposal was to make modifications to the Articles of Confederation, but delegates simply threw them out and wrote a new Constitution, according to historians.
Among other unanswered questions are how officers would be chosen, how delegates would be named and whether it would be open to the public or would allow changes in the Constitution be written behind closed doors, he said.
Chuck Baldwin, presidential candidate for the Constitution Party last year, said the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention were "freedom-loving patriots who had just fought a bloody war for independence and were in no mind to re-enact tyranny upon the land they had just fought to liberate."
"However, can one imagine what would happen if the current bunch of politically correct leftists in Washington, D.C., were to be granted the power to rewrite our Constitution?" Baldwin continued. "It would be the end of the United States of America, and that is no hyperbole."
The effort to establish a convention began about 40 years ago, mostly based on issues such as the desire for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
"Since then, 32 states have issued the call. The total number of states that are required to enact the Con Con is 34," Baldwin wrote. "Simple math reveals that we are only two states short of this disaster. As word of this potential calamity began to surface, the effort stalled with the total states issuing the call stuck at 32.
"With the election of Barack Obama, however, supporters of a Con Con have been emboldened and are now trying to resurrect the momentum. The state that is currently in the crosshairs appears to be Ohio," Baldwin said.
DeWeese wrote in his alert, "In truth no restrictive language from any state can legally limit the scope or outcome of a [Constitutional] Convention! Once a Convention is called Congress determines how the delegates to the Convention are chosen. Once chosen, those Convention delegates possess more power than the U.S. Congress itself."
"DeWeese is right," Baldwin added. "If called, a modern Constitutional Convention could declare the U.S. Constitution to be null and void, and could completely rewrite the document. For example, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger once declared, 'There is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda.'"
Melody Barnes, a senior domestic policy adviser to the Obama campaign, has told Fox News Obama's "view is that our society isn't static and the law isn't static as well. That the Constitution is a living and breathing document and that the law and the justices who interpret it have to understand that."
WND also reportedObama believes the Constitution is flawed,because it fails to address wealth redistribution, and he says the Supreme Court should have intervened years ago to accomplish that.
Obama told Chicago's public station WBEZ-FM that "redistributive change" is needed, pointing to what he regarded as a failure of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in its rulings on civil rights issues in the 1960s.
The Warren court, he said, failed to "break free from the essential constraints" in the U.S. Constitution and launch a major redistribution of wealth. But Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, said the legislative branch of government, rather than the courts, probably was the ideal avenue for accomplishing that goal.
In the 2001 interview, Obama said:
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
WND also has reported an associate at a Chicago law firm whose partner served on a finance committee for Obama has advocated simply abandoning the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural born" citizen.
The paper was written in 2006 by Sarah Herlihy, just two years after Obama had won a landslide election in Illinois to the U.S. Senate. Herlihy is listed as an associate at the Chicago firm of Kirkland & Ellis. A partner in the same firm, Bruce I. Ettelson, cites his membership on the finance committees for both Obama and Sen. Richard Durbin on the corporate website.
The issue of Obama's own eligibility under the U.S. Constitution's requirements that presidents be "natural born" citizens is the subject of nearly two dozen court cases, including several that have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Herlihy's published paper reveals that the requirement likely was considered in a negative light by organizations linked to Obama in the months before he announced in 2007 his candidacy for the presidency.
"The natural born citizen requirement in Article II of the United States Constitution has been called the 'stupidest provision' in the Constitution, 'undecidedly un-American,' 'blatantly discriminatory,' and the 'Constitution's worst provision,'" Herlihy begins in her introduction to the paper titled, "Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement: Globalization as the Impetus and the Obstacle."
The U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Justice Department today confirmed that documentation challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president has arrived and soon will be evaluated.
Orly Taitz has been working on a number of cases that raise questions over Obama's birth location, and therefore his qualifications to be president under the Constitution's demand that the office be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen.
According to the blog, Taitz was informed by Karen Thornton of the Department of Justice that all of the case documents and filings have arrived and have been forwarded to the Office of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, including three dossiers and the Quo Warranto case.
"Coincidently, after Dr. Taitz called me with that update, she received another call from Officer Giaccino at the Supreme Court," the posting said. "Officer Giaccino stated both pleadings have been received and being analyzed now."
The report from the Supreme Court also said the documents that Taitz hand-delivered to Chief Justice John Roberts at his appearance at the University of Idaho a little over a week ago also were at the Supreme Court. ....
At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.
The highest-profile moments in the new approach have been well-noted, such as the president giving an interview to progressive radio host Ed Schultz and Obama calling on a reporter from the liberal-leaning Huffington Post at his first news conference.
But those moves are only part of a much larger strategy aimed at communicating directly with audiences the White House believes are more sympathetic to the president’s agenda — and one in which much of the work is being done by Obama’s top advisers. ....
The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.
The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.
Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president's Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.
The administration plans to send legislation to Capitol Hill this week. Sources cautioned that the details, including the Treasury's role, are still in flux.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is set to argue for the new powers at a hearing today on Capitol Hill about the furor over bonuses paid to executives at American International Group, which the government has propped up with about $180 billion in federal aid. Administration officials have said that the proposed authority would have allowed them to seize AIG last fall and wind down its operations at less cost to taxpayers.
The administration's proposal contains two pieces. First, it would empower a government agency to take on the new role of systemic risk regulator with broad oversight of any and all financial firms whose failure could disrupt the broader economy. The Federal Reserve is widely considered to be the leading candidate for this assignment. But some critics warn that this could conflict with the Fed's other responsibilities, particularly its control over monetary policy.
The government also would assume the authority to seize such firms if they totter toward failure.
Besides seizing a company outright, the document states, the Treasury Secretary could use a range of tools to prevent its collapse, such as guaranteeing losses, buying assets or taking a partial ownership stake. Such authority also would allow the government to break contracts, such as the agreements to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees of AIG's most troubled unit.
The Treasury secretary could act only after consulting with the president and getting a recommendation from two-thirds of the Federal Reserve Board, according to the plan.
Geithner plans to lay out the administration's broader strategy for overhauling financial regulation at another hearing on Thursday.
The authority to seize non-bank financial firms has emerged as a priority for the administration after the failure of investment house Lehman Brothers, which was not a traditional bank, and the troubled rescue of AIG.
"We're very late in doing this, but we've got to move quickly to try and do this because, again, it's a necessary thing for any government to have a broader range of tools for dealing with these kinds of things, so you can protect the economy from the kind of risks posed by institutions that get to the point where they're systemic," Geithner said last night at a forum held by the Wall Street Journal.
The powers would parallel the government's existing authority over banks, which are exercised by banking regulatory agencies in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Geithner has cited that structure as the model for the government's plans.
(Compiler's note: Why am I not surprised here? Here we have an example of taking taxpayer money and making it directly available for your own direct access. Wonder how much of this $$ Dodd is going to give back --- and yes, it is time we remember these people work for us ... for the moment. This seems to me to be worthy of jail time for Mr. Dodd.)
No wonder Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) went wobbly last week when asked about his February amendment ratifying hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives at insurance giant AIG. Dodd has been one of the company's favorite recipients of campaign contributions. But it turns out that Senator Dodd's wife has also benefited from past connections to AIG as well. bailout
From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an "outside" director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. ....
(Compiler's note: It would be even better to identify the enemy somewhere in the mix, or am I just "old Corps?")
By Al Kamen
The end of the Global War on Terror -- or at least the use of that phrase -- has been codified at the Pentagon. Reports that the phrase was being retired have been circulating for some time amongst senior administration officials, and this morning speechwriters and other staff were notified via this e-mail to use "Overseas Contingency Operation" instead.
"Recently, in a LtGen [John] Bergman, USMC, statement for the 25 March [congressional] hearing, OMB required that the following change be made before going to the Hill," Dave Riedel, of the Office of Security Review, wrote in an e-mail.
"OMB says: 'This Administration prefers to avoid using the term "Long War" or "Global War on Terror" [GWOT]. Please use "Overseas Contingency Operation.'"
Riedel asked recipients to "Please pass on to your speech writers and try to catch this change before the statements make it to OMB."
An OMB spokesman took issue with the interpretation of OMB's wishes. "There was no memo, no guidance," said Kenneth Baer. "This is the opinion of a career civil servant."
Referring to the phrase "global war on terror," Baer said, "I have no reason to believe that would be stricken" from Hill testimony.
By way of history, senior Bush administration officials several years ago wanted to stop using the phrase and switch to something many felt might better reflect the realities of the fight against international terrorism.
One leading option was to change the name to GSAVE, or Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. This was not as catchy an acronym as GWOT, but officials felt it more accurately described the battle.Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld even used the GSAVE abbreviation publicly.
But, in a White House meeting, President Bush ruled that it was still a war for him, and Rumsfeld and everyone else went back to GWOT.
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