Stacy Summary: The fact that television news is not covering the fires in California is part of the trend of all charities needing a more and more famous face to front their campaign. I think it may have started with those cable ads asking you to sponsor a child, but went global with Live Aid. Now even local disasters need a celebrity angle to get coverage. So – any uncovered big stories in your non-celeb neck of the woods?
- Reality TV: No famous people, no coverage of your disaster (h/t @tinyrooster)
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I have an angle of the hurricanes in New Orleans. It is the relief work of one group in particular, which to my knowledge did not receive substantial attention.
I was unable to find any news articles myself on this through Google News, but I don’t really know how to search for that kind of thing. Especially considering that the story is as much as 4 years old.
But I can provide this excerpt from “Awake” magazine, August ’08 edition:
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005, they caused catastrophic damage and much loss of life. The victims included thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Directed by the United States branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses, disaster relief committees swung into operation. In Louisiana, they set up 13 relief centers, 9 warehouses, and 4 fuel depots. Their field of operation covered 32,000 square miles [80,000 km2]. Nearly 17,000 Witness volunteers from all parts of the United States and from 13 other lands poured in to help with emergency aid and reconstruction. The results showed that the forces of nature are no match for Christian love.—1 Corinthians 13:1-8.
The volunteers repaired more than 5,600 homes of fellow believers and 90 Kingdom Halls, the meeting places of Jehovah’s Witnesses. These figures represent virtually all such buildings that were damaged. In harmony with Galatians 6:10, which urges Christians to “work what is good toward all,” Jehovah’s Witnesses assisted a number of nonbelievers as well.
Ms. Herbert:
I caught Max on Alex Jones broadcast Wednesday 10/03/09.
THANK YOU.
Brilliant. On Point. STRONGLY SUPPORTIVE of Healthcare for all Americans.
MAX! Tanned, rested and back from vacation, CALLING CEO’s OUT to publicly shred them for their oligarch corporatist policies.
Screw socialized health care. Here in Australia our new nazi health “task force” is preparing some nice new lifestyle compliance rules that by the power of bureaucrat gods will crack down on humans who are incredulously overwhelming their glorious socialized health systems and using up “their” tax dollars that should be used paying of electorates in prep for next election or their own “personal expenses”.
And now apparently it doesn’t work good enough because the feds (Canberra) do not have complete command control abilities and it’s the bureaucrats at state level that are not as good bureaucrats as the feds.
But the market is evil I guess and gives us nothing but pain and suffering.
@Max Keiser – I agree with the Whole Foods boycott, but I believe the hedge funds will NOT act to support it. Really, we need some way to pull the trigger OURSELVES on their stock price. Once the price starts to drop, THEN the other funds will follow suit – but not before.
Weren’t you talking to Greenpeace at some point? They have a lot of money…
@frances – The man is such punk, you do not even realize. I asked my roommate to go and get me some TVP, and she returned with this tiny 8 oz package from WF that cost her $7.00
WTF?!?! I showed her where to get TVP in bulk, for about $2.00/lb at a LOCAL store.
As to whether or not he deserves financial armageddon, consider this: the owners of that stock, in a TRULY free market, have the right to do whatever they wish with it, do they not? And they don’t have to answer to me, you, or anyone else for what they do with it. If they wish to use that stock to blow this guy into next week for being a two-faced, smug, self-satisfied git then that is their prerogative, is it not?
I think he does deserve it, BTW. He sells overpriced crap to ignorant Yuppie pseudo-liberals while he personally supports right-wing causes. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of these clowns.
The question to be asked about the California fires shouldn’t be why such poor coverage, but how many people the environmental movement plans to kill to advance its agenda.
“The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee… Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species.”
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275865.html
Quebec to the rescue of California … RaR!!
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_13240889
Now let families to income split, restore assets like income trusts, reduce tax on incomes and shift it lightly to consumption, use tax incentives to start a personal savings revolution, slash the financial barriers to college and university and solve some problems with tax-free bonds, not more taxpayer bondage.
My 0,02$ on this blog for this quarter
@Mep:
Good point.
While I can understand your position that Mackey does not deserve to face “financial armageddon” due to his op-ed, I just don’t feel any sympathy for him. Even before the market crashed, we had 1 MILLION Americans per year filing for bankruptcy due in large part to medical bills. 62% of people who file for bankruptcy now do so because of medical bills. Of that 62%, 75% of people filing actually HAD health insurance at the outset of their bankrupting illness. That’s financial armageddon. And that’s what Mackey is promoting a continuation of.
What hope is there with the Congress and President we have writing the bills?
We will end up like a third-world republic.
Glad to hear the other side so well articulated.
Agree to disagree agreeably but nicely put.
(I detest partisan politics, just don’t want the state telling me what to do)
(but it’s not fair that the common person has been priced out of health care)
so do please tell us regular Americans what options we have left because not many people here trust Madame Pelosi inc.
If Whole Foods is forcing me to eat string beans and continues to support the immoral and racist European cracker trade, I’m all for boycotting the bastards! RISE UP!
Frances,
I have no doubt that some Whole Foods shoppers were naive enough to think that because Whole Foods tries to brand itself as a progressive company, that somehow implies that the CEO also holds progressive views. So I’m sure that some people were upset to find out otherwise. The majority of comments I’ve heard from ex-Whole Foods shoppers, however, point to them taking offense to the piece because while they had continued to shop at Whole Foods despite the depression–because they care about what they put into their bodies–there was Mackey, basically saying that he does not care about the health of the people in this country (which would include his shoppers) or about the state of their bodies; he cares that bodies fill his stores and stock his shelves, that’s all.
While I can understand your position that Mackey does not deserve to face “financial armageddon” due to his op-ed, I just don’t feel any sympathy for him. Even before the market crashed, we had 1 MILLION Americans per year filing for bankruptcy due in large part to medical bills. 62% of people who file for bankruptcy now do so because of medical bills. Of that 62%, 75% of people filing actually HAD health insurance at the outset of their bankrupting illness. That’s financial armageddon. And that’s what Mackey is promoting a continuation of.
Insurance loses its very meaning when people can have it, pay into it for years or decades, and then have it either not pay for necessary procedures and medications or have it pulled from them when they get sick enough to have to use that insurance. Further, people should not have their insurance revoked, be classified as “uninsurable” because they have cancer or some other illness and finally pushed into bankruptcy when they seek services on their own. Our “system” is immoral and criminal through and through. Nobody defending it should be taken seriously.
Hmm… It’s business as usual at the US Embassy in Kabul. This story actually made it to the MSM but I get the idea that the public doesn’t care, doesn’t get it, or their words will do nothing to make any changes so why bother.
http://tinyurl.com/nng2gb
If AJ was using a fully-powered truth filter, he’d be calling out the President for making a backroom deal with PhRMA and the private insurers, skewering the lunatic fringe for lying to people in order to keep the campaign contributions rolling in (and the seats warm in the insurance sector for when the dear “public servants” leave public life and enter the revolving door into the private sector for employment), questioning why it is that politicians and the corporate media have all but blacklisted the phrase “single payer,” questioning why the CBO has not scored single payer, and ultimately, take the side of the “socialists” who are calling for a single payer solution. In short, AJ, if using his “truth filter,” would understand why Mackey is full of shit and why Whole Foods ought to be attacked. He’d understand it so well that he’d ask his listeners to join in on the boycott.
Mep, nice commentary.
But are the progressives so naive to believe that Mackey always marketing ideology through avocados (as Max said the Avocado Pimp)?
oops: But are the progressives so naive to believe that Mackey’s actions, marketing ideology to sell avocados, is not the normal American capitalistic device? Are the progressives angry about capitalist hypocrisy or about Mackey’s stance?
@Mep:
I did take offense to the word you chose: “gaul”.
The entymology of the word is fascinating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaul
It was entirely appropriate in context you used it: actually brilliant. I just took offense to the first amendment issue.
The way I saw it (and of course my perspective is skewed by a subjective stance) the progressives felt slapped in the face by the “betrayal” of Mackey. But are the progressives so naive to believe that Mackey always marketing ideology through avocados (as Max said the Avocado Pimp)? It seemed that the movement was stung more by a wounded pride. Whole Foods is a grocery store, not a church.
You have every right to boycott an individual for his views when he uses his power and influence as a platform. I feel, though, that the man has a right to his views and should be allowed to express them without risking economic armageddon to his company.
@Mep:
Glad to see you posting again!
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lump you in with the progressive movement. My mistake.
@ Frances,
Who said anything about the Constitution? Using one’s 1st amendment rights to promote a point-of-view does not shield that person from feeling the wrath of his customer base. That is, unless there’s something in the fine print of the 1st amendment that I didn’t read.
On Afghanistan . . . really? How would you like me to work in my stance on what’s going on in Afghanistan into my commentary on Whole Foods the health care “debate”? Is there any other atrocity that I should also address so that you’re not compelled to call me a hypocrite for a stance of mine that you’re not even aware of? Or are you just trying to change the subject?
Mackey exercised his 1st amendment rights all right. Now, he gets to sit and enjoy the consequences as others exercise their own. And since Mackey so believes that free markets = free people and that the best way for one’s voice to be heard is via the markets, I hope that Max is successful in getting his acquaintances to exercise their 1st amendment rights, too.
@ frances,
My take after listening to AJ just to hear Max’s contribution, on the whole topic of health insurance/care reform, AJ is not allowing any facts re: the state of our health care “system” to enter his truth filter because AJ just can not fathom that government CAN do anything to improve health care. He clearly does not know even the basics, such as that private insurance has a 31% overhead; Medicare has a 4% overhead.
If AJ was using a fully-powered truth filter, he’d be calling out the President for making a backroom deal with PhRMA and the private insurers, skewering the lunatic fringe for lying to people in order to keep the campaign contributions rolling in (and the seats warm in the insurance sector for when the dear “public servants” leave public life and enter the revolving door into the private sector for employment), questioning why it is that politicians and the corporate media have all but blacklisted the phrase “single payer,” questioning why the CBO has not scored single payer, and ultimately, take the side of the “socialists” who are calling for a single payer solution. In short, AJ, if using his “truth filter,” would understand why Mackey is full of shit and why Whole Foods ought to be attacked. He’d understand it so well that he’d ask his listeners to join in on the boycott.
So I say hit him and hit him hard for having the gall to write such a POS op-ed and being so arrogant to think that he wouldn’t be called out for it or identified as being a poster boy for the perpetuation of debt slavery, sickness, and death.
@Mep:
You’ll have to explain the history of hate crime precident to Americans. You see: we’re naive. We believe we have a right to voice our opiinions based on the Constitution. Many Americans believe the Mackey has a right to voice an opinion on an op-ed at the Washington Post without being personally attacked.
It’s called DIALOGUE.
The new actions are a result of old reactions to the force upon our country: marginalize the opposition, silence the other.
Your anger and your threats only serve to diminish your cause.
IF you want to see real slavery and death, why don’t you hypocritical progressive say SOMETHING about the UN “humanitarian relief effort” in Afghanistan?
@gb,
I say hit him because Mackey has made WF vulnerable and hit him so that the rest of the scumbags realize that they can be just as easily targeted.
Hit him because scumbags like him are responsible for 14,000 Americans losing their health insurance PER DAY and for 47 million others having no access. Hit them because every time something horrible happens–whether it be 9/11, natural disasters, wars, or economic collapse, it is THEY who benefit from the suffering of everyone else. And they benefit while scapegoating everyone else (i.e. they scapegoated homeowners who got scammed into subprime mortgages, minorities, immigrants, union members, poor people, people without health insurance, people with shitty health insurance). We’ve got 20,000 Americans dying every year because they lack access to medical treatment. Now that’s a death panel. The other REAL death panel is that which they seek to keep alive: the private insurance scam.
Also, hit him for being just another scumbag willing to grab any old piece of shit he can find to fling up into the air to keep the health care “debate” from centering on this:
“seems like a choice between two crap alternatives, just like every other big issue in U.S. politics.”
These scumbags don’t want a real debate, because they don’t want people to come to their senses and realize that we already have models for government-FINANCED insurance that work. (Tricare through the VA, SCHIP, and Medicare.) A nephew of mine just had a $23,000 procedure done ($11,000 for the hospital; $12,000 for the surgeon). The cost to my sister under Tricare was $25. I can’t even go and get my teeth cleaned and walk out of the dentist’s office w/o paying over $100!
So I say hit him and hit him hard for having the gall to write such a POS op-ed and being so arrogant to think that he wouldn’t be called out for it or identified as being a poster boy for the perpetuation of debt slavery, sickness, and death.
Make no mistake, the “bipartisan reform” that Mackey and his fellow scumbags are after is one that includes individual mandates to purchase private insurance and fines those who refuse to or cannot buy in, one that allows for the trojan horse to the privatization of Medicare that is Medicare Advantage to live on and continue to suck money out of the system, one that continues to ban pharmaceutical imports from Canada, one that extends the patent life of drugs another 12 years so that cheaper generics are not available, and one that is guaranteed to INCREASE the cost of premiums and deductibles once the scumbags have succeeded in creating a captive market.
I wish I had a Whole Foods store near me. I’d burn the effer down.
Max,
The stock price of Whole Foods is at a 52 week high. I’m wondering if it’s your experience that when faced with a boycott, investors jump in to inflate the stock price a bit in an attempt to blunt criticism and use the stock price as a piece of positive PR?
I’ve seen some comments online that claim that the general trend is that large boycotts show up in the stock price a quarter later–that if the stock price is going to take a mild hit, that’s when it’ll appear. I don’t know if that’s true or not because I’ve never paid much attention to the effect of boycotts on share prices.
It seems pretty safe to assume that Whole Foods will lose a considerable amount of customers over Mackey’s piece (which the Honduran-coup-supporting fake progressive, Lanny Davis helped to write). As well they should. A CEO that out-of-touch regarding who his customer base is ought to be flat-out fired for his stupidity in thinking that his piece would somehow sway public opinion and the opinion of his customers. People gave him a pass for his anti-union stance. Now, even that position of Whole Foods is being criticized. I have to assume that since the health care “debate” continues to devolve (we’re now talking about slitting our wrists and forming covenants to defeat health care reform), a lot of the anger that people feel will be shifted to Mackey, himself, for the part that he played in arguing against reform. Because the “debate” is such a farce and has gotten so ugly, I have to believe that Whole Foods boycotters will be more likely to wage a sustained boycott.
A small boycott even cropped up outside of a new Whole Foods store last week:
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=1422
@MaxKeiser:
I’m confused. This site posted an audio yesterday in which I heard you say that Alex Jones was a ‘truth filter’. Then I listened to the Alex Jones Show yesterday and you were quite vocal in opposition to Alex concerning John Mackey and his company. So which is it? Is Alex filtering out truth, is Alex filtering out untruth, or did truth get caught in the spam filter?
Have you now harnessed truth personally with your London friends whom you threaten to unleash upon the free market in America?
Juxtaposition Fun of NYT headlines
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/duncanblack/endemic.jpg
p.s. i mean the health care choices
MAX,
with all the scumbags in the world, why concentrate on the guy from whole foods? seems like a choice between two crap alternatives, just like every other big issue in U.S. politics.
t’s amazing how people can fight against their own interests. http://tr.im/xMtr
the studies quoted are interesting
@Max, Thank you for explaining that.
Yeah, if Whole Foods took all their cash and paid down their debt they’d be left with nearly 300 million in debt, according to their recent quarterly report. They needed sales of 1.9 billion last quarter to get just 160 million in cash flow. They look vulnerable in my amateur opinion.
I still think it’s hilarious that a union investment fund is invested in this adamantly anti-union company! lol. They write an angry letter to the board but, it is their union members who should be writing angry letters to them for investing in Whole Foods in the first place.
Absa Newgold, an ETF in South Africa, just transported their gold to the UK. Why?
If I would like to store gold securely London is certainly not on my list. The security industry in SA is well equipped to store gold. Question remains: why did Absa do this?
Hong Kong recalls gold reserves, says it can store it at home
Invites Asian states to store bullion in new facility, in bid to become gold hub
By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London, transferring it to a newly-built high-security depository at the city’s airport, in a move that won praise from local traders Thursday.
The facility, industry professionals said, would support Hong Kong’s emergence as Swiss-style bullion trading hub and help lessen dependency upon London as center of settlement and storage.
..
..
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hong-kong-recalls-gold-reserves-from-london-2009-09-03
LOL ….. Geithner obviously didn’t convince them on his last visit it seems !
They found traces of real food in Snickers
@ P/E Ratios
Amazing .. how many companies have P/E ratio in the hundreds and thousands !
;.)
ALL
http://www.finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&o=-pe
NYSE
http://www.finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=exch_nyse&o=-pe
NASDAQ
http://www.finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=exch_nasd&o=-pe
Click on P/E twice to sort top down !
@Link for Currencies and Gold
http://www.finviz.com/forex.ashx
… gives you a quick visualization of the relative movements.
BTW… FINVIZ has a lot of other goodies as well IMO !
@gonzomarx .. great pst.
Yes, and I was surprised to find it at MarketWatch .
… “Lobbyists love spending your tax dollars”…
How true !
@phil
indeed i’m a fan of Coincidence Theory
it’s a great post by Paul B. Farrell and i’d rip it off!
and it gives me another excuse to post a George Carlin clip
http://tr.im/xMjQ
@phil
indeed i’m a fan of Coincidence Theory great post by Paul B. Farrell. i’d rip it off!
and it gives me another excuse to post a George Carlin clip
http://tr.im/xMjQ
Max
talking of Punks, did you ever see the Siege?
I thought they were good
Mike
@gonzomarks .. Matt Tabbei link
From Matt :
|| intellectual desperation and magical-thinking ||
… ” In light of all this, the Fed’s decision to brag publicly about a few loans that are actually performing is sort of scary — it speaks to a level of intellectual desperation and magical-thinking unusual even for a banker in the subprime/MBS era ” …
From MarketWatch: Democracy is dead … lobbyists rule America
|| “Denial” and “Magical Thinking” make us easy targets. ||
… ” And here’s why: Ask any neuroeconomist, behavioral-finance quant, investment psychologist or other practitioner of the mysterious “science of irrationality” and they’ll tell you that Americans have two self-sabotaging mental biases that killed democracy from within: “Denial” and “Magical Thinking” make us easy targets. Our brains are being manipulated by clandestine forces beyond our control. We can’t see them or resist. ” …
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/16-credos-for-our-new-lobbyist-nation-2009-09-01?ref=patrick.net
Coincidence ?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/nov/25/2
this link just popped up on my inbox
http://notreason.com/2009/09/02/max-keiser-just-lost-his-mind/
Dude! Bring in on!
come on my show and debate me on this
Your comments are full of misinformed tripe that exposes your pinhead agenda.
keep in mind that Whole Foods is a 4 bn. dollar company. A successful boycott and short-sale of the stock could drive 1 billion or more into the pockets of the victims of America’s “health” industry. In order to drain the swamp of corporate sleeze balls we need to take away their cheap source of financing by driving their stock prices down to zero.
For a complete legal discussion on this check out Larry Ribstein’s write up he did for the Wash. Legal Foundation covering my idea of tying boycotts with short sales.
note: this is not for individuals to sell short in their own account.. this is about boycotting a company until professional hedge funds enter the fray and short the stock to oblivion.
yes hedge funds make money on this but so what.. this gives them more fire power to go after the next boycott and sell short target; starbucks, coke, mcdonald’s, etc.
The power to move the economy’s finances away from the oligopolists and into the pockets of the rightful owners of the country is within reach
Getting back to that avocado pimp John Mackey of Whole Foods. Like I said yesterday, if he’s so sure he’s ‘doing the right thing’ than come on my show and explain to me why your not jiust another oligopollist punk whose stock should be sold short down to zero.
Of course he’ll never do it because his only interested in the health “debate” is to promote his stores. He’s a shameless promoter who wastes valuable public space shilling for string beans and European crackers.
morning all. Doubt we’ll see much of these in the MSM
CIA doctors face human experimentation claims
http://tr.im/xMac
The Secret Government
http://tr.im/xMai
Bailout Propaganda Begins
http://tr.im/xMaq
House of Saud and Al-Qa`idah
http://tr.im/xH8K
A map of book banning in the US.
http://tr.im/xH1b
I wonder if we see Gold past $1000 today?
Will it stay above $1000?
Mike
Fi-fa-first!
@Stacy
Are you accepting the offer? Or where do I send your prize?
I think Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin have paved the way for a wave of politicians that will simply go with the misinformed public. Another example is this lady Blanche Lincoln : http://tinyurl.com/mk2sjx
her quote: “For some in my caucus, when they talk about a public option, they’re talking about another entitlement program, and we can’t afford that right now as a nation,” or “As people don’t understand the PO and see it as a danger, I’m going to vote against it, after all my job is more important than the opinion of 73% of my constuency.”
I call them the morons form across the pond..