Tonight's Friday Night Video is a collection of news and interview clips that need to be seen to be believed. The first is a report from NBC Rock Center on how people are getting their identities stolen and then ripped off. If that wasn't bad enough, identity thieves are filing bogus tax returns and collecting the refunds. Identify theft is now ruining millions of people's lives and costing billions in lost tax revenues to boot.
The next story clip is also from Rock Center on Carnival Cruises. The floating packed sardine cans known as Carnival cruises are costing millions in taxpayer funded coast guard rescues. Yet Carnival Cruises is headquartered in tax haven Panama and that means they don't pay hardly a dime in corporate taxes The story typifies the privatize the profits socialize the cost corporate welfare that has become the norm in the United States.
This final video is an interview from Bloomberg law where sovereign debt guru Lee Buchheit tells Bloomberg Cyprus might need yet another bail out. I guess they will be picking the pockets of the dead for the next one.
Comments
Too much of this stuff and an ulcer is a guarantee
1) Only so much a man can take and rail against with no effect before he suffers shell-shock.
Surely the problem with cruises is they have too many regulations (sarcasm). There's a reason they register their ships in Panama and Liberia, and it's not because the Liberian Navy (there is none and that's the least of that country's issues as we feed billions into it so its leaders get richer) is closer and better than the Coast Guard. Absolutely, profits at the expense of passenger safety and health. Look at those ships nowadays, they look like they are ready to turn on their sides if there's a rogue wave. 5,000+ people, many of whom are drinking heavily, bad regulations + enforcement = nightmare. But don't dare talk about tougher regulations to cruise ship owners. That would cut into their piggy banks.
Again, notice the big vs. small treatment. Small group of people goes hiking in restricted area, needs rescue, people and MSM says they should repay costs. Big cruise ship runs like crap, breaks down, 5000 people need rescue, won't see Fox News demanding owners repay Coast Guard. Double standards everywhere for corporate boards and CEOs vs. people - proves corporations really aren't "people," they are deities in the eyes of our govt.
2) ID theft - once again, what's going to happen when all three credit agencies have more and more security breaches as they handle all of our Social Security Numbers and other data overseas?
Law firms and hospitals and banks and every other entity all allowed to outsource confidential information to Asia and everywhere else while a store clerk in the US has to take a urine test and fingerprint check and provide 3 references before he is even hired (and won't be because he won't work for free). Is ID theft, forgery, depleting entire bank accounts, terrorists using our data and IDs, etc. going to get worse or better? Our govt. is okay with it because they allow it. But perhaps they can spend 20 years and hire 100 consultants for $20 billion to study the problem and come up with an answer. One breach and a person can lose all their money and become a "terrorist" overnight. Their life is ruined and the companies and the government not only don't care, they won't do anything to prevent it from happening again.
two sets of rules again
First, I would never book a cruise where they pack people in like Sardines and clearly safety is being cut for profits. But those people should sue that company into the ground and the government, coast guard should charge for services. BP cost billions to taxpayers and they went after some of that money, the same should apply here.
I agree with you, unfortunately these are just your typical weekly news stories and every week, everyday we see yet another.
Millions of bogus IRS tax filings? I think there might be 100 million or less individual tax filings in the United States in the first place? What's the percentage of overall tax filings where people are getting their ID stolen. This is just outrageous and nothing is being done. You can buy stolen IDs now, not just one, a batch, for less than $20.
Global Outsourcing: the Synonym for Oppression Job Destruction
Every Cruise Ship, all job losses not due to technology ,not recaptured by local tech employment as it was, the destruction of the manufacturing sphere all have a single thing in common: Global Outsourcing. Cruise Ships have crews not sourced controlled or regulated by a single country. It's the Global Economy, man, start liking it. Or fight it.
We need Scandinavian cruise lines to have mostly Scandinavian crews. If not, crews fo cruise liners, comprised of underpaid international help, will run ships aground with no particular country, or labor force, or controlling legal entity, to be held accountable. The passengers may be poisoned or killed, it does not matter.
Service industries around the globe are using a standard of the lowest price of labor. :Lowest price for technology, cruise ships, hotels, fast food, all of it. So how extreme does the labor arbitrage model go? Look at a real company, names changed to protect the guilty. This global outsourcing company works in one country only, the USA. It's client is a marquis of finance.
GatesofHell cannibalizes an existing contract with Clueless Technologies.
Only 2 of hundreds of Clueless employees survive, both have 'Security Clearances'. Like all Clueless employees, the Black Helicopter Crowd of
IT are told they must have OPM Security Clearance to retain employment in the USA.
Total WarDog Employees on GatesofHell Projects 324
Total Offshore - Chennai India- Employees 280
Total OnShore - US - Employees 40
Total H1B - US - Employees 35
Total US -Us - Employees 5
Wow, think that small number of US workers is small? Not small enough for the Global Outsourcers. It seems that the Vendor Management Office of Wardog wants the US employee number smaller. They reduce the number of US Employees for 5 to 2 excluding the 2 of the Black Hellicopter Crowd.
Burton Leed