Dave Brat’s “Christian Economics” Course at Randolph Macon Funded by Wall Street Bank BB&T Worshipping the Ayn Rand Selfish Money (Greed) Goddess /Idol

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5798904/the-bank-funded-libertarian-curriculum-david-brat-taught-at-randolph

David Brat's work at Randolph-Macon College gives one more clue to who he is. 

Aside from chairing the economics department, he is director of the BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism program. In this program, underwritten by the bank BB&T's charitable foundation and inaugurated in 2008, colleges teach a curriculum that promotes free-market economics, and notably, the ideas of Ayn Rand.

The man behind the program, former BB&T chairman and CEO John Allison has described the curriculum as a way of helping save America from economic decline:

"Unless students (i.e., future leaders, teachers, professors, etc.) learn the principles that underlie a free society, the United States will continue to move toward statism and economic decline. The believers in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" must retake the universities, or America will ultimately become a second-tier country with a dark future." 

That is the context in which BB&T began its program "The Moral Foundations of Capitalism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB%26T

The BB&T Corporation (Branch Banking & Trust) is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with $184.7 billion in assets and market capitalization of $28.9 billion, as of March 31, 2014. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., the company operates 1,824 financial centers in 12 states…

Since 2009, BB&T has outsourced it's back-end operations to Proview Global Administration Inc., a small BPO company located in Manila, Philippines. With around 150 employees, Proview Global Administration Inc. provides premium billing and reconciliation; benefits enrollment; COBRA administration and other financial-related services to BB&T. The officers of Proview Global Administration Inc. are former BB&T employees.

47% View themselves as Victims of Vulture Capitalists – Lunch with Locusts and Vampires?

When capitalists like Mitt Romney and Bain Capital sweep into town and turn viable factories and local businesses into lunch for locusts on pension funds, benefits, employee incentives and are they left at the side of the road like a raped hooker unpaid by their rapist johns – Mitt Romney and Bain Capital -

Maybe, just  maybe their self-esteem goes down the drain when they are unemployed in a one factory town where they have lived all their lives, where they next lose their homes and watch their families disintegrate as a result of economic chaos after Bain leaves town.

Maybe when Mitt and Bain have shipped their jobs to China to the slave labor under the Communist whip, they feel like they have heen Victimized. Maybe they see themselves as victims.

Victims maybe temporarily for a while before they get over the feeling of being a whipped dog, a dog tied to the roofs of the cars of Vulture Capitalists, maybe the next round belongs to the American workers and not the pricks in $1,000 Armani business suits.

Or maybe Mitt is 100% right as victimizer and exploiter of the working poor in America, maybe the strange parasitic vampire kristianity practiced by the polygamist inbred Mormon cult leaves them worthy to be thrown out in the trash when the vampires cannot get another drop of blood out of their victims and Ann needs a new Cadillac as proof of her husband’s “love”.

Comcast to Outsource Jay Leno - to be replaced by Max Headroom ?

The Tonight Show with Max Headroom

Of course anybody can replace Jay Leno, at least that is what the greedy execs as Comcast probably plan on doing.  Outsourcing is standard operating procedure in current American business.

If you can't outsource a TV personality's job to India or China, you can replace him with a video game image talking head and save the estimated 25-30 million dollar salary wasted on just one person.


Layoffs at the Tonight Show are only the beginning.

http://www.eonline.com/news/339116/the-tonight-show-lays-off-employees-jay-leno-takes-a-pay-cut

As a part of a major budget-restructuring plan, at least 20 employees were laid off from the NBC late-night show Friday, an NBC rep confirmed to E! News, and the Tonight Show host reportedly offered to take a pay cut to save jobs, according to the LA Times. 

Jay? Is that you?

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Shards of 911 - Postscript - One Bankers Trust Plaza - 130 Liberty Street NYC

I saw a reminder on some blog last week about the upcoming eleventh anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

It took perhaps longer for me to forget some aspects of that day having worked across the street from the now defunct old World Trade Center for many years back in the eighties or thereabouts on a timeline.

The new World Trade Center is rising quite marvelously, taking its time to change the lower Manhattan skyline.

I call 130 Liberty Street by the title I knew it back when I worked there – One Bankers Trust Plaza.

The building was the back office of the main office of Bankers Trust Company on Wall Street which I think these days has a health spa in the gilded art deco main banking floor of that building and with I think condos now in old office space.  Things change especially in this virtual world.  Back offices in general in America these days are now in India and China courtesy of outsourcing. 

That bank eventually went under IMHO starting with the eighties, having put its old fashioned conservative banking sense, along with all its customer good will and corporate nest eggs into the new computer generated crap shoot game derivatives basket. Some German bank bought out the company in the nineties and what are left of old accounts on digital records are in that bank’s midtown offices and computer memory.

BT plaza had a nickname of the “BlackWidow” for some years.  She had been wounded in the World Trade center collapse and wore a dark fabric mesh covering for several years like a widow's veil.  But with insurances companies fighting and lawyers haggling, the building went to seed or more properly went to mold and the building was condemned, rather than clean her up and recycle its old function. 

No big profit to be had in retrofitting a 1970’s design building.  The bureaucrats made a handsome dime taking nine years and $300 million to tear it down and turn the building into an empty lot, waiting for some future billion dollar design office building or condos to stand one day in her old place.

This empty lot BTW is now being used as a staging area for tourists with tickets, to go across the street to visit the now opened 911 Memorial Fountains. 

Second Floor Lobby - BT Plaza

Skeletal outline of 1WTC (top) and 2WTC (bottom)

Tickets! All visitors to the Memorial must have their tickets out.

Postscript:

Without too much sentiment, looking at some of these photos of 911, I am reminded of a line by W.B. Yeats regarding that tragic day and use that poetic line in paraphrase – “A terrible beauty (was) born (on 911)”.

http://www.amazon.com/ghosts-911-reflections-September-ebook/dp/B005IDO9CO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344225131&sr=1-1

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Mitt Romney’s Campaign Song – Yankee Doodle – Outsourced Of Course, What Else

Yankee Doodle went to town

A riding on a pony

  

He stuck a feather in his cap

And called it macaroni

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Censorship at the London Olympics

Is this 2012 or 1936?

Rich man oligarch rules in place in London for one of their own – Willard Romney.

PAC pulls ad offline at Olympics’ request

An ad from the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA has been pulled off YouTube at the request of the International Olympic Committee on copyright violation grounds, and the group has voluntarily taken the ad offline and will not be running it on television. 

The ad used footage of Mitt Romney from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games’ opening ceremony to suggest that the former Massachusetts governor loves sending jobs and money to other countries. 

Priorities USA is not protesting the decision, because the United States Olympic Committee is asking that Games footage not be used in any political ads.

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Face of the 1% - Mitt "Gordon Gekko" Romney

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Bain Capital – Phony Crony Capital – Putting Lipstick on a Pig

What is coming to light in the political spotlight of Mitt Romney’s quest for the White House is the manner in which his company sought capital and made money, profits by sacking existing companies and their assets, pension funds, repackaged the company’s spreadsheet image, sold the companies for huge returns on junk bond capital and turned around and did the same thing on the next victim company acquisition of Bain Capital.

One of the causes of the stock market crash of October 1987 was a market floating on inflated junk bond capital raised by Michael Milken at Drexel Burham Lambert and similar imitators.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-06-24/business/32383267_1_junk-bonds-bain-capital-refinances-debt

The market bubble that burst in 1987 was a bubble that fueled the Savings and Loan bubble that burst shortly thereafter. This invented high risk money fueled speculative building in office buildings, shopping malls, golf courses and housing all over the west. Because of the junk bond model pretty much invented by Milken at Drexel Burnham and used in speculative investments funded in loans by banks, savings and loans, guaranteed by the federal government, the S & L debacle got dumped on the American taxpayer during the Bush 41 regime.  700 to 800 billion back then, now about a trillion and a half of the present national debt with over twenty years interest added on.

The only big fish punished back then was Charles Keating, heavily into the newly deregulated S & L industry, separated from regular commercial banking in that their base was savings used almost exclusively in financing housing real estate and not necessarily commercial building, office buildings, malls and apartment complexes that fed on easy junk bond funding once deregulation went into effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating

Bain used Drexel Burnham junk bond capital to fund its early vulture capitalism projects.

Michael Milken and Charles Keating were eventually tried and jailed for fraud among other things like conspiracy cooking the books and breaking existing laws.  They are now out of jail and back in business. Keating in real estate in Arizona and Milken is a philanthropist giving away some on the money he made from fraud and is now a key player in the next financial racket bubble to burst – EMOs – Education Management Organizations into education for profit, charter schools etc. feasting on the public dime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken

Romney did not break any laws that we know of at Bain.  Indeed, the government swallowed up the losses caused by the Savings and Loan Fraud.  If Bush 41’s admin had prosecuted more smaller fish than just Keating instead of sweeping it all under the rug, maybe the housing bubble burst in the 2008 financial meltdown under Bush 43 might not have been allowed to happen if deregulation of the American banking industry had learned any serious lessons from the Bush 41 Savings and Loan Junk Bond meltdown.

Sadly, so much of what happened in 2008 with the banks was not illegal as stated by Obama.

Things like junk bonds in their time and derivatives and hedge funds today are little understood let alone regulated by realistic laws to protect the public.

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital did not break any laws that we know of.  But taking, looting pension funds from employees, taking other benefits away like healthcare  and outsourcing old jobs to China and India is the way American business operates these days.  Not very Christian by my definition of such.  But Mitt has a Mormon bible besides the Judeo Christian bible by which to live his life.

No doubt the 21 trillion dollars worldwide hiding out in offshore tax havens is part of the reason Mitt refuses to reveal his recent tax returns, that and the 10% of his income donated to his church and their related hate projects ongoing as holy on Temple Square, Salt Lake City.

Putting lipstick on a pig like with Bain Capital operating methods or Mitt’s “humanity” is a metaphor Jesus would understand and be amused by. 

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Mitt Romney Has Touched the Lives of Millions of Average Americans

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Comrade Hat - USA Olympic Team Uniform

Looks like something that crash landed in Roswell 65 years ago. 


Comrades beware!


Made in China courtesy of Bain Capital and Mitt Romney's offshore bank accounts. 


Unfcuking believable. 

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Corporate Mantra – Screw Your Neighbor – Lifeguard in Florida Saves Life and is Fired – Thomas Lopez – Jeff Ellis Management

More of this “f*ck your neighbor” corporate personhood horseshit in the news with a lifeguard in Florida fired for saving a drowning victim because the victim was outside designated corporate franchise territory.

All this contract, skimmed profit, white envelopes to people who award no-bid contracts, the outsourcing by city and town governments stuff sometimes goes too far. Kind of like the fire department letting your house burn down because you have not paid your local fire department protection tax etc. 

Screw your Neighbor - the new Corporate Personhood Mantra.

Can’t this Jeff Ellis Management corporation, but is a person, but without any personal moral responsibilities according to the Thomas/Scalia f*ck you I got mine Supreme Court, can’t this corporate person be held in contempt or in negligence to help save a non-corporate life form - a human being? 

No Moral Responsibilities for the Corporate Person – the New Man.

Doesn’t Right to Life Florida State have any Good Samaritan Laws to make insurance companies not have the right to charge more for liability in the case of Thomas Lopez, a lifeguard, saving a life outside a designated franchised for profit geographic area?

Florida, the Right to Be F*cked State.  I’ll wouldn’t be caught dead in it - drowning or otherwise!

Read the shit here below for yourself:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/florida-lifeguard-axed-helping-swimmer-area-article-1.1108270

Unf*cking believable!

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Morality, Gravity and Foreclosures

This week the banks backed off of foreclosures because the paperwork involved in 19th century protocols that 21st century computers did not have a clue about.

The morality of foreclosure never existed. The legality of having the right papers to sign in mass foreclosure brought even the mighty banks to a temporary halt. Or at least until a judge somewhere says go ahead with the process.

The computer speeds things up and creates volume. It does not however create quality or accuracy. These front office jockeys who have outsourced half our jobs off to China and India do not know how the back office works or is supposed to work.

It is as if corporations are all sitting in luxury carriages and have dismissed the horse and coachman mainly due to the expense of the horse and the coachman’s meager wages. It all goes unnoticed if the traffic is all down hill which it is at the moment. Does gravity really run our largest corporations at the present moment and not common sense???

God save us all from the U.S.S. Titanic mindset of the idiots in charge of business and government.

True Values of a Human Being

What price do you put on a human being? To be fair, I do not know how this question is approached in other religions? No doubt the value and recognition of a human being has evolved over time.

Christians claim to put a high price on the value and dignity of every human being.

In Jesus’ time, there was slavery as an established and grossly inefficient way of doing work. How efficient? You worked your slaves to death. No pension or retirement plans back then. There was a huge and non ending supply of fresh meat for the meat grinder of the military/mercantile empire of Rome.

Of course with an entity like the Roman Empire, everybody in terms of race and or religion or even personal beliefs was grist for the mill of a giant non-stop 24/7 beast from hell.

Our elites over the centuries have unearthed beautiful statues and rediscovered the magnificence and simplicity of the Roman city plan. Rome has been reinvented a thousand different ways in literature, art, architecture, law, religion since the great rebirth or renaissance in the West.

Our view of Rome in the past is I think much more kind than that ancient civilization deserves to be viewed.

I am big on timelines in looking at history. Of course, Rome continued in the east in Constantine’s Xanadu city of Contantinople until 1453 when the latest enemy at the gates got over the gates and that city became the jewel of somebody else’s empire.

Since the reformation, I see personal freedoms and rights slowly evolving in western Europe to the point where civil institutions have stood for the rights of man and not religions.

Religion in the west has always stood for the afterlife. If you can’t get it here, you’re likely to get there. How convenient.

Jumping forward on the timeline to the present, I hear someone on the television talking about outsourcing and how an accountant earning $50k per year can be replaced by ten accountants in New Delhi who earn $5k per year. Efficient yes. Fair?

I am looking at the financial institutions in the west, in the USA in particular today, and am wondering why the value of human beings was not in any recent financial equations. I wonder why somebody at Freddie Mac or is it Fannie Mae got $14 million in salary one year. Freddy and of course Fannie have to do with packaging of home mortgages into securities that are traded globally. I have to wonder what these high earners did to deserve such large salaries. I have to wonder if anybody saw any spikes in their spreadsheets as the cost of a home in America doubled and tripled and quadrupled over a handful of years.

Wall Street, these days, seems merely to be a casino shooting craps and charging fees, fees, fees, on the few lucky ones that have pension funds left to be looted by the privileged financial classes.

If one recognizes human beings as people, if one knows the price of the loaf of bread in America or the rest of the world - One has to wonder where the common sense was when paperwork coming into these institutions stated that the people applying for these questionable mortgages could afford them.

It would appear that the disintegrating quality of securities sold overseas shows evidence of the original paperwork being forged or falsified. I used to work in the mortage business when everything was above board. I know the difference between a bona fide mortgage package and a scank loan package put together by commissioned salespeople motivated not by morality but by bonuses.

The big MBA types, motivated by bonuses, managing the wealth and legacy of the United States saw no problems in the whole burgeoning mess until the present collapse of confidence in our government and financial institutions at present.

Somewhere in this whole bloody local and global mess, besides the lack of morality, is the lack of people, common people, the value of people other than as a commodity, in the financial equations invented at Harvard, Brown, and Wharton in the 1960’s when the concept of a global village and a global economy became the undisputed goal of all future business and diplomatic efforts of the United States.

We may be on the verge of greatness and a great global empire. But at what cost? What is the price of a soul? My soul? Your soul? What is the price of our collective souls as well?

What are the true values of a human being in terms of the sacred and or the secular? Locally? Globally?

It may be a secular world but where in the education system of so many college graduates, who have run this nation into the ground, where is the value of a human being or the dignity and respect for his or her soul? Whose bottom line is more important – God’s or Caesar’s ?

Where is Jesus? He is in the streets with the people. They are the very valuable People of God.