Montesquieu speaks to this issue in his 1748 book The Spirit of the Laws and its as Prime Minister Viktor Orban sates; a political unit e.g. a country can only be comprised of one culture. Introducing a mixing separate cultures creates problems in direct proportions to the difference we tween them. In this case with Democratic Christian and Theocratic Muslims there can be no assimilation; the differences are way to great to come to an accommodation.
Category Civil Society
DREAMER BUSTED AFTER BOAST
What the immigration system was designed to do as a result of the President Johnston changes in 1965 was to change America from primarily northern European background to southern European, south America and middle east background. The reason for this was that those cultures were use to large central governments and it would be easier to control them. Montesquieu shown in his writing that to change the form of government you first needed to change the sentiments of the people.
Dramatic Aerial Footage Shows What The Oroville Dam Looks Like Now
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted ZERO HEDGE Mar 1, 2017 11:47 AM
Via Daniel Lang of SHTFPlan.com,
Earlier this month, we all heard the news that the Oroville Dam was damaged, and that thousands of residents living in its shadow would have to be evacuated. Fortunately the dam held, and the residents of Oroville were able to return to their homes. For the most part the story has since faded from the news. However, the damage remains.
When the crisis was at its peak, you may have heard about what specifically went wrong with the dam. The main spillway was damaged when the dam operators attempted to release some water to control the depth of Lake Oroville. Essentially, a crater unexpectedly emerged in the middle of the spillway, and when the water flowed through that hole, it eroded the soil beneath. So the dam operators decided to let the water flow over an emergency spillway instead. But as the emergency spillway began to erode as well, an evacuation order was issued.
But hearing that doesn’t really do it any justice. To really appreciate the magnitude of what occurred that day, you have to see it with your own eyes. And now you can.
On Monday the California Department of Water Resources stopped the flow of water down the spillway so that they could assess the damage. Here’s what they found:
I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be fixed for a long time.
We need a New Alliance!
During WW II America, Brittan, Russia and the French resistance fought the Axis powers lead my Germany and totally destroyed them. What we need now is to save Western Civilization once more from the invasion of Islam which is in the process of bringing 5,000 years of progress to a screeching halt throwing us into a new Dark Age. So some strange reason the left or the progressive movement as they prefer to be called have aligned themselves with the the Medina faction of Islam (Jihadists) in there attempt to set up a one world government under the principles of Marxism. Trump had now correctly defined the obvious enemy as Radical Islamic terrorism he will now need to bring in the other half which is lead my George Soros with is Open Society movement which is Marxism; BTW Karl Marx was German.
If Le Pen can win in the French election than an alliance of America, Britain, Russia and France is possible and we could save Western Civilization once more. Russia does have clean up to do but the Russian people are good and even Putin could see the advantage of this new alliance. I hope trump can see this and put something like this together; as this not inconsistent with the MAGA movement.
NY Teamsters Pension Becomes First To Run Out Of Money As Expert Warns “Pension Tsunami” Is Coming
by Tyler Durden
The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has won the unfortunate award for “First Pension to Officially Run Out of Money.” According to the New York Daily News, and a host of angry former truck drivers who’ve had their pension benefits slashed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has officially been forced to step in and take over payments to retirees of the Local 707, albeit at a much lower rate.
Teamsters Local 707’s pension fund is the first to officially bottom out financially — which happened this month.
“I had a union job for 30 years,” Chmil said. “We had collectively bargained contracts that promised us a pension. I paid into it with every paycheck. Everyone told us, ‘Don’t worry, you have a union job, your pension is guaranteed.’ Well, so much for that.”
“It’s a nightmare, it has just devastated all of our lives. I’ve gone from having $48,000 a year to less than half that,” said Chmil, one of five Local 707 retirees who agreed to share their stories with the Daily News last week.
“I don’t want other people to have to go through this. We need everyone to wake up and do something; that’s why we’re talking,” said Ray Narvaez.
Of course, the Teamsters 707 and other Teamster pension boards attempted to submit plans that would have cut benefits in order to prolong payments to retirees but those plans were universally rejected by the Obama administration…better that the pensions just run out of cash completely. Per Pensions & Investments:
The Obama administration is in denial about the necessity of cutting pension benefits under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 to try to put distressed multiemployer plans on sounder financial footings and make them more sustainable. It must face reality and order the Treasury Department to stop blocking action.
So far the department, required under the act to approve proposed reductions, has rejected proposals by the Teamsters Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Plan and the Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund.
Ten plans total have applied for cuts, including the New York State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund, Syracuse, whose Aug. 31 application is too new to be listed on the Treasury’s website.
The Road Carriers 707 application stated that the plan projects it will become insolvent in February — only about five months away — absent suspension of benefits.
As desperate as the plan’s financial situation appears to be, the Treasury denied the application.
And while the Local 707 pension was the first to dry up, it certainly won’t be the last…
Also on the brink of drying up are the pensions for two Teamster locals — 641 and 560 — in New Jersey, union officials said. Plus 35,000 Teamster members upstate who are part of the money-hemorrhaging New York State Teamsters Pension Fund.
Bigger than all of New York’s Teamster locals combined is the Central States Pension Fund — another looming financial disaster that could leave 407,000 retirees without pensions across the Midwest and South.
Meanwhile, under the maximum benefits provided by the PBGC, many former Teamsters, like Ray Narvaez, said their monthly retirement checks have been slashed by two-thirds.
Then Narvaez, like 4,000 other retired Teamster truckers, got a letter from Local 707 in February of last year.
It said monthly pensions had to be slashed by more than a third. It was an emergency move to try to keep the dying fund solvent. That dropped Narvaez from nearly $3,500 to about $2,000.
“They said they were running out of money, that there could be no more in the pension fund, so we had to take the cut,” said Narvaez, whose wife was recently diagnosed with cancer.
The stopgap measure didn’t work — and after years of dangling over the precipice, Local 707’s pension fund fell off the financial cliff this month. With no money left, it turned to Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government insurance company that covers pension.
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. picked up Local 707’s retiree payouts — but the maximum benefit it gives a year is roughly $12,000, for workers who racked up at least 30 years. For those with less time on the job, the payouts are smaller.
Narvaez now gets $1,170 a month — before taxes.
Of course, as the Central States Pension General Counsel notes, the real “pension tsunami” will come when the massive “municipal and state plans go down next.”
The same crisis now hitting Local 707 has been stewing among numerous Teamster locals around the country for the past decade, he said, and that includes in upstate New York.
The trucking industry — almost uniformly organized by Teamsters — has suffered enormous financial losses in its pension and welfare funds due to a crippling combination of deregulation and stock market crashes, Nyhan said.
“This is a quiet crisis, but it’s very real. There are currently 200 other plans on track for insolvency — that’s going to affect anywhere from 1.5 to 2 million people,” said Nyhan. “The prognosis is bleak minus some new legislative help.”
And it’s not just private-sector industries that are suffering, he added.
“Municipal and state plans are the next to go down — that’s a pension tsunami that’s coming,” he said. “In many states, those defined benefit plans are seriously underfunded — and at the end of the day, math trumps the statutes.”
We’re looking at you Illinoi
Of Bread And Circuses
Well hey maybe the 95th time it might work.
Virtue-Signaling The Decline Of The Empire
by Tyler Durden
Via Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Virtue-signaling doesn’t signal virtue–it signals decline and collapse.
There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, the status quo seeks to mask its self-serving rot behind high-minded “virtue-signaling” appeals to past glories and cost-free idealism.
Virtue signaling is defined as “the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily with the intent of enhancing that person’s standing within a social group,” “the practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue” and “Saying you love or hate something to show off what a virtuous person you are, instead of actually trying to fix the problem.” Yes, yes and yes.
“Virtue-signaling” expresses two other key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline: complacency and intellectual sclerosis.
Michael Grant described these manifestations of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
What are those “resisting Trump” proposing as solutions to the profound structural ills afflicting the empire? Gender-neutral bathrooms? A continuation of a dysfunctional immigration policy? Blaming Russia to mask the catastrophic failure of the past 25 years of neocon imperial over-reach? Cost-free “virtue-signaling” proclamations in support of diversity? “Safe places” on college campuses paid for by student loans crushing a vast indentured class of debt-serfs?
These status quo policies and cost-free diversions are the acme of a profound complacency and intellectual sclerosis that serve to defend a self-serving, morally corrupt political and financial elite.
Virtue-signaling pronouncements lack any recognition of the moral, political, social and financial crises facing the American empire, and are devoid of any practical, politically/financially painful first-aid measures to staunch the decline.
Glenn Stehle, commenting on 9/16/15 on a thread in the excellent website peakoilbarrel.com (operated by the estimable Ron Patterson) made a number of excellent points that I am taking the liberty of excerpting: (with thanks to correspondent Paul S.)
The set of values developed by the early Romans called mos maiorum, Peter Turchin explains in War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, was gradually replaced by one of personal greed and pursuit of self-interest.
“Probably the most important value was virtus (virtue), which derived from the word vir (man) and embodied all the qualities of a true man as a member of society,” explains Turchin.
“Virtus included the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to act in ways that promoted good, and especially the common good. Unlike Greeks, Romans did not stress individual prowess, as exhibited by Homeric heroes or Olympic champions. The ideal of hero was one whose courage, wisdom, and self-sacrifice saved his country in time of peril,” Turchin adds.
And as Turchin goes on to explain:
“Unlike the selfish elites of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of Cannae, as mentioned previously, the senate lost almost one third of its membership. This suggests that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen….
The wealthy classes were also the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed… A graduated scale was used in which the senators paid the most, followed by the knights, and then other citizens. In addition, officers and centurions (but not common soldiers!) served without pay, saving the state 20 percent of the legion’s payroll….
The richest 1 percent of the Romans during the early Republic was only 10 to 20 times as wealthy as an average Roman citizen.”
Now compare that to the situation in Late Antiquity when
“an average Roman noble of senatorial class had property valued in the neighborhood of 20,000 Roman pounds of gold. There was no “middle class” comparable to the small landholders of the third century B.C.; the huge majority of the population was made up of landless peasants working land that belonged to nobles. These peasants had hardly any property at all, but if we estimate it (very generously) at one tenth of a pound of gold, the wealth differential would be 200,000! Inequality grew both as a result of the rich getting richer (late imperial senators were 100 times wealthier than their Republican predecessors) and those of the middling wealth becoming poor.”
Do you see any similarities with the present-day realities depicted in these charts? A self-serving class of Technocrats and bureaucratic Nomenklatura have garnered all the gains, while the bottom 90% have lost ground in wages, wealth and financial security.
This Technocrat/Nomenklatura class controls both private and public powers (media, finance, trade, industry, governance and institutions) which serve its own interests.
What we have now is a self-serving “virtue-signaling” technocrat class that works for a self-serving political/financial elite that avoids the imperial burdens of military service and taxes while imposing what amounts to an economic military conscription on the working class. This Imperial elite sends these military conscripts around the globe to defend their Imperial interests.
Virtue-signaling doesn’t signal virtue–it signals decline and collapse. Just as in 5th century Rome–an empire careening toward collapse–those reaping the gains are complacently confident in their moral superiority while their hubris-soaked intellectual sclerosis blinds them to the systemic banquet of consequences that will soon choke their precious self-serving status quo.
