“End The Fed” Protest in Washington DC on July 3, 2010

Just say NO!vember

Audit the Fed Update: It’s Over… For Now

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which had previously attracted 320 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, failed by a vote of 229-198.

All Republicans voted in favor of the measure with 23 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans. 114 co-sponsors of HR 1207, all Democrats, jumped ship and voted against Audit the Fed.

How They Voted

Watch Ron Paul’s Video Update

Audit the Fed Update: The Fed has won the battle but they will lose the war

Ron Paul discusses the latest in the efforts to get a full and complete audit of the Fed as well as the future of Fed transparency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IixLg4AtNI

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which was previously co-sponsored by 320 members of the House (HR 1207), failed by a vote of 229-198. All Republicans voted in favor of the measure with 23 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans. 114 co-sponsors of HR 1207, all Democrats, jumped ship and voted against Audit the Fed.

The GOP had offered the Fed audit as the minority’s last chance to alter the financial regulation bill. The bill does have an watered-down audit provision in the conference report, but it is limited to loans made by the Fed during the height of the economic crisis. Ron Paul’s bill would have allowed a total examination of the Fed’s books.

How they voted

KEY: Democrats, Republicans, HR 1207 Co-Sponsors

YEA! = Audit the Federal Reserve System (a private rockefeller/rothschild bank that started in 1913 that bankrupted the USA by 1933 & stole OUR gold, and which is paid INTEREST on this debt in the form of UN-Constitutional unapportioned federal INCOME TAXES on your WAGES that were traded even-up for LABOR)

NAY! Traitors:

Not Voting (cowards, but not traitors)

Bishop (UT)
Taylor
Wamp
Woolsey
Young (AK)

LEARN ABOUT THE FEDERAL RESERVE!

EMERGENCY! Senate Sellout Threatens Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bills HR1207 + S.604

Bernie Sanders sold out to wall street. tell him we want OUR S.604 back, which we already have 32 cosponsors = 1/3 of the senate + 319 cosponsors for it’s sister bill HR1207 = 73% of the house backing us. Audit the Fed! and then End the Fed! that’s why JFK gave us Executive Order #11110

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuVBAMQ0j4A

Ron Paul: Audit the Fed! No More Bailouts!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVNvjQobulQ

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had long worked together on their campaign for a full audit of the Federal Reserve, which emerged last year as H.R. 1207 and S. 604. Dr. Paul’s House version of the Audit the Fed bill had 319 cosponsors; Sanders’ Senate version, 32 cosponsors. Despite these bills’ massive popularity with a public grown increasingly suspicious of central banking, efforts to audit our central bank, the Federal Reserve, have been effectively thwarted for the time being.

Last-minute Senate maneuvering on Thursday May 6 resulted in a compromise measure that would require the Fed to disclose more details about its lending practices during the financial crisis, but would permit just a one-time audit of its loans and a one-time review of Fed governance. The compromise would also shield the Fed’s interest rate decision-making procedures from Goverment Accounting Office (GAO) scrutiny.

Dr. Paul, who has long advocated opening the Fed’s books to scrutiny to reveal its dealings with foreign banks as well as its domestic lending practices, expressed disappointment with the compromise in a sternly worded statement released Thursday evening.

Sanders had originally argued, “At a time when our entire financial system almost collapsed, we cannot let the Fed operate in secrecy any longer.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke disagreed. The Wall Street Journal reported his remark that the original measure would “seriously threaten monetary policy independence, increase inflation fears and market interest rates, and damage economic stability and job creation.”

Members of the Obama administration, among their number former Fed officials, backed the changes to Sanders amendment. These include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former chair of the New York Federal Reserve, and Paul Volcker, who was Alan Greenspan’s predecessor as Fed chair. They gave credit to Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, for pushing through the compromise bill. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin stated that the compromise measure would allow for a comprehensive audit of the Fed’s operations “while preserving the existing protections of the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to monetary policy.” It is just this independence which the Fed’s critics wish to challenge, as it leaves the Fed essentially accountable to no one except other elite bankers — some of them foreign.

On Thursday night, Ron Paul made an urgent appeal in a two and a half minute video (see below) urging Senators to reject the Sanders Amendment when it comes up for a vote, possibly as soon as next Tuesday (May 11). Dr. Paul stated,

I’m not a bit surprised that the Federal Reserve got to the Senate. I had expected Bernie Sanders to offer 604, which was the same as 1207, which is Audit the Fed bill, and at the last minute he switched it and watered it down, and really it adds nothing, It’s a possibility that it even makes the current conditions worse….

But as we speak — this is Thursday night — they are working on this on the Senate floor. And we need to get as many messages as possible to as many Senators you can think of, especially to Bernie Sanders’ office, that we don’t want this version….

But the only thing that would be fair to the American people after all this work and energy that we put into this is to have an up and down vote on what was our 1207 in the House which is 604 in the Senate….

Dr. Paul’s website adds that the compromise “exempts monetary policy decisions, discount window operations, and agreements with foreign central banks from [GAO] audit. This is of particular concern when several countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain are seeking IMF help in the midst of their financial crises, because American taxpayers provide fully 17% of all IMF funding.”

“Taxpayers are weary of bailing out privileged banks and corporations in the U.S.,” Dr. Paul added, “and we certainly cannot afford to bail out entire countries. The possibility of this happening behind a veil of Federal Reserve secrecy is not acceptable.”

“This compromise language represents a huge missed opportunity by Congress to finally make the Fed accountable for trillions of taxpayer dollars it administers. Full transparency, via a full GAO audit, is the only acceptable option. However, I am grateful to Senator Vitter for offering the original full audit language in an alternative amendment to the bill.”

The John Birch Society has issued a press release urging opposition to the compromise measure and restoration of the original language. Readers are invited to go to “Ron Paul Appeals for Help to Rescue His ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill in the Senate” and spreading the word on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Or they may contact their Senators directly to urge support for an amendment that would restore the original ‘Audit the Fed’ language and intent:  “As Ron Paul says in the video,” reads the JBS statement, “it’s vital and urgent that we do as much as we can to bombard the Senate with information that we the people deserve to have an up-or-down vote on Audit the Fed bill.”

View Ron Paul’s complete statement below. The vote on the compromise measure is expected to take place next Tuesday, May 11.

Source: The New American

The Federal Reserve will finally be required to disclose the names of banks that could have collapsed if they had not received emergency loans. The story from Ronald D. Orol of MarketWatch.com:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The Federal Reserve will be required to identify the names of banks that could have collapsed if not for the central bank’s emergency lending, a federal appeals court said Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled on Friday that the Fed needs to disclose documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by Bloomberg L.P. and other news organizations. “We are reviewing the decision and considering our options for reconsideration or appeal,” said Fed spokeswoman Barbara Hagenbaugh.

source: AuditTheFed.com

President Obama will be attending the Copenhagen UN climate change conference on December 18 where he will be an active participant “as [in the words of 'The White House Blog' for Dec. 10] the global community, with the United States in a leading role, works towards securing the strongest possible outcome in Copenhagen.”

For more information about the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference see the numerous, recent, excellent articles on JBS.org and TheNewAmerican.com. For example, “Climategate, ‘Scientific Fascism,’ and Copenhagen” by James Heiser was posted on JBS.org today. And, “Lord Monckton, the Copenhagen Treaty, and the Constitution” by William F. Jasper was posted on TheNewAmerican.com yesterday.

Gordon Brown Speech At Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BOXO9itws

Hillary Clinton Speech At Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u42SVaaUs

President Obama Press Conference Before Leaving Climate Change Summit Copenhagen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1VMrMHbW2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ndexqc0MOg

There are certain provisions of the Patriot Act handed to the American people in the wake of 9/11 that are set to expire at the end of 2009. The Senate is set to disentangle itself from the healthcare debate long enough to address the issues in response to the Obama administration’s desire to reauthorize the Patriot Act. Then the Senate bill would have to be reconciled with one of two bills already introduced in the House.

Currently the two bills in the House and one in the Senate contain different approaches and proposals to the various expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are said to be working toward an agreement so that a consensus and passage can be quickly reached.

The version in the Senate, the Leahy/Feinstein Bill S.1692, would reauthorize three very questionable provisions until the end of 2013. H.R. 3845 sponsored by John Conyers (D-Mich.) would reauthorize two provisions, allowing one to lapse. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) introduced his version, H.R. 3969, into the House and it is said to mimic the Leahy/Feinstein bill in the Senate.

While H.R. 3969 has not made its way through the various committees yet, H.R. 3845 has and is the most likely candidate to be moved forward. It is already poised to skip any formal markups so it could be brought to the floor very quickly and without much notice.

Limiting the size and scope of the Patriot Act is not altogether a bad idea. But in order to stop the spread of a totalitarian state and return to our constitutional principles of limited government, the Patriot Act would need to be eliminated altogether.

Contact your senators and representatives and urge them to oppose the reauthorization of any aspects of, or amendments to, the Patriot Act via H.R. 3845, H.R. 3969, or S.1692.

Special thanks to Robert Owens and JBS for providing this alert.

Should The Patriot Act Be Allowed To Expire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv1NaZ0CMyA

Obama set to extend the Patriot Act

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NSL4CAePWQ

the new boss looks like the old boss…

House passes HR1207 – Ron Paul voted against it

Ron Paul’s HR1207 is one step closer to becoming law. The bill was attached to a horrible financial “reform” bill which calls for the creation of yet another government agency to regulate private industry. So of course Ron Paul voted against it on principle, despite the fact that it contains the “Audit the Fed” bill he’s worked so hard for.

Source: Liberty Maven

Ron Paul votes against his own amendment

Congressman Ron Paul (R Texas) is the last true statesman. Want proof, the Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate fought more than twenty years to finally create an amendment to fully audit the Federal Reserve, which is the main cause of the present financial crisis.

The Audit the Fed bill was accepted as an amendment to a larger bill, the Wall Street Regulatory Overhaul. Even though the congressman’s bill was attached he could not in good faith vote for the larger legislation. Imagine a country full of men like that. Imagine just having 100 representatives like that.

The legislation will now go to the Senate for a vote. Ron Paul said “I have no clout in Congress, it was the people (grass roots) who made this happen.” A good guess would be that the Senate will try to take this amendment out. Reportedly, Senator’s are a little closer to those at the Fed than Congressman. It will be up to the people once again to make sure this amendment sticks if the larger bill is passed.

Voters should take notes from Dr. Paul on this issue. When your representatives have back bones like him liberty will flourish. People must become more involved and not fall for the left/right nonsense. There obviously is still room for honesty and integrity in Washington but it will be up to you to make it happen.

As you can see auditing the Federal Reserve is not an easy task. Some say they are more powerful than the President since they control the money supply. It’s reported that John F. Kennedy tried to abolish this powerful organization before being assassinated. Auditing it has been hard enough.

Source: Examiner.com

House Passes Wall Street Reform Bill With Zero GOP Votes

In a close vote, the House of Representatives Friday afternoon passed a financial reform bill intended to re-regulate Wall Street and increase protections for Main Street.

The bill, passed in a 223-202 vote, calls for the creation of a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers that would police consumer credit products like mortgages and credit cards. It also establishes new rules for the trading of derivatives and increases the transparency of the credit-rating process — two previously under-regulated parts of the economy that played a large role in last year’s economic collapse.

Not a single Republican voted for the bill. Twenty-seven Democrats broke with the rest of their party to vote against it.

The measure includes language, introduced in committee by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), that would authorize an expansive audit of the Federal Reserve, a landmark achievement for critics of the central bank’s secretive operations.

The bill also requires systemically important banks to pay into a fund that would be used to break them up and sell them off if they go bankrupt. Republicans bitterly and inaccurately referred to it as a “bailout fund,” telegraphing a critique that will undoubtedly re-emerge during the 2010 midterm elections.

“Today is an important milestone in reversing the decades-long stranglehold Wall Street and big banks have had over our economy. But it is just the first step,” said Service Employees International Union Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger. “Despite the millions Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce spent fighting the demands of the American people and the dozens of visits by big bank CEOs to strong-arm members of Congress, our leaders found the political will and courage to pass the most historic financial reform legislation in nearly 80 years.”

The fight to fundamentally reform financial regulations began soon after President Barack Obama took office. Public zeal, though, was tempered on Capitol Hill by bankers and other Wall Street titans, who united to fight against the kind of reform advocated by consumers, union groups, and academics.

The bill disappointed some consumer groups, who pledged to work to make it stronger as it moves to the Senate.

“The bill does very little to address industry structure,” the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement. “The biggest banks are now bigger than they were before the crisis.”

Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, hailed the bill’s creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but worried it goes too far in allowing federal regulators to preempt their state compatriots.

“The bill would provide consumers with significant protections from the industry practices that dismantled our economy and those of countries around the world,” he said. “We commend the House for this vote to protect families and small business from unfair, unsafe financial practices. However, we remain concerned that the bill allows the same federal banking regulators whose inaction led to the current crisis to continue to ignore state law. That must be fixed as the legislation moves forward.”

Despite the advocacy by financial luminaries like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the bill does nothing to break up big banks or address the mixing of commercial and investment banking by giant firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, praised the part of the bill dealing with credit rating agencies — with a caveat, though.

“If you accept the whole business model as a given, the rest of it is strong,” she said, referring to the fact that the agencies are paid by bond issuers to rate their products, creating an inherent conflict of interest.

Specifically, the bill subjects the credit rating agencies to increased liability, allowing for aggrieved investors to sue. Also, thanks to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a provision was added mandating that the agencies owe a duty of care to investors, rather than just to the bond issuers that pay them, she said.

The bill takes a stab at regulating derivatives, but key reforms were either ignored or voted down. An amendment by Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) calling for increased transparency in trading, which was backed by a coalition of pro-reform advocates, was voted down 330-98.

Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank offered another amendment regarding derivatives that would have beefed up the powers of federal regulators, who have long lacked critical authority to initiate meaningful regulation. That, too, died.

A third amendment would have banned those derivatives that are, in essence, used by big financial firms to place bets upon bets upon bets, like the kind pioneered by AIG that helped crash the financial system last year. It also was voted down.

“Basically, the financial houses and the big banks are working [these amendments] real hard,” Stupak said. “Wall Street’s been working hard. We’ve been tripping over them all week. They’ve won this round.”

Public Citizen offered this explanation:

It’s no mystery why this legislation is not stronger. Wall Street spent $5 billion in political investments in the decade before the financial crisis to obtain deregulation and non-enforcement of existing rules.

Despite Wall Street having crashed the economy, nothing has changed on Capitol Hill. Wall Street continues to invest heavily in politics and wield enormous influence. More than 900 former federal employees, including 70 former members of Congress, are working as lobbyists for the financial services sector this year. Wall Street has spent more than $40 million on campaign contributions since November 2008.

“It was the single most important they needed to get right if they wanted to protect the system from future crises, and I don’t think they got it right,” Roper said.

The bill also addressed investor protection, increasing it in some areas but weakening it in others. Shareholders will now be able to hold non-binding votes on executive compensation — a big win for investor groups. But the bill also includes a provision that changes current law by exempting about half of all publicly-traded companies from having to get audits of their internal controls. Fraud will be harder to catch, investor groups argue.

The House also voted to kill what many experts, consumer advocates and economists believe to be the best — and perhaps the only — way to stem the rising tide of foreclosures: a provision that would have allowed judges to cut the principal for struggling homeowners in bankruptcy.

Belying their expressions of outrage towards banks and sympathy for struggling homeowners, enough Democrats joined Republicans to kill the amendment offered by Democrats John Conyers of Michigan and Jim Marshall of Georgia, by a 241-188 vote.

Bankruptcy courts may reduce several forms of debt for distressed borrowers, but not the mortgage on a primary residence. Judges can, however, alter loan terms on vacation homes and cars, for example.

In March, the House passed a bill that was “substantively identical” to today’s amendment, according to a summary of the amendment provided by the chamber’s Rules Committee. The Senate, however, voted it down, leading Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate for homeowners, to conclude that banks “frankly own the place.”

“The financial industry has so much invested in political influence, in lobbying, in campaign contributions, into having a local network through the local banks and the credit unions,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.). “It’s just very hard to go up against that based upon a strong public policy objective.”

Backers of the measure thought it had a reasonable chance of passage, since, after all, it had already passed, and the foreclosure crisis has only gotten worse. About one in seven homeowners with a mortgage are either delinquent or in foreclosure. The passage of time, however, gave banks a chance to work the halls.

“We got a vote for it earlier this year, but it took a huge effort. There was none of that effort this time. I think that leadership has been working other issues in the bill, but not that one. And there’s enormous opposition to it,” said Miller.

One in four homeowners with a mortgage are “underwater,” meaning they owe more on the home than it’s worth. The administration’s $75 billion foreclosure-prevention effort does virtually nothing to help those homeowners, consumer advocates and economists argue.

Furthermore, since the program’s launch in March, less than 32,000 troubled homeowners have received permanent relief through the government’s mortgage modification plan. It’s supposed to help three to four million homeowners avoid foreclosure.

“You would think that would be a strong argument for doing something about it,” Miller said. “And with the continued foreclosure rate and the effect that’s having on home values and the effect they’re having on each other, being such a downward force on our economy. But there’s just a united front of opposition by the financial industry. If some members are playing it by thinking, well, I’ll give them this vote but then I’ll vote for the CFPA, I guess I can see that calculation.”

Marshall pinned some of the blame on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who had been cool to the idea last spring.

“The leadership here in the House is a big friend to this bill. The White House, well, the Treasury Secretary made some comments earlier this year that I thought were unfortunate. Other than Geithner’s comments, I haven’t really heard anything else from the White House. Obviously it’s not on their priority list, among the many things they don’t have much of an opinion about. Though Geithner did say something, and I wish I could recall, he said something earlier this year that was chilling. Not that he said it was a bad idea, but it certainly wasn’t an endorsement,” said Marshall.

Candidate Obama supported the idea of allowing judges to modify mortgages in bankruptcy en route to the White House. He even expressed public support in February when outlining his plan to stem foreclosures. But it wasn’t in his detailed plan released the next month. Since then, the White House has largely been silent.

President Obama cheered the House action Friday. “This legislation brings us another important step closer to necessary, comprehensive financial reform that will create clear rules of the road, consistent and systematic enforcement of those rules, and a stronger, more stable financial system with better protections for consumers and investors,” he said in a statement.

But the loopholes in the bill and the reforms that were voted down revealed something else to Roper — an apparent deep-seated hostility to government regulation.

Time and time again, Roper noticed various reform proposals killed on the specious claim that they would kill jobs. Looking beyond today’s vote, there are deep, structural roadblocks to fundamental reform, she said.

“Even as they’re trying to cure the regulatory failures that led to the current crisis, they’re setting us up for future crises,” she said. “It’s a philosophy and attitude to regulation that suggests that as soon as the spotlight is off they will be back to attacking regulation as too costly.”

The vote, she said, reveals “that the attitude, the underlying problem, has not changed, and will come back to haunt us in the future.”

“It’s hard to be all that enthusiastic when you know that nothing has changed,” she said.

Source: Huffington Post

House Financial Services Committee approved Ron Paul “Audit the Fed” * House Attacks Fed * Call for Geithner to Quit *

Critical Vote on Audit the Fed!

Congressman Paul will offer an amendment in Committee restoring an audit of the Fed’s entire $2 trillion balance sheet, but we have received word that some of the Democrat members may be waffling on their support for his amendment.

For example, Watt’s amendment prevents the GAO from auditing or reviewing decisions to authorize, modify, extend, or terminate loans or liquidity facilities.

Fed balance sheet can be audited, panel says

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – A key congressional committee approved legislation on Thursday that would allow for government audits of Federal Reserve monetary policy as well as how much the central bank has lent and will lend to specific banks in response to the financial crisis, despite major opposition from the central bank. The measure, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has the support of 309 members of Congress.

House Attacks Fed, Treasury

Panel Votes for Tighter Political Rein on Central Bank; Some Call for Geithner to Quit

WASHINGTON — Political frustration over the rescue of Wall Street and high unemployment erupted in Congress Thursday, with one committee threatening to impose tighter scrutiny on the Federal Reserve and another excoriating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The House Financial Services Committee voted, 43-26, to approve a measure sponsored by Texas Republican Ron Paul, vociferously opposed by the Fed, that would direct the congressional Government Accountability Office to expand its audits of the Fed to include decisions about interest rates and lending to individual banks. The Fed says the provision threatens its ability to make monetary policy without political interference.

Treasury chief Geithner faced a House Republican who told him, ‘The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job.’ He shot back: ‘What I can’t take responsibility is for the legacy of crises you’ve bequeathed this country.’

The vote was the latest blow to the central bank, which has been become a lightning rod for politicians responding to popular anger that Wall Street was bailed out while the public was not. The Fed faces a stinging backlash from legislators from both parties who argue that has too much power and too little oversight. On Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee began debating legislation that would largely remove the Fed from bank supervision over the objections of both the Fed and the Obama administration.

The Paul-Grayson Amendment
by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson

“It is encouraging to see the issue of Federal Reserve transparency receiving so much attention during this current markup. Today we plan to offer an amendment to the Financial Stability Improvement Act that expands on the many extant proposals to enhance Federal Reserve transparency. Our amendment is based on HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which has broad bipartisan and grassroots support. The bill is cosponsored by 309 Members of Congress, including all Financial Services Committee Republicans and 13 Financial Services Committee Democrats.

The amendment removes restrictions on GAO audits of the Federal Reserve, as HR 1207 does, but makes a few changes to take into account some of the concerns that the Fed has made known in public testimony.

Unlike proposals that target the Fed’s 13(3) facilities, the Paul/Grayson amendment opens up the entire $2 trillion Federal Reserve balance sheet to a GAO audit.

Mr. bernanke, do THEY have OUR gold? or did THEY sell it to Europeans for $35/oz within years of being CONFISCATED from the American people at $25/oz after THEY bankrupted us in 1933?

Learn more about the corrupt “Federal Reserve System”:
http://americanbuilt.us/videos/federal-reserve-system.shtml

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced this week that it would be policing blogs and social media for the first time, cracking down on “reviewers” and advertisers who fail to provide full disclosure in endorsements, sparking intense outrage among the regulated. Violators can be subject to $11,000 fines per infraction.



”Given that social media has become such a significant player in the advertising area, we thought it was necessary to address social media as well,” explained the FTC’s assistant director of advertising practices Richard Cleland, describing the agency’s first overhaul of its endorsement policies in almost 30 years. The proposal was adopted with the unanimous approval of all four commissioners.



More than 80 pages of confusing new rules will now govern bloggers’ and even social media users’ activity. If they are paid to write an endorsement, or even if they receive an item for free and then write about it, everything must be noted “clearly and conspicuously.” There are also provisions mandating that people disclose any “material ties.”



When companies give a reviewer a product to write about, they “should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance,” explains an example provided in the FTC rules. How should people know whether the FTC will consider something an endorsement? According to the regulations: “The facts and circumstances that will determine the answer to this question are extremely varied and cannot be fully enumerated here …”

Source: JBS.org

Treasury Dept. Admits Mega-Billion Dollar Global Warming Tax

Documents obtained this week from the U.S. Treasury Department reveal the Obama administration’s plans for a massive global-warming tax through “cap and trade” legislation that has already passed the House. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) requested the Treasury documents (PDF) under the Freedom of Information Act and was given an edited version of five records that indicated the cost to American taxpayers would be from $100 – $200 billion per year.

This is just an estimate, since the Treasury had blacked out the end of the following sentence: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of….” Opponents of the plan maintain that the average household would end up saddled with an estimated one to two thousand dollars in added energy consumption costs annually, costs that are corroborated by the Treasury’s estimate since there were 105,480,101 households as of the last census.

If passed, cap-and-trade legislation would set up government rationing of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Obama’s plan involves granting, selling, and/or auctioning carbon dioxide-emission permits to the industrial sector, which will translate to higher prices for household and business energy consumers.

“The cost of a cap-and-trade plan to businesses and consumers will be huge, which the Treasury Department internally acknowledges,” said CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner. “The documents represent what the administration expects ‘cap and trade’ to cost, and raise. It’s a candid perspective that must be told with as much openness to the American public as administration staff discuss with each other. Therefore, we call on the Administration to immediately release complete, un-redacted copies of these documents for all to see. No more hiding.”

Environmentalists disagree with CEI’s conclusions, claiming that Obama plans to use cap-and-trade revenue to cut taxes. Tony Kreindler, spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund, explained, “That math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.”

The Treasury Department goes even further. “The reporting on the Treasury analysis is flat out wrong,” said Alan B. Krueger, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy. “The reporting and blogging on this issue ignores the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are not convinced. “The current administration claims to be the most transparent in American history, yet it’s been hiding a report showing its cap-and-trade energy plan would cost up to $200 billion every year,” argued Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). “American families can’t afford a new $1,761 yearly energy tax, and our economy surely cannot afford the 1-percent drop in productivity this big-government bill would cause. The best step we can take right now to lower energy costs, boost the economy, and clean our air would be to rely on a technology we created: nuclear power.”

Others warn this legislation would likely offshore more American jobs, since countries like China and India do not levy greenhouse-gas taxes. In a February interview with the New York Times, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “The concern about cap-and-trade in today’s economic climate is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be completely politically sellable.”

Source: The New American

Powerful House Financial Services Committee chairman says central bank’s lending powers to be ‘curtailed’

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the most unabashed liberals in the U.S. House of Representatives, told a Massachusetts town hall recently that Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve will clear his chamber by October.

Over half of the House members, most of them Republican, have signed on to the bill, H.R. 1207.
Though Frank disagrees — as many proponents of the bill contend — that the Fed is the cause of the U.S. dollar’s shrinking value, he told a Massachusetts audience that he’s been a proponent of greater transparency at the nation’s central bank for some time.

“Here’s what we plan to do: I want to restrict the powers of the Federal Reserve in a number of ways,” he said. “First of all, they will be the major losers of power if we’re successful, as I believe we will be, setting up that, uh, financial product protection committee.”

The committee Frank mentioned was proposed by President Barack Obama during the campaign, as a way of protecting consumers. It was formally presented to Congress in the President’s financial regulatory reform white papers in July, noted law firm Wiley Rein LLP.

“The Federal Reserve is now charged with protecting consumers,” continued Frank. “They were supposed to do sub-prime mortgage restricted … Congress in 1994 gave the Federal Reserve the power to adopt rules to ban bad sub-prime mortgages. … They have the power to ban credit card abuses. They have the power to do most of it. They, under Greenspan, did nothing.

“Under Bernanke, they started to do things, but only after Congress started, when I became chairman of the [House Financial Services Committee], we began to act on these things: Sub-prime mortgages, credit cards, overdraft … And after we started, the Fed did. So, that’s why one of the reasons why in the new consumer protection agency we will take away from the Federal Reserve the power to do consumer protection.”

Frank added that Congress will reverse an action by the Democratic Congress of 1932 that gives the Fed authority to lend money at will.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/rep-frank-house-will-pass-ron-paul’s-‘audit-the-fed’-bill-this-year.html