Posted on 04/02/2010 1:51:49 PM PDT by Lorianne
In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack [of Birmingham].
And once the giant shit machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam.
Birmingham became the poster child for a new kind of giant-scale financial fraud, one that would threaten the financial stability not only of cities and counties all across America, but even those of entire countries like Greece.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollingstone.com ...
Looters are looters whatever party they are in.
Rolling Stone.
Circulation dying.
Old hippie acid head 60’s maggots are now reading AARP and sitting on bedpans.
Can’t fight the power anymore, Obama’s in 2 wars.
Funny !
of selling “rights” and “units” and “permits” and “trades” and “credits” to cities and towns and farms and every citizen,every business, every corporation, and even our military
all to cream money off the needs of everyone to have access to energy, water, transportation.
These giants of extortion are hunkered down, buying off our Congress and every other world official, just waiting for Soros et al, to direct Barry Soetero to push the button, with the help of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Lisa Jackson, and fools like Linsey Graham
Imagine the story our grandchildren may hear some day, if truth is permitted to escape the black hole that western civilization is entering
I have trouble maintaining interest in the article due to the writer’s potty mouth.
It’s funny how every once in a while a good piece of investigative journalism emerges from Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and even the National Enquirer
Even the London Telegraph and Pravda are not bad reading, for news on US politics
The same has happened here. With just 2 of us here our water/sewer bills have went from $60 every 2 months 10 years ago to over $140 now. They are in the process of building a new sewer system. Of course it is all owned by the city who is 100% except for 2 council members Democrats.
Agreed. Just cannot stand the overtly biased RS.
Our new water treatment plant has Italian marble in the interior grand entrance hall.
“It’s not high finance,” says Taylor, the former bond regulator. “It’s low finance.” And even if the regulators manage to catch up with them billions of dollars later, the banks just pay a small fine and move on to the next scam. This isn’t capitalism. It’s nomadic thievery.
....Hmm....Birmingham....isn’t that yet another urban area run by black Democrats?....just like Baltimore,Detroit,New Orleans,Oakland ect.
The article doesn’t say ... he only mentions party affiliation once, in reference to a Republican councilman in Chicago (once out of discussions of dozens of ‘officials’).
That should tell us something the reporter doesn’t want to emphasize.
If you want to get all Glenn Beck about it, you could lay the blame for this entire mess at the feet of weepy, tree-hugging environmentalists.
The EPA sued the county to force it to comply with the Clean Water Act. In 1996, county commissioners signed a now-infamous consent decree agreeing not just to fix the leaky pipes but to eliminate all sewer overflows — a near-impossible standard that required the county to build the most elaborate, ecofriendly, expensive sewer system in the history of the universe.
Commissioners gave the finance director — an unelected official appointed by the president of the commission — the power to automatically raise sewer rates to meet payments on the debt.
Judging by the state and county, all the convicted public employees would be DemoRat party members, and not one bank employee is listed as having been charged or convicted of a crime.
So the only problem plaguing county citizens is leftist, socialist, environazi, DemoRat government employees and policies.
The cure is the elimination of these.
The old saying “you can’t cheat an honest man”. Looks like the local grifters got taken by the big city grifters.
Theft on a scale like this should be resolved with the barrel of a gun.
Now I know! I mean I knew that bonds were issued to finance this but why do I now feel that EPA was a tool used by the bank frauds to create a huge demand that they were only to ready and willing to satisfy.
The gov't of this country is and has been completely bought and paid for by special interests for a long,long time.
Don't trust any politician, the system is corrupted and any one in it or going into it is or soon will be! We have used up our trust and faith that comes only from GOD. It is every man for himself now.
Thanks for the post; heck of tale even if the writer had left out
“the potty words”!
The author, Matt Taibbi has been going after Goldman Sachs and their CEO’s for the longest time. His article on how GS benefited through their government connections and how the governemnt saved their behinds has been widely quoted and is part of the reason for the huge animosity this investment bank has been getting from the public.
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