Detroit citizens no longer rely on police as self-defense killings skyrocket

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Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matt 24:37

“These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just•Strongs 6662: tsaddiyq, tsad-deek´; from 6663; just:—just, lawful, righteous (man). man and perfect•Strongs 8549: tamiym, taw-meem´; from 8552; entire (literally, figuratively or morally); also (as noun) integrity, truth:—without blemish, complete, full, perfect, sincerely (-ity), sound, without spot, undefiled, upright(-ly), whole. in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 7843: shachath, shaw-khath´; a primitive root; to decay, i.e. (causatively) ruin (literally or figuratively):—batter, cast off, corrupt(-er, thing), destroy(-er, -uction), lose, mar, perish, spill, spoiler, x utterly, waste(-r). before God, and the earth was filled with violence•Strongs 2555: chamacç, khaw-mawce´; from 2554; violence; by implication, wrong; by meton. unjust gain:—cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, x oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong
•Strongs 2554: chamacç, khaw-mas´; a primitive root; to be violent; by implication, to maltreat:—make bare, shake off, violate, do violence, take away violently, wrong, imagine wrongfully..”
—Genesis 6:9-11

Editors note about the word perfect• In James 1:27, when the Holy Spirit wrote the Book of James, through, James, the half brother of Jesus, He used the word unspotted.
• In the Strongs this word is defined • Strongs 2554 (aspilos, as´-pee-los; from 1 (as a negative particle) and 4695; unblemished (physically or morally): — without spot, unspotted.).
• Both in Noah’s generation and this, the Spirit of God is calling us to live purely in our walk with Him. In doing so we become the people like Noah.
• Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Let us continue in God’s Grace and live godly in this evil and perverse generation.
• As Noah and as Lot, we will see the deliverance of God.

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

“We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.

The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.

“I don’t intend to be one of their victims,” said Brown, who has lived in Detroit since the late 1950s. “I’m planning on taking one out.”

How it got this bad in Detroit has become a point of national discussion. Violent crime settled into the city’s bones decades ago, but recently, as the numbers of police officers have plummeted and police response times have remained distressingly high, citizens have taken to dealing with things themselves.

In this city of about 700,000 people, the number of cops has steadily fallen, from about 5,000 a decade ago to fewer than 3,000 today. Detroit homicides — the second-highest per capita in the country last year, according to the FBI — rose by 10 percent in 2011 to 344 people.

On a bleak day in January, a group of funeral directors wearied by the violence drove a motorcade of hearses through the city streets in protest.

Average police response time for priority calls in the city, according to the latest data available, is 24 minutes. In comparable cities across the country, it is well under 10 minutes.

Citizens like Brown feel they have been left with little choice but to take the law into their own hands.

The number of justifiable homicides, in which residents use deadly force in self-defense, jumped from 19 in 2010 to 34 last year — a 79 percent rise — according to newly released city data.

Signs that vigilantism was taking hold in the city came earlier, around Memorial Day 2009, when former federal agent Alvin Davis decided he’d had enough of the break-ins at his mother’s home on the east side. She called the police again and again, but the brazen robberies continued. Davis, then a 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, snapped.

Prosecutors said he spent days chasing and harassing the teenagers who were allegedly robbing his mother, even shoving his federally issued firearm into one of their mouths. No one was killed, but by the time he was done, Davis had racked up charges of unlawful imprisonment and assault. In August 2010, he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

But many residents in his mother’s Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood are sympathetic to Davis, whose case is on appeal.

“He basically did what a lot of us wished we could do,” said Ken Gray, 58, who lives down the street from Davis’ mother.

One high-ranking official in the county legal system, speaking to The Daily, said the rise in justifiable homicides mirrors a local court system that’s increasingly lenient of the practice.

“It’s a lot more acceptable now to get your own retribution,” the official said. “And the justice system in the city is a lot more understanding if people do that. It‘s becoming a part of the culture.”

Detroiters are arming themselves with shotguns and handguns and buying guard dogs. Anything to take care of their own. And privately, residents say neighborhood watch groups in Detroit are widely armed.

“It’s like the militiamen who stepped up way back when. That’s where the neighborhood folks are,” said James “Jackrabbit” Jackson, a 63-year-old retired Detroit cop who has patrolled the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood for years.

“They’re ready to fight,” Jackson said. “We don’t hardly see police anymore.”

The city’s wealthier enclaves have hired private security firms. Intimidating men in armored trucks patrol streets lined with gracious old homes in a scene more likely seen in Mexico City than the United States.

That kind of paid protection can run residents anywhere from $10 to $200 per month, and companies say business is good.

“We’re booming,” said Dale Brown, the owner of Threat Management Group, which along with Recon Security patrols neighborhoods like Palmer Woods in black Hummers.

“We’re paramilitary, but we’re positive. I’m not a vigilante. I’m an agent of change.”

The Detroit Police Department, grappling with deep funding cuts in a city with a spiraling budget crisis, acknowledges that response times are high and says it is working on a plan to lower them. But a spokeswoman for the department insists the rise in justifiable homicides is unrelated.

“It’s not about police response time because often the act has already taken place by the time the police are called,” said Sgt. Eren Stephens. She said citizens have a right to defend themselves.

“Anytime a life is lost, we’re concerned,” she said. “But we can‘t be on every corner in front of every home. And we know that there are citizens who will do what they have to do to protect themselves.”

That’s the terrifying position in which Kevin Early found himself in November when he was held up at gunpoint outside his home in the upper-middle-class Rosedale Park area. Neighbors called the police, but it was 25 minutes before an officer arrived.

Early, the director of the criminal justice studies program at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus, reasoned with the men for more than 20 minutes before he sensed they were about to shoot him in the head — then he ran. As his attackers fled in the opposite direction, neighbors emerged from the street’s stately homes with shotguns.

“All I could think of was my daughter coming home,” Early said. “I didn’t want her to see me shot dead.”

Weeks later, Early packed up his home and left Detroit. He hired Threat Management to supervise the move.

“Where else do the police come to your house after you’ve been robbed and ask you, ‘Why did you call us?’ ”

Mara.Gay@thedaily.com

Fast running out of money, solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC last summer sold off nearly $60 million worth of inventory for less than $20 million in cash to a newly formed corporate entity closely tied to the company’s biggest investors, records show.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matt 24:37

“These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just•Strongs 6662: tsaddiyq, tsad-deek´; from 6663; just:—just, lawful, righteous (man). man and perfect•Strongs 8549: tamiym, taw-meem´; from 8552; entire (literally, figuratively or morally); also (as noun) integrity, truth:—without blemish, complete, full, perfect, sincerely (-ity), sound, without spot, undefiled, upright(-ly), whole. in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 7843: shachath, shaw-khath´; a primitive root; to decay, i.e. (causatively) ruin (literally or figuratively):—batter, cast off, corrupt(-er, thing), destroy(-er, -uction), lose, mar, perish, spill, spoiler, x utterly, waste(-r). before God, and the earth was filled with violence•Strongs 2555: chamacç, khaw-mawce´; from 2554; violence; by implication, wrong; by meton. unjust gain:—cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, x oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong
•Strongs 2554: chamacç, khaw-mas´; a primitive root; to be violent; by implication, to maltreat:—make bare, shake off, violate, do violence, take away violently, wrong, imagine wrongfully..”
—Genesis 6:9-11

Editors note about the word perfect• In James 1:27, when the Holy Spirit wrote the Book of James, through, James, the half brother of Jesus, He used the word unspotted.
• In the Strongs this word is defined • Strongs 2554 (aspilos, as´-pee-los; from 1 (as a negative particle) and 4695; unblemished (physically or morally): — without spot, unspotted.).
• Both in Noah’s generation and this, the Spirit of God is calling us to live purely in our walk with Him. In doing so we become the people like Noah.
• Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Let us continue in God’s Grace and live godly in this evil and perverse generation.
• As Noah and as Lot, we will see the deliverance of God.

Backed by $535 million in federal loan guarantees but burning through the little cash it had left, Solyndra made its first sale in late July to a corporate entity that had been formed just a day earlier. Three more transactions followed over the next few weeks with the same buyer, Solyndra Solar II.

By the time the last sale took place on Aug. 29 — two days before the company announced plans to file for bankruptcy — Solyndra had sold off a total of $58.1 million worth of inventory for $17.5 million, according to documents Solyndra attorneys filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

The sales began at a time when Solyndra officials were trying hard to assure lawmakers and the public of the company’s prospects amid increasing questions about the company’s financial health. Inside the company, the sales transactions show, officials were moving fast to raise cash and buy Solyndra more time.

Todd Zywicki, bankruptcy professor at the George Mason University School of Law, said it’s not unusual for troubled companies to sell off assets to improve liquidity. But he said the inventory sales figure cited by Solyndra — $58.1 million in inventory for $17.5 million in cash — seems unusual.

“The test under the bankruptcy code is whether the sale was for reasonably equivalent value and selling inventory at such a huge discount raises real concerns,” he said. “If Solyndra Solar II is owned or controlled by any insiders or anything like that, then it becomes even more suspicious.”

Solyndra Solar II was formed in Delaware by affiliates of Solyndra’s debtor in possession lender — investors Argonaut Private Equity and Madrone Capital Partners — as well as other debt holders, bankruptcy and government records show. Another special-purpose entity, Solyndra Solar LLC, was formed to purchase the company’s accounts receivable.

Argonaut is the investment arm of a foundation headed by billionaire Oklahoma businessman George Kaiser. Madrone Partners has ties to Wal-Mart’s Walton family.

Steve Mitchell, an Argonaut executive who served on Solyndra’s board, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that investors did not profit from overall sales of the accounts receivable and inventory. The plan was to give the company more time to turn around, he said.

“The inventory was purchased to give the company more time to turn the corner as Solyndra’s revenues were ramping and its costs were coming down, unfortunately the macro solar and economic environment at the time proved too difficult,” Mr. Mitchell said.

“The $58.12 million reported by Solyndra in its bankruptcy filing is the cost to produce the inventory purchased, with the DOE’s consent, by Solyndra Solar II,” he said, referring to the Energy Department, which awarded Solyndra’s loan guarantees in 2009.

“Solyndra’s expected sales proceeds for this inventory was $35 million,” he said. “In the event Solyndra sold these solar panels at the expected price, Solyndra would recover 91 percent of the total sales proceeds.”

To sell the inventory, Solyndra formed its own special entity called Solyndra Financing LLC, which, in addition to inventory, also sold off tens of millions of dollars in the company’s accounts receivable to a separate entity called Solyndra Solar LLC.

Both Solyndra Solar and Solyndra Solar II were created to “raise additional capital and improve debtor’s liquidity position” in the months before the company went bankrupt, attorneys said in filings.

‘Certain inventories’

The formation of Solyndra Solar LLC and Solyndra Solar II LLC was first disclosed in bankruptcy filings last year, but records at the time did not reveal just how much inventory and accounts were being sold off.

In addition to the $58.1 million in inventory sold off to Solyndra Solar II for $17.5 million, the company also sold $59.1 million in accounts receivable to Solyndra Solar LLC for $46.4 million in cash, according to bankruptcy filings.

The bankruptcy filings don’t say how bankruptcy attorneys arrived at the $58.1 million figure for the inventory. A bankruptcy attorney for Solyndra did not respond to email questions Tuesday.

“Certain inventories were sold to Solyndra Solar II on the dates listed for …aggregate cash proceeds of approximately $17.5 million,” the bankruptcy filing states, noting four sales transactions ranging from $5.8 million to $26.5 million for a total of $58.1 million.

The first accounts receivable sale took place on June 3 for $25.7 million. Five other sales followed until the last one for $722,220, which took place on Aug. 4.

Searching for cash

The inventory sale was reported because bankruptcy law mandates disclosure of property “transferred outside the ordinary course of business” going back two years before the date of the bankruptcy filing. The inventory and accounts receivable transactions were the only such sales reported by Solyndra.

Under the inventory deal, Solyndra Solar II would buy Solyndra’s inventory and the solar company, in turn, agreed to market, sell and ship the inventory on behalf of Solyndra Solar LLC, bankruptcy records filed last year show.

“What this appears to be is an effort to bring cash into Solyndra on the eve of bankruptcy by converting accounts and inventory to cash,” said Mr. Zywicki, who reviewed the bankruptcy filing on Tuesday at the request of The Washington Times.

“There’s nothing inherently problematic about that as it is common to want to stockpile cash on the eve of a bankruptcy in order to have a sort of war chest going into the case,” he said.

“It could be a problem, however, if there were particular creditors who were benefited by converting the accounts/inventory to cash for some reason or if those assets were converted to cash for less than reasonably equivalent value.”

Comparison with private sector likely to heat up debate over ending freeze.
Buoyed by generous benefit packages, federal workers earn significantly better compensation than similarly educated workers in the private sector, according to a report released Monday from Congress‘ chief scorekeeper that threatens to reignite at the national level last year’s state battles over public-employee rights.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

Overall, federal workers earn 16 percent more in total compensation — including wages and benefits — than comparable private-sector employees, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Only private-sector workers with the highest levels of education, such as doctors and lawyers, earn more than their public counterparts.

The finding is incendiary at a time when Republicans in Congress are fighting for a freeze on federal worker salaries and the Obama administration is balking, arguing that after two years of freezes, it’s time to ramp up pay.

The CBO said federal workers do better in wages at the low education end, are about equal in the middle, and fall behind the private sector at the top end.

But the key difference is in benefits, where federal workers average more than $20 per hour in compensation — 48 percent higher than the $13.60 in prorated hourly benefits in the private sector. Added together, CBO said, that means significantly higher pay for government employees.

“For workers at all education levels, the cost of total compensation averaged about $52 per hour worked for federal employees, compared with about $45 per hour worked for employees in the private sector with certain similar observable characteristics,” CBO analysts said in their report.

Unions that represent federal workers said the CBO’s comparison was pointless.

The CBO looked at workers with equivalent education levels, but John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the better approach is to compare specific jobs. On that measure, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that federal employees make less than those working equivalent jobs in the private sector.

“Salaries and wages should be a function of the job, not the job-holder — and that’s the case in the federal government,” Mr. Gage said.

He also said the federal government doesn’t consider race, age or sex in employment, and questioned whether discrimination may play a role in holding down pay for some in the private sector.

“The logical implications of a study such as CBO’s can border on the absurd. Assessing the cost of hiring certain numbers of whites and racial minorities, young and old, women and men might lead to the ridiculous notion that since the private sector pays, on average, lower wages to women and racial minorities, then to cut costs, the government should hire more people with those demographic characteristics, rather than hire according to skill,” he said.

Emboldened by the 2010 elections, new Republican governors and legislative majorities in some states last year battled public workers in attempts to curtail benefits and in some cases strip collective bargaining rights.

The fight was most pointed in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is likely to face a recall vote this year over his push, and in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich’s effort to curtail public employee unions’ bargaining power was overturned by a referendum in November.

In Washington, the battle has been less heated — in part because Republicans haven’t gone as far as their state counterparts, and in part because the GOP and Democrats agreed on halting cost-of-living increases for federal civilian workers in 2011 and 2012. That did not rule out pay increases for merit or promotions, but both sides said it amounts to a freeze.

The House has a vote slated for this week to continue that freeze through the end of 2013 for federal workers, members of Congress and their staff.

“While private-sector workers face the squeeze and millions of families continue searching for work, the idea of asking that their hard-earned tax dollars go to fund a pay raise for government employees is just not right,” said Rep. Sean P. Duffy, the Wisconsin Republican who is sponsoring the freeze bill.

But Democrats are balking this time.

After supporting the pay freeze for the past two years, the White House objected in December when Republicans proposed continuing the freeze and using the savings to cover some of the costs of extending the payroll-tax cut into 2012.

Administration officials first said they planned to use the money elsewhere, and then planned to allow a half-percent pay increase for federal workers.

The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment on the CBO report.

The government spent about $200 billion on salaries in 2011, with $80 billion going to pay for the military and $120 billion covering civilian employees governmentwide.

The federal government employs about 2.3 million civilian workers, which is about 1.7 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Another 2.3 million uniformed personnel are employed, including 1 million reservists, and 800,00 people work for government enterprises such as the Postal Service.

Warren Buffett, whom President Obama likes to cite as a fair-minded billionaire while arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy, stands to benefit from the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

“The king by judgment establisheth the land: but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth•Strongs 7843: shachath, shaw-khath´; a primitive root; to decay, i.e. (causatively) ruin (literally or figuratively):—batter, cast off, corrupt(-er, thing), destroy(-er, -uction), lose, mar, perish, spill, spoiler, x utterly, waste(-r). it.”
—Proverbs 29:4

Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, which is among the railroads that would transport oil produced in western Canada if the pipeline isn’t built.

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told Bloomberg News. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul,” she said.

The Obama administration rejected TransCanada’s request for a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to review the proposal by Feb. 21, the deadline imposed by congressional Republicans eager to see the pipeline built. The decision came from the State Department, although Mr. Obama said he agreed with it.

TransCanada said it plans to submit another proposal that would avoid an environmentally sensitive route through Nebraska. The State Department had been reviewing the pipeline project tor three years when it rejected the permit.

If completed, the $7 billion Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from oil sands in Canada to Texas refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It would traverse about 1,600 miles.

The State Department’s review of the project said shipping oil via rail is more costly than delivering it to refineries by pipeline.

Mr. Obama often cites Mr. Buffett as an example of a civic-minded billionaire because the entrepreneur has said he should pay a higher tax rate than his secretary. Mr. Buffett and the president like to tell the story of how Mr. Buffett pays a 15 percent effective tax rate, while his secretary pays a higher rate even though she earns only a fraction of what he does.

The president has called his push for higher taxes on the wealthy the “Buffett rule.”

The secretary, Debbie Bosanek, will sit with first lady Michelle Obama in her box in the House gallery at Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech.

Republicans, labor unions and even some Democrats have criticized the administration’s rejection of the pipeline permit, saying it would create up to 20,000 jobs. Critics accuse the president of buckling to pressure from environmentalists who oppose the project and are important to Mr. Obama’s re-election effort.

Regulators investigating the collapse of MF Global have determined that the firm combined money between securities and futures accounts owned by customers, and transferred funds outside the country to at least one entity, a source said on Friday.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

“The further we get into (the investigation) the more complex it is … but we’re making progress,” the source said, adding that the commingling and transferring of money is making it harder for regulators to determine what money belongs where.

MF Global took futures segregated money and put it into the account for customer securities, essentially mixing futures and securities that were both owned by customers, said an official familiar with the matter.

Until now, it was believed that only customer futures accounts were affected.

The source also told Reuters that MF Global had been using customer funds for “several days if not weeks” rather than just a few days before the firm collapsed.

Regulators had previously thought the firm was using customer funds on the Thursday and Friday before it filed for bankruptcy on October 31.

CME Group, the Chicago exchange where MF Global traded, said it had reviewed the company’s books a week before the bankruptcy and found no issues with the customer money.

If MF Global started improperly dipping into its customers’ accounts long before the firm’s collapse, the allegation would raise questions of why the regulators and auditors failed to spot such behavior.

Congress has already started asking questions about potential lapses in regulatory oversight of MF Global. The pressure on regulators would only increase if MF Global turns out to have misused customer funds over an extended period of time.

“Establishing the specifics of what happened is key to figuring out how the system failed and how to fix it going forward,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a statement on Thursday. “Congress will need to keep drilling down.”

MF Global collapsed in late October after the firm was forced to reveal that it had made a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt.

An effort to sell the firm failed, partially due to the revelation that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money were not where they should have been.

Investigators such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been scouring the company’s books, described as messy and unorganized, for the fund shortfall that has been estimated as much as $1.2 billion by the liquidating trustee..

However, regulators have been at odds with the trustee, believing that figure is too high.

(Additional reporting by Philip Shishkin; Editing by Gary Hill)

Former president’s new firm Teneo Strategy was hired to boost Corzine.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution.

“They were supposed to be helping Corzine improve his image as a CEO—I guess you can tell how that went,” he said. Corzine resigned as CEO and chairman November 4.

Before Corzine joined MF Global in May 2010, the firm was a smart and well-run commodities broker, a culture that was turned upside-down by his leadership style, he said.

“The traders would be shaking their heads,” he said. “They would come back to their desk and say, ‘Well, I thought we were going to do this—but Corzine would come by and do something else all by himself,’” he said.

The Teneo contract with MF Global lasted at least five months, he said. “The board cancelled it after Corzine resigned.”

The source, who is no longer associated with MF Global, said Teneo is a dual-track company with one side devoted to merchant and investment banking and the other side set up to provide image and strategy consulting services.

Clinton is the chairman of the company’s advisory board. His duties and compensation have not been released. The other member of the board is former British prime minister Tony Blair.

Two of the three founding partners are very close to the former president and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton. They are Douglas J. Band, who is the former president’s counselor and has served on his personal staff since 1995 and Declan Kelly, who earned the “Hillraiser” status in the secretary’s 2008 run for president for bundling more than $100,000 for the campaign.

Another prominent member of the Clinton political family is Tom Shea. Shea is a senior vice president for Teneo Strategy and served as Corzine’s chief of staff, when Corzine was the governor of New Jersey.

Kelly sold his public relations firm Financial Dynamics in 2006 to FTI for $340 million, and stayed with that company until July 2009, when he joined the State Department as the Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland.

The source said, “Kelly was given a job they created out our whole cloth.” The job did not exist previously.

“He basically got to ride around developing a book of business, while he waited for his non-compete clause to run out,” he said.

Kelley and the former president traveled together networking and making introductions at international conferences and events, he said.

The Secretary of State also traveled with Kelly, including the October 2010 U.S. – Northern Ireland Economics Conference, which Kelly organized and at which the secretary was the featured speaker.

The secretary announced that she accepted Kelly’s resignation May 11.

Teneo landed its first major client June 1, when the Rockefeller Foundation gave Teneo a $3,447,150, six-month contract to help plan the foundation’s 2013 centennial.

The foundation is another member of the Clinton’s extended family. It gave Clinton its Lifetime Innovation Achievement Award July 27 and the foundation is listed as a between $1 to $5 million contributor to the William J. Clinton Foundation, along with several members of the Rockefeller family who are listed as individual contributors.

[In the preparation of this story, several emails and phone calls were placed to Teneo, MF Global and the State Department for comment. In each case, there was no response.]

It follows an 11-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, earlier this year, which is also believed to have cost the U.S. taxpayer millions.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

While most Americans are lucky to get a few weeks of holiday every year, it seems the country’s leader gets a little more freedom in the matter.
President Barack Obama has announced his Christmas vacation to Hawaii – for a staggering 17-day trip.
Obama, who visited the island just two weeks ago for an economic summit, will head to Honolulu on Saturday December 17 until Monday January 2.

The president, who was raised in Hawaii until he was six, will be joined by his wife Michelle and their daughters, Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10.
The White House travel office announced the president has no public events scheduled for the trip.

The President’s family covers the cost of a private beach front residence in Kailua, Oahu, for their vacation – a ‘Winter White House’ that costs up to $3,500 a day, or $75,000 a month.
But the local and federal taxpayers help pay the bill for travel and s

Last year the trip cost more than $1 million,according to the Hawaii Reporter.
Obama announced the trip during a campaign fundraiser on Oahu’s Leeward Coast during his stay on the island last month.

‘It is great to be home, great to feel that Aloha spirit,’ he said.
‘And Michelle and the girls will be back shortly for Christmas vacation, as we do every year. We’ll see if Washington gets its business done, so I can get here as well. But that’s always a challenge.’
It follows an 11-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, earlier this year, which is also believed to have cost the U.S. taxpayer millions.
Next week, the president will be saving a few cents by hosting a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Obama will speak with Harper at the White House about economic competitiveness, security and key global issues.
Harper has urged Obama to support an oil pipeline from western Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
But the Obama administration said last month it was delaying a decision on the project until it can study new potential routes that would avoid environmentally sensitive areas in the Midwest. The decision is expected to be delayed until 2013.

The Obama administration is appealing a judge’s ruling that Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex are subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

The Justice Department filed a formal notice of appeal Friday afternoon regarding U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell’s August ruling rejecting arguments that the so-called WAVES records belong to the White House even though they are maintained and used by the Secret Service.

The decision to appeal the ruling to the D.C. Circuit would appear to be in tension with Obama’s repeated pledges to operate the most transparent administration in history. The White House announced in Sept. 2009 that it was voluntarily releasing the names of most White House visitors from Sept. 15 forward. However, the conservative group Judicial Watch sought information on visits before that date.

The position taken by the Obama Justice Department, namely that White House visitor records are presidential records and not agency records, is essentially the same one that the department took under President George W. Bush.

Howell did not rule that every White House visit had to be disclosed. However, she concluded that all the data had to be made public unless the government asserted a specific exemption from FOIA, such as provisions protecting national security and privacy.

There was no immediate comment on the appeal from the White House or the Justice Department.

CAIRO – Flames lit up downtown Cairo, where massive clashes raged Sunday, drawing Christians angry over a recent church attack, hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces. At least 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February.

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Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

“And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence•Strongs 2555: chamacç, khaw-mawce´; from 2554; violence; by implication, wrong; by meton. unjust gain:—cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, x oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong
•Strongs 2554: chamacç, khaw-mas´; a primitive root; to be violent; by implication, to maltreat:—make bare, shake off, violate, do violence, take away violently, wrong, imagine wrongfully. through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
— Genesis 6:13

The rioting lasted late into the night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1,000 security forces and armored vehicles to defend the state television building along the Nile, where the trouble began. The military clamped a curfew on the area until 7 a.m.

The clashes spread to nearby Tahrir Square, drawing thousands of people to the vast plaza that served as the epicenter of the protests that ousted Mubarak. On Sunday night, they battled each other with rocks and firebombs, some tearing up pavement for ammunition and others collecting stones in boxes.
At one point, an armored security van sped into the crowd, striking a half-dozen protesters and throwing some into the air. Protesters retaliated by setting fire to military vehicles, a bus and private cars, sending flames rising into the night sky.
After midnight, mobs roamed downtown streets, attacking cars they suspected had Christian passengers. In many areas, there was no visible police or army presence to confront or stop them.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people, blame the country’s ruling military council for being too lenient on those behind a spate of anti-Christian attacks since Mubarak’s ouster. As Egypt undergoes a chaotic power transition and security vacuum in the wake of the uprising, the Coptic Christian minority is particularly worried about the show of force by ultraconservative Islamists.
The Christian protesters said their demonstration began as a peaceful attempt to sit in at the television building. But then, they said, they came under attack by thugs in plainclothes who rained stones down on them and fired pellets.
“The protest was peaceful. We wanted to hold a sit-in, as usual,” said Essam Khalili, a protester wearing a white shirt with a cross on it. “Thugs attacked us and a military vehicle jumped over a sidewalk and ran over at least 10 people. I saw them.”
Wael Roufail, another protester, corroborated the account. “I saw the vehicle running over the protesters. Then they opened fired at us,” he said.
Khalili said protesters set fire to army vehicles when they saw them hitting the protesters.
Ahmed Yahia, a Muslim resident who lives near the TV building, said he saw the military vehicle plow into protesters. “I saw a man’s head split into two halves and a second body flattened when the armored vehicle ran over it. When some Muslims saw the blood they joined the Christians against the army,” he said.
Television footage showed the military vehicle slamming into the crowd. Coptic protesters were shown attacking a soldier, while a priest tried to protect him. One soldier collapsed in tears as ambulances rushed to the scene to take away the injured.
At least 24 people were killed in the clashes, Health Ministry official Hisham Sheiha said on state TV.
State media reported that Egypt’s interim Cabinet was holding an emergency session to discuss the situation.
Writing in his Facebook page, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said: “What is happening now are not clashes between Muslims and Christians but attempts to spark chaos and divisions. I call on all the children of the nation who care about its future, not to comply with calls of sedition, because it is fire that will burn us all.”
The protest began in the Shubra district of northern Cairo, then headed to the state television building along the Nile where men in plainclothes attacked about a thousand Christian protesters as they chanted denunciations of the military rulers.
“The people want to topple the field marshal!” the protesters yelled, referring to the head of the ruling military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. Some Muslim protesters later joined in the chant.
Later in the evening, a crowd of ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis turned up to challenge the Christian crowds, shouting, “Speak up! An Islamic state until death!”
Armed with sticks, the Muslim assailants chased the Christian protesters from the TV building, banging metal street signs to scare them off. It was not immediately clear who the attackers were.
Gunshots rang out at the scene, where lines of riot police with shields tried to hold back hundreds of Christian protesters chanting, “This is our country!”
Security forces eventually fired tear gas to disperse the protesters. The clashes then moved to nearby Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising against Mubarak. The army closed off streets around the area.
The clashes left streets littered with shattered glass, stones, ash and soot from burned vehicles. Hundreds of curious onlookers gathered at one of the bridges over the Nile to watch the unrest.
After hours of intense clashes, chants of “Muslims, Christians one hand, one hand!” rang out in a call for a truce. The stone-throwing died down briefly, but then began to rage again.
In the past weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angry over church construction. One riot broke out near the city of Aswan, even after church officials agreed to a demand by local Salafi Muslims that a cross and bells be removed from the building.
Aswan’s governor, Gen. Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, further raised tensions by suggesting to the media that the church construction was illegal.
Protesters said the Copts are demanding the ouster of the governor, reconstruction of the church, compensation for people whose houses were set on fire and prosecution of those behind the riots and attacks on the church.
Last week, the military used force to disperse a similar protest in front of the state television building. Christians were angered by the treatment of the protesters and vowed to renew their demonstrations until their demands are met.

The Obama daughters were listed on the manifest as “senior staff.”

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
—Matthew 24:37

Corruption

”The earth also was corrupt•Strongs 2040: haracç, haw-ras´; a primitive root; to pull down or in pieces, break, &ä destroy:—beat down, break (down, through), destroy, overthrow, pluck down, pull down, ruin, throw down, x utterly. before God,and the earth was filled with violence”.
—Gen 6:11

How much does it cost taxpayers to fly First Lady Michelle Obama, her two daughters and her mother, a niece and a nephew, a hairstylist and makeup artists to South Africa and Botswana to give a few speeches, meet Nelson Mandela, and enjoy a safari on a private game preserve?

Nearly half a million dollars, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) concerning Obama’s June 21-27 journey.

Judicial Watch said the U.S. Air Force provided a C-32 – a Boeing 757 modified by the military for the purpose of flying big-wigs around the world – to fly the First Lady and her entourage to and from Africa, at a cost of $424,142. Another $928.44 was listed as the cost of providing 192 meals for the 21 people who made the trip

The Obama daughters were listed on the manifest as “senior staff.”

“This trip was as much an opportunity for the Obama family to go on a safari as it was a trip to conduct government business,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This junket wasted tax dollars and the resources of our overextended military. No wonder we had to sue to pry loose this information.”

The documents made public by Judicial Watch do not include the total of all costs for the First Lady’s trip, such as expenses for security, transportation on the ground and so forth. For more information, go here.