WTC 7: Examining the Evidence of 9/11

 Examining


We are going to present a compilation here of material regarding the collapse of World Trade Center Building #7 on September 11, 2001.



Many have argued that the World Trade Center disaster was actually the result of a controlled demolition project planned well in advance by parties unknown. Much of the focus on the disaster that day has been centered on Towers 1 and 2, which were struck by aircraft. It has also been argued by many, that the damage from the aircraft and ensuing fires would not have been sufficient to cause a symmetrical collapse at nearly free-fall speed. There is compelling evidence to support the idea that the planes could not have brought down the towers, but perhaps the most compelling is that WTC7 was never struck by a plane at all, and yet that building too also collapsed in a way that seems to defy any explanation other than a controlled demolition.

But let's start by looking at the official explanation first. Could fire be the reason that Building 7 collapsed, as we have been told by government officials? It seems rather unlikely, considering that it has never happened before, or since. Yet on 9/11, we are told that three steel buildings were brought down primarily by fire. And again, one of those buildings was not even hit by a plane loaded with fuel.

This is a picture of the fires still burning in WTC7 in the late afternoon of September 11.

Here are some examples, of burning skyscrapers from around the world, that did not collapse, despite the fact that they suffered fires that burned longer, and engulfed more square footage of the structure.

In 1975, World Trade Center Tower 1 also burned on several floors, for several hours, with no modernized fire suppression system or fire-proofing material in place, but did not collapse.


Of course, these towering infernos were not struck by aircraft and were not struck by the debris of the Twin Towers as they collapsed. So let's have a look now at what sort of damage a building can suffer and still remain standing.

This is an image of debris which struck and damaged WTC 7.

For comparison now, here is a picture of the Deutsche Bank building which suffered extensive damage on 9/11. A fire in 2007 claimed the lives of two FDNY firefighters. Nearly a decade later, a $100-million deconstruction project was completed and the building was no more.

The following two images show the damage done to WTC Building #3 on 9/11, and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after it was bombed in 1995. Despite the devastation, what remained of the buildings still did not collapse, and had to be brought down later.

Relatively small fires, comparatively far less structural damage than others, yet WTC7 still fell, uniformly, into a nice neat pile.

Even when buildings do happen to collapse, perhaps after an earthquake, they do not implode. Here are some images of what happens when critical supports in a building fail.

Even when specialists spend months planning and spend weeks placing huge amounts of explosives all throughout a building, it is still a difficult task to bring down a building in it's own footprint. There are no guarantees, as these videos show. Demolitions gone wrong, click here, here, and here to see them.

Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex first explained the collapse of Building 7 saying he gave the order to "pull it." This is a term often used in demolitions, meaning to pull down the building.


Strangely, given the subsequent information you will read here in a moment which has been kown for years, Secretary of State John Kerry also explained the destruction as a controlled demolition rather than an unexpected collapse. 

There is a very serious problem with that explanation though. Fire departments are not trained or equipped for demolitions operations. Fire trucks do not carry explosives, firefighters do not knock down buildings. Even for the world's leading specialists a demolition of that scale is not something that could be done in a matter of hours in a damaged and burning skyscraper. The only explanation could be that the explosives were set, before 9/11.

Silverstein later tried to revise the meaning of his statement, saying that he meant "pull it" as in to pull the rescue effort, and to pull out the firefighters in the building. The only problem with that, is that there were no firefighters in the building according to FEMA, because there was no water available to carry out interior firefighting operations. This video clip corroborates that. That clip also alludes to previous knowledge of impending collapse.

How did anyone know the building was going to collapse before it actually did? Why wasn't it predicted that other, more badly damaged buildings were going to fall, even though they never did? What were the telltale signs that Building 7 was going to collapse?

CRAIG BARTMER NYPD: "I walked around it (Building 7). I saw a hole. I didn't see a hole bad enough to knock a building down, though. Yeah there was definitely fire in the building, but I didn't hear any... I didn't hear any creaking, or... I didn't hear any indication that it was going to come down. And all of a sudden the radios exploded and everyone started screaming 'get away, get away, get away from it!'... It was at that moment... I looked up, and it was nothing I would ever imagine seeing in my life. The thing started pealing in on itself... Somebody grabbed my shoulder and I started running, and the shit's hitting the ground behind me, and the whole time you're hearing "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." I think I know an explosion when I hear it... Yeah it had some damage to it, but nothing like what they're saying... Nothing to account for what we saw..."

Why did the BBC report that the building had collapsed, 20 minutes before it actually did?


In this video clip, you will hear someone declare that the building ia about to "blow up" as you hear what sounds like explosives going off in the background. Odd choice of words. Blow up. And who told them it was going to blow up?


Perhaps the sounds of bombs going off was a clue, but bombs had been going off all day. Something that was completely overlooked by the media and has never been explained.


But perhaps the most chilling account of bombs in WTC 7 comes from Barry Jennings, Deputy Director of the Emergency Services Department for the New York City Housing Authority. That fateful morning he raced to the Office of Emergency Management located in WTC7, to find it eerily empty, except for New York City's corporate counsel Michael Hess. An explosion trapped the two inside the building. Keep in mind that what he talks about here in the following interview happened before either of the Twin Towers fell, and therefore before the collapses had done any damage to Building 7.


Unfortunately, Barry Jennings will never be able to testify on record about what he saw that day. He died, for unknown reasons, just days before the NIST report on 9/11 was released in 2008. One of the film makers who interviewed Jennings for the film Loose Change hired an investigator to find out more about Jennings' mysterious death. All that he found was Jennings' home empty, and up for sale. He then returned the money to the man who hired him, and told the filmmaker to never contact him again. This only added to the mystery. A commenter at a website claimed to be Jennings' son, and claimed his father had died of leukemia, but the identity of the commenter has never been verified.

Hess publicly corroborated important elements of Jennings' account.


This video examines the collapse of WTC7 and some elements of the NIST report.


If that video was a little too technical for you, don't worry. Most of us are not engineers. There are plenty of real experts out there though, thousands of them, who disagree with the government's findings. This video summarizes the details of the WTC 7 collapse in terms we can all understand.

Armed Clerk Foils Liquor Store Robbery

Being a veteran of four combat tours in Iraq, as well as being a prison guard and a private investigator, this liquor store clerk is no stranger to danger. But at the end of the day, it was his right to bear arms that saved the day.

Check out the video as this quick-thinking clerk turns the tables on the belligerent burglar.

Principal Forces Students to Kneel Before Him

A San Bernadino, California elementary school administrator will apparently not face any sort of disciplinary proceedings by the district school board after enacting a policy which forced students to kneel with hands at their sides. While the policy has now been suspended, it appears that the district and the superintendent didn't actually see anything wrong with mass humiliation of young students.

The enforced practice has been described as "a positive way to enforce safety" and "a positive behavior intervention." You read that right, kneeling before authority is now considered to be positive behavior by the educators molding the minds of your children. 

The abhorrent practice only came to light after several students causally mentioned it to parents. One parent chose to act and began handing out flyers to inform other parents.

School officials maintain that the policy was only meant to keep order among students, and was used as a dismissal method mostly after recess time, and sometimes before beginning a class. Yet this is not something we would even see in an American prison, except perhaps Guantanamo Bay.

As a former school secretary, I can tell you that subtle and not-so-subtle submission tactics take place all the time. It's part of the public school system fabric - which is why it was mostly openly discussed - because it really does seem normal for the school officials enacting those standards. But notice that parents didn't receive a mass notification to begin with? It took enough children casually mentioning it before one parent finally spread the word.

So, there's going to be a meeting for parents to discuss different safety options. That way, parents can choose which way they want the little human resources to submit to authority. I want to emphasize that choice, a common tactic to get children to behave, is going to be used on the parents! Why does there have to be some kind of ritual at all?

-Activist Post

It seems now clearer than ever that schools are no longer an institution of learning, but rather a node of indoctrination.

This news was also reported at:

CBS Los Angeles.

And now a music video:

Was Cop Wrong to Hit 8-Year Old In Face?

There has been outrage over a YouTube video which surfaced recently, which appears to show a Eugene, Oregon police officer striking an 8-year old boy in the face.

While there is a wealth of videos out there showing very serious misconduct and unwarranted violence by these shielded government agents, this video does not seem to warrant the outrage being shown by the public. While it certainly does run contrary to our moral senses that a grown man, an armed man and a stranger should hit a child in the face, we should try to understand that the police do have a job to do that is often a difficult one. A job where sometimes what is necessary is not always what we would like to see, or admit that we might have to do the same if we were in their shoes.

In this instance, the officer claims the boy bit him. The video was filmed with a lagging digital camera in a cellphone, so it is difficult to catch the few moments in question, whether he did bite the officer, or to get a sense of how hard the officer actually hit him. Or even if he really did hit him for that matter, though it does appear so. What the video does show however is that the officer was being calm and professional, not in any rage of any sort, and even waved at the camera before the apparent bite and strike. This would seem to run in accordance with his claim. If the boy did bite him, then the officer was justified to respond.

The only other issue at hand might be whether the officer was justified in taking the boy in the first place. This is, of course, another very serious concern when we as a society have seen so many terrible examples of a child being taken away for very little cause and winding up abused, or even murdered while in state custody or in a foster home. So while the officer may have been justified to strike the child after being bitten, it would be far less justified if the officer was there acting on what amounts to a kidnapping order by a local CPS office. This does not appear to be the case either though.

Reports indicate that the boy was illiterate, did not attend school, and was living in a bus. Furthermore, he had been living with a woman for years despite a court order awarding custody to his father. So this was not so much the state taking custody, as enforcing the rights of the father, which is all too rare it seems these days.

All in all, it appears that this is actually an example of how public outcry against the police is not always justified. (Even as public outcry seems to be severely lacking in other instances where it should appear.)

Finally now, here is the video to judge for yourself:

Warrantless Search of Apartment Complex

For any patriot adherent of the United States Constitution, this image will stand as a chilling testament to the reality of the police state we now live in.

Not only is this search being conducted without a warrant, but they may enter your residence randomly even if you are not at home.

Boston Bombing Script Rewritten Yet Again

In an exclusive report by the BBC, the prime suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing are now being painted as right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists, rather then devout Muslims.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had right-wing extremist literature

One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.

He also had reading material on mass killings.

Until now the Tsarnaev brothers were widely perceived as just self-styled radical jihadists.

Panorama has spent months speaking exclusively with friends of the bombers to try to understand the roots of their radicalisation.

'Government conspiracies'

The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies.

Another in his possession was about "the rape of our gun rights".

Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that "Hitler had a point".

Tamerlan Tsarnaev also had literature which explored what motivated mass killings and noted how the perpetrators murdered and maimed calmly.

There was also material about US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.

Read more from: BBC News

The article then goes on to label them as "Muslim by convenience" and essentially tries to justify the incongruous elements of this new version of the story with the one that has been spun thus far.

To anyone who has been paying attention to the facts, and lack thereof, this is a blatant piece of propaganda meant to vilify those who are not in-step with the official version of modern history. Truth-seeking conspiracy theorists and America-loving Constitutionalists are meant to be seen now as a threat, as terrorists, by those who only get their information from mainstream news sources and government handouts. 

CLICK HERE to read more about the unsettling facts surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombing. 

Boy Claims Anti-Gun Mayor Opened Fire After Sex Advances Rebuffed

The Inguistr reports:

Marcus Hook, PA — A member of the Michael Bloomberg-sponsored gun control organization “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” has been arrested and charged in connection with a handgun incident at his home.

James Schiliro, a.k.a. Jay Schiliro, the mayor of Marcus Hook, a small town in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, faces charges of official oppression, reckless endangerment, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, and furnishing a minor with alcohol.

(More at source)

The 38-year old Republican reportedly ordered a police officer to deliver the 20-year old young man to his home, and then allegedly told the minor that he had ordered police to stay away from the house for the rest of the night. It is further alleged that he plied the youth with alcohol, brandished numerous firearms, told the boy he was "going to be a hostage" and fired a shot from a 9mm pistol, when the youth refused the mayor's sexual advances.

Further coverage available at:

The Mental Recession, NY

The Half-Ton Woman Accused of Murder (Documentary)

On 18 March 2008 a two-year-old boy was beaten to death in a Texan border town. His aunt, Mayra Rosales, was the only one with him at the time and was charged with his murder. But was this really possible?

Mayra weighed nearly 500 kg, was bed-ridden and totally immobile. So why was she confessing to a heinous crime she seemingly could not have committed?

This incredible film follows the many twists and turns in the case with intimate interviews with Mayra, her family, and the investigators, lawyers and doctors involved.

Caution. Some viewers may find the imagery in this video disturbing.

Racial Profiling or Just Bad Police Work?

This post courtesy of Station.6.Underground

The oppression of the modern police-state against the people is something that can't be understated, and seems to only get worse by the day here in America. From criminal cops, to incompetent cops, to flat out bad policy which the police are there to enforce,  it's little wonder that there are more and more Americans who are fed up and speaking out.

Unfortunately, there is a racial dynamic to these problems as well. There are racist people people in our society and therefore it should come as no surprise that a certain amount of that will make it into police forces. But racism and bigotry are not necessarily synonymous either. Racial profiling is not necessarily born of some inherent hatred of people with different levels of melanin. It has been argued by some that, statistically speaking, black people are more dangerous than white people. Even within the black community, a black person is far more likely to be killed by another black person.

To look at it another way, if you happen to be driving a Honda Accord, the police may "profile" you based on the car you are driving. They may give you a little closer scrutiny in a routine traffic stop, ask a few more questions, be a bit more insistent, based on the fact that the Accord is the most frequently stolen car in America. It's not the job of the police to harass Honda owners though simply because they didn't choose to buy American. Which is why a whole host of other factors should go into the formulation of deciding whether or not there is something suspicious going on.

They are probably not as likely to be so suspicious of a woman driving a Accord with two kids in the car on a Sunday afternoon, as they would be of a teenager who was stopped in the middle of the night for driving without the headlights on. It also doesn't rule out the possibility that a mother of two might be driving a stolen Ford around town on a Sunday afternoon either. So from these examples we can see that while profiling may have some basis in general context when an officer conducts an investigation, it is not applicable as the entire basis of an interaction with police. It's just bad police work to be overly focused on any particular profile, all moral considerations aside. This is one good reason why profiling should not be the basis of policy as it is now in places in places like New York City.

An Inside Look at NYPD's 'Stop and Frisk' Policy

Mayor Bloomberg Defends Race Comments on Stop-and-Frisk


While the crap-storm swirls around the racial element of the deluded Mayor's policy and his comments, the core truth of the matter gets completely left out. The race-card has trumped the real flaw in the policy. That flaw is the blatant disregard for the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. The problem is not that the NYPD is stopping and frisking minorities. The problem is that they are stopping and frisking anyone without probable cause or a warrant. The problem is that there is a policy in place that would even allow people to be stopped simply on the basis of their skin color in the first place.

The debate over percentages and numbers is beside the point. If this despicable policy were not in place, then the police could not be stopping and harassing minorities or anyone else. The problem is not that minorities are being targeted by this policy, the problem is the policy itself. While white people may not be stopped as frequently, you can be sure that a white kid low-riding his pants, wearing hip-hop duds and listening to Immortal Technique is just as likely to be harassed by the NYPD. People with tattoos, people with piercings, people living in high crime areas, people driving Honda Accords may all be targeted without actual cause.

Of course, this is not just a NY thing. Black folk often feel that they are being targeted because of their race alone. Sometimes their complaint has some validity. Often times though, it doesn't. Take this case of a man who was arrested for DUI, even though he wasn't drunk.

Sober Man DUI: Arizona Driver Blows 0.000, Gets Penalized

The 64-year old black man was arrested, thrown into the back of a police vehicle and had his car impounded, even though he was not drunk at all. The officer disagreed with the breathalyzer device and decided to make the arrest anyway based on the fact that Jessie Thornton had bloodshot eyes. Keep in mind that alcohol doesn't always cause bloodshot eyes, and that it is just as illegal to drive under the influence of substances like marijuana as it is to drive drunk. Thornton admits his eyes may have looked bloodshot, but says that may have been due to a late night swim at a fitness center.

Mr. Thornton doesn't see a flaw in the law though, and he doesn't complain that the officer was just incompetent and unable to tell the difference between a DUI and a man who just climbed out of a swimming poor. Instead, he believes the officer was a racist.

“It was driving while black,” he said, adding: “I just don’t want any of this to happen to somebody else.”

Was the officer really a racist though? Was he really profiling the driver? It's possible, but there is no real reason to believe that based on the information which Mr. Thornton himself shared with the media in that article. So outside of that, either the officer was utterly incompetent, or he was just a cop harassing a citizen. A bully, which is more often than not the fact of the matter. Those same two options stand in this following case, where a white woman was arrested for being drunk, when she was actually the designated driver and had not touched a drop of alcohol that night.

Heather Squires was arrested for DUI without drinking a drop of alcohol

In short, police are not the spokespersons for "white people" and are not a standing army to protect whites from blacks. It's time we take a step back from the racial issues and take a good hard look at what is happening to our country. All of us, black, white, and all the rest across the board are being targeted by a fascist police-state. We are not so different at all really, we the people that is, and we have a common enemy. Tyranny.

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

-attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the sloth of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Also see:

Papers Please (Checkpoint Video)

Papers Please Incident Makes Cops Looks Like Gestapo

Budgeting for Poverty With McDonald's and Visa

This article courtesy Minimum Wage Workers Union of America


McDonald's and Visa have come together in a new initiative which purports to show low-wage workers how to survive, and even thrive financially on their meager earnings.

At their new Practical Money Skills for Life™ website you can find a pdf file sample budget, ostensibly designed to be a framework for workers to use in order to successfully manage their income while working at McDonald's.


It is certainly a good idea to have a budget, to practice good financial techniques, to minimize spending and the like, but no budget will solve the problem of not having enough money to meet the most basic living expenses. This core truth is completely overlooked by McDonald's and their collaborator. This then sets the stage for victim-blaming, rather than making a factual presentation. The premise they present here, is that if a worker is having financial troubles it is the worker's own fault.

The introductory video is immediately condescending to the viewer/worker and assumes that you lack the elementary concepts of basic addition and subtraction arithmetic, or even common sense. While some workers may be woefully uneducated and lacking in life experience, it appears that the true ignorance here rests with the creators of the fast-food giant's presentation.

As an example, almost any worker knows full well that taking a pay-day loan is financially unsound, being both risky and costly. What the creators of the video ignore is that a worker does not need to be taught this point as a lesson, as if it were some great revelation bestowed by a benevolent corporation out of sheer good will. The worker who does take such a costly risk by taking out a pay-day loan does it out of necessity, not stupidity. The payday loan industry thrives on the desperation of the poor, not on people who ant some extra spending money.

The video also encourages the viewer to get direct-deposit for their paycheck, and to have a bank account, in order to save on check-cashing fees. But again we see that the creators have ignored the reality of the situation for many of their workers. Some financial institutions will not let a person with poor credit have an account. Low-wage workers are, of course, more likely than most to have a poor credit rating. In other instances, a bank or credit union may not be easily accessible in their neighborhood or along their travel routes. Banks often require a large minimum balance, leaving substantial funds inaccessible to the depositor.
But most important of all perhaps, is that bank accounts are riddled with costly pitfalls. Visa check-cards exacerbate those dangers to workers who are subject to an array of hidden maintenance, access, and penalty fees.

For many people it is not only easier, but actually wiser to just spend a few dollars to cash their paycheck at a local supermarket, or check-cashing store. In this instance, a former McDonald's worker has been forced to sue for her right to be paid in legal tender, after her employer refused to pay her in any form other than a fee-laden debit card like those issued by Visa.



Even with the best financial practices, no human mistakes, and no unforeseen emergencies, a person still needs enough money to meet basic expenses. A sound budget will never work without enough money to put into that budget in the first place. So let's have a look at what McDonald's sees as a reasonable budget for a worker to, as they put it, "have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it."

Right at the start, McDonald's is admitting that a full-time worker at one of their restaurants does not earn enough to support themselves. Their budget demands from you that you get a second job, if you are lucky enough to find one at all, much less one that is compatible with your full-time and often irregular hours at one of their establishments. If you can't get a second job, for whatever reason, the full-time low-wage worker will be forced to go on welfare, or get at least some sort of public assistance.

What this means is that taxpayers are subsidizing the labor expenses of major corporations like McDonald's. We the taxpayers are now forced to pay a contribution in order to make sure that McDonald's workers actually show up for work in the first place, and that the worker is fed, clothed and healthy enough to perform their task. While these corporations reap billion dollar profits, and the CEO of McDonald's makes about $5,000 an hour, the taxpayers are forced to pay a share of their business expenses. In 2012, Wal-Mart workers were forced to rely on $2.6 billion in taxpayer relief. That directly translates into $2.6B in additional profits for the Walton family, who are more wealthy then the bottom 40% of all Americans combined.

Now let's go ahead and take a look at the person who winds up actually being lucky enough to have two jobs, and is in turn forced to pay taxes to help support the worker standing next to them who works only one full-time job. This budget projects a net monthly income of $2,060. Based on the 2012 IRS tax liability tables, a minimum wage worker earning $7.25 an hour would have to work 76 hours per week in order to have a net monthly income of $2,060. So much for the notion that poor people are lazy. This is essentially two full-time jobs, especially since employers won't usually let a worker hit the 40 hour mark in a week, for fear of having to pay an overtime wage.

This obviously leaves no time for continuing education, and precious few hours to spend with family or trying to raise your children. Contrary to the popular notion, teens do not make up the majority of minimum-wage workers. Roughly 90% are over the age of 20, and about 30% of minimum wage workers are trying to raise a family on that budget. 

But surely a person working two full time jobs, nearly 80 hours a week, must be living fairly well, right? Well, let's have a look at budgeted expenses.

The first line item in that section is savings. Anyone who can afford to save, must actually have an income that exceeds the rest of their expenses. Saving for the future is not only good advice, but absolutely necessary in order to build any sort of future It is even necessary to simply offset an array of inflationary factors which have undermined the American worker since our heydey in the 1950's.

90% of Americans Earn Less Than 1950 Minimum Wage Standard

Unfortunately, this budget is actually completely impractical and that $100 figure is completely unrealistic.

Looking at the next item we see how unrealistic it actually is. $600 for rent is unheard of in most parts of the country. The average rent last year in the US was $1,048 monthly. In New York, it is over $3,000 a month. One might suggest getting a roommate to split the rent, but then again we might also assume that this budget is actually written out for two people working at McDonald's full time, and who decided to move in together to share the bills because they couldn't find a second full-time job for themselves. So even with a roomate or spouse also working full time, this budget is still not practical, as we shall further see. 

(It could also be noted here that forced cohabitation can set someone up for all sorts of costly and life-damaging problems. Roomates can be an annoyance when they interfere with necessary sleep, but you are also vulnerable to thievery, fraud, and even being named as a criminal conspirator if they use the residence as part of an illicit enterprise. This socioeconomic dynamic has also pushed unwed couples to cohabitate prematurely, leaving them trying to force a frustrating and volatile relationship work out of simple economic necessity. This of course, is at the root of so many instances of domestic violence. Problems like these can wind up costing a worker for court fees, time missed from work, and more.)

Their budget does account for a car payment, but that figure is unrealistically low for the actual cost of operating a car. Insurance alone would easily double that figure, not to mention gasoline, maintenance, and repairs. Our own research has shown that the expense for basic auto transportation is roughly $500 a month. Public transportation may not give a significant reduction in transportation costs, and is not often available in many areas.

The next item combines home and car insurance into one item. Renters insurance is an excellent idea, and protects against all sorts of mishaps, like losing everything you own in a fire, or to a break in, but it is not really something that most low-wage workers can actually afford. Insurance for a homeowner is far more expensive than their figure, but we can assume that most people who work at McDonald's do not, and probably never will own their own home. They should not have even included car insurance there, but even for liability only that figure is very low, especially for younger drivers, or someone who may have had an accident. If you are making payments though, you need full coverage, which would be many time more per month than what they have calculated for.

For health insurance they have posted an absolutely absurd figure of $20 per month. Over-the-counter medicine to treat the flu would cost you more than that. McDonald's own basic plan for a single person with no children is $61 a month, with a maximum annual payout of $2000. (See: pdf) The plan also requires you pay a deductible and a single co-pay is $20. That $20 is, as you see, all they have budget for here, but not the actual cost of the insurance. Hardly sound financial advice from these supposed experts who worked on this project with them.

They must also assume that you live in Hawaii where it is practically 75-degrees year-round, because this budget allot for $0 in heating (or air-conditioning) expenses.

Cable and phone at $100 a month. This is possible, but you would not be able to afford a cellphone which is a nice convenience that can actually save you money and is indispensable in an emergency. Someone who is working 76 hours a week would probably choose to have a cellphone and eliminate television entertainment for the few hours that they are actually at home. They can just sit and stare at a wall until they fall asleep.

Their calculation for electric is not entirely unreasonable, but will vary widely from region to region and in different rental units. If there is electric heating for example, that figure could easily be two or three times as much per month. That would obviously wipe out their "other" category instantly. 

At the end of the McDonald's budget we see they have allotted for $27 a day in spending money. Perhaps they expect workers to take all of their meals where they work, as the budget has not accounted for any food or grocery expenses. The health consequences alone would be devastating for a worker who made fast-food the staple of their diet, but $27 a day is not really enough for that anyway. The average cost in the US for a Big Mac value meal is $6.64, though it is often several dollars more in metro areas like NY. This would leave you with about $7 for gas, and nothing to feed your family. You also wouldn't have money for garbage bags, light bulbs, toothpaste, aspirin, haircuts, deodorant. You also wouldn't have money to do laundry, but you don't have a budget to buy clothes anyway, so go ahead an just wear that stinky McDonald's uniform without any underwear on, every single day.

For a much more practical and realistic budget, please see:

Analyzing a Practical Minimum Wage

You can sign a petition at:

Low Pay Is Not Okay

"What if George hadn't gotten out of his truck?"

The question was posed by a spokesman for George Zimmerman, who was recently acquitted of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman happened upon the scene of a serious motor vehicle crash last Wednesday and jumped into action. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from his truck and then, along with another motorist, rescued a family from their flipped-over SUV.

Read more at:

Daily Caller

Orlando Sentinel

Supreme Court Rules Drug Companies Can't Be Sued

Supreme Court rules Drug Companies exempt from Lawsuits

July 7, 2013. Washington. In case readers missed it with all the coverage of the Trayvon Martin murder trial and the Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act, the US Supreme Court also made a ruling on lawsuits against drug companies for fraud, mislabeling, side effects and accidental death. From now on, 80 percent of all drugs are exempt from legal liability.

In a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s ruling and award for the victim of a pharmaceutical drug’s adverse reaction. According to the victim and the state courts, the drug caused a flesh-eating side effect that left the patient permanently disfigured over most of her body. The adverse reaction was hidden by the drug maker and later forced to be included on all warning labels. But the highest court in the land ruled that the victim had no legal grounds to sue the corporation because its drugs are exempt from lawsuits.

Read more at: Whiteout Press

Supreme Court vs. The People: 5-to-4 Does It Again

...In other words, a drug company that kills or maims us by pushing drugs on us through the corrupt health care system and is beholden to profit only, stands protected in law. Yet, these same drug companies fund medical training and "made to order" research, as well as, exert extensive influence on FDA drug approval process. They wine and dine doctors and pay them consultant fees to ghost write on their behalf and become their front-line sales force. We the people take the risks with our lives...

See the full article at: HuffPost Politics


See additional coverage at: Natural News

JP Morgan to Hire 100,000 Strong Army

Hiring Mission

JPMorgan Chase leads the charge to employ 100,000 U.S. military veterans by 2020.

By Jeanne Cotroneo Darrow

NYSE Euronext U.S. Trading News July 2013 #constantcontact http://t.co/mpEoxbF9KN about 15 hours ago Follow Us:

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nyse.com

More than 1 million service members are projected to transition out of the military by 2016 — a statistic that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) considers an opportunity. In 2011, with 10 other private sector companies, the company launched the 100,000 Jobs Mission, with a goal of hiring 100,000 veterans by 2020. In just two years, 64,628 transitioning U.S. service members and military veterans had found jobs through the program.

What began with 11 companies — JPMorgan Chase plus AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T); Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE: BR); Cisco Systems Inc.; Cushman & Wakefield Inc.; EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC); Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM); Modis; NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR); Universal Health Services Inc. (NYSE: UHS); and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) — has grown to 102 companies and evolved into a stable, ongoing initiative to hire veterans and share best practices. We checked in with Maureen Casey, managing director, Military and Veterans Affairs at JPMorgan Chase, about the program’s successes and why more companies should get involved.

Red more at link:

 http://nysebigstage.com/articles/jpmveterans?cid=p_outbrain

Also see:

Breadlines and Foodstamps

3 Cops Caught Talking About Killing Fellow Officers Fired Without Charges

Courtesy of Station.6.Underground

Three officers from the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee Police Department have been fired after recordings revealed they had been discussing killing fellow officers including the department's chief.

The contents of the recordings were revealed when investigators began looking into a harassment complaint.

The officers had been dispatched to check on the welfare of a visitor to the town at a local campground, and made contact with that person's girlfriend. They obtained her information and left, but a short time later she began receiving numerous text messages and Facebook friend requests. She subsequently filed a harassment complaint. During the investigation of that complaint investigators listened to the regular recordings made by equipment installed in the police cars, and heard the officers discussing killing other officers in explicit detail.

The officers were fired for misconduct, but criminal charges were not pursued by the district attorney or the U.S. attorney's office.

District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn excused the officers from criminal wrongdoing saying, "Even though they were sitting there talking about killing people... we haven't found there was any overt action taken. We have to prosecute using the law. No matter what we want it to be, or what we think it ought to be."

He went on to indicate that even though his office has considered a charge of official misconduct, he didn't believe a jury could be convinced there had been a crime.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, children are being treated as terrorists for far less than the overt planning of mass murder.

In one case a teenager was arrested, jailed for a month, and faced 20 years in prison for posting rap lyrics on Facebook. In another case, a teenager has been sitting in jail since February on charges of making terrorist threats stemming from a comment on a Facebook video game. The comment was admittedly violent sounding but also quite clearly meant as sarcasm. In Pennsylvania, school officials alleged that a five-year old made terror threats when she threatened to shoot classmates with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. In New York, a man's guns were confiscated and his permits revoked after his ten-year old son threatened to shoot classmates with a water pistol. Not a water pistol posing as a real gun mind you, just a water pistol. Authorities in Suffolk county have told the man he can't have his guns back until his son is 18 or moves out of the home. 

Even when their own are the target of violence, it seems that police hypocrisy knows no bounds. Time and time again we see that police officers are not held to the same standard of justice as the people, when they should actually be held to a higher standard of justice, not given special privilege in the face of gross wrongdoing.

You can read more on that case at:

WBIR.com

TriCities.com


Also see:

Are American Cops Out of Control?

Top Cop Threatens to Kill After Fellow Officer Gunned Down

Is Boston Bombing Suspect an Imposter?

According to a former wrestling teammate the man who appeared in the court room to answer for the Boston Marathon bombing was not Dzhokar Tsarnaev. More curious details are noted in the video.


Be sure to check out a recap of dozens of other oddities surrounding this case at the following link:

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Wife Plots Husband's Murder On Video

Sadly enough, cases like this are not particularly rare. This is actually a favored method for women to dispatch of the men in their lives, once they have decided to kill. While men are certainly not immune from hiring a contractor to murder their spouse or partner, often they prefer to take on the task themselves.

Women are more likely to hire someone, or even to manipulate a new lover into getting rid of the disfavored through murder. Often times these crimes will never be uncovered. And even when they are, the crime you see taking place in the videos below are not counted in domestic violence statistics, making those stats biases against males.

Also note how chillingly psychotic the young woman is, wanting an extra week with her husband, not wanting him to suffer, and essentially wanting to kill him because she doesn't want to "break his heart."

MUSKEGON, Mich. — Julia Charlene Merfeld said she wanted her husband killed because “it was easier than divorcing him.” That explanation came in a meeting with a man Merfeld thought she was hiring to do the murder.

Merfeld, 21, of Muskegon didn’t know the man was really an undercover police detective, or that she was being recorded on a hidden video camera.

Merfeld pleaded guilty June 27 to solicitation to murder. Chief Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti committed to cap her minimum sentence at six years. The maximum can be anything up to life in prison, depending on Marietti’s decision at her sentencing July 30.

PoliceOne.com

REPEAL the BILL OF RIGHTS, A Petition to Support Obama and NWO

Freedom 2013

Personally, they might have had to shoot me that night to get me out of my car. That citizen has no obligation to lower the window, to pull to "secondary" or to exit the protection of his vehicle.

Would I die for traffic stop? Well, if we all stood our ground this fascism would stop. And if someone shoots you, unjustified, you have the right to shoot back in some states.

NYC Draft Riots of 1863, Race and Finance

Have our times gotten better or worse?


 On July 13, 1863, as the second day of a new military draft lottery in New York City got underway, demonstrations broke out across the city in what began as an organized opposition to the first federally mandated conscription laws in the nation’s history, but soon morphed into a violent uprising against the city’s wealthy elite; its African-American residents; and the very idea of the Civil War itself. The New York City Draft Riots, which would wreak havoc on the city for four days and remain the largest civilian insurrection in American history, exposed the deep racial, economic and social divides that threatened to tear the nation’s largest city apart in the midst of the American Civil War.

Thanks to its status as the business capital of the United States, New York City was a deeply divided city at the start of the Civil War in April 1861. Its merchants and financial institutions were loath to lose their southern business and the city’s then-mayor, Fernando Wood, had called for the city to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, to the city’s poorer citizens, the war increasingly came to be seen as benefitting only the rich, as the coffers of the city’s elites filled with the financial spoils of battle and the conflict became known as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s battle.” The passage of the nation’s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow men (presumably only the wealthy) to buy their way out of military service by paying a commutation fee of $300 (more than $5,500 in today’s money), it also exempted blacks from the draft, as they were not yet considered American citizens. Opposition to the draft was widespread across the North, and in New York, some of the loudest critics of the bill could be found in city government, as politicians (primarily Democratic) railed against the legality of the bill and its impact on the city’s working class poor.

Read more at: History.com



The following commentary courtesy of guest author J. Marselus VanWagner

That small brief from History.com gave some keen insight into social and economic dynamics which are still of great concern to us today, both for New York City and as American people overall.

In general, the average American vastly oversimplifies the American Civil War and ignorantly believe that it was a war to end slavery. This premise is almost entirely false, and has been brought about through revisionists of history, particularly in the public school system, where most of us have had our worldview fed to us from a tin can.

Many readers may be surprised to learn certain incongruous facts about the Civil War as it pertains to race. The fact that New York City almost seceded from the Union in 1863 is one such fact shown in the article above. Another fact is that New Jersey, a Union state, still had slaves at the end of the Civil War. It was not until January 1866 that they ratified the 13th Amendment freeing the last Negroes held in bondage there.

While President Abraham Lincoln seems morally opposed to the practice of slavery, some of his own words show that the issue did not carry the same weight as true racial equality, which only became a concern for Americans a century later. Moreover, his own words betray a glamorized notion that some of our revered national heroes, like Lincoln, were any better than the hypocrites who occupy the same office in the modern era.

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." - 4th Lincoln/Douglas Debate, 1858

Ol' "Honest Abe" was just another politician after all.

Ultimately, the issue of slavery has nothing to do with liberty for blacks, but simply an economic weapon to use against the Confederacy of southern states opposed to an imperial Federal government. 

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..." -Abraham Lincoln, publichsed response to Horace Greeley, 1862

The Civil War was as the Confederacy said all along, a war of independence, based on the same spirit as the American Revolution which freed the colonists from the oppression of a King who was beholden to elitist financiers. The bankers.

Read more on that subject in the following article:

U.S. Federal Authority Is Martial Law

Of course, this is not to say that racial tensions were not a very real dynamic then, even as they are today. This is also not meant to diminish the abhorrent practice of slavery either, and the horrors that both black and white folk were subjected to in the centuries before the Civil War, as victims of slavery. (Yes, white people were slaves too.)

On the one hand, we must consider that slaves were not universally beaten, raped, and abused as revisionist history would lead us to believe. After all, a slave was a very expensive piece of  "property." One might compare owning a slave in those times, to owning a luxury automobile in these times. One does not intentionally go out and beat on a brand new Mercedes or BMW simply because they can. Often a slave might be treated as a prized "possession." Doing harm to a slave made about as much sense as blowing the motor in your brand new BMW. Then again, ignorant asses will do that, and ultimately, we are still talking about treating a human being as a possession, no matter how well they were treated.

But we should also consider that all slaves were not Negroes imported from Africa. Granted, by the time of the Civil War, blacks were the vast majority of slave laborers in the Continental United States. Nonetheless, the practice of slavery still persisted as a legitimate economic structure, not necessarily based on race alone. New Orleans, for example, became a hub of Creole persons. In the Caribbean, Scots, Welsh, and Irish persons made up a large population of slaves and indentured servants. To a lesser extent, whites has also served as slaves even in New England states.

One might even see the first military draft in American history as a form a slavery, or indentured servitude, forcing free men into military service in which they might very well die, even if they were paid a pittance for their efforts. This notion certainly played an important part in the psychology behind the NYC draft riots. Not only were poor white men being drafted for a war that was not at all their own cause, but the wealthy were able to buy their way out.

Then, as now, war was a rich man's game paid in poor man's blood. 

Essentially, poor whites were being forced to fight and die for the right of poor blacks to compete with them for low-wage jobs. And because blacks were not citizens, they were legally exempt form the draft in a war that was ostensibly meant to be a fight for the liberty of their own race.

Of course, there was a bigger political and economic paradigm behind the Civil War, but for the Irishman on the street, who was seen as little more than a "white nigger" by the powers that be, abolition meant unemployment and starvation for them and their families as former slaves would flood the workforce and eviscerate labor bargaining for even menial labor. Not necessarily based on race even, but sheer numbers.

The same article referenced above tells us:

A labor demonstration earlier that year had turned violent, as had a protest by the city’s white, largely immigrant dockworkers, who refused to work alongside African-American workers. The two groups, on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder, had long jostled for the city’s lowest paying jobs, and tensions had only increased as the war continued.

In other words, the elite financiers exploited racial tension to exempt themselves from paying a living wage to their laborers, and let them duke it out in the streets to fight for the scraps left over from their fortunes.

The same plan in various forms has been put into effect several times in the years since the Civil War, driving homemakers into the workforce, extending retirement age, and cultivating the influx of virtual slave labor today from Latin America. The net result has been devastating to the American labor force and leaving the minimum wage settled at a rate below the standard of the slave's living.

Oh, but you're not a slave, you get paid. Whereas in yesteryear, even a slave owner had to pay for your clothes, your housing, and even your medical care.

So what do we conclude here? What has history told us? That poor people will be divided and conquered by the power elite, along easily inflamed lines of inherent, perhaps instinctive bigotry and racism. Our instincts tell us that a man of a different color, a person of another gender, hell, a person who has a bad tattoo, is competition and therefore an enemy. All the while, we are blinded to the fact that the real enemy remains aloof, and untouchable. 

We can always find a reason why a person is "different" and therefore not as "worthy" as you. But the truth is, none of us, no matter our color or affliction is any better than another. And in our hearts, we know this.

And of the blacks in the NYC riots? They got their asses kicked that time. Poor folk. Poor folk vs poor folk in fact. What a shame. As before then, even in those racial times, NYC tried to be a bastion of racial equality, and failed under economic pressure by the same bastards that are doing it to us today.

Quote from article above:

Many of those who stayed relocated from their racially mixed neighborhoods to areas with an elevated police presence or to the relative safety of the outskirts of the city.

Also see:

John Decker

Top 5 Greatest Bar Brawls in American History

When gangs of thugs put out your fires

Marijuana Retail Rules Released By Washington State Liquor Control Board