Self Defense Products Blog

Another week, another disappointing stock market. But, cheer up! I think some long overdue change is on it’s way. And remember, there’s more to life than just money. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “This too, shall pass.”

We don’t have to look too far to see the signs of outrageous greed that ran rampant during the last stock market bull cycle. Here are just some of the highlights from the last week of media reports that exhibit the excessive greediness of corporate executives:

• The Trustee in the Bernard Madoff bankruptcy case reported that the financier hadn’t bought any securities for the past 13 years!

• The SEC filed fraud charges against Texas billionaire Allen Stanford and two other executives of Stanford Group of selling $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit with impossibly high interest rates in a worldwide scheme.

• GM CEO Rick Wagoner was quoted at a press conference stating: “We have to restructure…so we can be viable at a sales level that is dramatically lower than what we ever anticipated.” Huh? You mean GM Executives never considered what would happen if oil prices increased from historically low levels and what impact that would have on their dominant market share position and sales of gas guzzling SUV’s and trucks? Were they too busy working on their golf game to bother with such small details?

• Speaking of General Motors, GM and Chrysler told the U.S. Congress that they could need $21.6 billion more in aid to keep them going. GM said it could need $100 billion in financing if it filed for bankruptcy, and CEO Rick Wagner said bankruptcy would be “risky” and would only be used as a last resort. I wonder what Wagner really means when he says that a GM bankruptcy would be “risky”? Risky for him, personally, and his future salary and earnings prospect perhaps?

• UBS agreed to pay $780 million and identify some American clients with undeclared bank accounts, to settle a tax case and avert criminal charges. But Switzerland’s finance minister vowed that the country’s bank secrecy would be maintained.

But, as Bob Dylan would say, “The times, they are a changing.” Yes, the Federal Goverment is throwing an awful lot of money at our financial markets to try and stop the decline in our financial markets and restore some resembelance of confidence again. As inflationary as the long-term effects of this loose money policy will be, they really don’t have a choice if they have any hope of preventing the global economy from falling into a long, deep and severe depression.

Critics of President Obama’s new housing rescue plan say they don’t want to pay for their neighbor’s mortgage in the form of higher taxes. Well, I don’t think anyone is happy about paying higher taxes, but what choice do we really have? The economy is messed up, big time. We can’t blame President Obama for this because things were already messed up by the time he was elected into office. He could complain about the crappy job that he inherited from the outgoing administration, but he’s not. He’s doing everything that he can to try and stop the bleeding and prevent any further damage from occuring.

Now, to get back to the headline of this long-winded blog post, It was clear from the November 2008 U.S. Presidential results that Americans wanted change. Not just a little tweak, but a major change. Well, change IS coming. It has to, or else we are all dead. Not just the US economy, but the global economy. How can you imagine that a person as insane as Adolph Hitler became so powerful? Germany was weak from the last major recession and people were starving and desperate for change. These people were so desperate that they decided that while Hitler had some radical ideas, nothing else had worked so far. They HAD to DO SOMETHING! So they put this guy named Hitler with some crazy ideas into power to see if that might fix things. And the rest is history, as they say.

Please don’t misunderstand and think that I’m comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler, because that is NOT WHAT I’M DOING. American’s are smart enough to learn from the past mistakes of others and I think Obama is exactly what America needs right now to get us out of this financial mess without creating more problems down the road.

Just to be safe, you might want to pick up a C2 TASER in case their’s an uprising in your neigborhood…

www.LaneSelfDefense.com/c2taser.htm

A Taser is simply a less lethal alternative to a hand gun. Afterall, you just want to stop your neighbor from attacking you and stealing your stuff. You don’t want to actually KILL HIM, right?

Stay safe to stay alive,

Steve Lane

Self Defense & Surveillance Shop

http://www.LaneSelfDefense.com

http://www.LaneSurveillance.com

A professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota has created an online database of government documents that he hopes will increase public scrutiny of how the U.S. treated detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The professor, Steven Miles, said his archive is not an “anti-war” site” but offers a genuine look at actual government documents with disturbing details of deaths, maltreatment, and inadequate medical care.

There are a wide variety of records, some of which indicate:

> A prisoner whose death was initially ruled a heart attack but occurred after he was beaten and stuffed in a sleeping bag.

> An escapee who died after being restrained and suspended by his arms and legs.

> A child who died of untreated tuberculosis.

> A women whose baby was taken from her so she could continue in her interrogation.

“The idea of our government taking babies away from mothers who should be nursing so these mothers can endure interrogation is just flatout wrong.” Miles said. “Read the account and see if it chills you. It chills me.”

You can find this archive online here: http://www.umn.edu/humanrts

This story appeared in an article written by Jeremy Olson, Pioneer Press, Wednesday, April 25, 2007.