'We' may be screwed, but you don't have to be ...
Throughout society, in every nation, there are people in charge of important things in your life who are completely incompetent. Example after example has proven this to be true beyond even a shadow of a doubt.
These people have created markets designed to make themselves wealthy while disregarding the outcome if things go wrong. They pile up the cash and when disaster strikes they run and hide because their incompetence is exposed.
In our country we wrongly assume there are laws in place, regulations to follow, safeguards which protect us. Not even remotely true. Whatever laws exist are so lengthy and convoluted as to be (intentionally) uninforceable.
The people in charge of asking the relevant questions such as,"What will you do if things go wrong" and, "What is your commitment to make things right to your customers or investors" have been paid off with cash or favors. We are rapidly becoming another Russia, no offense to Russians, but read the paper.
My life experience has hardened my viewpoints. I learned the hard way, by being screwed by corporate entities again and again. Then I discovered that they are not in charge of me, I am in charge of me.
Complaining on an internet blog does absolutely no good. Calling Customer Service will elicit insults and the old run-around. Emailing Customer Service does the same, but at least you get a response in writing with an albeit fake name for a signature. But, it is still evidence of incompetence.
Give the email complaint a few tries. Save the responses to your computer. Then, contact the State Attorney General of your state as well as their state. (Hint: The US Attorney General is useless) If your problem is with a lending institution you should also contact the Comptroller of the Currency, a department within the US Treasury.
Spell out your problem, state it chronologically and specifically. Name names and give complete descriptions of all that has happened. Also, at the end, say what it is that will give you satisfaction, this is very important. A complaint without a solution is easy to ignore or to be answered with platitudes of no consequence or even more insults.
You will win. There is no opportunity for them to dodge if you follow this advice. And, what do you have to lose anyway?
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Chase Conspires To Bilk Customers
Chase Conspires to Bilk Customers
It is evident and can be shown through public records and customer complaints that Chase Credit Card Services is and has been conspiring to cause their customers to lose points on their credit scores, create situations that cost customers excessive interest and charges, and has policies which prevent customer service representatives from correcting errors which Chase has fraudulently initiated.
These practices have been in place at least since Chase has acquired other banks and their clientele. Many customers of what is now Chase have flocked to consumer complaint organizations and flooded Chase’s Customer help lines. The major complaints are that Chase, without due cause, has terminated or decreased their credit lines. These are people with up to 25 years of excellent payment histories. Experian, Chase’s lap dog, is always quoted to be the initiator of the action when in fact it is Chase’s soul decision.
Chase’s Customer Help personnel are trained to be obtuse, argumentative, and elusive. Customers are asked to provide unnecessary documentation, to call another number, to write to another PO Box or simply told their complaint has been sent to some non-existent third party.
Another favorite is for Chase to assist you in making a late payment. If you mail a check they are likely to sit on it for weeks or even ‘lose’ it in order to cause you a late fee. If you have an automated payment set up and your payment date falls on a Sunday or Holiday your payment will be posted late. Call to complain and your are told, ‘Sorry, no exceptions.’ Chase, apparently, would rather have your $39 late fee now than your future business.
There are myriad variations on these themes and others, which are created daily. They are all geared to place you in a subservient position and to take your money regardless of your feelings about it. This is why I, and others, have decided to enter into a class action lawsuit. This is more about restoring dignity to those who have been lied to and abused by Chase than it is about money.
If you have been abused by Chase and would like to join this action simply reply with your email address.
To see hundreds more complaints click HERE.
To file a complaint with the Comptroller Of The Currency, click HERE. This is the only known way to get their attention.
It is evident and can be shown through public records and customer complaints that Chase Credit Card Services is and has been conspiring to cause their customers to lose points on their credit scores, create situations that cost customers excessive interest and charges, and has policies which prevent customer service representatives from correcting errors which Chase has fraudulently initiated.
These practices have been in place at least since Chase has acquired other banks and their clientele. Many customers of what is now Chase have flocked to consumer complaint organizations and flooded Chase’s Customer help lines. The major complaints are that Chase, without due cause, has terminated or decreased their credit lines. These are people with up to 25 years of excellent payment histories. Experian, Chase’s lap dog, is always quoted to be the initiator of the action when in fact it is Chase’s soul decision.
Chase’s Customer Help personnel are trained to be obtuse, argumentative, and elusive. Customers are asked to provide unnecessary documentation, to call another number, to write to another PO Box or simply told their complaint has been sent to some non-existent third party.
Another favorite is for Chase to assist you in making a late payment. If you mail a check they are likely to sit on it for weeks or even ‘lose’ it in order to cause you a late fee. If you have an automated payment set up and your payment date falls on a Sunday or Holiday your payment will be posted late. Call to complain and your are told, ‘Sorry, no exceptions.’ Chase, apparently, would rather have your $39 late fee now than your future business.
There are myriad variations on these themes and others, which are created daily. They are all geared to place you in a subservient position and to take your money regardless of your feelings about it. This is why I, and others, have decided to enter into a class action lawsuit. This is more about restoring dignity to those who have been lied to and abused by Chase than it is about money.
If you have been abused by Chase and would like to join this action simply reply with your email address.
To see hundreds more complaints click HERE.
To file a complaint with the Comptroller Of The Currency, click HERE. This is the only known way to get their attention.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Global Warming
Does A Volcano Need Carbon Credits?
For all of you out there in America and across the globe who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions, that bogus god you worship named "Climate Change" or "Global Warming", there is some really bad news that will be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.
Are you sitting down? Okay, here's the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash a week ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.
I know, I know.... (have a group hug)...it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs ...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just the past week.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in the past week has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses... you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now.
I'm so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.
So, grab a Coke, OR A COCKTAIL, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!
…AND THINK HOW RICH AL GORE IS GETTING OFF THIS HOAX!
For all of you out there in America and across the globe who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions, that bogus god you worship named "Climate Change" or "Global Warming", there is some really bad news that will be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.
Are you sitting down? Okay, here's the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash a week ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.
I know, I know.... (have a group hug)...it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs ...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just the past week.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in the past week has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses... you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now.
I'm so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.
So, grab a Coke, OR A COCKTAIL, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!
…AND THINK HOW RICH AL GORE IS GETTING OFF THIS HOAX!
911 Families Reject Ground Zero Mosque
9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site
New York, May 24, 2010 -- 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America (9/11 FSSA) adamantly rejects the plan for a mosque to be built atop a planned 15-story structure that would tower over the site where nearly 3,000 people were killed by Islamic terrorists.
According to the project's leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the mosque and "Muslim-led community center" is to be called the Cordoba House, named after the historic period when the Islamic Caliphate in Cordoba ruled much of Europe and non-Muslims lived as second-class citizens under Islamic rule.
Victims' families view the imam's expressed plan to "leverage" the mosque's proximity to Ground Zero to engage in proselytizing and to "grow the Muslim community," as shockingly insensitive to the history of the site where their loved ones were slaughtered in the worst terrorist attack by extremist Muslims in America's history; following the attack, 20,000 body parts were recovered in a nine-month operation to remove 1.8 million tons of rubble from Lower Manhattan.
"Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric who, immediately after 9/11, blamed the attacks on U.S. treatment of Muslims, asserting that Osama Bin Ladin was 'made in the U.S.A,'" said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 FSSA, whose brother was the pilot of the American Airlines flight which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. "We do not accept the Cordoba organization's view that we need Imam Rauf to lecture us about religious tolerance in a city still dealing with the consequences of the attack that he claims we brought on ourselves."
Last Monday, representatives of 9/11 FSSA met with Sharif El-Gamal, owner and CEO of Soho Properties, the corporation that purchased the two buildings where the mosque will be built at 43-45 Park Place, and asked him to name the investors in the mosque project. Mr. El-Gamal refused, citing the advice of his attorneys, stating that "this is private property" and that "we can build this 'as of right.'" The property was purchased with $4.85 million in cash.
Imam Rauf is now publicly stating in a professionally-organized PR campaign that the building will be a community center, "not a mosque." However, Mr. El-Gamal showed 9/11 FSSA members architectural renderings in which a mosque, located on the top floor of the 15-story building, would have a commanding view of the entire Ground Zero neighborhood.
Equally troubling is the fact that, while the stated purpose of the project is to engage in interfaith dialogue and cultural egalitarianism, Imam Rauf embraces Shariah, the Arabic word for Islamic law, a sociopolitical system of jurisprudence based upon the Koran which supersedes man-made law and which rejects the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state. Islamic countries that embrace Shariah and political Islam are known for brutal policies that discriminate against women, gays, and religious minorities. Shariah law is entirely incompatible with the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment and would violate 1st Amendment protections of speech, assembly and the free exercise of religion.
We feel that the attempt to use our loved ones' deaths and the painful legacy of 9/11 still felt by New Yorkers to engage in a campaign to reverse America's core doctrine of religious freedom -- and to do so under the guise of interfaith understanding -- is a gross insult to the memory of those who were killed on that terrible day.
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America asks concerned Americans -- regardless of race, color, creed, or ethnic origin--to join us in denouncing this effort to chip away at America's bedrock principle of religious freedom.
Sign Petition Here
New York, May 24, 2010 -- 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America (9/11 FSSA) adamantly rejects the plan for a mosque to be built atop a planned 15-story structure that would tower over the site where nearly 3,000 people were killed by Islamic terrorists.
According to the project's leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the mosque and "Muslim-led community center" is to be called the Cordoba House, named after the historic period when the Islamic Caliphate in Cordoba ruled much of Europe and non-Muslims lived as second-class citizens under Islamic rule.
Victims' families view the imam's expressed plan to "leverage" the mosque's proximity to Ground Zero to engage in proselytizing and to "grow the Muslim community," as shockingly insensitive to the history of the site where their loved ones were slaughtered in the worst terrorist attack by extremist Muslims in America's history; following the attack, 20,000 body parts were recovered in a nine-month operation to remove 1.8 million tons of rubble from Lower Manhattan.
"Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric who, immediately after 9/11, blamed the attacks on U.S. treatment of Muslims, asserting that Osama Bin Ladin was 'made in the U.S.A,'" said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 FSSA, whose brother was the pilot of the American Airlines flight which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. "We do not accept the Cordoba organization's view that we need Imam Rauf to lecture us about religious tolerance in a city still dealing with the consequences of the attack that he claims we brought on ourselves."
Last Monday, representatives of 9/11 FSSA met with Sharif El-Gamal, owner and CEO of Soho Properties, the corporation that purchased the two buildings where the mosque will be built at 43-45 Park Place, and asked him to name the investors in the mosque project. Mr. El-Gamal refused, citing the advice of his attorneys, stating that "this is private property" and that "we can build this 'as of right.'" The property was purchased with $4.85 million in cash.
Imam Rauf is now publicly stating in a professionally-organized PR campaign that the building will be a community center, "not a mosque." However, Mr. El-Gamal showed 9/11 FSSA members architectural renderings in which a mosque, located on the top floor of the 15-story building, would have a commanding view of the entire Ground Zero neighborhood.
Equally troubling is the fact that, while the stated purpose of the project is to engage in interfaith dialogue and cultural egalitarianism, Imam Rauf embraces Shariah, the Arabic word for Islamic law, a sociopolitical system of jurisprudence based upon the Koran which supersedes man-made law and which rejects the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state. Islamic countries that embrace Shariah and political Islam are known for brutal policies that discriminate against women, gays, and religious minorities. Shariah law is entirely incompatible with the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment and would violate 1st Amendment protections of speech, assembly and the free exercise of religion.
We feel that the attempt to use our loved ones' deaths and the painful legacy of 9/11 still felt by New Yorkers to engage in a campaign to reverse America's core doctrine of religious freedom -- and to do so under the guise of interfaith understanding -- is a gross insult to the memory of those who were killed on that terrible day.
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America asks concerned Americans -- regardless of race, color, creed, or ethnic origin--to join us in denouncing this effort to chip away at America's bedrock principle of religious freedom.
Sign Petition Here
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Chase Credit Card? Think Again ...
Chase Credit Cards Complaints
Chase is rated 45th out of 50 Top Banks in America, just under CITIBANK
Chase Credit Cards has a well established practice of delaying or losing payments in order to maximize their profits illegally. If you suspect your payment has been delayed or intentionally lost I urge you to contact the Comptroller of the Currency, HERE.
Colleen of Warren, MI May 19, 2010
I had a Washington Mutual Visa card for 4 years when they were transferred to Chase. My rates went up once Chase took over which was bad enough. That was approximately one year ago. My card with chase has an expiration date of May, 2010. I had not received a replacement card and wondered about that but figured it would come by June 1. On Monday, May 17 I received a letter from Chase Bank informing me that they had chosen NOT to renew my credit card with them and if I would like to know their reasoning to contact Experian?
I have NEVER been late on this account, always double and triple above the minimum amount due. I was STUNNED. I am STILL stunned. Called customer service and was given the basic brush off of sorry ma'am - make any disputes regarding your credit report with Experian, there is nothing we can do. Please continue to make payments on this account, however. Unbelievable. It seems from this site that they are targeting Washington Mutual customers. It is a shame they are allowed to do this to people.
I have used this card for over four years for a small personal business I have. This has really thrown a wrench into things being that it has come so last minute. I had placed an order for supplies for my company - and thought they were on the way when I was told the order had been declined. I used another card and made a mental note to call Chase when I received the "were not renewing" letter from Chase on Monday morning.
Sandi of Santa Rosa, CA May 19, 2010
I have had a Chase credit card for 25 years and have always been a member in good standing. Then they raised my interest rate to 29.99% and I promptly paid off my balance and stopped using the credit card - keeping the credit card for emergencies. Now, a year later Chase notified me that they are cancelling my card and the my card cannot be kept open and I cannot open this card in the future "because of the type of card" - whatever that means. Basically I have to accept this and I have no recourse and this is a horrible way to conduct and keep clients - which I guess they do not need anymore.
Gail of Marietta, GA May 18, 2010
I have a Chase Visa Credit Card that had a payment due on May 9, 2010 which was a Sunday. I took the payment to the a Chase bank location on Piedmont Road in Marietta, Georgia on 5/7/2010 and put it in the deposit box knowing that it would be processed the next day which would have been 5/8/2010. I have never been late because I know how these banks like to charge those outrageous late fees.
Today I got my statement and saw that the payment had not been processed until the 5/10/2010 which was a Monday, a 39.00 late fee has been added to my balance and the APR was increased. I talked to 3 Chase customer services people and each one said that the fee could not be reversed. I think the due date was a calculated move so that Chase could charge (who knows how many people) that late fee. I know that my payment was not late and I feel that the late fee should be refunded and the original APR should be reinstated. Shame on Chase Visa Credit Card Services.
Naider of Tampa, FL May 18, 2010
I have a Chase Visa card with due date on May 09, 2010 and I scheduled a Bank of America bill payment in Apr, 2010 to pay the bill of 28.52 in full on May 09, 2010. The payment went through on May 10, 2010 and the Chase Visa card charge me late fee 15 plus interest 1. I called Chase Visa card customer service number on May 18, 2010 and they said I should use Chase bill payment service and my payment will be timely paid on May 09, 2010 (Sunday) instead of May 10, 2010 (Monday) and there will be no late fee.
The Chase credit card representative said their position is firm and there are no exception. A payment received on Monday is late for a due date on Sunday and the late fee and interest must be charged. I asked to talk to Chase public relationship department but got refused. Anyway, I felt sorry about their customer service training and business practice. I'm not sure if Chase no longer care about the business reputaion and only trying to make quick profit anyway they could.
I believe my payment is not late as I scheduled bill payment the same day as due date from Bank of America bill payment center and I shouldn't be charged the late fee and interest from Chase credit card. The arrangement of electronic fund transfer is only between my bank (Bank of America) and the Chase Bank USA and legally, the late fee and interest shouldn't be not my responsibility. Can any consumer affair attorney comment on this. Thanks.
Denise of Bronx, NY May 18, 2010
I enrolled in the Leisure Rewards debit Visa program for 25.00 a year. The program offers you 4 points for every 1 you spend using your card as credit only. I had about 13,000 unused points in my account. I had left my bank card at work on Saturday 5/8/2010 weekend and was nervous someone could use it, so I called chase and asked if they could just put a hold on the account until 5/10/2010 that Monday. They informed me they would be able to inactivate the account for up to 48hrs after that the account would close and that is all they said.
I called first thing Monday to reactivate the card. I was than notified that my points would be affected; I was transferred over to the Leisure Rewards Dept which was not even open yet for me to speak to anyone. I called later that day and was hold for over 20 minutes I had to hang up. I finally get in touch with the Leisure rewards Dept for them to tell me that since my account was deactivated I lost my points! I am a loyal customer I have 3 credit cards with them along with my checking and savings! And I paid 25.00 for the program! I lost out on all of my unused points that I earned! I used my card as credit for all my purchases some stores charge tax just for using card as credit as apposed to cash or debit!
D of Buffalo, MN May 18, 2010
Having had a Amocco gas credit card since 1977 with good payment history and use i was appalled at the treatment and mismanagement of the chase/ bp, which forced me to deal with chase, I was changed with out approval they sent stuff to the wrong address and unwilling to work out helpful plan, for a very minimual balance something under 20.00 at the end...rediculus. Several attempts to correct situation to just have them discontinue my card and were unwilling to re instate my over 30 year account. yes 30 years absolutely horrible treatment
my husband his this fiascal show up on his credit report and he is not a card holder, never has been on my account. we have only been married 5 years. he has a multi million dollar business that should not be haunted by this menial incident (on his credit report) that the bp/chase people did not want to correct ethically and responsibly which has snow balled into a minemuim of 500,000.00 of financial difficulties
Daniel of Los Angeles, CA May 18, 2010
I was using a Chase credit card over 17years. I satisfied their services, so I had 4 credit cards. I used them well, so 2 of 4 cards accumulated 6,743 points(it's cash refund 67.43 value: 1 point is a 1 purchase). Recently they checked my credit report, suddenly closed my 4 credit cards. They sent me a letter that there are 3 reasons. Now and then I didn't have any credit card balance. O.K. they don't want me a customer, I don't want to be one, either.
But they refuse my reward. They insist their reward, that's why I used their reward cards. Please make them pay me a reward money. I didn't close my accounts, they close my ones. Whatever their reasons. They pay me a reward. I'll never be their customer. Reward details are attached 2 statements. 3406 has 3,478 points and 4853 has 3,265 points. Their acct close reasons are *Current loan amount on all open accounts *Number of bankcard accts *Too many requests for/reviews of credit
Dan of Montevallo, AL May 17, 2010
Last month I received a call from a collection agency informing me that I had an outstanding balance on Chase Visa Card. I had not received a balance statement from them either by mail or electronically for over a year. When I called to inquire, I was dealing with someone in India, the only office you can use to complain. They could not tell me what the the charges were for and even though I have asked them, I still have not received a statement. They informed me they could only send by fax or mail, not electronically, even though they claim I have a paperless bill account. All attempts to contact Chase in this country have been fruitless.
mary of troy, NY May 17, 2010
i paid the balance in full on time my interest rate is 29% this month get abill for 3.78 for interest due interest on nothing is nothing and the want more trying to tell me something about the billing cycle bull ishouldnt be paying 29% interest either so they are waiving the charge which tells me the charges were bogus and now i wander how long ive been getting ripped for if 100,000 people pay 3.78 in bogus interest charges the bank makes 300,000 doesnt seem fair to me also they told me if i had acomplaint i had to put it in writing wouldnt give me a complaint #
Tosha of covington, GA May 17, 2010
I was told by Consumer Affairs that my account was being closed because I owed WAMU money. I opened an account with Chase with the only money I had left in the world from an iNsurance policy from my deceased mother. 1100..I only wanted to cash the check, but was talked into opening an account. I was put on the phone with Yvette A by a banking specialist so she could explain my money being taking for a debt. I explained to ms arreola that i was homeless and this was all the only i had in the world. SHE LAUGHED AT ME...literally laughed on the phone in my face. I owed WAMU money.
It was okay when they did pay my escrowed homeowners with statefarm and my policy was cancelled. THen WAMU placed a force policy on my mortgage which then increased by 276 monthly...but I owe them money. Ihave never felt so low and disrepected in my entire life. Being homeless and living in my car is disgrace enough without being laughed at and made fun of.
Read more:
Chase is rated 45th out of 50 Top Banks in America, just under CITIBANK
Chase Credit Cards has a well established practice of delaying or losing payments in order to maximize their profits illegally. If you suspect your payment has been delayed or intentionally lost I urge you to contact the Comptroller of the Currency, HERE.
Colleen of Warren, MI May 19, 2010
I had a Washington Mutual Visa card for 4 years when they were transferred to Chase. My rates went up once Chase took over which was bad enough. That was approximately one year ago. My card with chase has an expiration date of May, 2010. I had not received a replacement card and wondered about that but figured it would come by June 1. On Monday, May 17 I received a letter from Chase Bank informing me that they had chosen NOT to renew my credit card with them and if I would like to know their reasoning to contact Experian?
I have NEVER been late on this account, always double and triple above the minimum amount due. I was STUNNED. I am STILL stunned. Called customer service and was given the basic brush off of sorry ma'am - make any disputes regarding your credit report with Experian, there is nothing we can do. Please continue to make payments on this account, however. Unbelievable. It seems from this site that they are targeting Washington Mutual customers. It is a shame they are allowed to do this to people.
I have used this card for over four years for a small personal business I have. This has really thrown a wrench into things being that it has come so last minute. I had placed an order for supplies for my company - and thought they were on the way when I was told the order had been declined. I used another card and made a mental note to call Chase when I received the "were not renewing" letter from Chase on Monday morning.
Sandi of Santa Rosa, CA May 19, 2010
I have had a Chase credit card for 25 years and have always been a member in good standing. Then they raised my interest rate to 29.99% and I promptly paid off my balance and stopped using the credit card - keeping the credit card for emergencies. Now, a year later Chase notified me that they are cancelling my card and the my card cannot be kept open and I cannot open this card in the future "because of the type of card" - whatever that means. Basically I have to accept this and I have no recourse and this is a horrible way to conduct and keep clients - which I guess they do not need anymore.
Gail of Marietta, GA May 18, 2010
I have a Chase Visa Credit Card that had a payment due on May 9, 2010 which was a Sunday. I took the payment to the a Chase bank location on Piedmont Road in Marietta, Georgia on 5/7/2010 and put it in the deposit box knowing that it would be processed the next day which would have been 5/8/2010. I have never been late because I know how these banks like to charge those outrageous late fees.
Today I got my statement and saw that the payment had not been processed until the 5/10/2010 which was a Monday, a 39.00 late fee has been added to my balance and the APR was increased. I talked to 3 Chase customer services people and each one said that the fee could not be reversed. I think the due date was a calculated move so that Chase could charge (who knows how many people) that late fee. I know that my payment was not late and I feel that the late fee should be refunded and the original APR should be reinstated. Shame on Chase Visa Credit Card Services.
Naider of Tampa, FL May 18, 2010
I have a Chase Visa card with due date on May 09, 2010 and I scheduled a Bank of America bill payment in Apr, 2010 to pay the bill of 28.52 in full on May 09, 2010. The payment went through on May 10, 2010 and the Chase Visa card charge me late fee 15 plus interest 1. I called Chase Visa card customer service number on May 18, 2010 and they said I should use Chase bill payment service and my payment will be timely paid on May 09, 2010 (Sunday) instead of May 10, 2010 (Monday) and there will be no late fee.
The Chase credit card representative said their position is firm and there are no exception. A payment received on Monday is late for a due date on Sunday and the late fee and interest must be charged. I asked to talk to Chase public relationship department but got refused. Anyway, I felt sorry about their customer service training and business practice. I'm not sure if Chase no longer care about the business reputaion and only trying to make quick profit anyway they could.
I believe my payment is not late as I scheduled bill payment the same day as due date from Bank of America bill payment center and I shouldn't be charged the late fee and interest from Chase credit card. The arrangement of electronic fund transfer is only between my bank (Bank of America) and the Chase Bank USA and legally, the late fee and interest shouldn't be not my responsibility. Can any consumer affair attorney comment on this. Thanks.
Denise of Bronx, NY May 18, 2010
I enrolled in the Leisure Rewards debit Visa program for 25.00 a year. The program offers you 4 points for every 1 you spend using your card as credit only. I had about 13,000 unused points in my account. I had left my bank card at work on Saturday 5/8/2010 weekend and was nervous someone could use it, so I called chase and asked if they could just put a hold on the account until 5/10/2010 that Monday. They informed me they would be able to inactivate the account for up to 48hrs after that the account would close and that is all they said.
I called first thing Monday to reactivate the card. I was than notified that my points would be affected; I was transferred over to the Leisure Rewards Dept which was not even open yet for me to speak to anyone. I called later that day and was hold for over 20 minutes I had to hang up. I finally get in touch with the Leisure rewards Dept for them to tell me that since my account was deactivated I lost my points! I am a loyal customer I have 3 credit cards with them along with my checking and savings! And I paid 25.00 for the program! I lost out on all of my unused points that I earned! I used my card as credit for all my purchases some stores charge tax just for using card as credit as apposed to cash or debit!
D of Buffalo, MN May 18, 2010
Having had a Amocco gas credit card since 1977 with good payment history and use i was appalled at the treatment and mismanagement of the chase/ bp, which forced me to deal with chase, I was changed with out approval they sent stuff to the wrong address and unwilling to work out helpful plan, for a very minimual balance something under 20.00 at the end...rediculus. Several attempts to correct situation to just have them discontinue my card and were unwilling to re instate my over 30 year account. yes 30 years absolutely horrible treatment
my husband his this fiascal show up on his credit report and he is not a card holder, never has been on my account. we have only been married 5 years. he has a multi million dollar business that should not be haunted by this menial incident (on his credit report) that the bp/chase people did not want to correct ethically and responsibly which has snow balled into a minemuim of 500,000.00 of financial difficulties
Daniel of Los Angeles, CA May 18, 2010
I was using a Chase credit card over 17years. I satisfied their services, so I had 4 credit cards. I used them well, so 2 of 4 cards accumulated 6,743 points(it's cash refund 67.43 value: 1 point is a 1 purchase). Recently they checked my credit report, suddenly closed my 4 credit cards. They sent me a letter that there are 3 reasons. Now and then I didn't have any credit card balance. O.K. they don't want me a customer, I don't want to be one, either.
But they refuse my reward. They insist their reward, that's why I used their reward cards. Please make them pay me a reward money. I didn't close my accounts, they close my ones. Whatever their reasons. They pay me a reward. I'll never be their customer. Reward details are attached 2 statements. 3406 has 3,478 points and 4853 has 3,265 points. Their acct close reasons are *Current loan amount on all open accounts *Number of bankcard accts *Too many requests for/reviews of credit
Dan of Montevallo, AL May 17, 2010
Last month I received a call from a collection agency informing me that I had an outstanding balance on Chase Visa Card. I had not received a balance statement from them either by mail or electronically for over a year. When I called to inquire, I was dealing with someone in India, the only office you can use to complain. They could not tell me what the the charges were for and even though I have asked them, I still have not received a statement. They informed me they could only send by fax or mail, not electronically, even though they claim I have a paperless bill account. All attempts to contact Chase in this country have been fruitless.
mary of troy, NY May 17, 2010
i paid the balance in full on time my interest rate is 29% this month get abill for 3.78 for interest due interest on nothing is nothing and the want more trying to tell me something about the billing cycle bull ishouldnt be paying 29% interest either so they are waiving the charge which tells me the charges were bogus and now i wander how long ive been getting ripped for if 100,000 people pay 3.78 in bogus interest charges the bank makes 300,000 doesnt seem fair to me also they told me if i had acomplaint i had to put it in writing wouldnt give me a complaint #
Tosha of covington, GA May 17, 2010
I was told by Consumer Affairs that my account was being closed because I owed WAMU money. I opened an account with Chase with the only money I had left in the world from an iNsurance policy from my deceased mother. 1100..I only wanted to cash the check, but was talked into opening an account. I was put on the phone with Yvette A by a banking specialist so she could explain my money being taking for a debt. I explained to ms arreola that i was homeless and this was all the only i had in the world. SHE LAUGHED AT ME...literally laughed on the phone in my face. I owed WAMU money.
It was okay when they did pay my escrowed homeowners with statefarm and my policy was cancelled. THen WAMU placed a force policy on my mortgage which then increased by 276 monthly...but I owe them money. Ihave never felt so low and disrepected in my entire life. Being homeless and living in my car is disgrace enough without being laughed at and made fun of.
Read more:
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Credit Card Theft
Good Luck, You are Screwed
As we are all aware, credit card theft is rampant and being carried out in larger volumes everyday. Many third world countries have teams of hackers doing nothing but illegally accessing data banks, looking for credit card and other information with which to access your credit.
They do this because it pays, and because they have nothing to fear from being caught or prosecuted. They collect so many card numbers that they can sold for just a few dollars each on the so-called black market. If you have 2 or 3 cards the odds are great that at least one of them will be compromised this year.
Your credit card company probably 'protects' you. When (not if) a fraudulent transaction occurs you can call them and get the charges erased, eventually. The merchant(s) who took the stolen numbers will go on as usual, taking more stolen numbers, and nothing will change but your life.
I have run businesses in the past and it was necessary to accept credit cards. I was able to collect credit information on the internet, in person, or over the phone. I once ran a charge from an internet customer which turned out to be fraudulent. When I became suspicious and back tracked to the issuing bank to report the theft they put measures in place to revoke MY ability to accept credit cards.
Based on my recent experience I doubt any merchant accepting a fraudulent card will be notified, much less penalized. The brain dead 'customer support' I contacted had no idea how to deal with fraudulent charges and completely confused the issue again and again. The gangster-in-training who used my stolen numbers purchased some gaming software from Zynga (whose management has admitted fraud in the past) and bought a VoIP calling card from IDT SPAWAR who specializes in Internet Cafes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans.
When hackers and end users are caught with the goods they always have many pages of double spaced credit card numbers and associated info. They never ever have just one or a few numbers.
What this means is that your numbers could have been hacked months ago and are now in the system to be processed by the ultimate purchaser. My advice is to assume you will be abused, find out what to do about it and do it quickly. Check your credit card and checking accounts on line daily. Stay informed about your financial dealings which are in the hands of so many other entities who don't particularly care about you as a person.
It's the latest sign that computer hackers continue to target hotel networks to obtain sensitive guest data, which they can then use to purchase stolen goods. Earlier this month, Hotel Check-In reported that hotels had become hackers' No. 1 target last year, hitting hotels even more than banks and other financial service company sites.
Hackers broke into computer systems at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts recently, stealing customer's credit card information, according to an IDG New Service article on CIO.com. Wyndham operates chains including Days Inn, Ramada, Super 8 and Howard Johnson.
Russian hackers recently (December '09) got into CITI Bank's data and stole tens of millions before being discovered. The ripples from that wave are still being felt around the globe.
Luckily (or not)I caught the abuse to my card before it amounted to very much, and reported it. I found it is a waste of time to report to the merchants because they have so many abuses that they have given up and given in. Just call (don't email) your credit card company, wade through all the crap to get to a human, and get assurances that only charges you have authorized are credited and that your card is closed. They will email you an explanation of what they are doing for you. You will receive a new card in a week or so.
In my case I made my own luck by checking my accounts at least daily. I have since set up alerts on all card accounts. You should too. Remember, the card companies don't really accept any loses, they simply pass it along to you in the form of high interest and fees.
As we are all aware, credit card theft is rampant and being carried out in larger volumes everyday. Many third world countries have teams of hackers doing nothing but illegally accessing data banks, looking for credit card and other information with which to access your credit.
They do this because it pays, and because they have nothing to fear from being caught or prosecuted. They collect so many card numbers that they can sold for just a few dollars each on the so-called black market. If you have 2 or 3 cards the odds are great that at least one of them will be compromised this year.
Your credit card company probably 'protects' you. When (not if) a fraudulent transaction occurs you can call them and get the charges erased, eventually. The merchant(s) who took the stolen numbers will go on as usual, taking more stolen numbers, and nothing will change but your life.
I have run businesses in the past and it was necessary to accept credit cards. I was able to collect credit information on the internet, in person, or over the phone. I once ran a charge from an internet customer which turned out to be fraudulent. When I became suspicious and back tracked to the issuing bank to report the theft they put measures in place to revoke MY ability to accept credit cards.
Based on my recent experience I doubt any merchant accepting a fraudulent card will be notified, much less penalized. The brain dead 'customer support' I contacted had no idea how to deal with fraudulent charges and completely confused the issue again and again. The gangster-in-training who used my stolen numbers purchased some gaming software from Zynga (whose management has admitted fraud in the past) and bought a VoIP calling card from IDT SPAWAR who specializes in Internet Cafes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans.
When hackers and end users are caught with the goods they always have many pages of double spaced credit card numbers and associated info. They never ever have just one or a few numbers.
What this means is that your numbers could have been hacked months ago and are now in the system to be processed by the ultimate purchaser. My advice is to assume you will be abused, find out what to do about it and do it quickly. Check your credit card and checking accounts on line daily. Stay informed about your financial dealings which are in the hands of so many other entities who don't particularly care about you as a person.
It's the latest sign that computer hackers continue to target hotel networks to obtain sensitive guest data, which they can then use to purchase stolen goods. Earlier this month, Hotel Check-In reported that hotels had become hackers' No. 1 target last year, hitting hotels even more than banks and other financial service company sites.
Hackers broke into computer systems at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts recently, stealing customer's credit card information, according to an IDG New Service article on CIO.com. Wyndham operates chains including Days Inn, Ramada, Super 8 and Howard Johnson.
Russian hackers recently (December '09) got into CITI Bank's data and stole tens of millions before being discovered. The ripples from that wave are still being felt around the globe.
Luckily (or not)I caught the abuse to my card before it amounted to very much, and reported it. I found it is a waste of time to report to the merchants because they have so many abuses that they have given up and given in. Just call (don't email) your credit card company, wade through all the crap to get to a human, and get assurances that only charges you have authorized are credited and that your card is closed. They will email you an explanation of what they are doing for you. You will receive a new card in a week or so.
In my case I made my own luck by checking my accounts at least daily. I have since set up alerts on all card accounts. You should too. Remember, the card companies don't really accept any loses, they simply pass it along to you in the form of high interest and fees.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Born In The USA?
BORN IN THE USA?
Investigators: Obama uses Connecticut Soc. Sec. Number
3 experts insist White House answer new questions about documentation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 11, 2010
9:57 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
NEW YORK – Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
In addition, the records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, yet Obama's earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Oahu, Hawaii.
WND has copies of affidavits filed separately in a presidential eligibility lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by Ohio licensed private investigator Susan Daniels and Colorado private investigator John N. Sampson.
The investigators believe Obama needs to explain why he is using a Social Security number reserved for Connecticut applicants that was issued at a date later than he is known to have held employment.
See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery!
The Social Security website confirms the first three numbers in his ID are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049.
"Since 1973, Social Security numbers have been issued by our central office," the Social Security website explains. "The first three (3) digits of a person's social security number are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address shown on the application for a social security number."
The question is being raised amid speculation about the president's history fueled by an extraordinary lack of public documentation. Along with his original birth certificate, Obama also has not released educational records, scholarly articles, passport documents, medical records, papers from his service in the Illinois state Senate, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and adoption papers.
Robert Siciliano, president and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com and a nationally recognized expert on identity theft, agrees the Social Security number should be questioned.
"I know Social Security numbers have been issued to people in states where they don't live, but there's usually a good reason the person applied for a Social Security number in a different state," Siciliano told WND.
WND asked Siciliano whether he thought the question was one the White House should answer.
"Yes," he replied. "In the case of President Obama, I really don't know what the good reason would be that he has a Social Security number issued in Connecticut when we know he was a resident of Hawaii."
Siciliano is a frequent expert guest on identify theft on cable television networks, including CNN, CNBC and the Fox News Channel.
Daniels and Sampson each used a different database showing Obama is using a Social Security number beginning with 042.
WND has further confirmed that the Social Security number in question links to Obama in the online records maintained by the Selective Service System. Inserting the Social Security number, his birth date and his last name produces a valid Selective Service number.
To verify the number was issued by the Social Security Administration for applicants in Connecticut, Daniels used a Social Security number verification database. She found that the numbers immediately before and immediately after Obama's were issued to Connecticut applicants between the years 1977 and 1979.
"There is obviously a case of fraud going on here," Daniels maintained. "In 15 years of having a private investigator's license in Ohio, I've never seen the Social Security Administration make a mistake of issuing a Connecticut Social Security number to a person who lived in Hawaii. There is no family connection that would appear to explain the anomaly."
Does the Social Security Administration ever re-issue Social Security numbers?
"Never," Daniels said. "It's against the law for a person to have a re-issued or second Social Security number issued."
Daniels said she is "staking my reputation on a conclusion that Obama's use of this Social Security number is fraudulent."
There is no indication in the limited background documentation released by the Obama 2008 presidential campaign or by the White House to establish that Obama ever lived in Connecticut.
Nor is there any suggestion in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," that he ever had a Connecticut address.
Also, nothing can be found in the public record that indicates Obama visited Connecticut during his high-school years.
Sampson's affidavit specifies that as a result of his formal training as an immigration officer and his 27-year career in professional law enforcement, "it is my knowledge and belief that Social Security numbers can only be applied for in the state in which the applicant habitually resides and has their official residence."
Daniels told WND she believes Obama had a different Social Security number when he worked as a teenager in Hawaii prior to 1977.
"I doubt this is President Obama's originally issued Social Security number," she told WND. "Obama has a work history in Hawaii before he left the islands to attend college at Occidental College in California, so he must have originally been issued a Social Security number in Hawaii."
The published record available about Obama indicates his first job as a teenager in Hawaii was at a Baskin-Robbins in the Makiki neighborhood on Oahu. USA Today reported the ice-cream shop still was in operation one year after Obama's inauguration.
Politifact.com, a website typically supportive of Obama, claims he worked at the Baskin-Robbins in 1975 or 1976, prior to the issuance of the number in question.
"It is a crime to use more than one Social Security number, and Barack Obama had to have a previous Social Security number to have worked at Baskin-Robbins," she insisted. "Under current law, a person is not permitted to use more than one Social Security number in a lifetime."
Another anomaly in the law enforcement databases searched by Daniels and Sampson is that the date 1890 shows up in the field indicating the birth of the number holder, along with Obama's birth date of 08/04/1961. A third date listed is 04/08/1961, which appears to be a transposition of Obama's birth date in an international format, with the day before the month.
Daniels disclosed to WND the name of the database she searched and produced a computer screen copy of the page that listed 1890 as a date associated with the 042 Social Security number.
Daniels said she can't be sure if the 1890 figure has any significance. But she said it appears the number Obama is using was previously issued by the Social Security Administration.
After an extensive check of the proprietary databases she uses as a licensed private investigator, Daniels determined that the first occurrence of Obama's association with the number was in 1986 in Chicago.
Daniels assumes, but cannot prove, that Obama took on a previously issued Social Security number that had gone dormant due to the death of the original holder.
Daniels has been a licensed private investigator in Ohio since 1995. Sampson formed his private investigations firm, CSI Consulting and Investigations, in 2008. He previously worked as a deportations law enforcement officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The Daniels and Sampson affidavits were originally recorded by attorney Orly Taitz in an eligibility case against Obama last year.
Investigators: Obama uses Connecticut Soc. Sec. Number
3 experts insist White House answer new questions about documentation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 11, 2010
9:57 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
NEW YORK – Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
In addition, the records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, yet Obama's earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Oahu, Hawaii.
WND has copies of affidavits filed separately in a presidential eligibility lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by Ohio licensed private investigator Susan Daniels and Colorado private investigator John N. Sampson.
The investigators believe Obama needs to explain why he is using a Social Security number reserved for Connecticut applicants that was issued at a date later than he is known to have held employment.
See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery!
The Social Security website confirms the first three numbers in his ID are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049.
"Since 1973, Social Security numbers have been issued by our central office," the Social Security website explains. "The first three (3) digits of a person's social security number are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address shown on the application for a social security number."
The question is being raised amid speculation about the president's history fueled by an extraordinary lack of public documentation. Along with his original birth certificate, Obama also has not released educational records, scholarly articles, passport documents, medical records, papers from his service in the Illinois state Senate, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and adoption papers.
Robert Siciliano, president and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com and a nationally recognized expert on identity theft, agrees the Social Security number should be questioned.
"I know Social Security numbers have been issued to people in states where they don't live, but there's usually a good reason the person applied for a Social Security number in a different state," Siciliano told WND.
WND asked Siciliano whether he thought the question was one the White House should answer.
"Yes," he replied. "In the case of President Obama, I really don't know what the good reason would be that he has a Social Security number issued in Connecticut when we know he was a resident of Hawaii."
Siciliano is a frequent expert guest on identify theft on cable television networks, including CNN, CNBC and the Fox News Channel.
Daniels and Sampson each used a different database showing Obama is using a Social Security number beginning with 042.
WND has further confirmed that the Social Security number in question links to Obama in the online records maintained by the Selective Service System. Inserting the Social Security number, his birth date and his last name produces a valid Selective Service number.
To verify the number was issued by the Social Security Administration for applicants in Connecticut, Daniels used a Social Security number verification database. She found that the numbers immediately before and immediately after Obama's were issued to Connecticut applicants between the years 1977 and 1979.
"There is obviously a case of fraud going on here," Daniels maintained. "In 15 years of having a private investigator's license in Ohio, I've never seen the Social Security Administration make a mistake of issuing a Connecticut Social Security number to a person who lived in Hawaii. There is no family connection that would appear to explain the anomaly."
Does the Social Security Administration ever re-issue Social Security numbers?
"Never," Daniels said. "It's against the law for a person to have a re-issued or second Social Security number issued."
Daniels said she is "staking my reputation on a conclusion that Obama's use of this Social Security number is fraudulent."
There is no indication in the limited background documentation released by the Obama 2008 presidential campaign or by the White House to establish that Obama ever lived in Connecticut.
Nor is there any suggestion in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," that he ever had a Connecticut address.
Also, nothing can be found in the public record that indicates Obama visited Connecticut during his high-school years.
Sampson's affidavit specifies that as a result of his formal training as an immigration officer and his 27-year career in professional law enforcement, "it is my knowledge and belief that Social Security numbers can only be applied for in the state in which the applicant habitually resides and has their official residence."
Daniels told WND she believes Obama had a different Social Security number when he worked as a teenager in Hawaii prior to 1977.
"I doubt this is President Obama's originally issued Social Security number," she told WND. "Obama has a work history in Hawaii before he left the islands to attend college at Occidental College in California, so he must have originally been issued a Social Security number in Hawaii."
The published record available about Obama indicates his first job as a teenager in Hawaii was at a Baskin-Robbins in the Makiki neighborhood on Oahu. USA Today reported the ice-cream shop still was in operation one year after Obama's inauguration.
Politifact.com, a website typically supportive of Obama, claims he worked at the Baskin-Robbins in 1975 or 1976, prior to the issuance of the number in question.
"It is a crime to use more than one Social Security number, and Barack Obama had to have a previous Social Security number to have worked at Baskin-Robbins," she insisted. "Under current law, a person is not permitted to use more than one Social Security number in a lifetime."
Another anomaly in the law enforcement databases searched by Daniels and Sampson is that the date 1890 shows up in the field indicating the birth of the number holder, along with Obama's birth date of 08/04/1961. A third date listed is 04/08/1961, which appears to be a transposition of Obama's birth date in an international format, with the day before the month.
Daniels disclosed to WND the name of the database she searched and produced a computer screen copy of the page that listed 1890 as a date associated with the 042 Social Security number.
Daniels said she can't be sure if the 1890 figure has any significance. But she said it appears the number Obama is using was previously issued by the Social Security Administration.
After an extensive check of the proprietary databases she uses as a licensed private investigator, Daniels determined that the first occurrence of Obama's association with the number was in 1986 in Chicago.
Daniels assumes, but cannot prove, that Obama took on a previously issued Social Security number that had gone dormant due to the death of the original holder.
Daniels has been a licensed private investigator in Ohio since 1995. Sampson formed his private investigations firm, CSI Consulting and Investigations, in 2008. He previously worked as a deportations law enforcement officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The Daniels and Sampson affidavits were originally recorded by attorney Orly Taitz in an eligibility case against Obama last year.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Pirates Released by Russian Navy Apparently Perished at Sea
Pirates released after assault operation near Gulf of Aden apparently perished
12:16 11/05/2010
The Somali pirates who were captured in an assault operation after hijacking a Russian tanker near the Gulf of Aden and then released by Russian military officials have not reached the coast and have apparently perished, a top-ranking source in Russia's Defense Ministry told journalists on Tuesday.
Russia's Moscow University tanker was hijacked last week near the Gulf of Aden. Ten pirates were captured and one was killed in the assault operation.
The captured pirates were initially to be sent to Moscow for prosecution, but Russian military officials then made the decision to release them, citing the absence of a legal base to carry out prosecution procedures against pirates.
The pirate's boat reportedly disappeared from radars an hour after they had been released by the Russian military.
MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti)
12:16 11/05/2010
The Somali pirates who were captured in an assault operation after hijacking a Russian tanker near the Gulf of Aden and then released by Russian military officials have not reached the coast and have apparently perished, a top-ranking source in Russia's Defense Ministry told journalists on Tuesday.
Russia's Moscow University tanker was hijacked last week near the Gulf of Aden. Ten pirates were captured and one was killed in the assault operation.
The captured pirates were initially to be sent to Moscow for prosecution, but Russian military officials then made the decision to release them, citing the absence of a legal base to carry out prosecution procedures against pirates.
The pirate's boat reportedly disappeared from radars an hour after they had been released by the Russian military.
MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Jihadists' Deadly Path to Citizenship
The Jihadists' Deadly Path to Citizenship
By Michelle Malkin
America's homeland security amnesia never ceases to amaze. In the aftermath of the botched Times Square terror attack over the weekend, Pakistani-born bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad's U.S. citizenship status caused a bit of shock and awe. The Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg's response was typical: "I am struck by the fact that he is a naturalized American citizen, not a recent or temporary visitor." Well, wake up and smell the deadly deception.
Shahzad's path to American citizenship — he reportedly married an American woman, Huma Mian, in 2008 after spending a decade in the country on foreign student and employment visas — is a tried-and-true terror formula. Jihadists have been gaming the sham marriage racket with impunity for years. And immigration benefit fraud has provided invaluable cover and aid for U.S.-based Islamic plotters, including many other operatives planning attacks on New York City. As I've reported previously:
— El Sayyid A. Nosair wed Karen Ann Mills Sweeney to avoid deportation for overstaying his visa. He acquired U.S. citizenship, allowing him to remain in the country, and was later convicted for conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that claimed six lives.
— Ali Mohamed became an American citizen after marrying a woman he met on a plane trip from Egypt to New York. Recently divorced, Linda Lee Sanchez wed Mohamed in Reno, Nev., after a six-week "courtship." Mohamed became a top aide to Osama bin Laden and was later convicted for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 others.
— Embassy bombing plotter Khalid Abu al Dahab obtained citizenship after marrying three different American women.
— Embassy bombing plotter Wadih el Hage, Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, married April Ray in 1985 and became a naturalized citizen in 1989. Ray knew of her husband's employment with bin Laden, but like many of these women in bogus marriages, she pleaded ignorance about the nature of her husband's work. El Hage, she says, was a sweet man, and bin Laden "was a great boss."
— Lebanon-born Chawki Youssef Hammoud, convicted in a Hezbollah cigarette-smuggling operation based out of Charlotte, N.C., married American citizen Jessica Fortune for a green card to remain in the country.
— Hammoud's brother, Mohammed Hammoud, married three different American women. After arriving in the United States on a counterfeit visa, being ordered deported and filing an appeal, he wed Sabina Edwards to gain a green card. Federal immigration officials refused to award him legal status after this first marriage was deemed bogus in 1994. Undaunted, he married Jessica Wedel in May 1997 and, while still wed to her, paid Angela Tsioumas (already married to someone else, too) to marry him in Detroit. The Tsioumas union netted Mohammed Hammoud temporary legal residence to operate the terror cash scam. He was later convicted on 16 counts that included providing material support to Hezbollah.
— A total of eight Middle Eastern men who plotted to bomb New York landmarks in 1993 — Fadil Abdelgani, Amir Abdelgani, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, Tarig Elhassan, Abdo Mohammed Haggag, Fares Khallafalla, Mohammed Saleh, and Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh — all obtained legal permanent residence by marrying American citizens.
A year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, homeland security officials cracked a massive illegal alien Middle Eastern marriage fraud ring in a sting dubbed "Operation Broken Vows." Authorities were stunned by the scope of the operations, which stretched from Boston to South Carolina to California. But marriage fraud remains a treacherous path of least resistance. The waiting period for U.S. citizenship is cut by more than half for marriage visa beneficiaries. Sham marriage monitoring by backlogged homeland security investigators is practically nonexistent.
As former federal immigration official Michael Cutler warned years ago: "Immigration benefit fraud is certainly one of the major 'dots' that was not connected prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and remains a 'dot' that is not really being addressed the way it needs to be in order to secure our nation against criminals and terrorists who understand how important it is for them to 'game' the system as a part of the embedding process."
Jihadists have knowingly and deliberately exploited our lax immigration and entrance policies to secure the rights and benefits of American citizenship while they plot mass murder — and we haven't done a thing to stop them.
By Michelle Malkin
America's homeland security amnesia never ceases to amaze. In the aftermath of the botched Times Square terror attack over the weekend, Pakistani-born bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad's U.S. citizenship status caused a bit of shock and awe. The Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg's response was typical: "I am struck by the fact that he is a naturalized American citizen, not a recent or temporary visitor." Well, wake up and smell the deadly deception.
Shahzad's path to American citizenship — he reportedly married an American woman, Huma Mian, in 2008 after spending a decade in the country on foreign student and employment visas — is a tried-and-true terror formula. Jihadists have been gaming the sham marriage racket with impunity for years. And immigration benefit fraud has provided invaluable cover and aid for U.S.-based Islamic plotters, including many other operatives planning attacks on New York City. As I've reported previously:
— El Sayyid A. Nosair wed Karen Ann Mills Sweeney to avoid deportation for overstaying his visa. He acquired U.S. citizenship, allowing him to remain in the country, and was later convicted for conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that claimed six lives.
— Ali Mohamed became an American citizen after marrying a woman he met on a plane trip from Egypt to New York. Recently divorced, Linda Lee Sanchez wed Mohamed in Reno, Nev., after a six-week "courtship." Mohamed became a top aide to Osama bin Laden and was later convicted for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 others.
— Embassy bombing plotter Khalid Abu al Dahab obtained citizenship after marrying three different American women.
— Embassy bombing plotter Wadih el Hage, Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, married April Ray in 1985 and became a naturalized citizen in 1989. Ray knew of her husband's employment with bin Laden, but like many of these women in bogus marriages, she pleaded ignorance about the nature of her husband's work. El Hage, she says, was a sweet man, and bin Laden "was a great boss."
— Lebanon-born Chawki Youssef Hammoud, convicted in a Hezbollah cigarette-smuggling operation based out of Charlotte, N.C., married American citizen Jessica Fortune for a green card to remain in the country.
— Hammoud's brother, Mohammed Hammoud, married three different American women. After arriving in the United States on a counterfeit visa, being ordered deported and filing an appeal, he wed Sabina Edwards to gain a green card. Federal immigration officials refused to award him legal status after this first marriage was deemed bogus in 1994. Undaunted, he married Jessica Wedel in May 1997 and, while still wed to her, paid Angela Tsioumas (already married to someone else, too) to marry him in Detroit. The Tsioumas union netted Mohammed Hammoud temporary legal residence to operate the terror cash scam. He was later convicted on 16 counts that included providing material support to Hezbollah.
— A total of eight Middle Eastern men who plotted to bomb New York landmarks in 1993 — Fadil Abdelgani, Amir Abdelgani, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, Tarig Elhassan, Abdo Mohammed Haggag, Fares Khallafalla, Mohammed Saleh, and Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh — all obtained legal permanent residence by marrying American citizens.
A year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, homeland security officials cracked a massive illegal alien Middle Eastern marriage fraud ring in a sting dubbed "Operation Broken Vows." Authorities were stunned by the scope of the operations, which stretched from Boston to South Carolina to California. But marriage fraud remains a treacherous path of least resistance. The waiting period for U.S. citizenship is cut by more than half for marriage visa beneficiaries. Sham marriage monitoring by backlogged homeland security investigators is practically nonexistent.
As former federal immigration official Michael Cutler warned years ago: "Immigration benefit fraud is certainly one of the major 'dots' that was not connected prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and remains a 'dot' that is not really being addressed the way it needs to be in order to secure our nation against criminals and terrorists who understand how important it is for them to 'game' the system as a part of the embedding process."
Jihadists have knowingly and deliberately exploited our lax immigration and entrance policies to secure the rights and benefits of American citizenship while they plot mass murder — and we haven't done a thing to stop them.
Monday, May 10, 2010
A MOSQUE at Ground Zero ?
May 10, 2010
Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11
Gadi Adelman
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp
Well, it’s official, we have all lost our minds.
I read about this last December, plans for a mosque at Ground Zero, but like a fool, I assumed that New Yorkers would never let this come to pass. A mosque just 600 feet from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. I thought to myself; no way will New York or anyone with a heart or soul, not to mention just plain common sense, ever allow a mosque to be built anywhere near Ground Zero. But, as I said, I am a fool.
The project of a community center /mosque is being proposed by two organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and their sister organization, the Cordoba Initiative. This past Wednesday night they made their presentation to the Community Board of lower Manhattan (CB1). Twelve people sit on the board and would you like to guess what the final vote was? Get ready to grab a barf bag … the 12 members voted unanimously to support the project. Yes, it’s not a typo, it was unanimous, all were in favor and, to give you an idea of how excited the board members were, they applauded during the presentation.
In an article in the New York Daily News on Thursday, retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches said,
"I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque. If you ask me, it's a religion of hate." Deputy Chief Riches lost his son Jim, a firefighter, on 9/11.
Also quoted in the article was Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, she called the project,
"a slap in the face. I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, "How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."
The mosque would be located in a former Burlington Coat Factory outlet which is just 2 blocks or 600 feet from where the World Trade Towers once stood. I find it ironic that the building has been mostly abandoned since 9/11 because the landing gear of one of the hijacked airplanes crashed through its roof.
The leader and co-founder of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, paid $4.85 million dollars for the building in December last year.
In a Fox NY channel 5 interview on Thursday, a 9/11 firefighter Tim Brown described the mosque project as,
"a Trojan horse being rolled into our most sacred ground". He asked the mosque's imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, where did Rauf get the reported $4.85 million in cash to purchase the building?
Needless to say, that question was never answered in full; Rauf would say only that the cash came from “members of the community.”
Tim Brown is a former NY firefighter and one of the few 9/11 survivors to survive the collapse of both WTC towers. He was also a first responder to the 1993 WTC bombing, also executed by a group of Islamic terrorists. He is the founder of the website thebravest.com.
I spoke with Matt Dunning, the Associate Editor of the Tribeca Trib newspaper on the telephone on Sunday. The Tribeca Trib is a monthly newspaper that covers lower Manhattan. Unlike most publications today, they actually report the news. Mr. Dunning explained to me that they “do not even do editorials for that reason”, they report on facts. He was at the CB1 board meeting Wednesday night. We spoke about his article on the meeting and I must say I was shocked when Dunning told me that “not one person from the community came to the meeting was in opposition. If someone had been, we would have reported it.”
This was a public board meeting, and no one who lives or works in this area even showed up to voice his or her opinion that they opposed the mosque? Have we actually arrived at the point in this country where forgiveness or ignorance overrides sense and responsibility?
Back on December 16th, 2009, in an article written shortly after the purchase of the building, Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote the following in Hudson NY,
“As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent, and as a New York Sun columnist who covered Islamic fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoids asking, so many pertinent questions.
The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature-- Islamist propaganda in fact—from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schools growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu -- radical messages, it often turns out.
As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so. It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations. The government just discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in New York City, which had operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, and has been owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.
The context here is that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the attacks -- on the very site where this new mosque shall rise -- came from Saudi Arabia.”
He ended his article with “One would hope for a follow-up story or stories, and that New York City and its citizens at least ask harder questions, rather than submit to being misled in the interest of political correctness.”
The estimated cost for the 13 story building is $100 million dollars. According to page 8 of the ASMA website financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009 they have “temporarily restricted net assets” as follows:
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) $ 53,664
MDG3 Fund (Millennium Development Goals) $481,942
Hunt Alternatives Fund $15,000
Carnegie Corporation of N.Y. $ 144,752
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund $50,000
Qatar government fund $576,312
Interestingly, I had no trouble locating all of the groups as linked above, except for the Qatar government fund, which donated over half a million dollars to ASMA in 2009.
The fact that the UN has a hand in this really comes as no surprise given that just last week they embraced the Islamic Republic of Iran by allowing them to become a member of The Commission on the Status of Women, as I wrote about in my article “Even if it were a joke, it wouldn’t be funny”.
Also, according to the same financial statement, on page 10 of the report they list their “Expenditure report for the period October 13, 2008 to June 30, 2009” leaving ASMA with a balance of $988,586.00 when converted from Euros to Dollars using the conversion noted on the same page.
So, assuming this “independent” audit is correct they ended their fiscal year on 6-30-09 with a balance of almost 1 million dollars. I wonder then, where is the money for a 100 million dollar mosque coming from?
As Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote in his article “It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations.”
Does anyone have the sense to connect the dots and follow the money trail? Is it not enough that the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 are from the same country that is funding mosques all over our country, that we have to allow them to fund the building of a mosque in the very location where they committed the most heinous act in American history?
Using this analogy, had the bomb last week in Times Square actually exploded, we would be planning a mosque in Times Square right now. Have we lost our minds so much that we have moved to erecting monuments to perpetrators and not victims?
Currently, in the U.S. there are over 1200 mosques, with at least one in each state. I don’t see the need to build a new mosque at the same location where nearly 3000 people were murdered by terrorists who followed an Islamic ideology that will be preached inside this new one.
Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11
Gadi Adelman
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp
Well, it’s official, we have all lost our minds.
I read about this last December, plans for a mosque at Ground Zero, but like a fool, I assumed that New Yorkers would never let this come to pass. A mosque just 600 feet from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. I thought to myself; no way will New York or anyone with a heart or soul, not to mention just plain common sense, ever allow a mosque to be built anywhere near Ground Zero. But, as I said, I am a fool.
The project of a community center /mosque is being proposed by two organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and their sister organization, the Cordoba Initiative. This past Wednesday night they made their presentation to the Community Board of lower Manhattan (CB1). Twelve people sit on the board and would you like to guess what the final vote was? Get ready to grab a barf bag … the 12 members voted unanimously to support the project. Yes, it’s not a typo, it was unanimous, all were in favor and, to give you an idea of how excited the board members were, they applauded during the presentation.
In an article in the New York Daily News on Thursday, retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches said,
"I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque. If you ask me, it's a religion of hate." Deputy Chief Riches lost his son Jim, a firefighter, on 9/11.
Also quoted in the article was Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, she called the project,
"a slap in the face. I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, "How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."
The mosque would be located in a former Burlington Coat Factory outlet which is just 2 blocks or 600 feet from where the World Trade Towers once stood. I find it ironic that the building has been mostly abandoned since 9/11 because the landing gear of one of the hijacked airplanes crashed through its roof.
The leader and co-founder of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, paid $4.85 million dollars for the building in December last year.
In a Fox NY channel 5 interview on Thursday, a 9/11 firefighter Tim Brown described the mosque project as,
"a Trojan horse being rolled into our most sacred ground". He asked the mosque's imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, where did Rauf get the reported $4.85 million in cash to purchase the building?
Needless to say, that question was never answered in full; Rauf would say only that the cash came from “members of the community.”
Tim Brown is a former NY firefighter and one of the few 9/11 survivors to survive the collapse of both WTC towers. He was also a first responder to the 1993 WTC bombing, also executed by a group of Islamic terrorists. He is the founder of the website thebravest.com.
I spoke with Matt Dunning, the Associate Editor of the Tribeca Trib newspaper on the telephone on Sunday. The Tribeca Trib is a monthly newspaper that covers lower Manhattan. Unlike most publications today, they actually report the news. Mr. Dunning explained to me that they “do not even do editorials for that reason”, they report on facts. He was at the CB1 board meeting Wednesday night. We spoke about his article on the meeting and I must say I was shocked when Dunning told me that “not one person from the community came to the meeting was in opposition. If someone had been, we would have reported it.”
This was a public board meeting, and no one who lives or works in this area even showed up to voice his or her opinion that they opposed the mosque? Have we actually arrived at the point in this country where forgiveness or ignorance overrides sense and responsibility?
Back on December 16th, 2009, in an article written shortly after the purchase of the building, Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote the following in Hudson NY,
“As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent, and as a New York Sun columnist who covered Islamic fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoids asking, so many pertinent questions.
The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature-- Islamist propaganda in fact—from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schools growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu -- radical messages, it often turns out.
As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so. It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations. The government just discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in New York City, which had operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, and has been owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.
The context here is that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the attacks -- on the very site where this new mosque shall rise -- came from Saudi Arabia.”
He ended his article with “One would hope for a follow-up story or stories, and that New York City and its citizens at least ask harder questions, rather than submit to being misled in the interest of political correctness.”
The estimated cost for the 13 story building is $100 million dollars. According to page 8 of the ASMA website financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009 they have “temporarily restricted net assets” as follows:
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) $ 53,664
MDG3 Fund (Millennium Development Goals) $481,942
Hunt Alternatives Fund $15,000
Carnegie Corporation of N.Y. $ 144,752
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund $50,000
Qatar government fund $576,312
Interestingly, I had no trouble locating all of the groups as linked above, except for the Qatar government fund, which donated over half a million dollars to ASMA in 2009.
The fact that the UN has a hand in this really comes as no surprise given that just last week they embraced the Islamic Republic of Iran by allowing them to become a member of The Commission on the Status of Women, as I wrote about in my article “Even if it were a joke, it wouldn’t be funny”.
Also, according to the same financial statement, on page 10 of the report they list their “Expenditure report for the period October 13, 2008 to June 30, 2009” leaving ASMA with a balance of $988,586.00 when converted from Euros to Dollars using the conversion noted on the same page.
So, assuming this “independent” audit is correct they ended their fiscal year on 6-30-09 with a balance of almost 1 million dollars. I wonder then, where is the money for a 100 million dollar mosque coming from?
As Youssef M. Ibrahim wrote in his article “It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamists activist nations.”
Does anyone have the sense to connect the dots and follow the money trail? Is it not enough that the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 are from the same country that is funding mosques all over our country, that we have to allow them to fund the building of a mosque in the very location where they committed the most heinous act in American history?
Using this analogy, had the bomb last week in Times Square actually exploded, we would be planning a mosque in Times Square right now. Have we lost our minds so much that we have moved to erecting monuments to perpetrators and not victims?
Currently, in the U.S. there are over 1200 mosques, with at least one in each state. I don’t see the need to build a new mosque at the same location where nearly 3000 people were murdered by terrorists who followed an Islamic ideology that will be preached inside this new one.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
The Gun Is Civilization
The Gun is Civilization
by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
By Maj. L. C audill USM C (Ret)
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
By Maj. L. C audill USM C (Ret)
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Credit Cheats
Are You Paying The Good Credit Penalty?
The credit cheats in the headline are not consumers of credit but the credit card companies themselves. Chase seems to be the worst, from what I have read, but all are guilty of the same cheesy acts.
I recently wound up with 3 Chase cards when Chase acquired other banks I did business with. I also wound up with 2 Chase checking accounts, neither of which started out as Chase accounts.
Last year Chase cancelled one of my cards, the one with nearly zero balance. They cited a report from Experian (another disreputable outfit) as the deciding factor saying I had a high debt to credit ratio and many new accounts, all lies.
Last week Chase deemed it necessary to reduce credit on one of the 2 remaining cards they held. They cited the same lies while pointing the finger at Experian once again. I began to wonder what is going on. Why would they penalize someone who pays more than the minimum way before it is due and has a 742 credit score.
I searched articles and blogs on the internet and found this was happening to many, perhaps thousands, of good credit people.
The only logical explanation has to be that they are freeing up available cash to lend to POOR credit borrowers in order to charge more interest, collect late fees, and enrich their bottom line.
Does that sound hauntingly familiar? Well, it sure as hell should. This is exactly what AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fanny and Freddy condoned over the last several years which caused the situation we are in now.
We are credit slaves and lenders know it. You are punished for poor performance while they are rewarded for it. You are also punished for good performance while they have no such obligation.
Are you mad as hell? Not gonna take it anymore? On your way to ending your indebtedness to these cheap, chiseling, crooks, drop a line or two on the complaint form at the Comptroller of the Currency's web site HERE
The credit cheats in the headline are not consumers of credit but the credit card companies themselves. Chase seems to be the worst, from what I have read, but all are guilty of the same cheesy acts.
I recently wound up with 3 Chase cards when Chase acquired other banks I did business with. I also wound up with 2 Chase checking accounts, neither of which started out as Chase accounts.
Last year Chase cancelled one of my cards, the one with nearly zero balance. They cited a report from Experian (another disreputable outfit) as the deciding factor saying I had a high debt to credit ratio and many new accounts, all lies.
Last week Chase deemed it necessary to reduce credit on one of the 2 remaining cards they held. They cited the same lies while pointing the finger at Experian once again. I began to wonder what is going on. Why would they penalize someone who pays more than the minimum way before it is due and has a 742 credit score.
I searched articles and blogs on the internet and found this was happening to many, perhaps thousands, of good credit people.
The only logical explanation has to be that they are freeing up available cash to lend to POOR credit borrowers in order to charge more interest, collect late fees, and enrich their bottom line.
Does that sound hauntingly familiar? Well, it sure as hell should. This is exactly what AIG, Goldman Sachs, Fanny and Freddy condoned over the last several years which caused the situation we are in now.
We are credit slaves and lenders know it. You are punished for poor performance while they are rewarded for it. You are also punished for good performance while they have no such obligation.
Are you mad as hell? Not gonna take it anymore? On your way to ending your indebtedness to these cheap, chiseling, crooks, drop a line or two on the complaint form at the Comptroller of the Currency's web site HERE
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