Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 5, 2012  The cries for assistance from desperate families and elderly in the flood ravaged areas of the Rockaways and Staten Island could not be met by the already overwhelmed New York City responders and volunteers, and so the Marines have now stepped in to pump basements with their sophisticated equipment and provide other relief.  Likewise, New York City did not possess the ability to get the flooded subway tunnels pumped out in a reasonable amount of time – leaving the danger that the salt water would further eat away at the electrical systems.  The Army Corps of Engineers stepped in with high tech equipment they used during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and had the job completed within a few days.  People whose homes collapsed like crumpled match-sticks under a tidal surge as high in some places as 14.8 feet, are receiving … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 2, 2012  For three days, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has held multiple press conferences characterizing deaths from Hurricane Sandy as stepping on a downed power wire or being crushed by a fallen tree.  All the while, as we reported three days ago, the facts proved unequivocally that the vast majority of deaths resulted from drowning.  Yesterday, the New York Times made the sensible decision to stop believing what was coming out of the Mayor’s press conferences and called the medical examiner.  This is what the Times then reported:  “Three days after the storm hit New York, it is becoming clear how most victims died. ‘The majority of them drowned,’ said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.”  As of early this morning, there are now a reported 21 deaths from the hurricane on Staten Island, more than 50 percent of the New York City total … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 1, 2012  Despite what the paper of record would have you believe, Hurricane Sandy was not about killer trees.  Hurricane Sandy, like Hurricane Katrina, was about killer water.  The New York Times put it this way on Tuesday, before the death toll had climbed even higher: “There were 22 deaths reported in New York City, where the toll was heaviest, and 5 more fatalities elsewhere in the state. Most of all, it was the trees. Uprooted or cracked by the furious winds, they became weapons that flattened cars, houses and pedestrians.”  Here’s the way those last two sentences should have read: “Most of all, it was the wall of water. Giant storm surges rushing over the sea walls, turning roads into instant rivers replete with white caps that pulled two toddlers from their mother’s arms and sent many more to a watery grave in their basements.”  … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 31, 2012  Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg held two press conferences to provide updates on the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  At both press conferences, the nature of the deaths from the storm in New York City received short shrift.  The Mayor appeared to be saying to reporters, nothing out of the ordinary there — fallen tree, downed power wire– move along.  But then early this morning came the news that Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, with a population of almost 3 million, had just 4 deaths from the storm while New York City, with a population of roughly 8 million, had a striking 22 deaths from the storm, according to the NYPD.  (The Mayor put the figure at 18 at his second press conference yesterday.)  The New York Times ran a detailed story on storm-related deaths in New York City yesterday, going into … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 30, 2012 At 6 a.m., New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reported that there are 1,943,572 New Yorkers without power.  Con Ed is reporting that power is out in lower Manhattan below 39th Street with an estimated 250,000 people in Manhattan without power.  The MTA is reporting massive flooding in New York City subways and tunnels.  New York City is urging all residents to remain indoors, avoid use of elevators and stay away from windows as a precaution against flying debris. The following updates have been posted by New York City:  Alternate Side Parking regulations (street cleaning) will be suspended citywide on Tuesday, 10/30. Payment at parking meters is also suspended throughout the city on Tuesday, 10/30. The MTA has shut down all subway, bus, and commuter railroad service and likely will remain closed throughout Tuesday.  The Staten Island Ferry service is suspended until further notice. East River … Continue reading →

October 30, 2012 Joseph Lhota, Chairman of the MTA, released the following statement on the current condition of the New York City subway system: “The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots. As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 29, 2012  The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a one-on-one interview with President Obama.  Reading the interview, it became quickly clear how incredibly lax the New York Times was in failing to respond to repeated requests to correct a mountain of false facts that appeared in an Andrew Ross Sorkin article of May 21, 2012.  President Obama is now repeating the same utterly bogus information for even wider distribution.  This is no small matter.  Honing in on what genuinely caused the financial crash of 2008 is critical to understanding its roots and thus enabling the nation to write proper reform legislation.  This is what Andrew Ross Sorkin falsely claimed in his column in May: “Let’s look at the facts of the financial crisis in the context of Glass-Steagall. “The first domino to nearly topple over in the financial crisis was Bear Stearns, an investment bank … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 26, 2012 The peaceful stirrings of Occupy Wall Street began with a poster of a lithe ballerina poised gracefully on a bull with the reminder – “Bring tent.”  After a year of arrests, evictions, police brutality, and no prosecutions of Wall Street titans, the mood is less sunny.   An offshoot of Occupy Wall Street called Occupy Goldman Sachs has now set up a camp outside the ultra luxurious home of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein at 15 Central Park West in Manhattan.  The group is calling for a big protest there on November 10 at 12 noon with the reminder to bring pitch forks and torches (fake ones, of course.)  By this time next year, the reminder that the armaments should be fake may be shelved.  Explaining the protest on its web site, www.OccupyWallSt.org, the group says “this is a reminder that, as we close in to the 2012 elections, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 25, 2012  Nathan Sproul, the former Executive Director of the Arizona Republican Party, whose multi-headed political operations have left a widening eight-year trail of voter registration fraud allegations, is tied to yet another newly discovered operation called California Grassroots Mobilization.  California Grassroots Mobilization is the third firm linked to Nathan Sproul which was registered with a Secretary of State by a subsidiary of the foreign corporation, Wolters Kluwer – a sprawling conglomerate based in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, with operations in 35 foreign countries.  Why Wolters Kluwer is fronting for Sproul and why a foreign corporation has been involved in the 2006 mid-terms, and the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Presidential elections should rouse the FBI and Justice Department from their perpetual slumber on anything that doesn’t involve a man in a turban. California Grassroots Mobilization shows Meghan Cox, Nathan Sproul’s partner in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 24, 2012 There are three words that provide context as to why Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, was abruptly dispatched from the bank eight days ago: Sheila Bair and Libor.  Bair’s book, Bull By the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street From Wall Street and Wall Street From Itself, threw down the gauntlet to Citigroup’s board to justify why it was keeping Pandit on board.  More than any other bank or CEO mentioned in Bair’s outstanding recounting of the financial crisis, Citigroup and Pandit are cast in a harsh light – as they should be.  Bair was the Chair of the FDIC and revealed in her book that Citibank, the insured deposit bank within Citigroup, had actually been downgraded to a rating of Camels 4, which would have landed the company on the troubled bank list.  It was only pressure from Citigroup’s other regulators that got the bank upgraded to … Continue reading →