While the corporate media attempts to minimize, under-report, distort, or outright ignore the enormous and growing and irreparable damage to people, wildlife, fishing, vegetation, and the eco-system of Mother Earth caused by this corporate horror that began on April 20th, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama / Biden / Rahm Emanuel administration was busily urging that off-shore drilling be expanded. In an April 15th, 2010, article in The Black Commentator titled, ‘Decloaking the Deadly Foxes in Our Midst,’ I specifically warned about the insidious and “environmentally insane off-shore drilling” policies on the part of “Obama and his Democratic and Republican Party colleagues.” Who was paying attention? Who is paying attention even now?

It is important to understand that British Petroleum (BP) is not by any means the only corporate player involved in this horrendous national and planetary disaster, just as Goldman Sachs is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only corporate vampire on Wall Street. In point of fact, Haliburton Corporation, Transocean Corporation, and Hyundai Heavy Industries all worked together with British Petroleum. The bottom line for these corporations is profit for the elite, motivated by greed. The safety and welfare of everyday people and the planet is a distant second or third – if indeed at all.

Even as the pro-apartheid Zionist Obama / Biden / Rahm Emanuel clique continues to wage bloody imperialistic wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan (to name but a few places), joblessness, foreclosures, college / university education-tuition hikes, homelessness, racism, corporate government attacks on labor unions & working people, and prison incarceration rates continue to sky rocket in this nation. Even as public education is in fact dismantled and privatized by the Democratic Party foxes and Republican Party wolves, our young people serve as cannon fodder for the corporate / military elite – going from the cradle to the military or to prison.

Our addiction to oil comes at a very high price. We have to wean ourselves off of it and as quickly as possible. Our ability to destroy and pollute this planet seems mind bogling and insane. We knew long ago this was coming but took no steps towards change. It amazes me that as a species we can be so kind on one hand but continue to destroy the planet at a reckless pace on ther other. I fear a true desire and push for real change will only come when millions of people are sickened and die. By then I wonder if it may be too late. Facts are facts people. We best wake up soon.

His office, which handles complaints from consumers about their banks, has seen a spike in the number of new cases it is investigating. In the quarter that ended Jan. 31, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, or OBSI, opened 301 new files – nearly twice the number in the same quarter last year and almost three times as many as in 2008.

Part of the reason for the increase: More consumers are looking into breaking their mortgages to refinance at lower rates – only to discover that doing so often triggers a prepayment penalty of thousands of dollars.

One frequent complaint is that the method of calculating the penalties is confusing. Last year, as interest rates were falling to all-time lows, Michael Davie looked into breaking the mortgage contract on his two-bedroom Ottawa condominium. The 27-year-old engineer, a first-time homeowner, was just two years into a five-year, fixed-rate mortgage of 4.479 per cent, but he suspected that refinancing might be worth it. /p>

“I decided to have a look at it but I had the same problem as everyone else – I couldn’t figure out how the penalty was calculated,” he said.

He searched his mortgage documents and failed to find it spelled out anywhere. A quick call to the mortgage company revealed that his penalty was the so-called interest rate differential, or IRD. Mr. Davie was charged a $2,500 penalty for breaking his mortgage and refinancing at a lower variable rate, saving himself roughly $300 a month in interest payments.

On a variable-rate mortgage, a penalty of three months’ interest is usually charged for prepayment. For fixed mortgages, the penalty could be three months or the IRD, which is more difficult to calculate. The IRD is based on the difference between the existing mortgage rate and the one at which the customer would be renewing.

Sometimes lenders calculate it using the posted mortgage rate – increasing the size of the penalty – rather than using the lower, discounted rate that many customers actually pay.

Over the years, most people had grown accustomed to the fees being three months interest, Mr. Melville said. “It just happens that in this unique interest rate environment, that was not the case. It was the three months’ interest or the IRD, and right now the IRDs are a lot bigger than the three months’ interest.”

Together, they would drastically lower taxes in Colorado. Proposition 101 would cut income taxes 0.1 percent a year until the rate was 3.5 percent – down from the current 4.63 percent. The initiative also would cut auto-registration fees to $1 or $2 and repeal all taxes and fees on telephones and computer networking, except for the 911 fee
The paper and printing costs alone for the 1,600 pages of petitions would have exceeded $200, according to the complaint.

“I just don’t think they have any regard for that aspect of the law,” said Tyler Chafee, spokesman for Protect Colorado’s Communities.

Of the official six ballot proponents, only conservative activist Freda Poundstone is well-known in political circles. Poundstone was visiting family in Washington on Tuesday and said she was not aware of the complaint, but she said she spent no money on the petition campaign.

She referred questions to Jeff Gross, the main sponsor of Proposition 101. Gross did not return an e-mail Tuesday, and he has declined previous interview requests.

Even if the complaints are successful, they will not keep the three questions off the ballot, said Rich Coolidge, spokesman for Secretary of State Bernie Buescher. If Buescher finds the complaints meet legal requirements, he will send them to an administrative law judge, who will set a hearing in the next 15 days, Coolidge said.

Chafee’s group is asking for fines of $50 a day and disclosures of the fundraising and expenses of the anti-tax campaigns since they started working

I’ve known Americans who’ve gone to Costa Rica, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico and Austria for medical and dental treatment they couldn’t afford here. (In fact, Logan wrote about this a few weeks ago.) If people are getting on a plane to go somewhere to get treatment, that’s got to tell you something:

MEXICO CITY — It sounds almost too good to be true: a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.

To get it, you just have to move to Mexico.

As the United States debates an overhaul of its health care system, thousands of American retirees in Mexico have quietly found a solution of their own, signing up for the health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute.

Canadian Health care vs American health care
The governments of both nations are closely involved in health care. The central structural difference between the two is in health insurance. In Canada, the federal government is committed to providing funding support to its provincial governments for health care expenditures as long as the province in question abides by accessibility guarantees as set out in the Canada Health Act, which explicitly prohibits billing end users for procedures that are covered by Medicare. While some label Canada’s system as “socialized medicine,” the term is inaccurate. Unlike systems with public delivery, such as the UK, the Canadian system provides public coverage for private delivery. As Princeton University health economist Uwe E. Reinhardt notes, single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems, because doctors are in the private sector.[21] Similarly, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities, rather than being part of government.

In the U.S., direct government funding of health care is limited to Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which cover eligible senior citizens, the very poor, disabled persons, and children. The federal government also runs the Veterans Administration, which provides care to veterans, their families, and survivors through medical centers and clinics.

The U.S. government also runs the Military Health System. In Fiscal Year 2007, the MHS had total budget authority of $39.4 billion and served approximately 9.1 million beneficiaries, including Active Duty personnel and their families and retirees and their families. The MHS includes 133,000 personnel, 86,000 military and 47,000 civilian, working at more than 1,000 locations worldwide, including 70 inpatient facilities and 1,085 medical, dental, and veterinary clinics.

“It is surprising and disappointing that an organization chartered to promote diversity and cultural understanding would take a public position of intolerance,” Rasmussen said.

The group’s executive director, Brenda Sturdevant, said that her group regularly sends youth home to change into appropriate clothing. “I expect our public leaders to follow the same guidelines that we have for our youth,” she told the Statesman Journal.

Rasmussen -who identifies as transgender prefers male pronouns- has called the dress code unnecessary and explained that he wore the outfit due to the heat.

“It was hot and sticky. My attire was completely appropriate to the circumstances and I also received a number of compliments during the day,” he said.