Southland Region New Zealand - Home of the Fiordland National Park

The Southland Region of New Zealand is sparsely populated but contains some of the most majestic natural wonders in a country which is full of spectacular nature. The region lies at the southern tip of the South Island of New Zealand and includes Stewart Island or Rakiura as it is more commonly known. The two largest cities are Invercargill with about 50,000 inhabitants and Gore with around 12,000 citizens in the area. A large swath of the region is covered by protected national parks with some of the most magnificent sights in the whole country.

Fiordland National Park is the largest national park in New Zealand, covering 7,860 square kilometers and in dramatic fashion. Most of Fiordland is dominated by the Southern Alps, with two of the most visited areas being Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound which are fjords formed by the powerful glacial activity here thousands of years ago. Milford Sound is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country with rocky peaks in the shape of an elephant head and crouching lion towering over the waters below. The area also contains Browne Falls which are (depending on the measurement 619 or 836 meters) the highest waterfall in New Zealand and the equally impressive Sutherland Falls at 580 meters. Boat tours are one of the best ways to see the fjords and temporary waterfalls are often seen in this, one of the rainiest areas on the planet with 6,813 mm of rain on average per year. The region also contains numerous lakes, among them the deepest lakes in New Zealand and the deepest of all is Lake Hauroko at 463 meters in depth.

Rakiura National Park covers over 80% of Stewart Island or Rakiura. The island lies just to the south and is administered by the Southland Region. Due to the absence of any large predators this is a great place to view kiwi in the wild as well as some other rare native birds. The island is well known for its gorgeous sunsets and sunrises along with the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights which is spectacular here. The endangered Yellow-eyed penguin has several breeding sites here and the Southern Brown Kiwi is found here as well along with a number of endangered flightless birds that were recently moved to smaller islands offshore for protection.

Invercargill is the region's largest city and one of the southernmost cities in the world. The rich farmland surrounding the area provides much of its economic activity centered on the dairy industry and the Southern Institute of Technology rejuvenated the city with its zero fees scheme. Oreti Beach is 10 km to the west and was featured in the film World's Fastest Indian which was the story of the local hero Burt Munro who set several speed records on this wide, flat swath of sand. The only indoor velodrome (cycling racetrack) in New Zealand is located here and there are several other sport stadiums as well.

Gore is the second most populated town in the region and is mostly a service town for the surrounding farming areas. The area is well known for its connection to country music and hosts the New Zealand country music awards ceremony every year. The most famous local building is the Creamoata Mill, with the porridge they produced once being considered the national breakfast. Local legends arose from the era of alcohol prohibition when the nearby Hokonui Hills produced Hokonui moonshine, which made Gore more well known to New Zealanders.

The Southland region is mostly mountainous and the similarities to the climate of the British Isles brought a large contingent of Scottish settlers here. Outside of the two largest towns, the area is sparsely populated with mountains and farmland covering the majority of the region. The Fiordland National Park is a must see destination for anyone visiting New Zealand with its fjords, lakes, and waterfalls giving it a unique beauty. As unique as some of the destinations in New Zealand are, the national parks here in Southland will rival and top that of any in the country based on their sheer grandeur. So be sure not to miss the opportunity to at least take a boat ride through either Milford Sound or Doubtful Sound when visiting here.

Lucky Rentals offers campervan rental in Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand. Campervans are an excellent way to check out the country on the open road, and to sleep out in the beautiful natural surroundings that make New Zealand so great.

How To Painlessly Remove $9 Trillion From Our $16 Trillion National Debt

Earlier this month the U.S. Federal government national debt went over the $16 TRILLION threshold during the Demcoratic national convention. This debt level is $5 TRILLION higher than when President Obama took office and will grow anywhere from about $3.4 TRILLION to over $7 TRILLION higher in the next five years if no fundamental change is made to the size, scope, and wasteful spending of the Federal government.

Many credible organizations have done detailed economic scenario analyses of what might happen if nothing is done to change the current trajectory of government spending. Hyperinflation, the collapse and devaluation of the dollar, widespread unemployment, a shrinking economy, draconian cuts to government programs, etc. were part of our discussion. Truly dire consequences if we do not get government growth and wasteful spending under control soon.

But there may be some hope. The following recommendations prove that getting government spending under control is possible, is relatively straight forward, is easy to understand and sell to the American public, and will minimize the economic impact on most American citizens.

Most importantly, the work and analysis on how to do the reduction has already been done by many fine analysis organizations in the U.S. Given that the groundwork as already been laid, we do not have to wait for the political class to get around to doing what has to be done, waiting that will never result in an substantial debt reduction actions.

The data below comes from a wide range of government and non-government sources, representing some heavy analytical work and research into how to make our Federal government more inexpensive, efficient and effective without causing unnecessary harm or hardship to most American citizens. The organizations listed below come from the left to the right side of the political spectrum. Sources for the following government budget cut recommendations include:

•U.S. Public Interest Group

•The National Taxpayer Union

•General Accountability Office

•Congressional Budget Office

•Associated Press

•Senate Reports

•The Cato Institute

•Housing And Urban Development

1) Let's start with the tremendous amount of tax wealth annually lost to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud in the following Federal programs:

•Medicare: $60 - $90 billion

•Medicaid: $30 - $40 billion

•Social Security: $100 billion

•One Federal Unemployment Program: $19 billion

•One Federal Food Stamp Program: $2 - $3 billion

•Total: $172 - $222 billion, midpoint = $197 billion

•Savings over ten years if you eliminated 50% of waste, inefficiencies and fraud - $985,000,000,000

2) Annual uncollected taxes due to the Federal government but not collected from tax evaders: $385 billion

•Savings over ten years if you just reduce the illegal tax evasion by 50% - $1,925,000,000,000 ($1.925 TRILLION)

3) The U.S. has about 84,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Europe, about 30,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in South Korea, and about 25,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Japan, serving defense purposes that were obsoleted decades ago. The Obama administration is about to unnecessarily deploy about 2,500 troops in Australia. If 75% of these troops were brought home, the country would save about about $212,000,000,000 over ten years.

4) If we cancel the production of the V-22 Osprey aircraft because it is over budget, likely to under perform, and has been designated as not critical by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, we would save $6.2 billion over the next five years.

5) If we cancel the production of the F-35 jet fighter which, according to the Sustainable Defense Task Force, "may represent all that is wrong with our acquisition process" and "would provide a capability that is not warranted considering emerging threats," we would save $22.5 billion over the next five years.

6) If we cancel the military Space Tracking and Surveillance System, which can be replaced with lower cost and more reliable options, we would save the Pentagon $5 billion over the next five years.

7) If we cancel the outdated, unreliable, and unneeded Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, because the General Accountability Office has cited the program's history of cost growth, schedule misses (14 years late), and performance failures as reasons for terminating the program, we would save $16.3 billion over the next five years.

8) The General Accountability Office found that the Army, Navy and Air Force are wasting billions of dollars a year by purchasing items that were either never used or were never required. The GAO identified purchasing reform processes that could save $36.9 billion a year or about $369 billion over ten years.

9) Terminating various unneeded corporate welfare programs would produce substantial savings. These programs include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Market Access Program, trade association subsidies for foreign marketing, subsidies to large agriculture business and wealthy farmers, tax credits for the blending of ethanol, the ultra-deepwater natural gas and petroleum research program, public timber sales subsidies, and Southeastern Power Administration. Ending these corporate welfare programs would save about $12 billion a year or about $120 billion over ten years.

10) The Federal government owns more than 55,500 buildings that are either not used or are underused. A detailed analysis suggests that if 50% of these buildings were eliminated over the next five years, not an unrealistic target, savings in the area of $48 billion would be realized.

11) According to government audits of Housing and Urban development, the Federal government wastes about $4.5 billion a year due to bad accounting and billing processes. Fix this problem and save about $45 billion over twelve years.

12) Using conservative estimates, annual earmarks, which are usually nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to fund their re-election campaign with taxpayer money, cost the Federal government about $16 billion a year in unneeded expenses. Eliminating earmarks would save $160 billion over ten years.

13) According to the General Accountability Office:

•The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws.

•It has more than 20 programs helping the homeless.

•It has 80 programs to help economic development.

•It has 82 agencies working on improving teacher quality, few of which are working if you see how poorly American kids are being educated vs. the rest of the world.

•It has 47 agencies working on job training.

•It has 18 programs working on food and nutrition assistance.

This type of redundancy results in tremendous waste and unneeded overhead, duplicate responsibilities, and inefficient service. A formal Senate report and analysis of the situation, estimates that between $100 billion and $200 billion a year could be saved by consolidating and downsizing these functions. If we take the midrange of the estimates, we end up with $1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 TRILLION) in savings over ten years.

14) A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report identified savings in the area of government spending on Science, Space and Technology - savings over ten years - $25.26 billion

15) The same CBO report found Agriculture savings over ten years - $3.87 billion. This does not include the termination of unneeded ethanol subsidies and other farm support programs that are no longer needed, given how well the American farming industry is dong today.

16) CBO - Natural Resources and Environment savings over ten years - $32.23 billion. These savings are mostly concentrated in programs that support corporations, not endangering basic government environmental programs.

17) CBO -Commerce and Housing savings over ten years - $5.42 billion. This does not include the savings that could be found by cutting back on the widespread fraud and mismanagement in government housing programs.

18) CBO - Transportation savings over ten years - $141.64 billion

19) CBO - Community and Regional Development savings over ten years - $21.94 billion

20) CBO - Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services savings over ten years - $45.42 billion

21) CBO - Income Security savings over ten years - $68.83 billion

22) CBO - Veterans Benefits and Services savings over ten years - $21.50 billion

23) CBO - Allowances savings over ten years - $2.54 billion

24) CBO - Administrative of Justice savings over ten years - $10.26 billion

25) CBO - Social Security savings over ten years - $388.52 billion. Part of these savings are compatible with the recommendation from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" which was to raise the retirement age to 70.

Not included the $388 billion is another step which is to uncap the total amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax. The CBO estimates that raising the cap amount the way they want to would provide an additional revenue of $503.4 billion to the Social Security finances over ten years.

This estimate also does not include another Social Security recommendation which was to terminate Social Security payments to anyone whose net worth is over $3 million in assets. People like Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates do not need the checks to live comfortably will not get them.

27) CBO - General Government expense savings over ten years - $5.21 billion

28) Since Obama came into office, the Federal payroll has grown by 231,000 civilian employees despite reduced tax receipts, the lingering impacts of the Great Recession, and the overall dire employment situation throughout the country. Since most of us would agree that we have not seen a corresponding rise in the quality of government service since these people have been hired, getting rid of them, like most efficient businesses would do, would not result in a degradation in Federal government services.

If we conservatively estimate that the weighted taxpayer cost (wages, benefits, and retirement costs) for these newly hired employees is $80,000 a year, than letting them go would result in annual savings of about $18.48 billion a year or $184.8 billion over ten years.

19) In any measure of education attainment, U.S. kids usually fare very poorly when compared to the education received by kids in other countries. Usually, the U.S. is bested by a dozen or more countries when it comes to comparing standardized test results. The Department of Education has been around for about thirty years and has done nothing to change this low performance.

Thus, given its nonperformance, the entire department should be eliminated. Cato suggests that this ill performing government entity be terminated at once, its responsibilities becoming the responsibility of the states to educate their own kids and the American taxpayer can save the annual $107 billion cost of the department. Jpwever, we could put a twist to this termination recommendation.

We should phase out the department over a four year period but would send the department's budget as block grants to the states during that four year phase out. The states could use the block grants to improve the teaching ability of their own state's teachers, improve their technology infrastructure, improve their curriculums, and improve their universities' teacher education curriculum.

At the end of four years, the states would be in a much better position to educate our kids, heaven knows the Federal Department of Education has not done anything worthwhile. 10 year savings - $909.5 billion.

30) Much like the Department of Education, the Federal government's Department of Energy has done nothing to get us to a coherent national energy strategy and policy and has not funded any breakthrough energy technologies. Terminate the entity and let the private market research and development new energy technologies. 10 year savings according to Cato - $382.8 billion.

31) Cato has done similar analyses on just about every other Federal organization, some of which we have already touched on. In order to avoid double counting, we will not go into their agriculture subsidy reductions and military spending reductions, given what we have already identified some of them above.

However, they have identified 10 year savings of $21.2 billion from the Commerce Department and if you conservatively accept only half of their Department of Transportation cuts, you get another 10 year savings of $424.4 billion.

These cuts alone would save the Federal government almost $9 TRILLION in expenses and costs over the next ten years with minimal impacts on needy Americans and ordinary American citizens. The $9 TRILLION does not include additional savings that would come from the following areas:

•More military cuts not listed above. Obama's own deficit reduction commission found that $100 billion a year could be taken out of the Pentagon's annual budget without endangering our national defense. Since the defense cuts suggested above do not add up to $100 billion a year, additional savings in this area are available.

•Reining in Medicare and Medicaid costs beyond the fraud and waste savings listed above.

•Deny Social Security payments in retirement to any American who has a net wealth of over $3 million.

•Savings from interest payments not paid because the Federal government took $9 TRILLION of debt out of play.

•The repeal of Obama Care which would save the country from expending an additional $300 billion over the next ten years, if you believe the recent analysis from the head actuary of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

•The termination of the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government agencies and the associated hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies they are likely to consume in the next ten years.

•Elegantly privatize some government functions such as what Canada and other European countries have successfully done with their national air traffic control processes and postal systems and allow private contractors do the TSA screening function at all U.S. airports. We know from experience that they can do a far better job for less budget money than government employed TSA screeners.

•Elimination of traditional defined benefit pensions for future Federal government hires since most Americans no longer can receive such pensions. Thus, from a fairness perspective, Americans who cannot get a traditional pension should not be subsidizing pensions for government workers.

•Elimination of life long pensions and benefits for past, current, and future Federal politicians. They are in office to serve their country for a limited amount of time, not create a life long revenue and benefit stream for themselves. Besides, given their horrible performance of nonaccomplishments over the past few decades, they do not deserve such rewards.

People far smarter than this article can determine the value of these additional efficiencies in government operations. In fact, Cato has already done all of this work and summarized it at their "Downsizing Government" website. Their comprehensive analysis found a way to reduce annual Federal government spending over time by about $1.16 TRILLION a year, creating a ten year debt reduction of $11.6 TRILLION.

This is in the same ball park of our $9 TRILLION in identified savings and the additional unquantified savings in the list above. Two separate analyses, about the same results, indicating that this is doable without raising taxes on any American, rich or poor.

And while many of these cuts are one time spending reductions, e.g. the cancellation of some military hardware programs, the majority of these spending reductions are ongoing, annual spending reductions that will continue on beyond the ten year window. These include improved tax evasion detection, reduction in criminal fraud in government programs, and a smaller Federal workforce.

Thus, implementation of these changes will help insure that government spending reductions continue on into the foreseeable future and help keep the national debt from ever getting so large again.

The above cuts are a great start. However, one of the first acts of our next President should be to convene a commission of smart Americans that have already analyzed the need for drastically reduced government spending, put them in a room, and have them work together to overlay their plans together to come out with one overall plan, based on their expertise and past experiences in this area.

Members of this commission would be drawn from at least the following organizations:

1.President Obama's defunct and severely underutilized Deficit Reduction Commission

2.The Cato Institute

3.The Concord Coalition

4.The General Accountability Office

5.The Congressional Budget Office

6.The Urban Institute

7.The National Taxpayer Union

8.The U.S. Public Interest Group

9.Bipartisan Policy Center

10.Others TBD

There you have it. Almost $9 TRILLION in ten year savings, savings and deficit reduction that are attained without raising taxes and with minimal financial impact on most Americans except criminals that currently rip off the American taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, defense contractors who are building unneeded military hardware, and unnecessary Federal employees.

And there is potential for more savings from the unquantified further steps listed above, e.g. more military reductions. However, it is unlikely to happen as long as we allow our current set of politicians to continually get reelected. Most of them have been in office too long and have not proven they are able, willing, or competent enough to get the job done.

We need leaders, starting with the President, who are willing to wade into the nitty-gritty working of government to wring out the fraud, incompetence, and inefficiencies that have accumulated over the decades within the Federal bureaucracy.

We need leaders, starting with the President, who are more concerned about the future fiscal integrity of the country than enjoying the overblown perks and benefits of being in office such as photo ops with athletic teams, five week vacations, golf rounds, high salaries for low production, etc.

We need leaders who can pull together and consolidate the budget work already done by the many organizations identified above and can make the sale to the American public that these are cuts are necessarily critical to the continuation of our democracy.

Thus, not only do we need to all of the budget reduction steps outlined and identified above, we also need to implement term limits on all Federal political offices. Those currently serving in Washington are the ones that allowed government spending to get so out of control, they are indeed part of the problem and need to be "reduced" along with government spending, i.e. swept out of office with the rest of the unnecessary Federal bureaucracy.

Walter "Bruno" Korschek is the author of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class," which is availabe at http://www.loathemygovernment.com and onoline at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our daily dialog on freedom in America can be joined at http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com.

Unione Siciliana - (Italo-American National Union)

For many years, people have assumed that the Sicilian crime faction called the Mafia and the Unione Siciliana were one and the same. However, this assumption is not entirely true. At least, not at the beginning.

The Unione Siciliana, a fraternal organization of Sicilian Americans, was first created in 1893 in New York City, and almost simultaneously in Chicago, by legitimate Sicilian businessmen. The original concept of the Unione Siciliana was to provide life and health insurance to Sicilians, who had recently emigrated from Sicily. This insurance was needed because the working conditions at that time were abominable for all workers, but especially for the alien newcomers, who were desperate for work of any kind, no matter how dangerous.

For a small dues, members were able to receive this insurance, as well as other social benefits desired by strangers in a foreign land, who were, by nature, extremely clannish. These social benefits included dances, friendly card games, and a social network where Sicilian men could meet Sicilian women, with the intention of eventually getting married. Soon branches (lodges) of the Unione Siciliana sprung up all over America, in any place that had a sizable Sicilian community. By the 1920, Chicago alone had 38 lodges, and over 40,000 members.

The Unione Siciliana also had a very sizable voting block, which made it attractive to politicians, especially the corrupt political machines in Chicago, and the notoriously crooked Tammany Hall hacks in New York City. The Unione Siciliana threw frequent fund-raising activities for politicians in both cities, making these politicians, when elected, deeply indebted to the leaders of the Unione Siciliana, who were increasing morphing from honest businessmen into criminals of the highest order.

If there was a buck to be made, or a politician to be bought, the Mafia, which also originated in Sicily, knew how to take advantage of the opportunity. At the turn of the 20th Century, the Mafia moved in, both in Chicago and in New York City, to take control of the Unione Siciliana.

In the early 1900's in New York City, the elected President of the Unione Siciliana was a beast-of-a-Mafioso named Ignazio Saietta, also known as "Lupo the Wolf." How a man like Saietta could be elected by honest businessmen to a position of such great influence can only be attributed to Saietta and his followers exerting tremendous pressure on the voters to elect Saietta, or suffer grave consequences.

Saietta, originally from Corleone, Sicily, was also one of the leaders of a Sicilian extortion group known as the Black Hand, which operated exclusively in New York City. Saietta was so feared in the Sicilian communities, Sicilian immigrants were known to make the sign of the cross at the mere mention of his name. The leadership of the Black Hand consisted of the Morello Brothers, Joe and Nick, and Ciro Terranova, who was known as the "Artichoke King." So at the time Saietta became the president of the Unione Siciliana, the Black Hand and the Unione Siciliana became basically one and the same.

Through the membership rolls of the Unione Siciliana, the Black Hand gang members were able to ascertain which Sicilian immigrants were generating income, thereby making these members ripe for a shakedown. Before any violence was perpetrated, the Black Hand sent threatening notes to Sicilian businessmen. On the bottom of the extortion notes, was the imprint of a "Black Hand," which was made by a hand dipped in black ink. However, due to the inroads law enforcement was making with fingerprinting at the time, the "Black Hand" was later drawn instead. If the person who was being extorted did not pay the Black Hand's demands, they were brutally tortured, and sometimes even murdered. If they were lucky, only their places of business was destroyed by explosives.

In 1905, a butcher named Gaetano Costa, got a Black Hand extortion letter, demanding $1,000. Costa was instructed to put the $1,000 into a loaf of bread, and to give it to a man who came into his shop to buy meat, and pulled out a red handkerchief. Costa refused, and the very next day, two men came into his butcher shop and shot Costa to death. No one was charged with the murder, but the police were sure the orders were given by Saietta.

One of the Italians being extorted by the Black Hand was the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso. Caruso was, at first, given an ultimatum to pay $2,000 for his safety. Caruso, knowing the murderous reputation of the Black Hand, agreed to pay that amount. However, before he could pay, Caruso received another letter now demanding $15,000.

The nemeses of the Black Hand was a short, barrel-chested police lieutenant named Joseph Petrosino. Knowing Petrosino was hot on the trail of the Black Hand, Caruso immediately took the second letter to Petrosino. Petrosino told Caruso to make arrangements to drop the money off at a prearranged place. When two Italian men showed up to pick up the money, Petrosino arrested them on the spot.

The magnitude of the atrocities perpetrated by the Black Hand was uncovered, when in 1901, acting on a tip from an informant, Petrosino discovered the infamous "Murder Stables" located at 304, 108th Street in Harlem. Petrosino directed his men to dig up the grounds of the entire stables. He was horrified to discover that 60 bodies were buried there. The landlord of record of the stables was none other than Ignazio Saietta, president of the supposedly respectable Unione Siciliana. When Petrosino questioned Saietta as to the slight problem of so many dead bodies being buried on his property, Saietta played dumb, saying he was only the landlord, and not responsible for the work of his tenants. Saietta provided Petrosino with a bogus list of the tenant's names, all of Italian decent, but Petrosino was not able to locate any of these tenants, if indeed they existed at all.

While investigating the Black Hand's roots in Sicily, on March 12, 1909, Police Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino was shot to death in the piazza of the Garibaldi Garden in Palermo. Petrosino's murder was ordered by the Black Hand members in America, and orchestrated by the head of the Mafia in Sicily - Don Vito Cascio Ferro.

However, Saietta was not so lucky himself. Saietta owned operated, with his partner Joe Morello, a bar/restaurant, at 8 Prince Street, in Manhattan's Little Italy. The joint was actually a front for an extensive counterfeiting operation. Counterfeit two and five-dollar bills were shipped to the restaurant from Sicily, in containers of olive oil, or in crates of spaghetti, cheese, and wine. These counterfeit bills were sold throughout the United States for as little as 30 cents on the dollar. Soon, the U.S. Secret Service caught wind of their operation, and in 1909, both Morello and Saietta were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

After Saietta's incarceration, the presidency of the New York Chapter of the Unione Siciliana changed hands from one thug to another, when in 1918, the crown settled on the head of Brooklynite Frankie Yale, real name Uale. Yale's ascension to the throne put an end to the misguided impression that the Unione Siciliana was an Sicilian-only organization. Yale was born in Calabrian town of Longobucco, Italy, and had no Sicilian roots whatsoever. Not only was Yale president of the New York Chapter of the Unione Siciliana, but due to the influence of his friend Johnny Torrio, a Brooklyn boy who was running Chicago with another Brooklynite Al Capone, in 1925, Yale also became National President of the Unione Siciliana.

But more on Frankie Yale later.

While Ignazio Saietta's Unione Siciliana was prospering in New York City, the Chicago chapters of the Unione Siciliana were also going to the wolves.

In 1902, the Chicago boss of the Mafia was Antonio D'Andrea, an ex-priest who in 1902 was also arrested for counterfeiting. After his release from prison, D'Andrea decided to go straight; at least somewhat straight. D'Andrea got a job as a professional translator, than later as a court translator. In 1919, using his legitimate position in the courts, D'Andrea ran for the presidency of the Unione Siciliana. D'Andrea was somehow elected, despite his criminal record, which tells you all you need to know about the crooked path the Unione Siciliana had taken in Chicago.

In 1921, D'Andrea decided to also run for Alderman in the 19th Ward against entrenched incumbent, John "Johnny de Pow Pow" Powers. That turned out to be not such a great idea.

Powers was an incorrigible saloonkeeper, who was known for his attachments to Chicago's more infamous Irish criminals. The Chicago hoods loved "Johnny de Pow Pow," but those not so-in- love with Powers called him "The Prince of Boodlers." Powers had been the powerful Alderman in the 19th Ward of Chicago since 1888, when almost all his constituents were Irish.

According to the Chicago Times, "The only way Powers can get votes is by hypocritical posing as a benefactor by filling the role of a friend in need when death comes. He has bowed with aldermanic grief at thousand of biers. He is bloodless; personally unattractive. His demeanor is one of timid alertness and anxiety to please, but he is actually autocratic, arrogant, and insolent."

One detractor said, "Johnnie Powers distributed turkeys on Christmas Day, but he has robbed the people 364 days in the year and he can afford to give them a little back on the 365th".

The Chicago Herald also wrote, "Powers is as fit to be an Alderman as an elephant is to take part in a roller-skating match."

By 1921, Italian immigrants had steamrolled into Chicago, so much so, Powers' 19th Ward was now 80% Italian, all with equal voting rights with the Irish. Powers still was successful in getting out the Irish vote, but until this time he had also been very successful with the Italian community.

"I can buy the Italian vote with a glass of beer and a compliment," Powers told his pals.

However, running against the Italian powerhouse D'Andrea, president of the powerful Unione Siciliana, changed the equation considerably for Powers. He decided it was time for more drastic actions.

The campaigning by both men was exciting, to say the least. As both pleaded to their constituents for votes, bombs started exploding at an alarming rate; one on Power's front porch, another at a D'Andrea rally (seriously injuring five people), two more on D'Andrea's front porch, and a final one at D'Andrea's election headquarters.

Councilman James Bowler, a fast pal of Powers, told the press, "Gunmen are patrolling the streets. Alderman Powers' house is guarded day and night. Our men have been met, threatened and slugged. Gunmen and cutthroats have been imported from New York City and Buffalo. It's worse than the Middle Ages."

The election was extremely close, but in the end Powers prevailed by a tiny margin of 435 votes.

However, D'Andrea turned out to be a sore loser, and as a result, the body count began to pile up in the Chicago streets.

Paul Labriola was one of the Italians who had backed Powers. On March 9, 1921, Angelo Genna, of the terrible Genna brothers and an ally of D'Andrea, shot Labriola full on holes on the corner of Halstead and Congress streets. On that same day, cigar store owner Harry Raimondi, who had switched sides from D'Andrea to Powers, was shot five times in the back, behind the counter of his cigar store.

In quick succession, D'Andrea had his men eliminate Powers' loyalists, Gaetano Esposito, Nicolo Adamo, and Paul Notte. Powers' faction countered back by killing Joe Marino and Johnny Guardino, two of D'Andrea's most capable men.

On May 11, 1921, while D'Andrea was playing cards at a local restaurant, three men drove past the entrance to the apartment building where D'Andrea lived with his wife and two daughters - 902 South Ashland Avenue. After the driver parked the car in a narrow alley on the side of the building, the two other men quietly exited the car. They pried open an alley window with a chisel, then crept through a coal bin to the basement stairs. Up the stairs they went, until they stopped at a vacant ground floor apartment right across the hall from D'Andrea's apartment; an apartment they knew was vacant, because they had told the occupant, Abraham Wolfson, to move out, or die.

Shortly after, they watched from an open window facing the street, as D'Andrea's car, driven by his bodyguard Joe Laspisa pulled up to the entrance. D'Andrea got out and walked into the building as Laspisa drove away. As soon as D'Andrea reached the front door of his apartment, the two men opened fire with two shotguns. D'Andrea took the two blasts full in the chest, but he would not go down without a fight. As his two killers exited the building the way they had entered, D'Andrea, lying in a pool of his own blood, fired five times at the fleeing men. But to no avail.

D'Andrea died a few hours later in Jefferson Park Hospital, after telling his wife and daughters, "God bless you."

D'Andrea's demise left a vacancy at the top of the Chicago chapter of the Unione Siciliana, which was quickly filled by Mike Merlo, who was on vacation in Italy when he heard his good friend D'Andrea had run into some bad luck. Merlo was considered a conciliator; someone who felt peaceful negotiations was better than blasting someone with holes. Still, that did not stop Merlo from immediately ordering the murder of the men involved in D'Andrea's killing.

Irishman Dion O'Banion was the head of the notorious North Side Gang, which was in constant conflict with the Italian mob led by Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, over who had the right to sell their illegal booze in which bars in Chicago, and in the surrounding rural areas. However, Merlo, for some unknown reason, liked O'Banion and as long as Merlo, who as president of the Unione Siciliana was as powerful in Chicago as Capone and Torrio, kept O'Banion under his wing, O'Banion life was secure.

Still, O'Banion, who owned and operated a Chicago flower shop on the side, couldn't wait to stick to his supposed Italian friends.

With a broad smile on his handsome Irish face, O'Banion approached Torrio and Capone, and offered to sell them his Sieben Brewery, on the North side of Chicago. The Sieben Brewery, which was under the protection of the North Side cops, had the reputation of producing the best quality beer in the entire state. O'Banion told the two Italian mob bosses that he had made enough money in the illegal hootch business, and that he was quiting completely, and settling with his lovely wife on a obscure ranch in Colorado. Capone and Torrio were delighted at the prospect of buying the brewery, and they didn't even flinch when O'Banion told them the price was half a million dollars. As a gesture of good will, O'Banion offered to assist in the delivery of one last shipment. Then he said he was out and gone for good.

On May 18, 1924, thirteen trucks stood inside the Sieben Brewery, manned by twenty two men. Each truck was loading up to their full capacity with cases of beer, which due to the fact the half a million dollars had already changed hands, now belonged to Torrio and Capone. Two policemen on O'Banion's pad, stood guard to make sure everything went hunky dory. Also on the premises supervising the operation were Torrio, O'Banion, and O'Banion's right hand man Hymie Weiss. Capone was absent because he was on the lam for killing a thug named Joe Howard.

All of a suddenly, before the first truck had left the brewery, an avalanche of cops descended upon the brewery like roaches swarming a loaf of bread. The cop in charge of the raid was a Chief Collins, and in minutes, the beer trucks had been seized, and Torrio, O'Banion, and Weiss were arrested.

The three men were soon released on bail, but Torrio, who was known as "The Fox," smelled a rat. He had cops on his payroll too, and one of them informed Torrio that O'Banion was in on the raid, and only agreed to be arrested to cast suspicion away from himself.

Torrio was further incensed when he was informed that O'Banion was bragging about how he set up the Sieben Brewery raid, saying, "I guess I rubbed that pimp's nose in the mud alright."

Torrio immediately set up a meeting with O'Banion nemeses Angelo Genna and his brothers Mike and Tony, Capone, and himself, to discuss what to do about O'Banion. The group unanimously voted to whack O'Banion. However, Torrio did caution the group that Mike Merlo, the powerful president of the Unione Siciliana, was still in O'Banion's corner. Angelo Genna told Torrio not to worry. Merlo was deathly sick with cancer, and, in fact, would die on Saturday, November 8, 1924, less than a week after the meeting. Frankie Yale, still the head of the National Unione Siciliana, flew in from New York City, and he appointed Angela Genna the new head of the Chicago chapter of the Unione Siciliana. Yale also renamed the group the "Italo-American National Union," thereby justifying the fact that he, a Calabrese, could rightfully be the president of the former Sicilian-only organization.

With Merlo out of the way, the Chicago mob, with the blessing of the Italo-American National Union, planned O'Banion's demise.

Merlo's funeral was, up until that time, the biggest funeral in Chicago history. More than $100,000 worth of flowers were ordered, and as a result, O'Banion's flower shop was bombarded with requests for numerous flower displays. On Sunday, November 9, O'Banion and his partner William Schofield spent the entire day in their flower shop weaving lilies, roses, orchids, and carnations into wreaths of various sizes. Capone had ordered $8,000 worth of red roses, and Torrio placed an order for $10,000 worth of various types of flowers and floral displays

Near closing time on Sunday, Angelo Genna phoned the flower shop and told Schofield that he needed to order another wreath, and that he would come to pick it up the following day. The vast amount of orders necessitated Schofield and several of his employees to stay up almost the entire night fulfilling their floral obligations.

At around noon on Monday, O'Banion was alone in the back room of the flower shot clipping the stems off chrysanthemums. The only other person in the flower shop was a black porter named William Crutchfield, who was busy sweeping up the mess from the day before. Suddenly, three men entered the shop. Two of Torrio's men, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were familiar to O'Banion, but the third man was a total stranger.

O'Banion came out of the back room and said, "You boys here for Merlo's flowers?"

The stranger was none other than Frankie Yale, who had been imported to Chicago once before, to eliminate Torrio's uncle-through-marriage and Chicago mob boos "Big Jim" Colosimo. Colosimo's sudden demise paved the way for Torrio and Capone to take over the town.

Yale extended his hand to O'Banion, "Yes, we are here for the flowers."

O'Banion took Yale's hand, when suddenly, Yale yanked O'Banion's hand toward him, and pinned both of O'Banion arms to O'Banion's sides. Before O'Banion could extricate himself, Scalise and Anselmi fired six bullets into O'Banion. Two blasted into O'Banion's chest, another hit him in the cheek, and two more buried themselves into O'Banion's larynx. The final shot, which was the capper, embedded itself in O'Banion's brain. The guns had been fired at such close range, there were scorch marks on O'Banion's face.

O'Banion's funeral was even bigger than Merlo's funeral. O'Banion's coffin, which was made of solid silver with bronze double walls, cost $10,000 alone; four times more than the average yearly pay of a Chicago wage-earner.

After Merlo's death, being the head of the Chicago chapter of the Italo-American National Union (formerly the Unione Siciliana), was the kiss of death. Within a year, Angelo Genna was murdered by members of O'Banion's North Side mob. Genna's place was taken by Samuzzo "Samoots" Amatuna, who was killed within a few months after he took Genna's place, by another North Side mobster, Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci.

After Amatuna's demise, Capone, who was now the Chicago boss due to Torrio's retirement, inserted one of his pals, Antonio Lombardo, as boss of the Chicago chapter of the Italo-American National Union. This was done without the blessing of Frankie Yale, who would not be Capone's friend much longer. It seemed that Yale had wanted to appoint Joe Aiello as the new boss of the Italo-American National Union in Chicago. Aiello was not too friendly with Capone, and in Yale's opinion, was more likely to pay the proper tribute to Yale in New York city rather than Lombardo, who was closely aligned with Capone.

Yale and Capone were now at cross-purposes, and if Capone needed another excuse to whack Yale it was presented to him in the spring of 1928. Capone and Yale were partners in the distribution of illegal whiskey, which was sold in the Chicago speakeasies, and speakeasies in the rural suburbs. The booze would arrive from Canada, and was transported through New York in trucks, on it's way to Capone in Chicago. It was Yale's duty to ensure the safety of those shipments. However, Capone was dismayed to discover that some of his trucks were being hijacked on route from New York City to Chicago by none other than Yale himself.

On Sunday afternoon, July 1, 1928, Frankie Yale was sitting comfortably in his Sunrise Club, located on 14th Avenue and 65th Street in Brooklyn. Suddenly the phone rang and Yale was informed that his new wife Lucy was in some sort of predicament concerning their year-old daughter. Yale associate Joe Piraino offered to drive Yale home, but Yale refuse the offer. Instead he jumped into his new light-brown Lincoln and headed down New Utrecht Avenue. The Lincoln had been bullet-proofed, but not the windows, which turned out to be a fatal mistake.

At 44th Street, Yale stopped at a red light, and he noticed that a black Buick occupied by four men were following him. Yale jumped on the gas, turned down 44th Street, and a wild chase ensued. The Buick managed to pull alongside Yale's car and the four men opened fire. Yale was hit by a barrage of bullets fired through the window of his car. The weapons used were two.45 caliber revolvers, two sawed-off shotguns, and a new invention called the Tommy Gun, or Thompson Submachine Gun, which fired bullets from a.45 caliber, 20-round magazine. Yale's car swerved out of control and crashed into the stoop of a house located at 923 44th Street. When the police arrived minutes later, Yale was indeed very dead.

The death of Frankie Yale greatly reduced the need for and the influence of the Italo-American National Union. In Chicago, Capone ran the town, and he soon eliminated both Lombardo and Aiello with bullets. In 1930, Capone put in Agostino Loverdo as the new president of the Italo-American National Union. Loverdo lasted until 1934, which by this time, Capone had already been sent to prison in 1932 on an income tax evasion charge. In 1934, former Capone bodyguard Phil D'Andrea was appointed boss of the Chicago Italo-American National Union by Frank Nitti, who was now running Capone's old crew.

In New York City, after the death of Yale, there was no real boss of the Italo-American National Union. After the Castellamarese War eliminated both Joe "The Boss" Masseria and his successor Salvatore Maranzano, Lucky Luciano became the head of the Italian Mafia and his used the concept of the Italo-American National Union to start a National Crime Syndicate, which included Jewish mobsters, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Louis Lepke. Irishman Owney Madden was also part of the Syndicate. So in effect, in New York City the Italo-American National Union, formerly the Unione Siciliana, ceased to exist.

In Chicago, Phil D'Andrea kept the Italo-American National Union loosely in place until he dissolved it in 1941, due to the lack of interest from it's members. However, after the dissolution of the Italo-American National Union, the Mafia continued to remain strong in New York City and in Chicago, as well as in other major cities throughout America. The Mafia continues to thrive today as it did in the Roaring Twenties heyday of the Unione Siciliana.

You can view my Author website with all my fiction and non fiction writings at:
http://josephbrunowriter.com.

In addition, you can view my blog Joe Bruno on the Mob at:
http://joebrunoonthemob.wordpress.com/

National Nurses Day Celebration - May 6 Every Year- Thank Your Nurses And Nominate Them To Win Award

National Nurses Day on May 6 in the USA is a wonderful opportunity to honor Nurses throughout the profession. This is a profession that proliferates our lives from birth to death and with bittersweet emotions. Hospital Nurses work long arduous hours to cure the ill without the honor and benefits of many other occupations. They are often silent in their endeavors; yet, they are there when your Doctor is not!

We are all dependent on Nurses in many areas of our lives; school nurses help us, occupational nurses are there for our immediate injuries, emergency room nurses offer stat care to reverse many dangerous traumatic situations for us and our relatives and relieve our worries, home care nurses offer the opportunity to remain in our environment during illness, amusement park nurses provide first aid services, case managers are to act as our advocates with insurance companies, legal nurses can offer opinions on care or after care and even on lawsuits for poor care.

Some Nurses are visible in health newspaper columns such as some that I have written for newspapers and even on television as producers and hosts to inform the public. Some nurses are authors such as on the book" Nurses On Our Own" IUniverse publishers offering a unique perspective into the mystical land of the psychiatric unit, movie sets and home care visits as well as professional relationships with Doctors and the Police.

Where would we be without Nurses from the moment we are born to the moment we pass on , they hold a special place in the hearts of soldiers, children and the senior communities. We could remember them with awards such as Nurse of the Year Contests at AmericaNurse.com (not AmericanNurse) or by recognizing them on Calendars, sending flowers, sending special Nurses Day Cards and Thanking them for their dedication and sacrifice with their knowledge and emotions which enrich all of our lives. You may nominate a special Nurse at asktvnurse@yahoo.com who may be chosen for a TV appearance with Karon Gibson, R.N. on Outspoken with Karon TV Show in Chicago and California. Phone is 815 773 4497. Karon is a speaker on this issue and others. Info at AmericanTVProductions.com

Karon Gibson, R.N. CCM is a Registered Nurse with entrepreneurial skills. She has been the ER Charge Nurse and Psychiatric Head Nurse in Hospitals as well as the creator and President of an Independent Nursing Practice Business in Home Care and Consulting. As an occupational health Nurse, she worked with many TV stations and major motion pictures such as Risky Business, Doctor Detroit and others. She has written newspaper columns in Chicago. As winner of many awards in business and Nursing, she has provided a forum for the public to learn new and innovative health care trends and options in natural health health on TV and radio. As coauthor of NURSES ON OUR OWN, she offers inside information and insight on the health care system. As a speaker on Nursing and Business as well as A CPR for crime, she has taught men, women, children and seniors much information on wellness as well as illness. She has a wealth of information on alternative care treatments such as endermology, reflexology and irology. She is available at http://AmericanTVProductions.com or call 815 773 4497. A TV/HOST & SPEAKER!

FOX News Logic Knows No Bounds, Even When It Comes to National Security

The recent uproar from the right over the T.S.A.'s tight security measures should come as no surprise, staggering as it may seem. When conservative commentators started calling Afghanistan "Obama's Vietnam" at the very beginning of his presidency, well before he even drew up his war strategy, it became clear to me that there's nothing he can do to avoid hypocritical and vicious attacks from the right. I loved to say at the time that theoretically, even if Obama were to embrace conservative policies, capture Bin Laden, kill every member of Al Qaeda and usher in an era of everlasting peace, conservatives would still paint him as soft on terror, a friend of terrorists, indecisive, and obsessed with expanding the reach of big brother.

As it happens, history has borne me out. The right has ridiculed him for implementing many supposedly conservative policies such as tax cuts, a hawkish counterterrorism agenda, aiding small businesses, building on Bush's No Child Left Behind, creating high risk insurance pools, cutting health care costs and organizing a bi-partisan budget deficit committee. Nothing matters. The only pretense of an exception is that the Republicans have largely voted in support of the Afghanistan war, but, true to form, they managed to do so in a way that opposes the President's plan by criticizing him for developing an exit strategy and pledging to withdraw troops as early as possible.

In this vein, a New York Times Op-Ed called "Politicizing Airport Security" describes how this form of FOX News logic is playing out in the pseudo-debate over the T.S.A.'s efforts to secure our airports. Mike Huckabee has called the scanners and pat-downs "unconstitutional," audaciously challenging the President to subject his family to the intrusive procedures, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas thinks T.S.A. agents belong at the Mexican border instead of at airports.

In addition, a popular conservative talking point has it that we should implement racial profiling in place of the "degrading" practices currently in use. This idea has been embraced by Huckabee, Pete Hoekstra, who will become the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence in January, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. The latter, one of the most disgraceful figures America has ever produced, eloquently expressed her support for profiling via Twitter, as the Times reports: "TSA: why politically incorrect 2 'profile' anyone re: natl security issues? We profile individuals/suspects in other situations! Profile away."

I characterize all these "objections" as FOX News logic because they are all shamefully lacking in consistency and/or truth. Although there is a real debate over whether the T.S.A.'s behavior is unconstitutional, was it any less unconstitutional before Obama became president? Though the searches may be more prevalent now, the constitutional argument remains as strong or weak as it ever was, and the issue was never a mainstream concern for conservatives like Huckabee before.

As for Rick Perry's urging the T.S.A. to prioritize securing the Mexican border over airports, leaving aside the fundamental absurdity of such a suggestion, the government currently has 20,000 Border Patrol agents deployed (compared to 9,000 in 2001) as a result of Bush's Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which has added 2,000 new agents per year since it was initiated. In addition, Obama has not only upheld that total while cutting costs for the program but has also ordered 1,200 additional National Guard troops to help.

The racial profiling line is particularly laughable because aside from being abhorrent, the T.S.A. already engages in profiling, as The Times explains.

As always, the real issue is that conservatives will attack everything Obama does. There was once a time when politicians understood that national security should trump petty politics. But, as the Republicans' blatantly partisan resistance to the START treaty with Russia further attests, that ideal, much like the existence of moderate Republicans, is a thing of the past.

For source and more articles check out my blog:

http://scholarlywritingreviewed.com/

A recent graduate of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, I consider myself a student of Melville and Shakespeare. Particularly, my fascination with Moby Dick has sparked a broader interest in many fields such as politics, history, science, economics, etc, since that novel deals with disparate disciplines and issues in an encyclopedic, yet accessible manner.

My blog is designed to direct readers to cool articles and books about a wide range of topics such as climate change, financial crisis, terrorism, Obama, etc that are well worth checking out. My commentary is meant to stand on its own, even for readers who have not looked at the works upon which my analyses are based. The ultimate goal is to generate engaging discussions...

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The National Federation of Roofing Contractors

Like many other countries, the United Kingdom has its own association for roofing contractors. The National Federation of Roofing Contractors is a London-based group founded by 40 slate merchants and slaters. It has branches all over the United Kingdom and is divided into eight regions. They strive to provide industrial-level roofing for the houses and buildings of the country. It only applies to Englandn and has no branches in other countries. We will discuss the history and mission of the National Federation of Roofing Contractors, including how it was formed and how it came to be what it is today.

The federation was originally formed by a group of slaters and slate merchants all the way back in 1892. The first meeting of the group was the next year, and a couple of months after they decided to make themselves an official association. At first they called called themselves the London Association of Slate Merchants and Master Slaters. But, after a few years of consistent and steady growth, they changed their name. It grew past the local level as the years went by and the association ultimately became a national federation.

Now, it is a major roofing company in the United Kingdom. It contains eight different regions of the United Kingdom with its headquarters located in London. The association has a mission to ensure the best quality roof work available in the country as well as providing the proper insurance and warranties. It has proven itself to be a very reliable roofing association over the years.

In value, the National Federation of Roofing Contractors holds over 60 precent of the country's roofing industrial work and contractors. It is the biggest supplier of tiles and shingles in the nation. They constantly strive to produce industrial-grade tiles and hire only the best contractors. The Federation has come a long way from the original group of 40 slaters and slate merchants back in 1892.Starting as a humble meeting of slaters and slate merchants, they have grown to a nationally recognized association. It controls 60% of the United Kingdom's roofing industry and it provides proper insurance and warranties as well as hires quality roofing contractors. The association is based in London, but it controls eight regions across the United Kingdom. For anybody living in the United Kingdom, the National Federation of Roofing Contractors is the place to go for all his or her roofing needs.

Gottlieb Wendehals owns and operates http://www.roofing-contractor-search.com
Roofing Contractor

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, also referred to as the NHTSA, is a government agency that is part of the United States Department of Transportation. The NHTSA was formed in 1970 with the passage of the Highway Safety Act of 1970. The NHTSA also dates back to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 and the Highway Safety Act of 1966. It also has ties to the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act of 1971. The NHTSA's mission statement on their website states that their main focus is "to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce traffic-related health care and other economic costs."

The NHTSA operates under three main areas; research, information and education, and funding other research. The NHTSA is responsible for writing and enforcing safety, theft-resistance, and fuel economy standards for motor vehicles. It is also responsible for licensing vehicle manufacturers and importers, allows or blocks the import of vehicles and safety regulated vehicle parts, administers the VIN system, develops the dummies used in crash test safety as well as the standards for those tests, and provides vehicle insurance cost information.

Since the inception of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration highways deaths in the United States have declined almost annually. Since the year 1960, the number of deaths per miles travelled has declined incredibly. The current number of deaths per year on United States roads hovers around 40,000. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has also expanded to include consumer information programs as well. One of the main reasons for the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was due to public pressure in the United States to create safer automobiles. One of the provisions by Congress made it a law to install safety belts in all newly manufactured vehicles. The meetings held by Congress occurred in 1966 and those same meetings produced the creation of the United States Department of Transportation.

Prior to the creation of the NHTSA, all vehicles being imported to the United States had to meet standards that were set by the ECE. The ECE is short for the Economic Commission for Europe. They are called the ECE Regulations for vehicle design, construction, and safety performance. Once the United States government created and placed into effect the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety standards, any vehicles meeting the ECE safety standards but not the United States standards were no longer permitted to be imported into the country for sale.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also responsible and is legally allowed to perform safety investigations of any safety problems with vehicles imported into the country as well as vehicles that are manufactured within the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also works in conjunction with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to provide American drivers with the most safety information about their vehicles and the roadways as possible. The NHTSA is working on a proposal to mandate that all vehicles by the model year 2012 have Electronic Stability Control equipped on them.

Car Rental Durham

Rent Car Durham

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week started February 22nd and goes through February 28, 2009. March 1st sees the opening of the Women's Center for Healthy Living at Lakeview Health Systems in Jacksonville, Florida. This will help to publicize the seriousness of this disease and the general attitudes that prolong the suffering of those afflicted. Organizations all across the country will use this week as a platform to help the general public understand the affects produced by the behaviors of the sufferers. People must understand that eating disorders are not a life style choice but a serious sometimes fatal disease. What may appear to have started as a preoccupation with food or body image is undoubtedly centered in issues of self-esteem or physical or psychological abuse.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week will be an annual event designed to highlight all arrears of concern associated with this disease. Eating Disorder agencies will make a concerted effort to better educate employers, medical workers and those in the education field. Education must not be limited to only symptoms and treatment but also to the lack of insurance coverage available to insure proper treatment. Changes have been mandated by congress but will not go into effect until 2010. 

Eating Disorder Treatment facilities like the one opening in Jacksonville are capable of helping to cure this disease but it is up to the family and friends to identify and convince one suffering to admit themselves. With a combined effort we can educate those around us to the seriousness and plight of eating disorder sufferers.

 

Dan C's career in the addiction field spans twenty-five years. He has held positions in all phases of administration and clinical services in Treatment Facilities throughout the state of Florida. He is currently employed by http://www.recoveryconnection.org

Restoring The National Mojo

On Wall Street (the free part, not the occupied territory) they talk about "animal spirits." Economists measure consumer and business confidence. Politicians track approval ratings like batting averages. Business schools teach entrepreneurship alongside marketing, finance and accounting.

These are all aspects of our national mojo - the seemingly innate American confidence that notwithstanding today's problems, tomorrow will be better if we work hard enough to make it so.

Our mojo has taken a big hit lately. We ought to ask ourselves why - and, more importantly, what we can do to get it back.

Let's start with a few obvious explanations for its decline, on the theory that being obvious does not automatically make them wrong - though it doesn't make them completely right, either. This is a big, complicated country. Anything as large as the national spirit is going to be the product of a lot of factors.

But we can be confident that the crash in housing and stock prices that began a few years ago has played a major role in undermining our self-assurance. Economists Karl Case, Robert Shiller and John Quigley used the dramatic decline in housing prices to update an earlier study about the "wealth effect" that encourages consumers to spend money when their net worth increases. As reported in a recent New York Times article, the economists, unsurprisingly, found that there also is a negative wealth effect; consumers pull back on spending when asset values drop. Also, less intuitively, the negative effect is bigger for a drop in home values than a drop in stock portfolios. (1)

So the sharp drop in home values has a lot to do with the economy's slow rebound, because it makes a lot of people feel poorer, even if their disposable income, which comes mainly from paychecks rather than houses, has not changed.

We might speculate that there is another psychological component at work. A lot of people who bought property during the recent boom thought they were savvy investors, only to discover that they had fallen into a trap long familiar to stock traders. That trap is summed up in the phrase, "never confuse brains with a bull market." I suspect people feel not only poorer thanks to the housing crash, but less sure of their own financial acumen. (A decent level of humility is a good thing in the long run, but it does not make for a fast recovery from a market crash.)

Then there is the sense that we are not making progress on the day's major economic and social issues. Unemployment lingers at painfully high levels. The federal government relentlessly spends $100 billion more than it takes in every month, a total annual deficit - and addition to the national debt - of more than $1.3 trillion, which has held that dreadful pace for three years running. Health care remains a flashpoint as insurance costs continue to climb for families and businesses. Students and their families are burdened with debt that may take a lifetime to repay, with little chance for relief even in bankruptcy. A quarter-century of arguing over immigration law has produced no solutions.

A lot of people across the political spectrum feel alienated and angry. So what do we do about it?

For starters, let's recognize that we have been in straits this dire - and worse - in the past. Think this country is polarized now? Consider the Civil War, or the protests of the 1960s. Today's politics are a love fest by comparison.

Think we've lost our national will? We've waged a 10-year war on terrorists and their sponsors, and they have had a far worse year than we did. We have waged this struggle through Republican and Democratic administrations. For contrast, consider the beginning of the 1940s. After a decade of Depression, this country stood frozen while Nazis invaded Poland, captured Paris and blitzed London. Only the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor mustered the national will to resist a world where tyrants slaughtered millions of innocents.

Sometimes a nice winnable little war provides a helpful morale boost. President Reagan helped banish the national malaise over Vietnam by invading the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983. I'm not advocating another invasion, especially since we have plenty of military action these days anyway. But that dreary North American winter is almost upon us. Just making an observation.

More usefully, Reagan found ways to work with Congress to change tax policy, unshackle business and put reasonably long-term fixes in place on immigration and Social Security. His budget deficits soared, but they pale in comparison to ours. And his policy changes gave business executives something they could plan with and count on. Nowadays, tax laws and Social Security changes expire faster than unpasteurized milk. Nobody can count on anything.

If we want to shake the national malaise, we have to confront our problems rather than continue our recent game of "extend and pretend" that things are going to get better on their own. We can't fix everything overnight, but we can start. Things have to stop getting worse before they can get better.

What if we can't agree on how to fix things? Well, that's why we have elections. We'll have one next year, and I suspect that one way or another, it's going to produce enough of a mandate to allow things to move forward. I won't like the direction that everything moves, and neither will you. But after the stagnation of the last few years, it will be progress.

I suppose that is what it takes for a country to rediscover its mojo. We never arrive at a perfect future, but our history has been that we do arrive, if sometimes haltingly, at a better one.

Source:

1) The New York Times, "Gloom Grips Consumers, and It May Be Home Prices"

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The National Debt Helpline And The Services It Offers

The National Debt Helpline is primarily a telephone service that provides free debt help, advice and information to people in the UK. It is part of the Money Advice Trust, which is a registered charity that tries to promote the availability of free debt help for people with financial problems.

The National Debt Helpline also has an extensive website, which offers a host of written advice, guides and fact sheets that can be downloaded free of charge. One of the most useful of these is the guide to producing your own personal budget. This is the key starting point in dealing with any debt problem.

If you work with a debt management company or other professional advisor, they will always start by analysing your current income and expenditure to see what you can afford to put towards your debts. You can do this yourself too if you know how, and the fact sheet on the National Debt Helpline website takes you through the process step by step.

The personal budget guide includes a blank budget for that you can use to fill in all the details of your finances. You start off with your income, adding details of all the income you receive. This obviously includes any wages from work that you do, but you also need to remember things like tax credits, income support, child benefit, any maintenance payments you receive and any other income you get.

Then you complete the expenditure section, detailing all the things you spend money on. It can be surprisingly tricky to remember everything you have to spend money on over the course of a year, so the guide is a great help in setting out most of the possible types of expenditure you could have.

You need to decide whether to do your personal budget on a weekly or monthly basis. How you get paid and deal with your bills will have a bearing on this and be a factor in deciding which option is best for you. In addition to obvious expenses such as mortgage, rent, gas, electricity and water rates, you also need to build in things that you may not spend money on every week or every month. These could include clothing, life insurance, car insurance, road tax, TV licence, holidays, prescriptions, etc.

By using the personal budget plan provided by the National Debt Helpline, you can begin to get a very accurate picture of your financial situation. Understanding exactly where you money is going, and how much you can afford to pay towards any debts you have is an essential starting point for dealing with debt problems. You will need this information to prove to your creditors that you cannot afford to repay your debts in full, and to justify making reduced payments towards them.

For more information on the National Debt Helpline visit the author's Help With Debt website, which offers free, unbiased advice on a range of debt related issues, including IVAs and using debt settlement companies.

The National Debt

On June 7th 2011 the National Debt reached 14.3 Trillion Dollars, (According to the big debt clock.) As I tried to grasp this number and get an understanding of it, I could not. I then decided to reduced the numbers down to something that I could understand. The average household income for 2009 was $49,477 so I decided to see what an average household would look like financially compared to the U.S. Government.

If the government were the average household making $50,000 a year, it would be like a family living above their means and spending $83,000 a year with a debt load of $265,000. There may be some families that only make $50,000 and own a home with a mortgage of $265,000, but I don't know any. Spending $83,000 a year I believe is fairly common for someone that lives in quarter million dollar home. If one partner lost their job, then I could see where they could be in this situation. On the other hand for someone to live year after year spending more than they earn, accumulating debt at a $33,000 or more a year does not seem likely.

A family that finds them self in this mess, would not increase their spending, but look for ways to cut back and sell what ever they could to lower the debt.

The other alternative would be to get a higher paying job or a second job. For the average American, this may not be possible with the current unemployment levels. The Government on the other hand, could and more than likely will raise taxes to increase the level of income. Cap and trade is a good example and is forecasted by the government to produce 73 Billion a year starting in 2012. This is listed in the Proposed Budget by Category as Climate revenues.

Corporation income taxes are also projected to more than double by 2012 from the 2010 levels. But with most everything else increasing, the deficit is expected to remain well over $600 billion a year, adding to the National Debt.

Our family in the example would not able to extend their credit and would have to take drastic steps in order to survive. I am not so sure that our government is prepared to do the same.

On February 6, 2007, The director of OMB Robert Portman testified before the House of Representatives about the current trends of the National Debt not being sustainable.

He predicted that by 2040 discretionary spending, interest and mandatory spending will overcome all other spending for defense, homeland security and education. He stressed a balanced budget and reducing spending growth by $96 billion over five years.

Now four years later our 2011 National debt is $14.3 Trillion compared to $8.7 Trillion on the date of his testimony.

Suggestions for families and governments in debt.

First, cut back on spending, sell any asset that is costing money that is not required in order to survive. Government should get out of the mortgage market and sell Freddie and Fanny to private or public corporations. Medicare and Medicaid together take in $189 Billion and pay out $736 billion, turning this over to private insurance companies would reduce the Deficit by $547 Billion alone. Make major cuts in Non-defense discretionary spending. Currently the government is over budget for 2010 in the amount of $110 Billion with more estimated each year. Government just like families must learn to stay within their budgets.

The government owns vast amount of land and mineral rights, much of this could be sold and placed into productive use and the proceeds used to reduce the debt.

Second, don't bite the hand that feeds you. Corporate and Individual income taxes (including Social Security payroll taxes and Unemployment insurance), make up 84% of the income. Passing any laws that may reduce or harm the working force must be avoided. On the other hand passing laws that encourage Corporate growth will provide more jobs.

Third, turn Social Security over to private investment companies willing to bid on high rates of return. Investing with a return of only 6.5% would erase the deficit in 2010 for Social Security and provide growth in the fund in future years. Or allow individuals to invest their own Social Security funds.

The Social Security Trust Fund, (Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund), is currently invested in Treasury authorized "special obligations" purchased exclusively by the trust fund. The rate of interest on special obligations is the average market yield on long-term U.S. obligations. The problem with this is that we are paying for this through the interest on the National Debt instead of private investments.

The gross Federal debt includes amounts owed to Federal trust funds, including the Social Security trust funds. New Treasury obligations cannot be issued to the trust funds if doing so would cause the debt limit to be exceeded. This limit is about to be reached, the time has come to start investing the trust fund in private investments.

The National Debt changes each day and may increase or decrease depending on securities that may come due. The debt to the penny on 7/7/2011 is $14,343,021,925,343.11. The treasury will also have to hold the debt down to the current limit of $14.294 Trillion until Congress approves a higher level of debt. They will be able to hold the debt down for a while by selling securities and moving funds around. However as pressure builds Congress will be forced to increase the limit again.

It does not take a Phd to see how big of a mess we are in. If I can look at this and see what is wrong, anyone should be able to.

Please visit my web page at: http://hubertcrowell.name/

Internet Advantages Overlooked by National Brokerage General Agency

A NATIONAL BROKERAGE AGENCY MISSES THE OPPORTUNITY. Google and the internet are national and even international. This means Google's Adwords used by local, state, and regional agent recruiters automatically are put at an disadvantage. For example, look at a smaller regional advertiser with a territory of Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

If their contract is for this area, any response they would receive from California or Florida would be totally useless. Half of them, still do not truly understand this. The purchase by bidding to get one of the top slots for key phrases like individual major medical.. After a few dozen calls outside their territory come in from visitors seeing their website, they finally get the hint. The keywords they bid on must be more exact. Or no sales.. "Maryland individual major medical", or "major medical insurance Virginia" must be used for their key Google AdSense word phrases. This usually increases the bidding costs, and also their advertising budget.

The National Brokerage General Agency can purchase keywords to target agent responses such as: best income indexed annuity, fixed income indexed annuity, fixed premium indeed annuity, or top return income indexed annuity. Advertising keywords prompt an internet searcher to go to a page directly on your internet site. This landing page should then give the agent more product info and how to contract for contracting. The National Brokerage Agency however is guilty of not spending some money for Google sending traffic their way, and also for not having pages designed with the agent in mind.

The 3rd opportunity, although a tough one to avoid all the scam operations, is the use of a quality internet Email list of insurance agents nationally. 4 hours of intense searching the internet resulted in finding only one firm who seem reputable in providing an Email list both high enough in quality, and backed by a good reputation at a fair price. Instead of 6 cents each on a questionable list and source, we located one charging 1 ½ cents each, $1,500 for 100,000 emails.

Since the National Brokerage General Agency firms average a few years behind the times, many of them are taking on the responsibility for far too much territory than they can handle. They should turn their attention to finding a mailing list compiler skilled in providing them with a target list of quality annuity brokers. Yes a more refined list might cost them $20-$30 per thousand agent names more. Instead procrastination sets in along with the unwillingness to spend money on either precise internet or direct mail recruiting to agents. Magazine Ads do NOT recruit agents, but excellent recruiters can recruit excellent agents. This is sometimes why a regional firm that understands direct marketing ends up being more profitable.

While National firms are still in the twentieth century, now is the perfect time for state and regional firms to steal more than their share of producing independent agents and brokers.

You have heard the saying that the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Don Yerke likes to concentrate on what you don't already know and what no one else dares to print. Tell it like it is, and more people listen. Besides writing articles, Don is the founder and adviser at Agents Insurance Marketing. The website address is [http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com] You find in pages after pages of info lots of facts, tips, tricks, industry secrets, advice, insight, news, and articles. Check out the website now. If subjects such as lead quality, lead generation, agent training, recruiting, direct marketing, insurance marketing, lead sources, sales pitches, or successful sales results appeal to you, then it's a website worth bookmarking.

Team National MLM Home Business Review

Team National Review - What is Team National?

Team National, also sometimes referred to as National Companies, is a debt-free network marketing company (or MLM home business) founded in 1997 by Dick Loehr. Located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the company is a legitimate business as evidenced by their multiple designations and associations: members of the Direct Selling Association (DSA), a Registered Member of Dunn & Bradsteet (D&B), a Member of the US Chamber of Commerce and a Member of the Better Business Bureau of Southeast Florida (BBB), with strong endorsements from people like best selling author & leadership development coach John Maxwell, among others.

The Team National MLM Home Business "Product":

While most MLM home business companies market a product or service to generate revenue, Team National is different in that it markets a membership, saving people money on a wide variety of products and services in over 20 different industries. Since 1997, total membership and product sales is approaching $1 billion.

The idea behind developing a company to provide benefits and services - now called membership savings - came as Dick envisioned an MLM home business program allowing anyone who owns a membership package to enjoy similar discount buying power as a Fortune 500 company. Starting with only a few basic discounts - savings on oil changes and new car purchases - the Team National MLM home business now offers substantial savings on everything from small everyday items (household goods, business supplies, eye-ware, etc) to larger once-in-a-while type items like jewelry, home furnishings and vehicles.

They break up the savings into 4 different divisions:

1. Factory Direct (up to 65% savings on items like jewelry and home furnishings)

2. Group Buying Power - savings on:


New and used cars, parts and service; motorcycles, ATVs, personal watercraft, etc
Financial services - home mortgage, wealth planning, debt management
Health discount benefit plans - vision, dental, hearing, teledoc, chiropractic, etc
Rental Vehicles
Communication & Entertainment Services - long distance, phone, hi-speed internet, satellite, etc
Business savings - credit card processing, check processing, etc
Travel Services
Insurance Services
An exclusive product line - automotive, nutritional supplements, skin care, etc

3. Business Exchange - save at thousands of local and small businesses across the country

4. E-Commerce - up to 30% commissions from over 100 popular and brand-name retail stores with a Team National website

The Team National MLM Home Business Opportunity:

Although the company's membership program clearly demonstrates great value and is rather unique in the industry, distributors - or IMDs (Independent Marketing Directors) as they're referred to - who focus primarily on selling the membership or aspects of the membership in order to get sales will not make much money with Team National. As with all MLM home businesses, MLM and internet home based businesses, creating a long-term, thriving, walk-away residual income requires leverage in the form of team building. By building teams, you're able to leverage your efforts, time, resources and energy to get not just a few membership packages purchased, but rather to get hundreds and thousands of memberships purchased through your network or team from which you receive your override so-to-speak (just like a real estate or insurance broker receives an "override" on the sales of their agents).

The optional earnings (Team National compensation plan) they offer is also one of the better ones in the industry due to the amount of money Team National pays out. This is because the company pays out 72% of the memberships back to the Independent Marketing Directors in the form of commissions and bonuses with their hybrid binary structure. This unusually high compensation amount is due to the fact that there is no product markup or profit margin added onto the price of the membership. The membership value comes from the large volume of Team National members which enables the company to negotiate these savings based on the group's high-volume buying power (similar to a co-op). Each new membership sold doesn't really incur any direct cost to the company (as opposed to companies that are primarily product-based which obviously incur the cost of producing, manufacturing and shipping the products they market). This again is one main advantage Team National has over its rivals in the industry.

Highlights of the Team National MLM Home Business compensation plan:

As discussed previously, the Team National business model as with most network marketing companies, pays out the most for those who build teams (which in turn gets more memberships purchased). Using their hybrid-binary structure, they pay out between $25-$100 for every membership sale. In addition, Team National has created a points system where on average 4 membership sales in each leg of the binary will produce a $1,500 check as often as weekly (see compensation plan for exact details). This is strong compensation and as your team grows you earn additional legs (paycenters they call them) which each pays out an additional $2,500 when on average 4 sales are made on each of the paycenter's 2 legs. This can add up to substantial income for the serious business builder.

Again, it is crucial that when building a business with Team National you focus on leveraging your efforts through team building rather than putting on a salesman hat and trying to solely sell memberships. When you compare $25-$100 a sale to even $1,500 a week for virtually the same effort through team building it becomes rather obvious.

So how does someone in Team National go about building a profitable, income-producing team?

First, you must have a system in place to help you seek out and find qualified business partners to present the Team National business opportunity to. You can do this by just talking to people you know, or you can work your MLM home business smarter by leveraging the power of tools like the internet to help you find and sort through a virtually endless supply of potential prospects actively looking for an opportunity like the Team National MLM home business provides. Work smarter to multiply your results and income and get your business in front of more people to make more money (it's all a numbers game after all) or continue doing what you've always done if you want to continue to get the same results.

Don't miss out on the huge momentum and fortunes being created today in the MLM home business industry.

If you're new to the industry or have never marketed online before, let me point you in the right direction so you can begin getting the word out about your business and start attracting people to you like a Top Earner to get some of that momentum going in your direction.

Learn more about how you can create your very own custom Team National sales funnel to build your residual income business and start leveraging the power of the internet to sign up more people, brand YOU as a leader and earn bigger checks faster by visiting this site now: MLM advertising.

National Marketing Companies - The 3rd Rail of Insurance

Many people are fully aware of insurance agents and brokers and what they do. They meet with clients and explain potential coverage and service existing business. People also know who and what insurance companies are. When you sign the dotted line, you are purchasing coverage from an agent who represents that company. However, there is a 3rd rail to the insurance system and they are called National Marketing Organizations or NMO's.

National Marketing Organizations (NMO) are known by a few other names.

Field Marketing Organization (FMO)

Internal Marketing Organization (IMO)

National Marketing Organizations are "middle men" who promote and train agents and brokers on insurance products. They constantly recruit independent insurance and promote insurance products to them. When an agent writes business, the NMO receives an over-ride on commissions. The more agents they recruit, the more money they make.

Independent Agents

NMO's recruit independent agents who are not contracted or captive agents with one insurance carrier. Think Allstate, Farmers, American National, North Western Mutual and MetLife agents. Independent insurance agents are often times referred to as insurance brokers. They are able to place business with any company they choose that fits their client's needs and are not required to sell only one insurance company's products.

Over-rides are Less Expensive

All but a hand full of insurance companies require agents to contract with a NMO instead of contracting directly with the insurance carrier. The Insurance Company wants agents to be trained and serviced through a 3rd party which creates competition among NMO's for agent's business. It is less expensive for the insurance industry to pay over-rides to marketing companies for training and servicing agents than it is to hire a few thousand home office people who have to train, service, and market these very same products. When business is down, the insurance company does not have to constantly hire and fire people according to fluctuations in business.

Time to Sell

National Marketing Organizations get contracted with multiple insurance carriers for annuities, life, disability, and long term care insurance. Some NMO's like the one I used to work for started out just wholesaling annuities and eventually added life insurance to the mix. In order to keep contracts with insurance companies, the NMO has to submit a minimum amount of business or production to have that insurance company available to sell to their contracted agents.

Insurance Hierarchy

Insurance Company (s)

NMO, FMO, or IMO

Agent

Or

Insurance Company (s)

NMO, FMO, or IMO

Broker Dealer/ Insurance Agency

Agent

Agent Commissions

Sometimes an insurance agency or a Broker Dealer is located in the commission hierarchy. Sometimes the agent will receive a cut in their street commissions or will be placed in a lower commission level. A street commission level is also referred to as the General Agent (GA) level and this means that they are receiving the highest level agent commission without taking a portion of the commission from their NMO.

NMO Commissions

Marketing companies receive an over-ride when an agent's policies issue and pay out. The agent and the NMO are paid directly from the insurance carrier according to their respective levels. Agents and NMO's can also be eligible for insurance company incentive trips, bonuses, and deferred compensation plans. Some NMO's give their top performing agents additional compensation in the form of.25%-1% for their production. The reason why a NMO would do this is for a few reasons:

Something is better than nothing

It is better to have a big producer under your organizations instead of your competitors

A big producer can help a NMO achieve bonus levels with insurance carriers

Things to Look For when Choosing an NMO

· Training from sales people (Not Home Office People)

· Marketing and sales ideas

· Case follow up

· Technology

· Good Contracts

· Lead Systems (Most leads are horrible)

If you are an independent agent and are looking for a new or additional NMO to work with you should make sure the NMO will give you a release of your contract at any time. Make sure to get this in writing before you contract with them.

I cannot tell you have many times over the years that an agent could not move over to my old company because their current NMO would not release them. A NMO will essentially hold that contract as long as they can. Meanwhile, you will have to sell a different company that may or may not exactly be best for your clients needs.

National Marketing Organizations are necessary for the fluid movement of day to day insurance transactions between clients, agents, and insurance companies. Without NMO's, business would not be placed in a timely manner and agents would not get the correct training on products to show to their clients. NMO's are truly and asset to the industry.

Visit http://www.annuitycampus.com for more Annuity and Life Insurance Tips and Tricks.

Call Robert Eldridge directly at 800-643-7544.

Robert Eldridge holds over a decade of experience as a multiline agent in multiple states and currently serves on the membership council of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors