Is God the Problem When It Comes to High House Prices and High Rents in San Francisco?

Josh Barro at Business Insider reports:

Last month, I spoke with Trulia's Chief Economist Jed Kolko about why San Francisco home prices are so high and he said, in reference to the city's geography, "God wanted San Francisco to be expensive."

The fact of the matter is that it is government regulations that prevent property development and thus limit housing. The Tenderloin district  of San Francisco, right smack in the middle of the city, could easily be an area of magnificent structures but zoning laws prevent development of the area, so instead you have dilapidated structures.

Indeed, architect Cesar Pelli says the San Francisco skyline has become boring because of the oppressive zoning laws.

On top of the zoning laws in SF, there are suffocating rent controls, which push up the rent of the very limited available rental space. What Barro explains about rents in NYC, also applies to SF:

Rent control raises your rent if you're not rent controlled. While the average rent for available apartments in New York City is now over $3,000, the U.S. Census Bureau says renters in New York City were only paying a median of $1,125 in 2011. What gives?

The answer is, there are lots of cheap apartments in New York. You just can't get one of them, because they're rent controlled, and tenants with great rent controlled deals cling to their apartments until they die.[...]In cities without rent control, rents for available apartments form a normal distribution around the Census median rent. Here's a chart of Philadelphia rents in 1997:

But in cities with rent control, most of the available housing stock exceeds the median rent.

[...]when you look at data from the Furman Center at New York University, it's not hard to see why.

In Manhattan below 96th Street, 35% of rent regulated apartments are occupied by a tenant who has lived there for more than 20 years. Less than 3% of market-rate tenants have been around that long.

Many of those rent regulated tenants would have moved if they had to pay market rent, whether within the city or to Florida; when they hold onto their great deals, they reduce supply available to new renters, and that drives up prices for everybody else.

The same goes for San Francisco, except it is worse, rental laws so favor tenants that many apartment owners choose to  leave their apartments vacant. One SF apartment owner explained in NyTi the situation:

The City by the Bay is going through one of its worst housing shortages in memory. With typical high demand intensified by a regional boom in tech jobs, apartment open houses are mob scenes of desperate applicants clutching their credit reports. The citywide median rental price for a one-bedroom is $2,764 a month, but jumps to $3,500 in trendy areas.

One reason for the shortage? Me.

I’ve recently joined the ranks of San Francisco landlords who have decided that it’s better to keep an apartment empty than to lease it to tenants. Together, we have left vacant about 10,600 rental units. That’s about five percent of the city’s total — or enough space to house up to 30,000 people in a city that barely tops 800,000.

BREAKING Massive Police Presence as Police Serve Search Warrant at Home of Adam Kokesh

DC FOX 5 has confirmed that U.S. Park Police along with Herndon, Virginia Police are serving a search warrant at the home of Adam Kokesh, who was seen on a YouTube video posted on July 4th loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C..

Roads have been blocked off in the area of the 1500 block of Snow Flake Court in Herndon and residents have been told to stay indoors while police serve the warrant.

DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG

UPDATE:

Kokesh has been arrested, details here.

Jack Hunter Issues an 'I Hope This Will Save My Job' Statement

On the heels of a hit piece designed to put pressure on Rand Paul to fire Jack Hunter, Hunter has issued the following statement:

Today’s article that brought my not-very-hidden radio pundit background to light does not accurately reflect me or my full, or true, views.

The role of a radio host is different from that of a political operative. In radio, sometimes you’re encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory. I’ve been guilty of both, and am embarrassed by some of the comments I made precisely because they do not represent me today. I was embarrassed by some of them even then.

I am also no longer a guy who judges beer drinking contests in a wrestling mask. Things change. We all hopefully grow up.

I abhor racism and have always treated everyone I’ve met with dignity and respect as individuals. This was true in the past and it is true now.

The controversial comments are also but a fraction of my decade of writing and talking about conservative, Tea Party and libertarian causes.

I have also written columns over the years promoting African-American history and politics, and many other writings that tell a far different story than what the headlines portray today. Not surprisingly, the reporter chose not to balance her piece by citing any of those columns.

Jack,

There is nowhere near enough in your statement to make the neocons happy. You would have had to have called, in your statement, for immediate troops on the ground in Syria, a nuclear strike on Iran and a drone strike on Edward Snowden, for them to even consider you as a possible  luggage carrying aide to Rand.

It's over. Rand wants to be president and they are going to bloody him, with his association with you, until you are set adrift. At this point, they will judge Rand merely on how quickly it takes him to cut you loose.

The Plus Three, Minus Eight Rule Could Help You Survive a Plane Crash

Via LifeHacker:

Do you tune out as soon as you get on the plane or it's about to land? That's probably not a good idea, according to research on when most accidents happen. The "plus three, minus eight" rule can help you stay alert when you fly.

In an article on ABC News, Ben Sherwood, author of "The Survivors Club — The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life" (and president of ABC News) says that 80 percent of all plane crashes happen within the first three minutes of takeoff or in the eight minutes before landing. These are the times you'll want to stay alert just in case. Leave your shoes on, the reading for later, etc.

Gallup: Unemployment Worse Than Government Reported Data

The Gallup Organization reports:

Gallup's private-sector monitoring of the jobs situation shows no improvement in full-time Payroll to Population (P2P) between June 2013 (44.8%) and June 2012 (44.9%). Further, Gallup's workforce participation rate suggests more Americans are joining the workforce this year, and the government is not picking up the increases, meaning the unemployment situation may be much worse than now recognized.[...]

. June's 68.5% matches the highest participation rate Gallup has seen since continuous monitoring began in January 2010. Gallup's participation rate surged to 68.5% in April 2013 from 67.7% in March.[...]

The government reported its lowest unadjusted participation rate of the year in March and April at 63.1%. This increased in May to 63.5%, trailing the surge in participation Gallup picked up in April. The government's participation rate is lower than Gallup's for a variety of methodological reasons, and these differences may also explain why the BLS participation rates continue to trail those seen in 2012 on a monthly basis.

Rahmaland: Summer Violence Creates Need For Blood Donations at South Side Hospital

A South Side hospital is asking residents to donate blood as a summer spike in city gun violence has created higher demand in emergency rooms, DNA Infor reports.

Price Inflation Watch: Average NYC Rent Passes $3,000

The average rent in NYC last quarter was $3,017 a month, according to Reis Inc.

According to Reuters, the average New York rent was more than 50 percent higher than second-place San Francisco, where rent grew 1.1 percent from the first quarter to $1,998.82. Oklahoma City was the cheapest market, at an average of $571.03 a month, up 0.6 percent. The national average is $1,062.

With few apartments up for grabs in NYC, brokers are urging prospective tenants to carry financial paperwork with them to showings and to make a decision quickly, reports WSJ.

From WSJ:

"I haven't met a single client who hasn't lost at least one or two rentals because they waited too long to decide," said Ed Azrilyan, owner of Chartwell F.H. Realty in Queens.

After a showing, "I take them to show another property, [and] we're wondering if it won't be rented by the time we get back; there's no time to mull things over in this hot rental market," he said.

I am hearing similar reports in parts on the greater San Francisco bay area. Prospective tenants are showing up at rentals with financial documents in hand.   


The desire to hold cash balances is clearly declining. WSJ again:

After the financial crisis, desperate landlords cut rents and paid broker fees to fill units. But those days are long gone: Mr. Azrilyan charges some who rent an apartment he finds a fee equivalent to one month of rent.

VIDEO: Midtown Manhattan Growth in 60 Seconds

(Via The Gothamist)

The John and the Madam

Kristin Davis has issued a press release commenting on the news that Eliot Spitzer will be running for NYC Comptroller:

Kristin Davis, the ex-madam who supplied escorts to Eliot Spitzer and was sentenced to 4 months in Riker’s Island and later collected the 15,000 signatures necessary to run as a protest candidate for Governor of NY in 2010, announced today that she would oppose former Governor Eliot Spitzer for the office of New York City Comptroller.

“Eliot Spitzer broke state and federal laws in his use of prostitutes and paid no penalty; I broke the law and paid my debt to society. There cannot be two standards of justice, one for the average citizen and another for the political and social elite” said Davis, a former Wall Street Hedge Fund Vice President who once ran the largest
escort service in the country. 

Eliot Spitzer financed his 2 Campaigns for Attorney General with illegal loans from his father, misused state resources to spy on his political opponents in Troopergate, pressured companies to hire his cronies as a conditions of settling charges with the Attorney Generals Office and violated Federal money laundering laws when he sought to hide his use of call-girls” said Davis. “ This is our next City Comptroller?”

Davis is running on the Libertarian Party ticket, but may need lessons on libertarianism  and the fact that there is more to libertarianism than the legalization of weed and that regulation and taxation of weed are not libertarian positions.

From her press release:

Davis said she would unveil a proposal to solve the city’s projected $2.2 Billion deficit by legalizing, regulating and taxing Marijuana.

WARNING Simulated 'Street Wide' Cyber Attack on Wall Street Coming

A source provides me with this internal advisory put out by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation:

Always be on your toes when 'simulations' are scheduled. Remember, simulation drills were on going at the time of 9-11 and also at the Boston Marathon bombing.

Greenwald Goes Off on WaPo's Walter PIncus

Glenn Greenwald sent the below email to Walter Pincus.

Dear Mr. Pincus:

That you decided to write an entire column grounded solely in baseless innuendo is between you and your editors. But your assertion of several factually false claims about me, Laura Poitras, and others is not:

(1) "On April 10, 2012, Greenwald wrote for the WikiLeaks Press’s blog about Poitras and WikiLeaks being targeted by U.S. government officials."

I have no idea what you're talking about here, and neither do you. I never wrote anything "for the WikiLeaks Press's blog". How you decided to pull that fact out of thin air is a genuine mystery.

The April 10, 2012, article of mine you seem to be referencing - about the serial border harassment of the filmmaker Laura Poitras - was written for Salon, where I was a Contributing Writer and daily columnist. Neither it, nor anything else I've ever written, was written "for the WikiLeaks Press's blog".

(2) "In that same interview, Assange previewed the first Greenwald Guardian story based on Snowden documents that landed a week later."

This claim is not just obviously false, but deeply embarrassing for someone who claims even a passing familiarity with surveillance issues. 

The sentence you quoted from Assange's May 29 interview about the collection of phone records was preceded by this: "The National Security Agency — and this has come out in one court case after another — was involved in a project called Stellar Wind to collect all the calling records of the United States."

Stellar Wind, as you rather amazingly do not know, is the code name for the 2001-2007 Bush NSA spying program. As part of that program, the NSA (as you also rather amazingly did not know) engaged in the bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

Back in April, 2012, NSA whistleblower William Binney went on Democracy Now and detailed how, under Stellar Wind, the NSA argued that the Patriot Act "gives them license to take all the commercially held data about us" and has thus "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens."

When "Assange described how NSA had been collecting 'all the calling records of the United States, every record of everyone calling everyone over years'", he was not "preview[ing] the first Greenwald Guardian story based on Snowden documents that landed a week later" (a story that revealed for the first time that a radical interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act was being used by the FISA court and the Obama DOJ to justify the bulk collection of Americans' communications record and that this indiscriminate domestic surveillance program was active under the Obama administration).

Instead, Assange was describing - explicitly - a Bush program from 8 years earlier, one that was widely reported at the time and thus known to the entire world (except, apparently, to you and your editors). 

(3) "He [Snowden] worked less than three months at Booz Allen, but by the time he reached Hong Kong in mid-May, Snowden had four computers with NSA documents."

Edward Snowden has worked more or less continuously at the NSA for various contractors since 2009 - not since March, 2013. See this July 4, 2013, New York Times article on Snowden's four-year history at the NSA as a sophisticated cyber-operative: 

"In 2010, while working for a National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden learned to be a hacker. . . .By 2010, he had switched agencies and moved to Japan to work for Dell as an N.S.A. contractor, and he led a project to modernize the backup computer infrastructure, he said on the résumé. That year also appears to have been pivotal in his shift toward more sophisticated cybersecurity."

By the time he contacted us, he had already been working at the NSA with extensive top secret authorization for almost four years. To conceal this vital fact from your readers - in order to leave them with the false impression that he only began working at the NSA after he spoke with me, Laura Poitras and your Washington Post colleague Bart Gellman - is deceitful and reckless. 

(4) "Was he encouraged or directed by WikiLeaks personnel or others to take the job as part of a broader plan to expose NSA operations to selected journalists?"

Although you also conceal this from your readers, both Poitras and I have repeatedly, publicly and in great detail addressed all of these questions. I did so in a newspaper called "the Washington Post" ("It was only in May — and not before — that Snowden told [Greenwald] who he was, who he worked for (at that point he identified himself as affiliated with the NSA) and what sort of documents he had to share, Greenwald says. It wasn’t until June — when Greenwald visited Snowden in Hong Kong — that Snowden told him he worked specifically for Booz Allen"), as well as in the New York Times. 

Poitras did so in an interview with Salon: "I didn’t know where he worked, I didn’t know he was NSA, I didn’t know how — nothing. There was no like, Oh do you think you …, no nudging. It’s like the crazy correlations that the NSA does. There’s no connection here. We were contacted, we didn’t know what he was up to, and at some point he came forward with documents".

You're free to disbelieve those answers in pursuit of your frenzied conspiracy theorizing. But you should not feel free to pretend those answers haven't been provided and thus hide them from your readers.

Apparently, some establishment journalists have decided that the way to save a discredited and dying industry is to fill articles and columns speculating about the news-gathering process on a significant story in which they had no involvement, and thus traffic in innuendo-laden "questions" designed to imply elaborate and nefarious conspiracy theories. So be it: I don't think that will work - I think what readers want are fact-based revelations about those in power - but feel free to try. 

But making up facts along the way, as you've done, should still be deemed unacceptable. At the very least, they merit a prominent correction.

All of this is independent of the fact that the conspiracy theory you've concocted is just laughable on its own terms. The very notion that Julian Assange would have masterminded this leak from the start, but then chose to remain demurely and shyly in the background so that others would receive credit for it, would prompt choking fits of laughter among anyone who knows him. Your suggestion that Assange would refrain from having WikiLeaks publish these documents, and instead direct these news-breaking leaks to The Guardian of all places - with which he has a bitter, highly publicized and long-standing feud - is even more hilarious.

Our NSA stories have been published and discussed in countless countries around the world, where they have sparked shock, indignation and demands for investigation. So revealingly, it is only American journalists - and them alone - who have decided to focus their intrepid journalistic attention not on the extremist and legally dubious surveillance behavior of the US government and serial deceit by its top officials, but on those who revealed all of that to the world.

This is an important news story and journalists should be free to ask all sorts of questions about who was involved and how. That's why we've been so forthcoming - unusually so - about addressing all these questions. Read your Washington Post colleague Erik Wemple as he explains that to you: "In response to various questions going back to the days just after his first NSA stories, Greenwald has delivered a remarkable amount of disclosures about how he got the story, how he executed it and how he plans to continue pursuing it."

But when those questions are posed by fabricating events that never happened and ignoring the answers that have already been provided, it strongly suggests that something other than truth-seeking is the objective.

Glenn Greenwald

BREAKING Snowden has Agreed to Venezuela's Offer of Asylum

Developing....

Check back for updates.

UPDATE 1

Via The Hill:

NSA leaker Edward Snowden has accepted Venezuela's offer of asylum, a key Russian lawmaker tweeted Tuesday. 

Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of Russian Duma's international affairs panel, tweeted that Snowden had accepted the offer from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The tweet was deleted soon after it was posted.

UPDATE 2

 “Predictably, Snowden has agreed to Maduro’s offer of political asylum,” Pushkov tweeted in Russian, according to Russia Today. “Apparently, this option appeared most reliable to Snowden.”

Hit Piece on Rand Paul Aide: Will Rand Tell Jack to Hit the Road?

Neocon Jennifer Rubin is tweeting a link out to a hit piece on Jack Hunter,which makes it clear the neocons want Hunter out and, of course, the big question is also in the hit piece, will Rand be able to "transcend" his father:

Devastating. Did Sen Paul know about this guy's background? If so, it is horrifying, revealing http://t.co/OUgEL7IpTo
— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 9, 2013

From the Hunter assassination piece at the Washington Free Beacon:

A close aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) who co-wrote the senator’s 2011 book spent years working as a pro-secessionist radio pundit and neo-Confederate activist, raising questions about whether Paul will be able to transcend the same fringe-figure associations that dogged his father’s political career.

Paul hired Jack Hunter, 39, to help write his book The Tea Party Goes to Washington during his 2010 Senate run. Hunter joined Paul’s office as his social media director in August 2012.

From 1999 to 2012, Hunter was a South Carolina radio shock jock known as the “Southern Avenger.” He has weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

During public appearances, Hunter often wore a mask on which was printed a Confederate flag.

Prior to his radio career, while in his 20s, Hunter was a chairman in the League of the South, which “advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.”

“The League of the South is an implicitly racist group in that the idealized version of the South that they promote is one which, to use their ideology, is dominated by ‘Anglo-Celtic’ culture, which is their code word for ‘white’,” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research at the ADL. The ADL said it does not necessarily classify it as a hate group.

For the record, The League of the South appears to be just what it says it is, a secession movement and not racist, but, hey, who needs truth when you are trying to dirty a libertarian leaning, non-interventionist aide to a presidential candidate.

The piece continues:

In one 2004 commentary, Hunter said Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth’s heart was “in the right place.”

“Although Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s heart was in the right place, the Southern Avenger does regret that Lincoln’s murder automatically turned him into a martyr,” he said in 2004.

He later wrote that he “raise[s] a personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.” 

He also compared Lincoln to Saddam Hussein and suggested that the 16th president would have had a romantic relationship with Adolf Hitler if the two met.

Lincoln was one evil bastard, so it is easy for anyone, with knowledge of who Lincoln really was, to be sympathetic to Hunter's  take. That said, the neocons have a different view. To them, Lincoln is a saint, yet to be canonized, despite the fact that 600,000 soldiers died in the unnecessary Civil War he instigated.

The column goes on to make further innuendos that Hunter is a racist, but then gets to the heart of the matter, as far as neocons are concerned:

The Washington Monthly reported Monday that Hunter is part of a group of close aides who advise Paul on foreign policy.

Both Hunter and Paul’s office denied his involvement in foreign policy deliberations in comments to the Free Beacon.

Since becoming Paul’s social media director, Hunter has publicly vouched for the senator’s non-interventionist bona fides.[...]

Hunter has also said that Rand Paul holds the same foreign policy views as his father, Ron Paul.

“The philosophy hasn’t substantively changed [from Ron Paul to Rand Paul]. The methods and style most certainly have.”

However, a spokesperson for Paul said Hunter was not speaking for the senator.

Hunter also discussed Paul’s intention to take non-interventionism into the “mainstream” in a comment to libertarian website the Daily Paul in January.

“I see, finally, a Republican willing to take the more sane, non-interventionist message into the mainstream in a way that can stick and possibly become policy,” said Hunter.

“Ron started this whole thing,” he added. “Rand is taking it to the next level.”

Despite the above Hunter comments, Hunter can hardly be considered a friend to principled libertarians, the article goes on to point out just how soft he has been when it comes to principle versus selling out for political gain:

When libertarians and paleoconservatives balked at Paul’s remark last January that “any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States,” Hunter downplayed the comment as a “little rhetorical concession” and said the senator was “play[ing] the game.”

“For every questionable action—support for Mitt Romney, comments about the U.S.’s relationship with Israel … these things do not diminish the overall record of the most libertarian senator since the Founding era,” wrote Hunter on the Southern Avenger website. “Not making these certain diplomatic statements or gestures on occasion, also makes taking these ideas into the mainstream much, much harder. A little rhetorical concession goes a long way.”

“Some say Rand is not Ron because he is ‘willing to play them game,’” Hunter continued. “That’s exactly right. That’s the point—to play it, influence it, and win it as much as you can. The neoconservatives certainly do, to their advantage.”[...]Hunter said [sic] does not think Rand Paul is a non-interventionist when asked by the Free Beacon.

That said, the neocon's want Hunter gone. It should be noted that the editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, where the hit piece appeared, is  Matthew Continetti, who is married to Anne Elizabeth Kristol, the daughter of neo-conservative kingpin Bill Kristol. In other words, this hit piece was a sanctioned hit.

What will happen from here? I say Rand buckles. Hunter is a goner and Rand bows once again at the feet of neocon godfather Kristol. As Rubin explained yesterday, bowing at the feet of Kristol just takes practice.

A Personalized Tour of Obaamcare

From WSJ. Of note, the below tour does not discuss the cost to taxpayers of those who will get free or subsidized healthcare. Nor does the tour discuss death panels, which will determine what medical treatments you will be eligible for and which you will be denied.

Obama's Mini-Coup d'Etat

In high school civics courses, we are all taught that there are three branches to the United States government: the executive branch, the judicial branch and the legislative branch.

With all looking on,  last week President Obama took over powers specifically granted to the legislative branch.

Michael McConnell,  who is a former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains:

President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.

Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.

This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."

To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.

Bottom line, as wacky as Obamacare is, the President has no authority to alter the law in any way. Which means, he has no authority to alter the starting date for Obamacare that is detailed in the Affordable Care Act that was passed by Congress. By doing so, he has gone beyond his powers as defined in the Constitution and, for all practical purposes, staged a non-violent mini-coup d'etat taking over powers that belong to Congress.

Every branch of government is always attempting to expand its power, but this is a pretty brazen act. If the President succeeds with this, what will he try next? Where is the outrage in Congress?

EXPOSED: Plot to Assassinate Leaders of Occupy Movement, "If Necessary"

Dave Lindorff, of WhoWhatWhy.com, reports on a plot to assassinate leaders of the Occupy movement, when the movement in 2011 was occupying land in various cities. Specifically, it appears the plot was aimed at Houston Occupy leaders:

Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protesters in a major American city — and did nothing to intervene?[...]

Remember the Occupy Movement? The peaceful crowds that camped out in the center of a number of cities in the fall of 2011. That movement swept the US beginning in mid-September 2011. When, in early October, the movement came to Houston, Texas, law enforcement officials and the city’s banking and oil industry executives freaked out perhaps even more so than they did in some other cities. The push-back took the form of violent assaults by police on Occupy activists, federal and local surveillance of people seen as organizers, infiltration by police provocateurs—and, as crazy as it sounds, some kind of plot to assassinate the “leaders” of this non-violent and leaderless movement.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what the document obtained from the Houston FBI, said:

An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles. (Note: protests continued throughout the weekend with approximately 6000 persons in NYC. ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests have spread to about half of all states in the US, over a dozen European and Asian cities, including protests in Cleveland (10/6-8/11) at Willard Park which was initially attended by hundreds of protesters.)

WhoWhatWhy contacted FBI headquarters in Washington, and asked about this document—which, despite its stunning revelation and despite PCFJ press releases, was (notwithstanding a few online mentions) generally ignored by mainstream and “alternative” press alike.

The agency confirmed that it is genuine and that it originated in the Houston FBI office. (The plot is also referenced in a second document obtained in PCJF’s FOIA response, in this case from the FBI’s Gainesville, Fla., office, which cites the Houston FBI as the source.) That second document actually suggests that the assassination plot, which never was activated, might still be operative should Occupy decisively re-emerge in the area. It states:

On 13 October 20111, writer sent via email an excerpt from the daily [DELETED] regarding FBI Houston’s [DELETED] to all IAs, SSRAs and SSA [DELETED] This [DELETED] identified the exploitation of the Occupy Movement by [LENGTHY DELETION] interested in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire.

Asked why solid information about an assassination plot against American citizens exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly never led to exposure of the plotters’ identity or an arrest—as happened with so many other terrorist schemes the agency has publicized—Paul Bresson, head of the FBI media office, offered a typically elliptical response:

The FOIA documents that you reference are redacted in several places pursuant to FOIA and privacy laws that govern the release of such information so therefore I am unable to help fill in the blanks that you are seeking. Exemptions are cited in each place where a redaction is made. As far as the question about the murder plot, I am unable to comment further, but rest assured if the FBI was aware of credible and specific information involving a murder plot, law enforcement would have responded with appropriate action.

Note that the privacy being “protected” in this instance (by a government that we now know has so little respect for our privacy) was of someone or some organization that was actively contemplating violating other people’s Constitutional rights— by murdering them.

Lindroff also reports on agent provocateurs operating at Occupy Houston:

[Paul Kennedy, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild in Houston] represented seven people who were charged with felonies for a protest that attempted to block the operation of Houston’s port facility. That case fell apart when in the course of discovery, the prosecution disclosed that the Occupiers had been infiltrated by three undercover officers from the Austin Police department, who came up with the idea of using a device called a “sleeping dragon” -- actually chains inside of PVC pipe -- which are devilishly hard to cut through, for chaining protesters together blocking port access. The police provocateurs, Kennedy says, actually purchased the materials and constructed the “criminal instruments” themselves, supplying them to the protesters. As a result of this discovery, the judge tossed out the felony charges.

POLL: Weiner Leads Democrats in Race for NYC Mayor

In a Wall Street Journal-NBC New York-Marist poll, among registered Democrats, Anthony Weiner had 25% of the vote, compared with City Council Speaker Christine. Quinn, who had 20%, marking her lowest level of support since polling of the race began. Trailing them were former Comptroller Bill Thompson, at 13%, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, 10% and city Comptroller John Liu, 8%.

The 5 Richest Cabinet Members of All Time

No. 5: W. Averell Harriman, commerce secretary, 1947-48

Estimated wealth in current dollars: $841 million

Harriman earned his money the old-fashioned way: He inherited most of it from his father, E.H. Harriman, founder of the Union Pacific Railroad.

No. 4: William C. Whitney, Navy secretary, 1885-89

Estimated wealth in current dollars: $1.1 billion

Whitney came into his money via political connections and by marrying Flora Payne, the sister of Oliver Hazard Payne, one of John D. Rockefeller’s close assistants and earliest investors.

No. 3: Penny Pritzker, commerce secretary, 2013

Estimated wealth in current dollars: $1.85 billion

Pritzker inherited a fortune and built it up from there. The seed of her fortune comes from the Hyatt hotel chain, which was developed by her father.

No. 2: Jesse Jones, commerce secretary, 1940-45

Estimated wealth in current dollars: $2.8 billion

During the Great Depression, Jones was the chairman of the powerful Reconstruction Finance Corp., the main financial arm of the New Deal. Jones was known at the time as “the fourth branch of government,” as his agency lent billions to restructure banks and to rebuild industry.

Jones earned his fortune in Texas real estate and banking and was also the owner and publisher of the Houston Chronicle.

Jones was a powerful political figure behind the scenes, nurturing the careers of Democrats such as Lyndon B. Johnson and John Connally.

No. 1: Andrew Mellon, Treasury secretary, 1921-32
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $50 billion

Along with brother Richard, Mellon took over his father’s bank in the 1880s and built it into one of the most powerful institutions in the country. Mellon invested in coal, steel, railroads, shipbuilding and petroleum. He helped to found Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Carborundum and U.S. Steel.

Mellon’s greatest political achievement was cutting income-tax rates, with the top rate falling from 77% to 24%.

(Assembled by Rex  Nutting)

Donald Trump Thinks The Extradition Process Is Too Slow, Suggests Just Killing Edward Snowden

Appearing on “Fox & Friends” Monday, Donald Trump called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be executed for leaking details about a massive spying program run by the National Security Agency:

You know, spies in the old days used to be executed. This guy is becoming a hero in some circles. Now, I will say, with the passage of time, even people that were sort of liking him and were trying to go on his side are maybe dropping out… We have to get him back and we have to get him back fast. It could take months or it could take years, and that would be pathetic.

This guy’s a bad guy and, you know, there’s still a thing called execution. You really have to take a strong… You have thousands of people with access to material like this. We’re not gong to have a country any longer.

Spies in the old days?  Would that be Nathan Hale?

As for this danger that Trump warns about:

We’re not gong to have a country any longer.

Let me think about that: No more taxes, no SEC, no FDA, no DEA, no DHH, no Obamacare, no more wars. Hmmm.

17 Signs That Most Americans Will Be Wiped Out By The Coming Economic Collapse

As assembled by Michael Snyder:

#1 According to a survey that was just released, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  But most Americans are acting as if their jobs will always be there.  But the truth is that mass layoffs can occur at any time.  In fact, it just happened at one of the largest law firms in New York City.

#2 27 percent of all Americans do not have even a single penny saved up.

#3 46 percent of all Americans have $800 or less saved up.

#4 Less than one out of every four Americans has enough money stored away to cover six months of expenses.

#5 Wages continue to fall even as the cost of living continues to go up.  Today, the average income for the bottom 90 percent of all income earners in America is just $31,244.  An increasing percentage of American families are just trying to find a way to survive from month to month.

#6 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

#7 Small business is becoming an endangered species in America.  In fact, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed at this point.  That means that the vast majority of Americans are depending on someone else to provide them with an income.  But what is going to happen as those jobs disappear?

#8 In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent.  Today it is up to154 percent.

#9 Today, a higher percentage of Americans are dependent on the government than ever before.  In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that gets direct monetary benefits from the federal government.  So what is going to happen when the government handout gravy train comes to an end?

#10 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#11 It is estimated that less than 10 percent of the U.S. population owns any gold or silver for investment purposes.

#12 It has been estimated that there are approximately 3 million "preppers" in the United States.  But that means that almost everyone else is not prepping.

#13 44 percent of all Americans do not have first-aid kits in their homes.

#14 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies stored up.

#15 53 percent of all Americans do not have a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water in their homes.

#16 One survey asked Americans how long they thought they would survive if the electrical grid went down for an extended period of time.  Incredibly, 21 percent said that they would survive for less than a week, an additional 28 percent said that they would survive for less than two weeks, and nearly 75 percent said that they would be dead before the two month mark.

#17 According to a survey conducted by the Adelphi University Center for Health Innovation, 55 percent of Americans believe that the government will come to their rescue when disaster strikes.

Durden concludes:

You can trust that Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have everything under control, but as for me and my family we are going to prepare for the giant economic storm that is coming.

I hope that you will be getting prepared too.