US citizens increasingly facing austerity dictatorship

Dr. Webster G. Tarpley
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/31/295923/us-citizens-facing-austerity-dictatorship

To the extent that the modern world thinks at all about the problem of fascism, there is a tendency to regard this form of bankers’ totalitarian dictatorship as something which happens suddenly and all at once.

Historians can remember Mussolini’s march on Rome in October 1922, and Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933. But we must also recall that the definitive seizure of power by fascism in these two countries was preceded by dress rehearsals and pilot projects of fascist rule on a more limited scale.

Mussolini’s dictatorship had its precursor in the dictatorship of the fascist literary man Gabriele d’Annunzio in the city of Fiume, bordering Yugoslavia, in 1919-1920. Here many of the rituals, methods, slogans, and other paraphernalia of fascism originated. The stalking horse for Hitler was the coup d’état by Chancellor von Papen in the state of Prussia in July 1932, which ousted the Social Democratic government there, ending government by elected leaders and replacing them with Reichskommissars sent by von Papen from Berlin as Prussia went into receivership.

Von Papen’s Prussian coup gets us uncomfortably close to what has just happened this past week in the great American city of Detroit, Michigan, well-known as the capital of the automobile industry but now especially hard hit by the world economic depression. The Republican governor, Rick Snyder, has just ousted the Mayor and City Council of Detroit, replacing them with a single outside overseer who will combine both executive and legislative functions to enforce austerity.

The lawyer Kevyn Orr took power as dictator of Detroit on Monday, March 25, 2013. He is expected to begin voiding labor contracts, imposing unilateral sacrifices on city workers, autocratically cutting the Detroit city budget, selling off city assets to Governor Snyder’s cronies and backers at bargain basement prices, and privatizing or simply terminating city services. Orr has signaled that one of his priorities will be to renege on Detroit’s pension and healthcare commitments to retired policemen, firemen, teachers, and other municipal workers. He does not rule out a haircut for the bondholders, but this must be considered window dressing unless and until it occurs.

Orr has boasted: “I’m prepared to be the most hated man for a period of time.” Here is one promise on which he can be expected to deliver. Orr has announced that, although Detroit Mayor David Bing and the City Council have no more authority to decide anything, he will keep paying their salaries in an attempt to buy the passivity of the local Democratic Party machine. Snyder’s goal is to maintain debt service payments on Detroit’s $8.6 billion in bonded debt. A year ago, Moody’s Investors Service, one of the notoriously mendacious ratings agencies, reduced its rating for Detroit’s general obligation bonds to B2, which is five notches below investment grade. In November 2012, Moody’s downgraded Detroit by two notches to Caa1, meaning junk bonds with a significant risk of default.

During 2012, the city utility agency for water and sewage borrowed money to pay off $300 million in toxic derivative swaps on which it wanted to cut its losses. This came at the same time that Mayor Bing and the Detroit Water Board (sic) announced a plan to cut 81% of city workers in this sector, reducing jobs from 1,978 to 374 over the next five years. Bing and the city council were attempting to implement austerity cuts so brutal that they could convince Snyder that an outside commissar was not necessary, thus hoping to keep their jobs. It was during this phase that Bing first hired Jones Day as a restructuring consultant.

Detroit the victim of toxic derivatives

Detroit is also facing a payment of between $350 million and $400 million on toxic derivatives contracts which were sold to the city over recent years as the mayor and council struggled to avoid bankruptcy. Detroit had issued floating-rate bonds, but then with great folly decided to swap these for fixed rate instruments. When interest rates declined, the city did not reap the benefit of having to pay less debt service. Many US municipalities, ranging from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts have had to pay billions of dollars to zombie banks to get out of interest rate swaps gone sour.

It is estimated that Wall Street firms including UBS, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan Chase have since 2005 (when Detroit began running large yearly deficits) collected more than $474 million from Detroit in fees for floating $3.7 billion of bonds. One of those backing these deals was the former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was just convicted on corruption charges. The banks told Detroit that these interest rate swaps would offer protection against higher interest rates which failed to materialize. (Darrell Preston and Chris Christoff, “Only Wall Street Wins in Detroit Crisis Reaping $474 Million Fee,” Bloomberg, March 13, 2013)

Snyder’s emergency manager law also poses the problem of conflicts of interest. The city of Detroit is presently saddled with a toxic credit swap arrangement in which Bank of America/Merrill Lynch is a counterparty. Bank of America is a former client of Jones Day. This derivatives trap could force the city to pay $400 million to the zombie banks under certain circumstances, one of which is the imposition of an emergency manager - which is what has just happened. Detroit’s financial position is further complicated by the deliberate policy of the Snyder administration to delay and withhold tens of millions of dollars of payments owed to the city by the state.

Detroit, the capital of the US automobile industry, has been cynically driven into deep financial crisis. The 700,000 residents are currently suffering shortages of streetlights, buses, and street repairs, and many homes are now abandoned. In 2012, the Detroit Police Department was cut by almost 12% of its officers, leading to a 9% rise in the number of homicides in the city. The policy of Governor Snyder is to force Detroit to make debt service payments to the banks a top priority, even as he sends in a financial commissar to impose additional measures of savage austerity.

November 2012: Michigan voters reject dictators, but Snyder installs them anyway

In November 2012, a broad coalition of community forces with strong representation from the black community gathered almost a quarter of a million signatures to get the repeal of the existing emergency manager law (Public Act 4) onto the state’s November election ballot in the form of Proposal 1. Incredibly, the United Auto Workers dragged its feet in this process, and preferred to focus its energies on efforts to get out the vote for Obama, who has never lifted a finger to defend the rights of Michigan citizens under attack. In the November 2012 election, Michigan voters nevertheless voted by 52% to 48% to strike down Snyder’s Public Act Four of 2011. Unfortunately, an attempt to write collective bargaining into the state constitution failed, most likely due to union efforts siphoned off for the benefit of Obama.

At this point, the GOP State Attorney General invoked the older and weaker emergency manager law, Public Act 72 of 1990, to keep the existing commissars in power. Snyder’s minions in the state legislature then quickly rubberstamped Public Act for 36 of 2012, a measure practically identical to the law which Michigan voters had just rejected. This new enabling legislation for city dictators has just gone into effect on March 28, 2013.

Who is governor Rick Snyder?

What kind of governor imposes dictatorial rule on a large part of his state? Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder represents Schachtian economics in a business suit for the United States in the 21st century. His outward demeanor seems reasonable, measured, moderate, even affable. Snyder wears button-down oxfords, with no black shirt or brown shirt, no Roman salute, no screaming (at least in public), no speeches from balconies. He uses the direct apologetic, arguing that his oppressive measures are rational and practical responses to the problems of Michigan and its cities. This is known as Snyder’s “positive” style - wildly ideological in content, muted in packaging.

Rick Snyder, like Bill Gates, Gianroberto Casaleggio, and Peter Thiel is a reactionary operative from the modern computer and information technology industry. Snyder was at various times chairman of the board (2005-2007), CEO, and cofounder of Gateway 2000, a computer hardware firm originally based in Iowa and South Dakota which later moved to California. Gateway’s stock price averaged about four dollars per share in the mid-1990s, and peaked at $84 in 1999 thanks to the dotcom bubble. Gateway at one time had a network of hundreds of its own retail computer shops, but this fell apart in 2004 after the dotcom bubble burst. The brand was damaged by shoddy customer service due to the overseas outsourcing of call centers. In October 2007, Gateway was sold to Acer of Taiwan for about $1.90 per share. The Gateway name is now in the process of being phased out. Gateway appears as a company which was decimated by unwise acquisitions, the reckless quest for short-term profit, outsourcing, and the desire to cash in by selling out to a foreign buyer.

Trained as a certified public accountant, Snyder was also a venture capitalist. In 1997, he founded Avalon investments Inc. of Ann Arbor. In 2000, he was cofounder of Ardesta, an investment firm which reportedly put money into 20 startup companies over the subsequent years.

Hear a word of clarification is in order. It would be misleading to expect fascism in the United States in the second decade of the 21st century to imitate each and every feature of historical fascism as it existed in Europe between the two world wars. Fascism today means first of all a commitment to destroy all remaining forms of trade unionism and other labor organization. It includes efforts to impose brutal austerity policies, such as the lowering of real wages, and a shifting of the tax burden from the super rich to the middle class and the underclass - in other words, tax cuts for the rich and tax hikes for working people. Modern-day fascists seek to destroy the social safety net, including food stamps, unemployment benefits, and child nutrition programs. They demand the radical deregulation of the entire economy, including in such savage directions as abolishing the child labor laws. Modern fascist economics also includes the vehement refusal to use public funds for building vital infrastructure.

Snyder was elected governor in 2010, the year of the hysterical tea party revolt against Obama as the first black president and as a Wall Street puppet. He campaigned as pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-family while touting his business experience. Unlike many less clever reactionaries, Snyder supported the federal rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, which make up a huge part of the Michigan economy. Upon taking power in Lansing in early 2011, Snyder rammed through a policy of balancing the budget by cutting spending on vital services to the disadvantaged while lowering taxes on corporate profits and increasing the burden on the middle class and the poor. Snyder claimed to be asking for “shared sacrifice,” but Democrats accused him of balancing his budget on the backs of children, working families, and seniors, brutally harming certain groups to get the result they wanted.

Snyder’s push for austerity dictatorship went into high gear in March 2011, when he signed a law increasing the powers of “emergency managers” whom the governor could appoint to take over the government of cities and other entities declared in receivership because of alleged financial insolvency. The new law also made easier for Snyder to oust existing mayors and city council members, replacing them with local budget dictators. To make it easier to implement these takeovers under bipartisan cover, Snyder had appointed as State Treasurer Democrat Andy Dillon, a former speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives who had lost the 2010 Democratic primary to choose an opponent for Snyder. Dillon had worked in Washington as an aide to the former right-wing Democratic Senator and basketball star Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who later went to work on Wall Street.

Snyder uses “right to work” law to bust unions

In December 2012, Snyder - ignoring vehement protests by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other unions who have large memberships and deep historical roots in Michigan - ordered his rubberstamp state legislature to ram through a bill making Michigan a “Right to Work” state. This bill outlawed the union shop by forbidding employers to collect dues on behalf of the labor union representing a bargaining unit. Henceforth only the open shop is allowed, with workers free to enjoy the benefits of union bargaining without paying any of the costs. Such an arrangement usually leads to the collapse of the union, which is Snyder’s goal. Snyder’s cited motivation was to make Michigan more business friendly. Michigan is thus walking in the footsteps of Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazi regime, both of which had the total destruction of labor unions as the leading point on their agenda. This Michigan union-busting offensive came at the same time that other Midwestern Republican governors, including Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, and Daniels of Indiana, were pushing programs to wipe out public sector unions and/or all labor organizations.

Democrats and Republicans serve the bondholders

The installation of local dictators tasked with defending the interests of the bondholders and derivatives mongers at the expense of the people was already gathering momentum under Snyder’s predecessor, former two-term Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, whose brief attempt to host a cable television news program on Current TV ended in failure in February 2013 after a year’s run. Granholm imposed dictatorial rule on Ecorse in October 2009, Highland Park from 2005 to 2009, Benton Harbor in April 2010, Pontiac in August 2010, and on the Detroit public schools. Snyder kept most of these dictators in place, increased their powers, and appointed new ones for the Highland Park schools in January 2012 and for Flint in August of 2012.

Emergency manager Kevyn Orr now rules Detroit

Kevyn Orr, Snyder’s choice as resident enforcer for the bondholders in Detroit, is a professional bankruptcy administrator. Representing Chrysler for $700 an hour during its 2009 bankruptcy and reorganization, Orr was instrumental in the asset-stripping of the number three automaker even as he further weakened the UAW to the point where Snyder could attempt to destroy this union with a frontal attack a few years later. One of Orr’s bright ideas was convincing a federal judge to allow Chrysler to suddenly close 800 dealerships -- one quarter its US total -- almost all of which represented not just showrooms but also repair and maintenance capabilities and skilled jobs important for local communities. Orr was a backer of John Kerry in 2004 and of Obama in 2008. He was therefore a logical choice for the Obama policy of forcing General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, eliminating scores of factories and tens of thousands of jobs, cutting retirement and health benefits, and lowering the pay of new hires to the level of non-union Mississippi sweatshops. At his current assignment, Orr will be getting $270,000 per year.

Orr lives in a $1 million mansion in tony Chevy Chase, Maryland. Between 2009 and 2012, the state of Maryland’s Office of Unemployment Insurance filed four separate tax liens on the Orr residence seeking to recover unpaid taxes Orr owed the state from hiring childcare providers to look after his two children and then not paying state taxes related to this household help. At the time that Orr was named Detroit commissar by Snyder, two tax liens totaling almost $16,000 were still pending back in Maryland. Orr described in this situation as “remarkably embarrassing” and “something that fell through the cracks.” (Matt Helms and John Gallagher, “Kevyn Orr Pays On Two Maryland Liens: Snyder Says He Overlooked Taxes, Detroit Free Press, March 18, 2013)

This looks like a typical nannygate problem. One of the surest ways to identify an oligarch from the top 1% in the United States today is that the individual in question can afford domestic servants, something the vast majority of the population cannot even dream of. These elitists, who are lawyers, often hire undocumented foreign workers as domestic help, or else fail to pay state or federal taxes for the servants they employ. Nanny problems have terminated a number of elitist careers, but Orr is likely to remain in power regardless.

Federal lawsuit, constitutional challenge, and protest march against emergency rule

There have been numerous political protests and legal actions against Snyder’s oppressive law. On March 27, 2013, a group of lawyers and civil rights leaders filed suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, naming Snyder and Dillon as defendants. The lawsuit seeks to establish the unconstitutionality of Snyder’s emergency manager procedures as applied under the current Public Act 436. The suit argues that Snyder’s emergency manager law violates the voting rights of Michigan citizens by depriving them of the chance to elect local officials for the purpose of self-government. Supporters of the lawsuit point out is that Snyder’s methods violate the equal protection of the laws which the XIV Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires every state to provide. The vote of the Detroit resident is worth less than the vote of an inhabitant of the nearby upscale Grosse Pointe because the Detroit resident no longer can elect a mayor and city council. The fact that majority black communities totaling over 50% of Michigan’s Afro-Americans are being singled out for finance dictators also means that civil rights laws are being violated. Public employees in the cities now under dictatorship are having their collective bargaining rights eroded even more than workers in the rest of Michigan.

On the day after this lawsuit was filed, a group of protesters featuring the Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action Network and MSNBC staged a protest march in downtown Detroit from the headquarters of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) - which is the largest public employee union in the city - to the federal courthouse. Sharpton correctly noted that “There will be a threat to everyone in this nation if the emergency management in Detroit stands.” Sharpton’s intervention is of course welcome, but it should not be forgotten that he and his associates had contributed relatively little to the struggle against Snyder’s program over the previous two years, and remain subordinated to Obama. Snyder blandly commented that lawsuits like this are “part of democracy” and boasted of his high success rate in getting judges to reject legal challenges to his dictatorial measures.

In effect, Public Act 436 creates a new form of dictatorial government under which cities and municipal corporations are subjected to the arbitrary rule of one unelected and unaccountable official who combines executive and legislative powers, and whose decisions, decrees, appointments, expenditures, and sales cannot be influenced by local voters. (Matt Helms and Joe Guillen,”Lawsuit Challenges Michigan Emergency Manager Law,” Detroit Free Press, March 28, 2013) There is a strong prima facie case that this new form of government is in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Article IV of the U.S. Constitution guarantees to every state a “republican form of government.” When mayors and city councils in so much of a state are ousted from power and replaced by dictatorial rule, it is clear that republican government has ended.

The XIV Amendment of this same Constitution orders that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Each state is further forbidden to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As noted, if you live in Ann Arbor you can elect your own local government, but if you live in Benton Harbor or Detroit you cannot, meaning that Snyder has thrown the U.S. Constitution out the window. Obama is charged by the Constitution to “take care” that the laws be faithfully enforced, but so far he and his Attorney General Eric Holder have done nothing in favor of Michigan.

Secrecy and graft under the emergency manager law

The local organization Citizens United against Government Corruption has filed suit in state court claiming that the Michigan Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board violated the Michigan Open Meetings Law because of excessive secrecy in the way Orr was appointed. This group is also suing Snyder for usurping the authority of the Loan Board by picking out Orr by himself.

One of the perks of being a Michigan emergency management commissar is that you can pay yourself large sums of money without any check or balance. The Michigan Court of Appeals has just upheld a judgment of $333,000 against the former dictator of Highland Park, who had paid himself a handsome $264,000 on his own authority -- something the courts have found illegal. This particular commissar is also under federal indictment for stealing money from the Highland Park school system when he served on their board - indicating that kind of person who gets appointed as emergency manager.

In Detroit, a major focus of resistance to Snyder’s dictatorship policy is the group For a Moratorium on Detroit’s Public Debt: Make the Banks Pay! There is also the Moratorium Now! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shutoffs, where David Sole is one spokesman. This organization demands that Wayne County and other Michigan counties immediately stop all foreclosures due to unpaid back real estate taxes. This includes a demand that Fannie Mae, a privatized agency which was seized by the federal government in September 2008, stop participating in these foreclosures. These actions are key to maintaining the Detroit real estate tax base.

One of the mass leaders of the resistance to Snyder’s commissars in Benton Harbor, on the western edge of the mitten, is the Reverend Edward Pinckney. Pinckney is a leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO). This past week, Pinckney organized protest motorcades on the I-94 Interstate near Benton Harbor.

Program to save Detroit and other cities

The most immediate remedy necessary for Detroit and other cash-strapped cities is to declare an immediate and unilateral debt moratorium freezing all payments of interest and principal for at least five years or for the duration of the world economic depression, which ever lasts longer. The survival needs of the Michigan population and economy must take precedence over the demands of the bondholders, which can be sorted out later on. The debt freeze is all the more justified since in large part of Detroit’s debt is represented by toxic credit derivatives which were sold to city officials through fraud, misrepresentation, and other corruption, with the investment bankers blatantly lying about future prospects. This hemorrhaging of cash must come to an end now.

Debt freeze

As the website For a Moratorium on Detroit’s Public Debt sums up the case: “Why should the same banks who destroyed the tax base of our city, who drove over 200,000 people out of the city of Detroit with their criminal, fraudulent foreclosures and evictions, who were bailed out by taxpayers and the Federal Reserve with trillions of our dollars, get paid first? The banks owe Detroit billions in reparations for the destruction they have caused. A suspension in debt service payments would immediately resolve the city’s fiscal crisis and allow for the restoration of city services and the recall of laid-off workers.”

1% federal wall street sales tax with revenue sharing for states and cities

Detroit and other Michigan cities would also benefit from the enactment of a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax on speculative turnover in financial markets. As of now, most Wall Street banks and hedge funds pay little to nothing in the way of federal corporate income taxes, and not a dime on their quadrillions of trading. A 1% Wall Street Sales Tax might produce as much as $1 trillion of revenue for the United States. Half of this should go to the federal government, but the other half should be apportioned to the states and localities through revenue sharing. This is where of Michigan and Detroit could find more needed liquidity to maintain police, fire, health, highway, education, and other vital services during the process of economic reconstruction and recovery.

Outlaw credit swaps and other derivatives

The role of toxic credit derivatives in destroying Detroit’s financial position reminds us of the need for outright bans -bright line prohibitions backed up by criminal penalties - on the sale of Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and other types of derivatives. The CDS and CDOs just mentioned played the central role in the 2008 collapse of the US banking system, and outlawing them is long overdue. The US economy did much better when these instruments were unheard of. Credit default swaps are inherently illegal. If they are gambling, that violates the law. If they are insurance, those who issue them are not properly registered an issue policies. All payments on credit derivatives must cease.

Fed must provide $3.6 trillion credit stimulus to build infrastructure

Finally, Detroit is now a city in urgent need of having its entire infrastructure rebuilt. The pressures on the federal and state budget to maintain the social safety net are already considerable, so it is not advisable to attempt to finance an infrastructure program through on-budget spending. At the same time, the principal money center banks have earned their title of zombie banks because of their inability to engage in normal commercial banking through their insolvency due to derivatives. The only available source of large-scale liquidity to finance the economic reconstruction and recovery of the US economy is therefore the Federal Reserve. Political forces must now force Bernanke to open an infrastructure window empowered to purchase $3.6 trillion of 0% century bonds issued by US states, municipalities, and regional authorities for modern superhighways, bridges, high speed rail, water and canal projects, modern energy production and distribution, public housing, schools, hospitals, public buildings, and telecommunications. (The $3.6 trillion corresponds to the most recent estimate by the American Society of Civil Engineers of the expenditures necessary to restore an adequate infrastructure in this country over the next few years.) This credit stimulus is indispensable to restart the US economy. Detroit would benefit from such a program by receiving a 21st-century infrastructure. At the same time, much of the construction equipment and transportation rolling stock would be produced in Detroit’s factories. The target is full employment, which will require at least 30 million new productive jobs over the years ahead.

Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1946. A philosopher of history, Tarpley seeks to provide the strategies needed to overcome the current world crisis. He first became widely known for his book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992), a masterpiece of research which is still a must read. During 2008, he warned of the dangers of an Obama presidency controlled by Wall Street with Obama: The Postmodern Coup, The Making of a Manchurian Candidate and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. His interest in economics is reflected in Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History Against Oligarchy. His books have appeared in Japanese, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Tarpley holds a Ph.D. in early modern history from the Catholic University of America.

Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza

Greg Palast
October 17, 2012
This article appeared in the November 5, 2012 edition of The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

About the Author

Greg Palast
Greg Palast is an economist and financial investigator turned journalist whose series on vulture funds appeared on BBC...
Also by the Author

Mr. Singer and Mr. Ryan (Paul Ryan)
Greg Palast
Confronting the Globalcrat (Global Organizations, Globalization)
Globalization advocates must realize that they're dealing with a new world.

Greg Palast
It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—?$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by ?Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999. Alone, Delphi foundered, declaring bankruptcy in 2005, after which vulture hedge funds, led by Silver Point Capital, began to buy up the company’s old debt. Later, as the nation’s financial crisis accelerated, Singer’s Elliott bought Delphi debt, as did John Paulson & Co. John Paulson, like Singer, is a $1 million donor to Romney. Also investing was Third Point, run by Daniel Loeb, who was once an Obama supporter but who this summer hosted a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for Romney and personally donated about $500,000 to the GOP.

As Delphi was in bankruptcy, making few payments, the bonds were junk, considered toxic by the banks holding them. The hedge funds were able to pick up the securities for a song; most of Elliott’s purchases cost just 20 cents on the dollar of their face value.

By the end of June 2009, with the bailout negotiations in full swing, the hedge funds, under Singer’s lead, used their bonds to buy up a controlling interest in Delphi’s stock. According to SEC filings, they paid, on average, an equivalent of only 67 cents per share.

Just two years later, in November 2011, the Singer syndicate took Delphi public at $22 a share, turning an eye-popping profit of more than 3,000 percent. Singer’s fund investors scored a gain of $904 million, all courtesy of the US taxpayer. But that’s not all. In the year since Delphi began trading publicly, its stock has soared 45 percent. Loeb’s gains so far for Third Point: $390 million. The gains for Silver Point, headed by two Goldman Sachs alums: $894 million. John Paulson’s fund, which has already sold half its holdings, has a $2.6 billion gain. And Singer’s funds and partners, combining what they’ve sold and what they hold, have $1.29 billion in profits, about forty-four times their original investment.

Yet without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds—and slashing worker pensions—the hedge funds’ investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the US Treasury.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

* * *

One of President Obama’s first acts in office, in February 2009, was to form the Auto Task Force with the goal of saving GM, Chrysler, their suppliers and, most important, auto industry jobs. Crucial to the plan was saving Delphi, which then employed more than 25,000 union workers.

Obama hired Steven Rattner, himself a millionaire hedge fund manager, to head the task force that would negotiate with the troubled firms and their creditors to avoid the collapse of the entire industry. In Rattner’s memoir of the affair, Overhaul, he describes a closed-door meeting held in March 2009 to resolve Delphi’s fate. He writes that Delphi, now in the possession of its hedge fund creditors, told the Treasury and GM to hand over $350 million immediately, “because if you don’t, we’ll shut you down.” His explanation was corroborated by Delphi’s chief financial officer, John Sheehan, who said in a sworn deposition in July 2009 that the hedge fund debt holders backed up their threat with “an analysis of the cost to GM if Delphi were unwilling or unable to provide supply to GM,” forcing a “shutdown.” It would take “years and tens of billions” for GM to replace Delphi’s parts. At that bleak moment, GM had neither. The automaker had left the inventory of its steering column and other key components in Delphi’s hands. If Delphi laid siege to GM’s parts supply, the bailout would fail and GM would have to be liquidated or sold off—as would another Delphi dependent, Chrysler.

Rattner could not believe that Delphi’s management—now effectively under the hedge funders’ control—would “want to be perceived as holding GM hostage at such a precarious economic moment.” One Wall Street Journal analyst suggested that Singer was treating Delphi “like a third world country.” Rattner likened the subsidies demanded by Delphi’s debt holders to “extortion demands by the Barbary pirates.”

Romney has slammed the bailout as a payoff to the auto workers union. But that certainly wasn’t true for the bailout of Delphi. Once the hedge funders, including Singer—a deep-pocketed right-wing donor and activist who serves as chair of the conservative, anti-union Manhattan Institute—took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).

Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

* * *

Another outcome may have been possible. In June 2009, the Treasury and GM announced a bailout deal they’d crafted over months with the cooperation of the United Auto Workers. GM would take back control of Delphi via a joint venture with Platinum Equity, a buyout firm led by billionaire Tom Gores, a self-described “Michigan man” who grew up in the shadow of Delphi’s Flint plant.

The final Platinum plan, according to Delphi’s official statement posted on Marketwire in June 2009, lists plants in fourteen locations slated for closing, which would have left several of Delphi’s plants still in business, still unionized—and still in the United States. Crucially, the deal would have returned key Delphi operations, including the production of steering columns, directly to GM.

The hedge funders stunned Delphi by refusing to accept the Platinum plan. Harshly criticizing it as a “sweetheart deal,” they demanded 45 cents on the dollar for the debt bonds they had bought on the cheap—more than double what the Treasury-brokered Platinum deal would pay.

Then the Singer-led debt holders swooped in. After the Platinum deal was announced, Elliott Management quietly tripled its holdings of Delphi bonds, purchased at just one-fifth of their face value. By joining forces with Silver Point, Paulson and Loeb, Singer now controlled Delphi’s fate.

Gores, Delphi and UAW officials declined to respond to queries about the deal on the record, but the sworn deposition by Delphi CFO Sheehan (confidential then, but later posted on Scribd.com) lets us in on the tense negotiations culminating in a twenty-hour showdown between Delphi, GM, the UAW, the Auto Task Force and the US pension agency, on the one hand, and Singer’s hedge fund group, on the other. Delphi said it would dump the Platinum deal if the hedge funds would agree to terms that would take care of all stakeholders, including the following stipulation: “Agree on plan structure to maximize job preservation.”

The hedge funders said no, since they had a billion-dollar ace up their sleeve. According to Sheehan, Singer and company’s controlling interest allowed them to force the bankruptcy judge to hold an auction for all of Delphi’s stock. The debt holders outbid the Michigan Man’s team, offering $3.5 billion. But it wasn’t $3.5 billion in cash: under the rules of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debtors-in-possession may bid the face value of their bonds rather than their current market value, which at the time was significantly lower. Under the Platinum deal, Delphi would have had much more in real money for operations: $250 million in cash from Gores, another $250 million in credit, and $3.1 billion in “exit financing” from GM, all of it backed up by TARP. Still, under Chapter 11 rules, the Platinum bid was technically lower. And that’s how Singer’s funds—which included the Romneys’ investment—came to buy Delphi for the equivalent of only 67 cents a share.

Rattner and GM, embarrassingly outmaneuvered, tried to put a good face on it. As Rattner wrote in his memoir, “In truth we didn’t care who got Delphi as long as GM could extricate itself from the continual drain on its finances and assure itself of a reliable supply of parts.”

* * *

Even before the hedge funds won their bid for Delphi’s stock, they were already squeezing the parts supplier and its workforce. In February 2009, Delphi, claiming a cash shortage, unilaterally terminated health insurance for its nonunion pensioners. But according to Rattner, the Treasury’s Task Force uncovered foggy accounting hiding the fact that the debt holders had deliberately withheld millions of dollars in cash sitting in Delphi accounts. Even after this discovery, the creditors still refused to release the funds.

The savings to the hedge fund billionaires of dropping retiree insurance was peanuts—$70 million a year—compared with the profits they later extracted from Delphi. But the harm to Delphi retirees was severe. Bruce Naylor of Kokomo, Indiana, had been forced into retirement at the age of 54 in 2006, when Delphi began to move its plants overseas. Naylor’s promised pension was slashed 40 percent, and his health insurance and life insurance were canceled. Though he had thirty-six years of experience under his belt as an engineer with GM and Delphi, he couldn’t find another job as an engineer—and he doesn’t know a single former co-worker who has found new employment in his or her field, either. Naylor ended up getting work at a local grocery store. That job gone, he now sells cars online for commission, bringing in one-fifth of what he earned before he was laid off from Delphi.

Even with his wife Judy’s income as a nurse, it hasn’t been enough: the Naylors just declared bankruptcy, and their home is in foreclosure.

After the hedge fund takeover of Delphi, the squeeze on workers intensified through attacks on their pensions. During its years of economic trouble, Delphi had been chronically shorting payments to its pension funds—and by July 2009, they were underfunded by $7 billion. That month, Singer’s hedge fund group won the bid for control of Delphi’s stock and made clear they would neither make up the shortfall nor pay any more US worker pensions. Checkmated by the hedge funders, the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation agreed to take over Delphi’s pension payments. The PBGC would eat the shortfall.

With Delphi’s new owners relieved of its healthcare and pension obligations, its debts to GM and its union contracts—?and now loaded with subsidies from GM funded by TARP—the company’s market value rose from zero to approximately ?$10.5 billion today.

* * *

But there was still a bit of unfinished business: President Obama needed to be blamed for the pension disaster. In a television ad airing in swing states since September, one retired Delphi manager says, “The Obama administration decided to terminate my pension, and I took a 40 percent reduction in my pension.”

Another retiree, Mary Miller, says, “I really struggle to pay for the basics…. I would ask President Obama why I had no rights, and he had all the rights to take my pension away—and never ever look back and say, ‘Not only did I take it from Mary Miller, I took it from 20,000 other people.’”

These people are real. But it’s clear that these former workers, now struggling to scrape by, were hardly in the position to put together $7 million in ad buys to publicize their plight. The ads were paid for by Let Freedom Ring, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization partially funded by Jack Templeton Jr., a billionaire evangelical whose foundation has sponsored lectures at the Manhattan Institute (the anti-union think tank whose board of directors includes not only Singer but Loeb). The ads also conveniently leave out the fact that the law sets specific ceilings on what the PBGC is allowed to pay retirees—regardless of what they were originally owed.

In June 2011, Charles and David Koch hosted a group of multimillionaires at a retreat in Vail, Colorado. In secret recordings obtained by investigator Brad Friedman, the host, Charles Koch, thanks Singer and Templeton, among others, for each donating more than $1 million to the Koch brothers’ 2012 anti-Obama election war chest.

Of course, it wasn’t Obama who refused to pay the Delphi pensions; it was Paul Singer and the other hedge funds controlling Delphi. The salaried workers’ pensions were, after all, an obligation of Delphi’s owners, not the government. Delphi’s stockholders—the Romneys included—had one easy way to rectify the harm to these pensioners, much as GM did for its workers: just pay up.

Making good on the full pensions for salaried workers would cost Delphi a one-time charge of less than $1 billion. This year, Delphi was flush with $1.4 billion in cash—?meaning its owners could have made the pensioners whole ?and still cleared a profit. Instead, in May, Delphi chose to use most of those funds to take over auto parts plants in Asia at ?a cost of $972 million—purchased from Bain Capital.

* * *

That leaves one final question: Exactly how much did the Romneys make off the auto bailout? Queries to the campaign and the Romneys’ trustee have gone unanswered. And Romney has yet to disclose the crucial year of his tax returns, 2009. But whatever the tally, it was one sweet deal. The Romneys were invested with Elliott Management by the end of 2010, before Delphi was publicly traded. So, in effect, they got Delphi stock at Singer’s initial dirt-cheap price. When Delphi’s owners took the company public in November 2011, the Romneys were in—and they hit the jackpot.

In their 2011 and 2012 Federal Financial Disclosure filing, Ann Romney’s trust lists “more than $1 million” invested with Elliott. This is the description for all of her big investments—the minimal disclosure required by law. (Had Romney kept the holding in his own name, he would have had to reveal if his investment with Singer had made more than $50 million.)

It is reasonable to assume that Singer treated the Romneys the same as his other investors, with a third of their portfolio invested in Delphi by the time of the 2011 initial public offering. This means that with an investment of at least $1 million, their smallest possible gain when Delphi went public would have been $10.2 million, plus another $10.2 million for each million handed to Singer—all gains made possible by the auto bailout.

But that’s just the beginning. Since the November 2011 IPO, Delphi’s stock has roared upward, boosting the Romneys’ Delphi windfall from $10.2 million to $15.3 million for each million they invested with Singer.

But what if the Romneys invested a bit more with Singer: let’s say a mere 3 percent of their reported net worth, or ?$7.5 million? (After all, ABC News reported—and Romney didn’t deny—that he invested “a huge chunk of his vast wealth” with Singer.) Then their take from the auto bailout so far would reach a stunning $115 million.

The Romneys’ exact gain, however, remains nearly ?invisible—and untaxed—because Singer cashed out only a fragment of the windfall in 2011. And the Singer-led hedge funds have been able to keep almost all of Delphi’s profits untaxed ?by moving Delphi’s incorporation from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey, a tax haven off the coast of France.

The Romneys might insist that the funds were given to Singer, Mitt’s key donor, only through Ann’s blind trust. But as Mitt Romney said some years ago of Ted Kennedy, “The blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will. Which is to say, you can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do.” Romney, who reminds us often that he was CEO of a hedge fund, can certainly read Elliott Management’s SEC statements, and he knows Ann’s trust is invested heavily in a fund whose No. 1 stake is with Delphi.

Nevertheless, even if the Romneys were blind to their initial investment in Elliott, they would have known by the beginning of 2010 that they had a massive position in Delphi and would make a fortune from the bailout and TARP funds. Delphi is not a minor investment for Singer; it is his main holding. To invest in Elliott is essentially a “Delphi play”: that is, investing with Singer means buying a piece of the auto bailout.

Mitt Romney may indeed have wanted to let Detroit die. But if the auto industry was going to be bailed out after all, the Romneys apparently couldn’t resist getting in on a piece of ?the action.


Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.

Palast's brand new NYT bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound and on the NOOK and Kindle.

Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Donate and can get a signed copy of the book or make a contribution of any amount to support our work.

Gayest Cities in America, 2012

Source:
http://news.advocate.com/post/15571734525/gayest-cities-in-america-2012

15. Denver
Denver is simultaneously outdoorsy and a rapidly growing metropolis, and its attitude is exceptionally laid-back and gay-friendly. (Screw the antigay zealots in nearby Colorado Springs.) A day spent skiing, fishing, hunting, or camping with the fit locals can lead to an evening dining, clubbing, or camping of another sort. Much of the sporting and social scene is devoted to the ladies of Denver; witness the Capitol Hill neighborhood, girl-watching at There Urban Whiskey Bar (ThereDenver.com), a nosh at Racine’s (RacinesRestaurant.com), and dancing at Charlie’s (CharliesDenver.com).

14. Long Beach, Calif.
How gay is Long Beach? Its pride celebration is one of the country’s biggest, and the Long Beach Pride float seems to make its way to every other Pride event within 500 miles! There are a ton of gay and lesbian bars, restaurants, a big boat suitably named the Queen Mary (QueenMary.com; it’s also haunted, and a hotel). The sunny, welcoming city provides a more relaxed alternative to nearby Los Angeles.

13. Austin
No amount of backwoodsiness from previous and current statehouse residents George W. Bush or Rick Perry can taint the cosmopolitan, countercultural, and friendly nature of this capital city. Bands, barhopping, and barbecue feature prominently here, for queers and others. The lesbian-owned Hotel San José (SanJoseHotel.com) is a minimalist oasis; no fewer than 16 bars offer libations for LGBTs; and Splash Days (au naturel sunbathing and parties over Labor Day), the Austin City Limits Music Festival (late September), and March’s South by Southwest (SXSW) film and music festival keep Austin suitably weird — and gay.

12. Portland, Ore.
Bisexual Sleater-Kinney alum Carrie Brownstein has fun on Portlandia (“Put a bird on it!”) playing with the rep of the city’s hipster, hyper-locavore, hyper-literate, boycott-ready, feminist, fleece-clad denizens. But there’s other fun to be had here too. Visit the arty Pearl and Alberta districts; stay at the Ace Hotel; read at the country’s largest indie bookstore, Powell’s; drink at the Silverado (SilveradoPDX.com) and Red Cap Garage/Boxxes (Boxxes.com); tune in to Out Loud (KBOO.fm/OutLoud), and party at Crush (CrushBar.com), popular with men and women. Oh, then there’s all that nature stuff!

11. Little Rock, Ark.
The River Market District is the main gay area, and many businesses that don’t advertise as specifically LGBT are friendly and open. The compact city has Backstreet (1021 Jessie Rd.) and U.B.U. (TheAquarium.bizland.com) for the over-18 crowd, and those of legal drinking age can check out SixTen Center Street Bar, TraX, Miss Kitty’s/Saloon (all three at TraxNLR.com). But not all LGBT life happens in a bar: According to GayChurch.org, nine of the city’s churches advertise as LGBT-friendly. Amen!

10. Grand Rapids, Mich.
The heart of western Michigan LGBT life is in Grand Rapids, with dancing, drinking, and bingo at the Apartment (ApartmentLounge.net), which has been in operation for over three decades; karaoke at Diversions video bar (DiversionsNightclub.com), and drag shows and go-go boys at Rumors (RumorsNightclub.net). The city boasts one of the Midwest’s best LGBT country line-dancing scenes, with the Grand River Renegades (GrandRiverRenegades.com) offering anyone a dance card on Sundays at Rumors.

9. Atlanta
We won’t fault you for trying to forget Real Housewife Kim Zolciak’s dip into the lesbian pool — but don’t blame Atlanta if everyone there wants to sample the fun LGBTs have all over town. Lesbian businesses thrive in East Atlanta, and gay clubs go off in Mechanicsville. People coming to Atlanta like to party, and the GayTL delivers with Black Gay Pride in September and Atlanta Pride in October, and the black gay clubs’ second-busiest weekend of the year surrounds the observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in January. Holla!

8. Knoxville, Tenn.
The state’s legislature has been an unmitigated disaster for our rights, making a law to prevent cities from adopting LGBT-inclusive antidiscrimination ordinances (although, happily, the ridiculous “don’t say ‘gay’” bill is dead for now). Nevertheless, Knoxville has defiantly produced a robust gay scene, including the University of Tennessee’s Commission for LGBT People; a welcoming spot for queer, trans, and other marginalized teens at Spectrum Café (SpectrumCafe.org); gay-affirming churches; and thriving nightlife.

7. St. Paul and Minneapolis
It’s technically two cities, but oh, what fun there is to be had here. The region is a draw for upper Midwestern LGBTs, and Minneapolis topped this list in 2011 for so many reasons. These two cities can’t get enough of each other: There’s the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus (TCGMC.org), Twin Cities Pride (the 40th annual is June 23-24), and even Quorum: The Twin Cities GLBT and Allied Business Community. Sheesh, just get domestic-partnered already!

6. Ann Arbor, Mich.
You don’t have to be big to have it going on, as this sixth largest city in Michigan does. The area has one of the few clubs in Michigan catering to dykes: Stiletto’s (technically in nearby Inkster) draws in every lesbian in Detroit. But talk about a taste for drama! Just ask U. of M.’s first out student body prez, Chris Armstrong, the target of a smear campaign by nutso assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell. We raised a glass at Aut Bar (AutBar.com) when the kook got the boot.

5. Seattle
When Forbes named Seattle the most miserable sports city in the nation, many of us felt a twinge of empathy. No matter; there’s heaps of other stuff to keep us busy, including tons of locavore and cosmopolitan cuisine, funky bars in a robust LGBT scene, Dan Savage, and hookups — or at least the search for them. TheStir.com noted that Seattle ranks among the top cities for residents who list “casual sex” as the type of relationship they’re seeking.

4. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Booting spring breakers from its shores may have not boosted Jagermeister sales, but it sure has classed up the joint. Add to that a mass exodus from Miami, where a real estate boom priced out many gay clubs (then the boom busted), and you have the recipe for a rising homo mecca in South Florida. The area is teeming with gay bars and restaurants, and a ton of guesthouses and spas that run the gamut from mild to spicy. Lesbians are finally starting to move to Fort Lauderdale too, though most girl bars, like New Moon (NewMoonBar.com), are in nearby Wilton Manors.

3. Cambridge, Mass.
The home of Harvard University likes a smarty-pants, including the nation’s first African-American lesbian mayor, E. Denise Simmons. Though her reign ended in 2009, she is currently in her sixth term on the City Council, which enacted antidiscrimination protections for transgender people in 1997. The town’s Paradise bar (ParadiseCambridge.com) is billed as New England’s only gay club with hot male dancers six nights a week — hey, everyone needs a night off — and the town is right next to a little hamlet named Boston, where allegedly LGBT stuff sometimes happens too.

2. Orlando, Fla.
Besides hosting Gay Days at Disney World, where 50,000 LGBT folks and their kids dressed in red T-shirts invade the theme park the first Saturday in June (and spend $100 million in town), Orlando has more gay softball teams than you can shake a Louisville Slugger at. And residents just got domestic-partnership protections. For non-Mickeyphiles, there’s oodles of homo content each year at the annual Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival (OrlandoFringe.org).

1. Salt Lake City
While those unfamiliar with the Beehive State are likely to conjure images of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, far-less-oppressive-than-it-used-to-be Salt Lake City has earned its queer cred. There are more than a half-dozen hot spots for men and women, including the eco-friendly nightclub Jam (JamSLC.com), though the sustainable bamboo flooring is perhaps less of a draw than the packed dance floor. The Coffee Garden (878 South 900 East) is a gathering spot for those looking for a caffeine fix, the Sundance Film Festival brings LGBT film buffs to screenings downtown, and lesbian-owned Meditrina (MeditrinaSLC.com) is a true wine bar — yes, you can get a drink in this town.

Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa was buried in cement at General Motors' HQ

Book claims Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa was buried in cement at General Motors' HQ

Has one of America's most enduring mysteries been solved?
Lydia Warren
26th December 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2078470/Teamsters-boss-Jimmy-Hoffa-buried-cement-General-Motors-HQ.html

The disappearance of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa remains one of America's most enduring mysteries.

But now, nearly four decades after Hoffa vanished, his driver has claimed he knows where he is buried – and how he got there.

Resting place? Informant Marvin Elkind claims a mob boss insinuated Hoffa was buried at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan - now General Motors' HQ

‘It was his own people who did it,’ Mr Elkind said in excerpts of a new book published in the New York Post, adding Mafia member Tony Jack insinuated he was responsible.

The startling claim comes 36 years after Hoffa, who led the labour union for 13 years, vanished while on his way to meet two mobsters he knew well, Anthony Provenzano and Tony Jack – real name Anthony Giacalone.

The Renaissance Center was under construction when he disappeared.

Mr Elkind explains how, during a Teamsters conference in 1985, he was among a group of men walking from the city’s Omni International when the Center came into view.

Tony Jack nodded toward the tower’s base and said, ‘Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys’, Mr Elkind alleges in The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob by Adrian Humphreys.

He also describes the rush to build the Renaissance Center following the disappearance of Hoffa – and claims the body was buried in wet cement.

‘There was a mad rush to get the concrete poured,’ the New York Post quotes the book as saying.

Hoffa was declared legally dead July 30, 1982, when he would have been 69.

He was a union stalwart, serving as its General President from 1958 to 1971 and playing a key part in its growth and development.

During his term as its leader, membership surged to more than 1.5 million members, becoming the largest single union in the country.

As well as a role as Jimmy Hoffa's driver, Mr Elkind had careers as a loan collector, a boxer - and a police informant.

He was working as a busboy in a Toronto restaurant frequented by Jimmy Hoffa's crew when he was poached as a driver.

Mr Elkind initially said he didn't want the job, but he was told: 'Nobody's asking you.'

He began testifying against the mob when police discovered he'd worked with a con man. They gave him an ultimatum - tell or be charged.

The book, by Canadian reporter Adrian Humphreys, follows his life.

It takes its title from Mr Elkind's nickname, The Weasel, which he claims was his boxing moniker - rather than to do with his snitching.

Detroit Rock City Population Drops Like Rock

How bad has the economic downturn hurt Detroit? Almost as bad as Hurricane Katrina has damaged New Orleans.
The city's population fell to 713,777 in 2010, down from 951,270 in 2000, a drop of 25 percent. In contrast, NOLA fell by 29 percent, though it only had half the population.

Flint, another Michigan city tied to the auto industry and the birthplace of General Motors, lost 18 percent of its population. All told, Michigan lost 0.6 percent of its population during the decade, making it the only state to have a population decline during the zeroes.

Census: Detroit's population plummets 25 percent
3/22/2011
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42220834

Robocop Statue in Detroit

Is there a better way to revitalize Detroit than to make a statue celebrating a human-slaying cyborg cop? Nope.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Good news, sci-fi fans: RoboCop is headed to Detroit.

Just six days after raising donations on the Internet, a group of local artists and fans of the 1987 cult classic exceeded the fund-raising goal of $50,000 this morning to build a larger-than-life sculpture of the crime-fighting cyborg.

With 1,500 donations and hundreds pouring in every day at www.detroitneedsrobocop.com, the group plans to continue raising money until the March 29 deadline to make the statue of "as big and good as possible," said Detroit artist Jerry Paffendorf, who is helping raise donations.

"This could be a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar KickStarter," Paffendorf said, referring to the online service hub for ideas looking for funding. "It's remarkable."

The statue has set off debates about the artistic value of a RoboCop statue. Some complain that the movie, about a dystopian, crime-ridden Detroit, would hurt the city's image.

Others said it's a fun way to bring more attention to the struggling, but resilient city...

Sci-fi fans, rejoice: RoboCop statue coming to Detroit
Steve Neavling
Feb. 16, 2011
http://www.freep.com/article/20110216/NEWS01/110216015/Sci-fi-fans-rejoice-RoboCop-statue-coming-Detroit

Sadly, Favre’s streak ends with little fanfare

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=ApfRyDUzadesxy2wXegEZI9DubYF?slug=dw-favresits121310

Sadly, Favre’s streak ends with little fanfare
Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
12-13-10

DETROIT – Talked out of another retirement in August, Brett Favre found a public that had long tired of his summer dramas. He found in his return to the Minnesota Vikings a receiving corps that was battered, a defense that was defenseless and a losing streak he couldn’t fix.

He found a coach he couldn’t coexist with (Brad Childress was fired by midseason). He found Randy Moss(notes), for a month. He found a body that couldn’t heal like it once did. He found an off-field scandal that was more humiliating than his most ill-fated interception. He found a home stadium with a collapsed roof.


And finally Brett Favre found himself here, on a bizarre, bitter cold night in snow-packed Detroit, in front of a two-thirds full stadium with the Vikings logo hastily painted over the Detroit Lion.

He found himself on the sideline, in black workout pants, a black T-shirt and a purple ski hat watching the start of an NFL game for the first time since Sept. 13, 1992. It ended the NFL-record ironman streak at 297 regular-season games (321 if you count the playoffs).

In 1939, not two miles from here at the old Briggs Stadium, the New York Yankees’ Lou Gehrig benched himself, ending baseball’s then-record 2,130 consecutive game mark. Seventy-one years later, Favre essentially did the same by declaring himself unfit to play.

“I’ve played through a lot of stuff,” he said softly postgame, a 21-3 Giants victory over the listless Vikings. “This is something different.”

Favre claimed he’d never envisioned how the streak would end, but this certainly couldn’t have been it. Both metaphorically and meteorologically it had all caved in on him this season.

Maybe he figured it would’ve happened back in Green Bay, when he was beloved by Packers fans and he could’ve taken a rollicking curtain call. Or maybe it would’ve been during a promising season where a one-game injury couldn’t quiet the promise of a potential Super Bowl. Or maybe it would’ve never come at all and Favre could’ve just happily mowed his lawn back in Mississippi, grinning that generations of NFL linebackers never could get him.

Instead a Buffalo Bill named Arthur Moats did, nailing Favre last Sunday and leaving his shoulder hurt and his hands tingling. All week Favre kept expecting his health to improve, kept figuring he’d be out there ready to play.

“I had broken my foot and walked in a boot,” he said of one injury. “I broke my thumb and ended up playing the best nine-, 10-week stretch of my career,” he said of another.

This was different, though. This was the end. His website was selling commemorative items celebrating the streak before kickoff. He spent the game casually talking on the sideline. There was little reaction from the neutral site crowd of 45,910, lured in by free tickets and a heated Ford Field.

With Favre, the end was just the end. Quiet. Uneventful. Passionless.

For a quarterback that has never been any of those things, that, perhaps more than anything, was the surprise.

“Today it wasn’t all of a sudden a flood of emotions, memories,” he said.

Favre couldn’t commit to playing again. He’s sure to call it quits for good at season’s end – three more games. He said he won’t play if he can’t feel his hand. He hadn’t thought about whether or not he’d stick around the team if he has to shut it down. The NFL still hasn’t ruled on a potential sexual harassment case – and would likely welcome his retirement.

Brett Favre shares a moment with the Giants' Eli Manning after New York beat Minnesota in Detroit. It was the first time since 1992 that Brett Favre missed a start.

The Vikings are a horrible 5-8, their performance Monday so spiritless that tight end Visanthe Shiancoe(notes) teared up in the locker room discussing the embarrassment. The season has no hope, plenty of misery.

Nearby Favre sat at his locker eating a slice of pepperoni from Bosco Pizza (“Quality Since 1988”). He’d showered postgame and then grimaced as he slipped a T-shirt and olive green sweater over his head. His No. 4 Viking equipment bag sat in front of his locker, unzipped and untouched. There had never really been a chance he would play.

He has gray hair, looks bored and actually sounded concerned about how all these NFL beatings are going to affect him in retirement.

From the outside, this entire season has been a disaster and this was a fitting conclusion.

A year ago he was the kid who wouldn’t grow up, leading a wild locker room playoff victory celebration by singing the joke song “Pants on the Ground.” Today, that’s just a punch line. He couldn’t even be hurt in peace – the Internet was full of conspiracy theories and jokes.

In the end, nothing’s the same.

“Not at all,” he said when asked if he regretted returning. “I knew coming in there was nothing left to prove. I knew duplicating what we did last year was going to be very difficult.”

He wasn’t making this season out to be better than it was. It was a gamble he admitted. The chance he might regret not giving it one more try had sucked him in, he said. He went to the wall. It didn’t budge when he hit it. Most players would be forgiven for trying. Favre has apparently used up his goodwill with many fans, who reveled in his failure, enjoyed watching his perceived ego do him in.

“[I heard people say] ‘Hate for the streak to end like this,’” Favre said. “End like what? It’s been a great run.”

For years he’d been one of the NFL’s most popular players, this dashing, daring quarterback up in Green Bay. The streak should say enough about him. In a sport defined by toughness, he might be the toughest of them all. Only then came the annual tearful retirements; the test of wills; the text messages. He somehow became a polarizing figure. Maybe it was his true self finally revealed. Maybe it was society’s interest in tearing apart its heroes.

In 1939, when Gehrig sat for the first time in years, the Detroit crowd gave him a standing ovation as he sat slumped in the dugout, his eyes welling with tears.

There was no such touching moment for Brett Favre. There was no such heartfelt gesture. The atmosphere was too sterile, the soap opera too fresh, the hero too modern.

Brett Favre’s streak just ended.

After all the glory and all the games, he just returned to the depressed locker room of a bad football team, grabbed his jacket and headed out into the cold, cold night air.

Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. He is the co-author of the new book "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series."

Harwell 'a true legend in Baseball, in life'

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100504&content_id=9790944

Harwell 'a true legend in Baseball, in life'
Georgia native was iconic voice of the Tigers for 42 years
Jason Beck / MLB.com
05/05/10

"This whole community loves Ernie Harwell, and they should. He's lived a full life, a life of kindness, grace and honor and goodwill."
-- Jack Morris
Tigers pitcher 1977-90

DETROIT -- The man who will forever be the voice of the Tigers is gone, and the Baseball community is left silent in remembrance. Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell passed away Tuesday at age 92.

Harwell succumbed to cancer of the bile duct, and passed away at his home in Novi, Mich. Doctors diagnosed the condition as an aggressive form in August, and Harwell and his family decided against surgery at his age. He explained his situation with an extraordinary sense of peace, both to his friends in the community and to fans at Comerica Park when he made one last visit in September.

"I've got a great attitude. I just look forward to a new adventure," Harwell told the Detroit Free Press when he disclosed his illness. "God gives us so many adventures, and I've had some great ones. It's been a terrific life."

It was a new journey, Harwell said, and he was ready for it. Still, many who knew him weren't quite ready to say goodbye.

"We lost a true legend today -- not just in Baseball, but in life," said Christopher Ilitch, president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings Inc, in a statement. "Ernie was one-of-a-kind. He was warm, passionate and had an unmatched love for the game of Baseball... and he also loved Detroit and entire State of Michigan. We were lucky to have Ernie in our lives; he will surely be missed by Baseball fans and anyone who has ever had the privilege to meet him."

Everyone knew this day was coming, but it didn't make it any easier to handle.

"He'll be sorely missed," said former Tigers great Alan Trammell, who appeared with Harwell at a charity event in December. "A lot of people will be mourning, but he didn't want any of us to feel that way. A great life, 92 years old, and I think we all could hope we could live that long. He did it with class, with dignity. It's sad. We shed a tear tonight. He's a great man."

Born Jan. 25, 1918, in Washington, Ga., William Earnest Harwell grew up an aspiring sportswriter, working as a paperboy in Atlanta and as a batboy for the Minor League Atlanta Crackers.

"This son of Georgia was the voice of the Detroit Tigers and one of the game's iconic announcers to fans across America, always representing the best of our national pastime to his generations of listeners," Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement.

Harwell was just 16 years old when a letter he sent to The Sporting News led to a freelance job as its Atlanta correspondent. He spent his high school and college years working on the desk at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He was on his way to becoming a sportswriter, but as he explained later on, life would put him on an unexpected path soon after he graduated from nearby Emory University. With writing jobs in Atlanta hard to find, Harwell auditioned for WSB radio in 1940 and earned a job hosting a sports show. His persistence landed him one of Baseball's most coveted interviews at the time when he won over the reclusive Hall of Famer Ty Cobb.

Soon after, he broke into play-by-play broadcasting with the Crackers, his start in what ultimately became his profession.

"I'm a failed newspaper man myself," he recalled last fall. "I wanted to be a sportswriter when I was younger, working on the [Atlanta] Constitution, doing everything that nobody else would do. Thought maybe I'd be the next Grantland Rice, but it didn't happen. God had another plan for me. Couldn't get a job on the paper, and I got into radio. Stuck with radio and television, and it stuck with me up until 2002."

Harwell honed his broadcasting style with the Crackers, where his conversational style and southern accent took on polish. But it took Baseball's only trade involving a broadcaster to break him into the Major Leagues. The Crackers let Harwell out of his contract to join the Brooklyn Dodgers as a fill-in for Red Barber in 1948 in exchange for Minor League catcher Cliff Dapper.

Harwell would stick in the Majors for more than a half-century. He went from behind the microphone of the Dodgers to the Giants (1950-53) -- Vin Scully succeeded him with the Dodgers -- then to the Orioles (1954-59).

He was a household name in the business well before the Tigers hired him to replace Van Patrick in 1960. In Detroit, however, he found a home, on and off the field. Though he had better than four decades of broadcasting left in him, he was done moving.

"Ernie Harwell was the most popular sports figure in the State of Michigan," Tigers owner Michael Ilitch said in a statement. "He was so genuine in everything that he did -- from his legendary broadcasting to the way he treated the fans and everyone around him. He was truly a gentleman in every sense of the word. Ernie has a special place in the hearts of all Detroit Tigers fans and the memories he created for so many of us will never be forgotten. Baseball lost a legendary voice this evening, and we have all lost a dear friend."

Harwell spent 42 seasons broadcasting in Detroit, where his Georgia tones became part of the sound of Michigan summers. Through Harwell, fans came to know Tiger Stadium by its location on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, recognized double plays as "two for the price of one," and home runs as "looong gone!" They still associate called third strikes with Harwell's phrase that the batter "stood there like a house by the side of the road."

"I thought that was one of the coolest things, to hear the phrase, 'Long Gone,'" said current Tigers catcher Alex Avila, who came to Detroit as a teenager in time for Harwell's last season in 2002. "I thought that was one of the coolest things about being a Tiger fan when my dad came over [as team vice president] and just kind of getting caught up in all that tradition. That tradition comes alive when you're listening to him."

Countless kids and more than a few adults wondered how Harwell knew the hometowns of so many fans who caught foul balls, whether Ypsilanti, or Sturgis, or whatever town Harwell wished to recognize.

"Ernie Harwell was the biggest professional influence on my career, and the reason I pursued a career in Baseball broadcasting," said Tigers television broadcaster and Michigan native Mario Impemba. "Ernie respected the game and his craft, and in return a whole generation of Tigers fans had a deep respect for Ernie."

The accolades deservedly followed over the years. He was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, earned induction to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1989, then the radio sports Hall of Fame in 1998. His songwriting skills, more of a side effort he enjoyed rather than a second career, led to more than 60 recordings by various performers.

"Ernie was so engaging," said David Dombrowski, president, CEO and general manager of the Tigers. "He had such a genuine gift of making people feel like he was your friend. Ernie made you feel good about life and brought a smile to everyone he knew. His passion and wisdom during each broadcast gave you insight to his love for the Tigers, and for the State of Michigan."

To those who came in contact with him, whether longtime friends, colleagues, players or fortunate fans, his legacy as a broadcaster is matched by his legacy away from the microphone. He got to know many Tigers players over the years not only through his job, but through an active role with the Baseball Chapel.

"What a gentleman, what a great person," Trammell said. "It's a sad day for Baseball, not just for the people in Detroit or Michigan. He treated everybody with a quality that very few have -- everybody was the same, whether you're the president or somebody on the street. That's a quality not too many people have."

Tigers manager Jim Leyland remembers meeting Harwell when Leyland was a player in Minor League camp for the team. He talked to him again last fall.

"Ernie Harwell treated me like I was a Major League Tiger for a long time," Leyland said, "and I was never a Major League Tiger. I was over there 18 years, and he treated me like I was a big leaguer, and I was never a big leaguer."

Said former broadcasting partner Jim Price: "If you met Ernie for the first time, you'd walk away and felt like you were Ernie's best friend. I mean, that just says it all."

The way he treated his situation, too, touched many.

"I hope that we all can be as at peace with ourselves as much as Ernie was," Leyland said Tuesday. "That's pretty good. I hope I can be like that. Like I said, I look at it like a celebration. He had a full life. He did so many things. He was so respected. He basically had a chance to say his goodbyes. That's a blessing. And we all had a chance to say our goodbyes."

Even those who had never met him until recently, until his illness brought him back into the spotlight, were in awe. The grace and the gratitude with which he stood and faced his condition was one more example for many to admire.

"What a tremendous man," said shortstop Adam Everett, who had the chance to visit Harwell at his home.

As Harwell talked with fans one last time from behind home plate at Comerica Park on Sept. 16, standing tall with his hands politely behind him, he turned his fate into a storybook ending in a way only he could.

"In my almost 92 years on this Earth, the good Lord has blessed me with a great journey," Harwell told fans, "and the blessed part of that journey is that it's going to end here in the great state of Michigan. I deeply appreciate the people of Michigan. I love their grit. I love the way they face life. I love the family values they have. And you Tiger fans are the greatest fans of all."

As Jack Morris said last fall: "He doesn't want people to feel sorry for him. I've never been an outwardly spiritual kind of guy, but I believe. He's going to get there first, and I hope he saves us a seat."

Harwell is survived by Lulu, his wife of 68 years, sons Bill and Gray, daughters Julie and Carolyn, seven grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be at the Comerica Park on Thursday. The viewing will begin at 7 a.m. and continue until the last person has a chance to see him. Complementary parking for the viewing will be available in Lots 1, 2 and 3.

Per Harwell's request, there will be no public memorial, just a private service. Memorial donations will be used for the Detroit Public Library and to fund college scholarships, and can be sent to the Ernie Harwell Foundation, c/o Gary Spicer, 16845 Kercheval Avenue, Grosse Pointe, Mich. 48230.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Militia Raids Part Of Government Effort to Provoke Violence, Purge Dissent

http://www.prisonplanet.com/militia-raids-part-of-government-effort-to-provoke-violence-purge-dissent.html
Militia Raids Part Of Government Effort to Provoke Violence, Purge Dissent
Militia insider says radical group were “perfect target” for feds
Steve Watson & Paul Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Monday, March 29th, 2010

News of a bust on nine members of a militia group in Detroit who were planning to “levy war” against the United States and “oppose by force” the nation’s government, should be treated with extreme suspicion, given that every major terror bust in the U.S. in recent years has been contrived.

According to an indictment (PDF) unsealed this morning in U.S. District Court in Detroit, eight men and one woman were training in modern combat techniques for a prophesized battle with the anti-Christ.

The indictment described the nine as gearing up to use bombs and other weapons to kill local, state, and federal law enforcement officials in an effort to act as a “catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the government.”

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force carried out a series of raids on group members in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio over the weekend.

Known as the “Hutaree” militia, each of the nine faces three to five charges, including sedition, attempts to use weapons of mass destruction, teaching/demonstrating use of explosive materials and two counts of carrying weapons in relation to a crime of violence.

Seven of the defendants appeared in court this morning and were ordered held without bond until Wednesday.

“This is an example of radical and extremist fringe groups which can be found throughout our society,” FBI special agent Andrew Arena told The Detroit News.

“The FBI takes such extremist groups seriously, especially those who would target innocent citizens and the law enforcement officers who protect the citizens of the United States.” Arena added.

Comments made by a well known former militia leader indicate that the Hutaree were regarded by other militia outfits as radical and reckless “low-hanging fruits”.

Mike Vanderboegh, who has close connections with the militia movement in Michigan and all over the country, was critical of the Hutaree, saying that they “have indicated in the past that, much like John Brown, they WANTED to start a civil war, which is why no responsible militia group in Michigan was willing to ally with them.”

Vanderboegh described the group as “a perfect target” for the feds, adding that the raids could have provoked a nationwide uprising if they had turned violent.

As we highlighted earlier this month, following the highly suspicious Pentagon shooting, recent history proves that domestic terror, far from being a militia plot or an “extremist fringe” threat, is a government specialty.

Just a brief reprisal of the last handful of major terror cases in the United States instantly reminds us that in every single instance the plot was artificially engineered by the federal government and then later seized upon, with the enthusiastic support of the corporate media, as justification for more funding, more power, and more authority to denounce critics of the war on terror and dissent against the state in general.

From ensuring known extremist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, now known as the underwear bomber, was able to board Flight 253 in Amsterdam last December, to allowing Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to remain on a U.S. Army base, and even to participate in Homeland Security exercises, the actions of Federal authorities have provoked often tragic newsmaking incidents.

Dozens of terror busts and stings since 9/11 have been orchestrated by handlers aiding the accused terrorists at every turn. We have never come across a major case where the terrorists involved in a plot were not being prodded by the FBI and federal informants, or where clear prior knowledge and forewarning was not evident.

Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill “as many soldiers as possible” concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.

Similarly, the “Toronto 18? terrorists turned out to be “a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac”. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the RCMP who had radicalized the group.

In the media-lauded Miami terror case in 2007, the supposed ringleader Narseal “Prince Marina” Batiste “had heard of Al-Qaeda, but wasn’t sure what it stood for. The FBI instigators made Batiste swear loyalty to al-Qaida; then had him call on his local buddies to form an ‘Islamic army’ in Miami. None had military training. Some could barely read. But Batiste assured the group in the midst of its collective marijuana buzz of greatness ahead,” wrote Saul Landau.

These were the men who comedian John Stewart referred to as “seven dipshits in a warehouse” after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had ludicrously told the press that the group of semi-retarded gang-bangers had planned to “wage a ground war against America”.

One of the more recent examples was the case of the so-called Muslim terrorists busted in New York, who supposedly wanted to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of the New York Air National Guard base. The men were provided with fake explosives and inactive missiles by an FBI informant, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Two of the ringleaders of the “deadly” plot which was endlessly hyped by the media turned out to be semi-retarded potheads, exactly as we had predicted would be the case due to the innumerable past cases with the exact same modus operandi.

Then we have the most deadly and contrived “christian-patriot” terror plot – the OKC bombing of 1995. While the SPLC, the ADL and similar organizations are happy to play the Timothy McVeigh card over and over again, to back up the notion that hate-filled right wing extremists are taking over the country, they are less enthusiastic to mention the fact that McVeigh planned his deadly assault on the Alfred P. Murrah building under the intimate direction of a high-level FBI official. This according to McVeigh’s co-conspirator Terry Nichols, a claim voluminously backed up by a plethora of evidence that has been presented in court on several occasions.

Time and time again it is revealed that the only prominent people who call for violence in the patriot movement turn out to be working for the feds.

Radio talk show host and racist firebrand Hal Turner recently admitted in federal court that he worked for the FBI as a “National Security Intelligence” asset. “Turner also claims the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements on his radio show, but the newspaper also found many federal officials were concerned that his audience might follow up on his violence rhetoric,” the Associated Press reported in November, 2009.

Turner’s code name was “Valhalla” and “he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance.

The FBI, under its long-running COINTELPRO, subsidized, armed, directed and protected the Klu Klux Klan and other racist groups.

In light of all these cases, and the ongoing effort to re-direct the focus of the war on terror away from foreign muslim terrorists to “home grown” American “extremists”, the question must be explored – were the FBI actively involved in radicalizing the “Hutaree” militia? Were any of the militia members FBI informants?

Count the hours until the links emerge.

Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/02/detroit-homes-mortgage-foreclosures-80
Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis
One in five houses left empty as foreclosures mount and property prices drop by 80%
Chris McGreal, in Detroit
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 March 2010

Some might say Jon Brumit overpaid when he stumped up $100 (£65) for a whole house. Drive through Detroit neighbourhoods once clogged with the cars that made the city the envy of America and there are homes to be had for a single dollar.

You find these houses among boarded-up, burnt-out and rotting buildings lining deserted streets, places where the population is shrinking so fast entire blocks are being demolished to make way for urban farms.

"I was living in Chicago and a friend told me that houses in Detroit could be had for $500," said Brumit, a financially strapped artist who thought he had little prospect of owning his own property. "I said if you hear of anything just a little cheaper let me know. Within a week he emails me a photo of a house for $100. I thought that's just crazy. Why not? It's a way to cut our expenses way down and kind of open up a lot of time for creative projects because we're not working to pay the rent."

Houses on sale for a few dollars are something of an urban legend in the US on the back of the mortgage crisis that drove millions of people from their homes. But in Detroit it is no myth.

One in five houses now stand empty in the city that launched the automobile age, forged America's middle-class and blessed the world with Motown.

Detroit has been in decline for decades; its falling population is now well below a million – half of its 1950 peak. But the recent mortgage crisis and the fall of the big car makers into bankruptcy has pushed the town into a realm unique among big cities in America.

A third of the population are unemployed. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in large parts of Detroit over the last three years. The average price of a home sold in the city last year has been put at $7,500 (£4,900).

The recent financial crash forced wholesale foreclosures among people unable to pay their mortgages or who walked away from houses that fell to a fraction of the value of the loans they had taken out on them.

Banks are selling off properties in the worst neighbourhoods, which are usually surrounded by empty and wrecked housing, for a few dollars each. But even better houses can be had at a fraction of their former value.

Technically, Brumit paid $95 for the land and $5 for the house on Lawley Street – which fitted what estate agents euphemistically call an opportunity.

Brumit said: "It had a big hole in the roof from the fire department putting out the last of two arson attempts. Both previous owners tried to set it on fire to get out of the mortgages. So there's a big hole about 24ft long and the plumbing had almost entirely been ripped out and most of the electrics too. It was basically a smoke damaged, structurally intact shell with a snowdrift in the attic."

Setting fire to houses to claim the insurance and kill off the mortgage is not uncommon in Detroit; a blackened, wooden corpse of a house sits at the bottom of Brumit's street. But it is more common for owners to just walk away from their homes and mortgages.

On the opposite side of Lawley Street Jim Feltner and his workers were clearing out a property seized by a bank. "I used to be a building contractor. I was buying up places and doing them up. Now I empty out foreclosures. I do one or two of these a day all over the city," he said. "I've been in Detroit 40 years and I've watched the peak up to $100,000 for houses that right now aren't worth more than $20,000 tops. I own a bunch of properties. I have 10 rentals and I can't get nothing for them, and they're beautiful homes."

Feltner's workers are dragging clothes, boots and furniture out of the bedrooms and living room, and dumping them in the front yard until a skip arrives. Kicked to one side is a box of 1970s Motown records. A teddy bear lies spreadeagled on the floor.

"You could get about five grand for this place," said Feltner. "Nice house once you clean it out. All the plumbing and electricals are in it. Roof don't leak."

Brumit said a man called Jesse lived there. "Jesse had mentioned that he was probably going to get out of there because he knew he could buy a place for so much less than he owed. That's a drag. You don't want to see people leaving," he said.

The house next door is abandoned. On the next street, one third of the properties are boarded up.

It's a story replicated across Detroit.

Joan Wilson, an estate agent in the north-west of the city, whose firm is offering a three-bedroom house on Albany street for $1, says that more than half of the houses she sells are foreclosures in the tens of thousands of dollars. "The vast majority of people that call to enquire, almost the first thing out of their mouth is that they want to buy a foreclosure. I have had telephone calls from people looking online that live, for example, in England or California, who've never set foot in the area. They're calling about one specific house they see online. I tell them they need to look at the neighbourhood. Is it the only house standing within a mile?"

But what is blight to some is proving an opportunity to remake parts of the city for others living there. The Old Redford part of Detroit has suffered its share of desolation. The police station, high school and community centre are closed. Yet the area is being revitalised, led by John George, a resident who began by boarding up an abandoned house used by drug dealers 21 years ago and who now heads the community group Blight Busters. They are pulling down housing that cannot be saved and creating community gardens with fresh vegetables free for anyone to pick.

"There's longstanding nuisance houses, been around seven, eight, nine years. We will go in without a permit and demolish them without permission," said George. "If you, as an owner, are going to leave something like that to fester in my neighbourhood, obviously you either don't care or aren't in a position to take responsibility for your property, so we're going to take care of it for you." Blight Busters has torn down more than 200 houses, including recently an entire block of abandoned housing in Old Redford. "We need to right-size this community, which means removing whole blocks, and building farms, larger gardens, putting in windmills. We want to downsize – right-size – Detroit," George said.

Houses that can be rescued are done up with grants from foundations.

"Detroit has some of the nicest housing stock in the country. Brick, marble, hardwood floors, leaded glass. These houses were built for kings," George added. "We gave a $90,000 house to a lady who was living in a car. She had four children. It didn't cost her a dime. We had over a thousand people apply for it. It's probably worth $35,000 now."

Old Redford is seeing piecemeal renewal. One abandoned block of shops has been converted to an arts centre and music venue with cafes. One of the few remaining cinemas in Detroit – and one that's among the last in the US with an original pipe organ – has been revived and is showing Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Brumit calculates that he has spent $1,500 to buy and do up his house, principally by scavenging demolition sites. He will move in with his wife and four-month-old child once it is complete, probably in the summer.

He said: "The Americans we know got ripped off by the American dream. But [the renovation] is the most like moving out of the country that we can actually do. We're the minority in terms of ethnicity and this is a rich environment … there's 30% open space in the city and that doesn't include the buildings that should be torn down. You're in a city riding your bike around and you hear birds and stuff. It's incredible."