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Rajjpuut has a pretty shameful story to tell you. A story involving the progressive (We need to progress beyond that outdated Constitution”) politicians’ cap and trade bill, British Petroleum, Al Gore and Barack Obama and all the “usual suspects tied into the shameless Chicago Climate eXchange (CCX), and an incredibly incompetent Ken Salazar and MMS (oops we mean an incredibly incompetent Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement now run by Ken Salazar). There’s plenty of blame to go around, but after doling out accurately and precisely the obvious and semi-obvious blame . . . it’s time to point out what seems to be a potential conspiracy. But, more on that after we take care of “ordinary business” first.

Barack Obama recently claimed during part of his non-ending speechifying that “the Buck stops here” while then going on to blame the Bush Administration for the Gulf oil spill within the next three minutes. Now, ten weeks and counting since the explosion that killed eleven men and caused this disaster, it’s time enough for settling responsibility and doing so accurately. It’s obvious the British Petroleum explosion and ensuing Gulf of Mexico oil Spill is a horrendous environmental disaster. British Petroleum is getting the vast majority of the criticism but in truth, the federal government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS which has now changed its name to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement --a la Nancy Pelosi changing the name of the “public option” to the “citizen’s option” when she was trying to win Obamacare votes) . . . in any case, MMS signed off on safety requirements, not met, from regulations passed in 1990 and 1994 and in Rajjpuut’s eyes MMS, whose job was to protect us from exactly this sort of thing . . . MMS bears most of the blame for the explosion and fire and leak, here’s why . . . .

Most distressing, ten fire booms were required by law to be on the site when in fact there were zero, none, nil, zip, nada to stop the fire. MMS was so deliriously incompetent that they were in the process of awarding BP a safety award for that very same Macondo Drilling Site where the Deepwater Horizon operated. All this becomes even more troubling when you realize that BP began having problems with the Macondo site and mysterious “cracks” as early as February 3^rd of this year. At first they did not seem serious, but by February 13^th, ten days later, they were acknowledged to be worth reporting and MMS and Ken Salazar and Barak Obama came into that knowledge then or shortly afterward. The American public was never informed.

One University of California engineer described an incident that then happened shortly after this, this way: “I’m telling you, they almost blew the whole damn rig sky high.” Now, if there were ever a time for MMS to insist upon full implementation of safety measures and to “call a moratorium on drilling” at the Macondo site until everything was 100% copasetic and to call in those ten fire booms . . . this was the time. But this was never done, was it even contemplated? Again, the American public was NOT informed. Salazar has not been called to task for his failures which is what Obama would have done were he a strong leader . . . and Obama has still not informed the American public of the full listing of BP problems ten weeks before the explosion or the full listing of MMS failures. Instead, apparently with his approval MMS has changed its name. Now that’s really taking responsibility, Mr. Prez!

So the explosion and SPILL can be blamed about 52% on MMS and Ken Salazar the Secretary of the Interior; about 48% on British Petroleum and roughly 100% of the cover-up of the early problems and not informing the public, can be attributed to Salazar and Obama. ‘Nuff said, now there’s the matter of the clean-up (before we get to the incredible little ‘potential conspiracy’ that needs to be unearthed for our readers) . . . .

While it’s well-known that Barack Obama has never once taken any responsibility for any problems of his administration, the Buck really does stop with him. How surprising is it that after a fire and an explosion that an oil spill might occur? Here it is on his and Salazar’s watch and absolutely NO PROACTIVITY takes place. From his days studying Kepner-Tregoe Management techniques, Rajjpuut can tell you that the first question out of the mouth of Obama and Salazar needed to be, “An explosion, what else could go wrong?” And they needed to be have Salazar on site and the president informed from the get-go. And within hours when it’s known that oil is leaking . . . a plan to avoid the hideous problems we’re now facing needs to be in place to save the beaches, the jobs and the wildlife as much as possible. Let us put 70% of the blame on Obama (the buck stops there) and 30% upon Salazar for not knowing enough about simple management principles that they could immediately spot that oil on the beaches, and oil ruining fishing and tourism was a very likely potential problem they needed to deal with. Obama has repeatedly said he and his administration was “on it” from day one . . . well, once again “Day One” was actually February 13^th and they certainly weren’t “engaged” back then. And “Day One” after the explosion didn’t show any engagement either . . . but, in any case, the real problem comes now down to Barack Obama’s total lack of leadership – total lack.

The unions that are so vital to Barak Obama don’t want foreigners coming in to help the clean up . . . so Barack Obama refuses to waive the Jones Act so that none of the 14 nations (many with extensive clean up expertise and clean up experience) who volunteered their time, effort, manpower and expertise to help with the clean-up have been allowed in to help by Obama himself. Obama, only had to say, “that’s nonsense” we’ll take whatever help we can and we'll take it now and then waive the Jones Act, his precious unions be damned.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has in at least fifteen different instances proved to be severely delaying the clean-up, and blocking the clean up, and blocking the protection of the beaches and wetlands, and blocking removal of the oil from the Gulf itself. What? I hear you saying, the EPA is delaying the clean-up? the EPA is blocking the cleanup? The EPA is blocking protection of the beaches and wetlands? The EPA is blocking removal of oil from the Gulf itself? Yes, that’s exactly what the EPA is doing.

Item: The EPA insisted upon running “environmental impact studies” over several weeks before allowing much clean-up activity to even begin. They're worried about little problems ten years down the road, when Aramageddon approaches?

Item: The EPA has decided that virtually no berms, preventing the oil from reaching the beaches and wetlands can be built.

Item: The EPA has decided that all skimmers which remove the oil must comply with ordinary EPA standards (rather than creating emergency standards in keeping with the emergency situation) and others canNOT skim the oil . . . so by insisting that helpful ships not be allowed to go 10% over ordinary very tight standards they have allowed virtually 100% of the oil mess to stay unskimmed.

Item: the EPA has insisted that 200 skimmers located elsewhere cannot come to the Gulf because they just might be needed in an emergency right where they are now. Let’s see once big accident in 30 years of offshore drilling, what are the odds?

Item: the EPA has not approved of even one from the over 2,000 ideas that have been generated by concerned Americans and American businesses for deep clean-up of the spill on the beaches and wetlands. Some of these ideas are so simple and so cheap (like bringing in hay and domestic plant refuse such as corn stalks to soak up about 70% of their weight in oil) and so effective one can only wonder how much better the situation would be if they’d been in place, say from Day three.

1. Get all the information possible from all the credible sources possible

2. Understand what is going wrong, and what must be done about it

3. Among all the possible goals, understand what is crucial, what is merely necessary, what is just “nice”, and what actually impedes success and progress . . . that is set priorities for goals

4. Communicate that big picture and those priorities

5. Keep monitoring the situation closely

It’s safe to say that Salazar and Obama have missed the boat continuously and are still missing it today when it comes to clean-up and prevention of oil spill related problems for the people of the Gulf. Barack, in particular, has routinely and continuously been saying things that aren’t so, (“on the job from Day One?”) and it appears that his lying is contagious, for example his Feds have said repeatedly that roughly 140 skimmers were at work, but the maximum counted by aerial survey was a mere 31 . . . but let’s get to the big surprise story . . . something that smacks of an awful and terrible conspiracy . . . say it ain’t so, Barack, say it ain’t so . . . well . . . .

The well-known point of view of the environmentalists; the cap and trade activists; the global-warming activists; the green jobs industry (for which Barack Obama promised to provide five million green jobs); and Barack Obama and Al Gore and Maurice Strong and all their scores of Chicago Climate eXchange (CCX) cronies like Joel Rogers and George Soros and that other GS and its people (Yep, Goldman Sachs owns 10% of CCX) and Franklin Raines . . . the key fact is that they’d all be so much, much better off if oil drilling came to a virtual stop and America immediately transformed itself (with government help and most importantly with CCX help) into a green energy country like Spain (unemployment there now 21% but was only 3% in 1997). Obama’s ridiculous six month offshore drilling moratorium is just one expression of their malevolent eyes turned against the oil industry, never mind that immediately instituting those policies would scoot our way of life back to about 1890 . . . . Ah, but now comes the crux of the matter. Guess who else is indirectly involved in CCX and likely to benefit from passage of the cap and trade bill Obama’s pushing right now? Take your wildest guess . . . we’ll wait. Answer below . . .

Ho Hum . . . .

Ho hum . . . .

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

**Yes, George Soros is the second largest investor in Petrobras (Brazilian Oil) and yes they did recently get a several billion dollar loan from the Obama administration to drill at 14,041 feet, but that’s only small potatoes in the scheme of this horrific scam on the American people . . . . here’s the important stuff: Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle his policies would “bankrupt the coal industry” and he’s mentioned on several occasions that his policies would “necessarily make the price of electricity skyrocket.” Actually that was only a half-truth. Here’s the real truth: The United States economy is $15 TRillion worth of goods and services. Mr. Sandor has fairly accurately stated that carbon-trading (selling blue sky, literally) which adds not a single product or service to the U.S. economy will be a $10 TRillion industry. So without adding any benefit, we will, in effect be taxed $10 TRillion giving us a $25 TRillion economy. All prices will rise on average by 67% ($25 TRillion divided by $15 TRillion = 167%) and entities like ICE and CCX and all those who own and run them (including BP) and non-productive (but non-polluting) businesses created by entities like ACORN and the progressive foundations (mentioned here in the next link) will rob all the rest of us and push our standard of living back 120 years:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

So it seems the Gulf oil spill response has been very ineffective with huge amounts of dithering every step of the way? Perhaps that's not consider too bad by BP, Barack Obama, Al Gore and the CCX people?

When you think about idle or under-used factories all around the United States like those in Indiana, Michigan, Georgia and Tennesse where automobiles used to be built, it’s obvious that for the hoped-for recovery to get anywhere near the 138 million non-farm jobs we had around 2006, those factories need to start up again and get humming with the production of new automobiles, or perhaps, retooled and modernized . . . producing new something elses. For those who don’t think the government is the problem, listen to the words of Tennessee Representative Marsha Blackburn, a member of the House energy and commerce committee . . . .

“Not far from my district the Spring Hill plant sits idle. GM pulled out of Spring Hill, once the proud home to the Saturn line, in the wake of its bankruptcy last year. Reopening the plant, either for the production of cars or anything else, will be critical to jobs growth in Middle Tennessee. At a listening session with constituents who live in the 7th district and used to commute to work in Spring Hill, the message was clear: to get the plant up and running again, Washington is going to have to do ... less.

“Washington, or more specifically the Environmental Protection Agency, poses a significant challenge to any new enterprise that hopes to revitalize Spring Hill and Tennessee’s economy. While Tennesseans are looking for a new owner to come in, take over the Spring Hill plant and get it producing again, the EPA has proposed a series of regulations that would require businesses to certify they have limited carbon emissions or pay steep fines. These regulations are a result of their “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act that carbon dioxide and other green house gasses pose a threat to human life. (Rajjpuut interjects here . . . The EPA was violating its own rules with these “endangered findings.” They are prohibited by law*** from making environmental regulations based upon somebody else’s studies such as the discredited CRU “global-warming” nonsense. They must conduct their own studies and base all regulations only upon their own studies, if the studies prove conclusively that the moves are warranted. Marsha Blackburn continues . . . .)

“The new greenhouse gas rules will require anyone who buys the Spring Hill plant and performs any modifications on it — which they will likely have to do — to analyze all the greenhouse gas emissions from the plant and from all its potential new processes. Any new owner will have to report these emissions to the EPA. All the while, Tennesseans remain jobless.

“Most possible uses for the Spring Hill plant would cause the plant to exceed the 25,000 annual tons of carbon dioxide emissions the EPA proposes to allow, classifying it as a “major emitter.” Major emitters must go through additional review and permitting by the EPA, a process that could take months or years. These are years when an entrepreneur owns, maintains, and pays taxes on a non-productive facility — clearly a disincentive to anyone thinking of reopening a plant in the United States.

“To add to the cost, the EPA will require major emitters to purchase and install the ‘best available control technology’ to reduce emissions to an acceptable level. Even when that equipment is installed, the new owner isn’t done with EPA-imposed costs. Because the EPA found that the Clean Air Act applies to carbon dioxide, any new owners of the Spring Hill plant are open to being sued if the carbon capture technology fails or the plant ever exceeds the EPA emission ceiling. Such a specter of unanticipated cost would hang over the plant for its entire operational life. While potential new owners calculate the possible cost, Tennesseans go jobless.

“As Washington works to balance economic impact with the need to spur energy independence, the EPA lurks on the Hill with these disastrous carbon restrictions in its briefcase, threatening to detonate them on the economy in the event that the Senate doesn’t meet its minimum standard of economy-killing carbon limits. Its actions are a clear executive overreach.”

The rest of Blackburn’s commentary can be found at:

http://thehill.com/special-reports/earth-day-april-2010/93643-epa-stands-in-the-way-of-recovery

She proposed a bill that would void the EPA’s endangerment findings and prohibit the agency from regulating carbon emissions under the auspices of the Clean Air Act in an effort to help the Spring Hill plant re-emerge from its near death experience. She then talked about the EPA announcing a video contest with a $2,500 prize to help Americans appreciate how EPA regulations and the entire regulatory process “benefits the citizens.” The fact of the matter is that the EPA’s regulations are killing the country and are a huge part of the problem and the proposed Cap and Trade legislation would cost America at least $220 Billion each and every year it’s in effect probably much more. One of Mr. Obama’s cronies at CCX (the Chicago Climate eXchange) has admitted on TV that their group sees climate exchange as a “Ten TRillion Dollar industry.” Since that industry produces nothing but only sells literal “blue sky nothingness to the productive parts of the economy (a shakedown, if you will, by the EPA) then the rest of the economy must lose $10 TRillion for the CCX to exist since the output of the whole non-government economy is now between $15-$16 TRillion . . . you get an idea of just what a raping cap and trade will prove to our nation and its future. Clearly, Mr. Obama as a board member of CCX is operating in conflicting of interest when he pushed the legislative process and again when he commanded the EPA to regulate carbon emissions a la cap and trade. You can read the specifics of this illegal and unconstitutonal matter and of Al Gore’s and President Obama’s betrayal in these three prior Rajjpuut’s Folly blogs:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/02/thanks_to_media_obama,__gore_and_cronies_might_make_trillions.thtml

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/04/27/bend_over,_america,_here_comes_your_re-raping.thtml

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/04/30/obama_c_and_t_corruption_bared_for_all_to_see,_media_ignores.thtml

As mentioned often by this blogger, the President has been repeatedly guilty of illegal and unconstitutional acts. After his impeachment, it would also be fitting and proper if the mainstream media that aided and abetted his rise to power and his illegal activities by refusing to engage in journalism but instead served as cheerleaders who refused to vett his connections, his activities and his personal background . . . Obama’s betrayal might be great but the betrayal of mainstream journalism upon the American people has been greater. Here Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn explains the simplest truths that are so basic to understanding how a capitalist economy creates jobs . . . and yet such a story is never a part of the media’s “hot topics,” never.

Like Obama himself, the EPA has seriously overstepped their bounds and the misuse of bureaucratic power by the president and by the EPA is a huge problem. Ask the folks around Fresno county (the richest vegetable-growing region in the world) about their nearly 40% unemployment in some areas while the EPA to save the purportedly endangered Delta Smelt has forbidden use of irrigation piping and pumping in the region to save the smelt. The Fresno county workers got shafted by the EPA during a drought; and the consumers are paying much more for vegetables thanks to the EPA . . . and the EPA with such nonsense is killing the economy.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

However, just as there is a genuine need for REAL reform in health care delivery, etc which will need to be addressed once Obamacare is repealed, there is truly an immense need for TRUE financial reform once Barackbanking fails and the progressive majorities are history after November. Let Rajpuut mince no words, Congress and the General Accounting Office (GAO) need to throw a noose around Goldman Sachs people, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) -- two of the most corrupt oversight agencies since Foxes began guarding chicken houses -- and march them right over to the nearest cottonwood tree. Is your head spinning? Let us explain . . . .

Yes, Virginia, ACORN and several years worth of Obama and Obama-clone lawyers did bring on the sub-prime lending crisis by forcing lenders to make terribly ill-advised loans to folks without jobs, folks with credit ratings in the 300’s, folks without IDs and even illegal aliens . . . yes, that’s true. But, second place among those culpable for the present financial mess has to belong to these two (SEC and DTCC) absolutely sneaky organizations. Along with the idiots in Congress in 1977, 1992 and 1998 who passed the ridiculous laws that ACORN was able to exploit against this country in the form of forced-ridiculous mortgages . . . Goldman Sachs and the SEC and DTCC are most guilty for bringing this nation to its knees from late 2007 to the present. Corruption on a major scale is rampant in these three organizations and needs to be shot down and fully punished. Additionally, after rolling heads out the door at the SEC and DTCC, Goldman Sachs needs to be punished to the tune of roughly $100 billion dollars and forever barred from holding any federal position of financial responsibility for the next twenty years.

So, getting down to particulars, what corruption is being talked about here? Well, starting with the DTCC . . . . The DTCC has the easiest clerical job in the oversight industry. All they have to do is see that the straightforward legal requirements are met in the vast majority of cases (say 99% of the time) whenever stocks are bough or sold. In the simplest instance, sell a stock and you must deliver a copy of the stock certificate within the legal timeframe. Buy a stock and you must deliver the money for the stock within the same time period. Simple-pimple. But the DTCC seldom actually does its job, it’s employees are ex-brokerage firm employees in many cases and they just ask their buddies, “John, everything copasetic? And that’s as far as it goes. The SEC, it’s believed only examines the DTCC once every other year. The DTCC, meanwhile is responsible for $1.5 quadrillion (that’s right QUADrillion!) in transactions ever single year and they don’t do their job.

Where this gets dangerous is in the matter of short-selling. You see a company like Bear Stearn or Lehman Brothers or Enron and you know they’re cruising for a bruising. So you sell their stock, except you don’t actually hold their stock, oooops, well you borrow their stock and turn the certificate over to the brokerage firm of the purchaser within the legally prescribed time limit. But wait a minute, because the DTCC never actually does its job, you never actually borrow the stock and never actually give the certificate to the purchaser’s brokerage – this is called “NAKED SHORT-SELLING” and huge amounts of it helped drive Bear-Stearns and Lehman Brothers stock and made it almost impossible for people actually owning the stock to get any value at all for their holdings. So someone wants to short sell, but it’s impossible to find someone to lend them the stock (people don’t like to commit their stock for any time period when financial armageddon approaches, they feel they might well need to sell it in a hurry. But here we have over 30 million illegal short sells that were driving the price down dramatically . . . which is a killer for someone who actually owns the stock. In practice, illegal naked short sales OFTEN go months at a time without delivery of the sold stock certificates.

In the case of the SEC, their corruption lies in knowing there are violations, serious violations, going on and looking the other way. In recent times the SEC corruption covered up the DTCC tendency for incompetence well known at the SEC and routinely overlooked; in 2008, the SEC stepped in to save face for the DTCC at huge cost to the public. Let’s go back to Lehman Bros. for an easy example: SEC records shows that an incredible 32.8 million shares of Lehman Bros. were sold but never delivered to buyers as of last September less than two weeks before the company declared bankruptcy which helped trigger the nearly full-implosion of our financial system. The SEC, which attacked Martha Stewart but not Bernie Madoff you’ll recall even though her actual guilt is still disputable and his had been tracked for years, is seemingly completely impotent and even frightened of doing the job it’s been created to do. In the Lehman Bros. example, the SEC found out that the DTCC was using “phantom stock” in a particular mumbo-jumbo called their “borrowed stock progam” to make up the difference. Only trouble, the DTCC is also NOT borrowing real stock and not delivering real stock to the buyers so the DTCC is actually abetting the illegal short-sales and the SEC knew that and did . . . NOTHING! Got that, all the while the DTCC is stating with a straight-face that NO illegal naked short-selling is going on . . . the SEC is backing them up and say, “NOPE, nobody here but us chickens!”

As for Goldman*** Sachs . . . they must be in bed with every congressman and senator in Washington to operate the way they do and never get even so much as a slap on the wrist. Consider this . . . Rajjpuut offers you a chance on a seeming coin-flip investment and sells you a piece of paper outlining your investment potential and advertisement claiming that you’ve got at least a 60% payout if your investment comes through. Sly Ol’ Rajjpuut hasn’t mentioned that your position in the coin-flip investment is the equivalent of backing a landing on the coin’s edge (say a ten million to one shot). That’s pretty much what Goldman Sachs is accused of knowingly offering their customers in an operation called “the heist” and knowingly setting up for a scam artist while knowingly collecting a huge amount of commissions as the heist proceeded to empty the little guys’ wallet as they knowingly favored that one client (a hedge fund operator) over thousands of investors it misled into thinking they were being offered a can’t miss deal. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs is actually a favored company receiving the contract to do a federal job and receiving huge draw down in the process . . . virtually the only stock brokerage to come out of the recent Wall Street debacle on top was GS. More below, but read about the exact details of “the heist” here:

http://www.startribune.com/nation/91031524.html

Meanwhile, as noted, Goldman really has the “ins” with the Feds. Timothy Geithner’s friend, a Goldman Sachs lobbyist was announced as Geithner’s new aide on the very day he issued a prohibition from hiring lobbyists in the Treasury Dept. President Obama recently announced he intended to install a former GS exec as the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Without discussion he was approved. GS received $13 Billion in the $170 Billion AIG bailout for ???? It now appears that AIG was apparently secretly used to bail out highly connected banks and financial institutions like GS and UBS. Secretary Paulson’s old firm was GS, of course, and whether with Bush or Obama GS continues to fall into the manure pile and come up smelling rosy. Paulson created a recommendation group about what must be done with AIG and heading it up were GS people. Obama’s administration has collected $5.2 million from a GS hedge fund and been paid several hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees by GS and GS related groups. The Federal Reserve Bank recently allowed GS to convert from an investment bank into a bank holding company usually a situation in which profits are severely restricted. This most recent blowout quarter for GS, however, saw over $2 Billion in profits. Barney Frank’s stop staffer (Frank is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee) cut loose and was immediately hired by GS as their, you guessed it, their top lobbyist. GS is dirty but the feds have no interest in exposing it.

So, is financial reform necessary? You bet. Is Barakbanking true financial reform? Not only “No, but HELL no!” Barackbanking is another attempt to move more and more control over American society into the executive branch of big gov while heavily refunding the ACORN-clones. First, defeat Barackbanking, next defeat Obama’s progressives in November and finally institute true financial reform and string up the SEC, DTCC and Goldman Sachs and their congressional protectors.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** * The SEC on Friday, April 16^th filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs for the ir involvement in the short-selling scam engineered by John Paulson (no known relation to the former Treasury Secretary). Sachs often called “Government Sachs” is, most obviously tied to the repayment at 100 cents on the dollar for contracts whose true market value, given the circumstances AIG was in, was probably no more that twenty cents on the dollar. Amazingly, $13 Billion of the $171 bailout to AIG was “misdirected” into GS hands. This fraudulent use of their fiduciary responibility cost the taxpayers at least $10.4 Billion. Anyway you look at it GS quacks like a mighty corrupt duck. However . . . . given that an SEC lawyer who a dozen years ago advised quashing charges against the R. Allen Stanford ponzi operation which has only now been brought to light . . . given that the lawyer in question is representing Stanford . . . .

. . .Yes, you’re correct, there’s plenty of room for a bit of suspicion here based upon the timing of the SEC charges. The SEC goes for years without remove its figurative thumb from where it usually sits. Now just on the eve of the big push to pass barackbanking, they get all serious on us just as Democrats are trying to get even one Republican to vote for their embarrassingly partisan, corrupt and poorly-conceived financial “reform “ legislation. Could that be a coincidence? Ha? Besides its problems with the corrupt refunding of ACORN-clones, the bill in large part is more of the idiotic “too big to fail” bull-feces that got us two stimulus packages and bailouts that have not helped create jobs. Barackbanking actually would punish firms for being “too big” and definitely encourages government to tell banks how to run their business . . . you’ll remember it was our progressive government’s abetting of ACORN with three ill-conceived mortgage-guarantee laws that allowed them to pressure banks and lending institutions to make abysmal home loans to far less than credit-worthy borrowers (some without jobs; others without ID; virtually all with credit scores under 600; and even to illegal aliens) that was the prime cause of the financial meltdown still socking it to us today . . . and the SEC wouldn’t mind looking good in the news reports after their huge failures with the Madoff, Petters and Stanford scandals. These three cases of massive, long-running ponzi schemes which the SEC didn’t uncover are surely a black-eye for that most incompetent and incompetent bureaucracy . . . but now charges are being laid upon the SEC that they knew of the Stanford ponzi scheme since at least 1997 and did . . . NOTHING! Oh my, bull and bears and nertz, oh my!