This article was first published on ConsortiumNews.com
This past Thursday, a Modesto, California, man whose house was in foreclosure shot and killed the Sheriff’s deputy and the locksmith who came to evict him from his condominium unit. Modesto authorities responded by sending 100 police and SWAT snipers to counter-attack, and it ended Waco-style, with the fourplex structure burning to the ground with the shooter inside.
It’s not surprising that this should happen in Modesto: Last year the Central California city’s foreclosure rate was the third worst in the country, with one in every 19 properties filing for foreclosure. The entire region is ravaged by unemployment, budget cuts, and blight — the only handouts that Modesto is seeing are the surplus military equipment stocks being dumped into the Modesto police department’s growing arsenal.
The shooter who died was 45 years old and he appears to have lost his condominium over a $15,000 home equity loan he took out almost a decade ago, owed to Bank of America. The condo was sold at an auction for just $12,988 to a shady firm, R&T Financial, that doesn’t even have a listed contact number. Too much for the former security guard, who barricaded himself in the condo which had been in the family for decades. He refused to walk out alive.
Prepared for foreclosure violence: Modesto SWAT team in armored truck
These “death by foreclosure” killings have been going on, quietly, around the country ever since the housing swindle first unraveled. Like the story of the 64-year-old Phoenix man whose daughter and grandson were preparing to move in with him after losing their home to foreclosure — only to get a knock on his door surprising him with an eviction notice on the house he’d owned for over 30 years. Bank of America foreclosed on him despite his attempts to work out a fair plan.
We now know that the same banks that had been bailed out over their subprime fraud disaster were, by the time this happened, headlong into another criminal scheme, this time foreclosure fraud. The fraud was effected both illegally and in bad faith on a scale so vast it’s hard not to think that it was carried out by some marauding foreign army.
Anyway, the old man grabbed a .357 and a beer, walked outside into a sea of Phoenix cops and snipers, and fired his gun off until they cut him down in a hail of bullets.
Sometimes the “losers” in this class war make it easier on everyone else by killing themselves and setting themselves on fire as they’re being evicted, as one Ohio couple recently did. Others class war “losers” aren’t as cooperative, like a Florida man who was gunned down by police after he set his foreclosed townhouse on fire last year.
It’s exactly the sort of lopsided class war that Warren Buffett first officially acknowledged in 2006:
“There’s a class war, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Buffett is right to call it a one-way war, in both a metaphorical sense and in a literal sense, given the endless wars being waged for over a decade now, wars that are tied to the class wars at home.
Murdering Afghan Civilians
Nothing illustrates the interlinking between the class war at home and the imperial wars abroad more starkly than the example of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the Army sniper accused last month of killing 17 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children.
The Army is trying to pin it all on Sgt. Bales’s supposedly deranged mental state, but their version of events contradicts what the victims and eyewitnesses in the village have been telling the few reporters who have had a chance to actually interview them. They’re saying that they saw several American soldiers participating in the massacre, as well as a helicopter.
Whatever the case, whether alone or with others, most people familiar with the case agree that for some reason, Sgt. Bales “snapped.” Invariably they’re over-psychologizing why he “snapped” — the military has blamed it on everything from his supposedly troubled marriage, to strain or stress, to an alleged alcohol bender.
Less well-known or discussed is what happened to Sgt. Bales on the other front: the class war front. Three days before his shooting rampage, the house where Bales’s wife and two children lived in Tacoma, Washington, was put up for a short sale, $50,000 underwater. This was exactly what Sgt. Bales and his wife feared might happen if the Army forced him into a fourth battlefield deployment.
The last time Sgt. Bales deployed — to Iraq in August 2009 — Bank of America foreclosed on the family’s rental property, a duplex that his wife had bought in 1999 that was also underwater. Within months of BofA taking their duplex, Sgt. Bales’s Humvee hit an IED and flipped over, causing brain and head injuries. On a previous deployment to Iraq, Sgt. Bales had one of his feet partially blown off by a bomb.
Censored US Army article celebrating Sgt. Bales in September 2011
Before being deployed to Afghanistan last year, he and his wife had been assured that the Army wouldn’t force Sgt. Bales, a highly-decorated hero who’d already sacrificed his physical wellbeing and his family’s financial health, back into combat.
Bales and his wife were planning their future as a career military family, on bases far from any combat zone, working up the Army’s pay scale year by year. But then in March 2011, a year before Sgt. Bales’s massacre, they were shocked and hurt by the Army’s decision to deny him his standard promotion to Sgt. First Class, which came with a much-needed pay hike.
(Last year, President Barack Obama’s Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Michael Mullen, said many of the austerity cuts would fall on soldiers’ pay and benefits rather than slashing weapons programs and force levels, which he called the “relatively easy” thing to do.)
When Sgt. Bales learned he wouldn’t get his promotion, his wife wrote on her blog:
“It is very disappointing after all of the work Bob has done and all the sacrifices he had made for his love of his country, family and friends.”
Kathilyn Bales comforted herself with the assurances they’d been given that at least her husband wouldn’t be sent back into combat again — at least the family would be going together to one of the many non-warzone bases around the world. She wrote:
“Who knows where we will end up. I just hope that we are able to rent out the house so we can keep it. I think we are both still in shock.”
Then came the real shock: the Army sent Sgt. Bales back into the war zone, into Afghanistan. His wife would have to deal with the more than $500,000 in mortgage debts on her own.
It was all timed perfectly: Last December, the month Sgt. Bales was deployed to Afghanistan, one of the subprime loans worth $178,000, taken out in 2006, was timed to “reset” to as high as 10.8 percent interest, and call in its first full payment.
Joe Krumbach, former president of the Seattle Mortgage Bankers Association, reviewed this loan and the others sold to Sgt. Bales’s wife while he was in Iraq, and denounced them as “unconscionable.”
He told the Seattle Times, “The margins on these loans are disaster waiting to happen” and admitted that mortgage lenders deliberately targeted military families like the Bales family, swindling them into signing onto far pricier refinancing loans “that benefited lenders and mortgage brokers” at the expense of vulnerable military families, as well as minorities and low-income borrowers.
Another local real estate businessman who specializes in short sales agreed, telling Businessweek that “we set them up.”
“It’s not an unfamiliar story, but it’s sad,” said Richard Eastern, a co-founder of Bellevue, Washington-based Washington Property Solutions, which negotiates short sales. “We’re going to send you off to war but we’re going to foreclose on your home.” He said many lenders offered loans they knew borrowers couldn’t repay. “And it’s not just soldiers, it’s everybody. We set them up.”
The extent to which mortgage lenders and banks deliberately preyed on American military families is made clear by this little-known fact: the Tacoma region, home to Fort Lewis-McChord, the largest base in the Western United States and home to 100,000 military personnel and families, suffered one of the worst predatory subprime loan epidemics in the country, an anomaly in the state of Washington. According to Richard Eastern’s firm, roughly half of all home sales in that region are either foreclosures or short sales. As early as 2007, the Wall Street Journal singled out Tacoma as one of the nation’s worst affected regions from subprime plunder.
Who’s at Fault?
So who did this? Who, in the class war equation, waged and “won” this class war on Sgt. Bales’s family, and so many other military families? What are their names? Where are they now?
As a matter of fact, there is a company name: Paramount Equity Mortgage. And there is a person’s name: Hayes Barnard, the CEO and co-founder of Paramount Equity. He lives in Roseville, California. In many ways, the story of the “winner” in this class war story is the most revealing, and enraging part of all.
Paramount Equity was founded in 2004, and quickly spread across the Western states, issuing some $8 billion in loans. Paramount Equity’s subprime predation really took off in 2006, right after the Bush Administration’s Department of Housing (HUD) and the FHA qualified Paramount Equity government insurance on its mortgages.
Almost immediately, Paramount Equity flooded the Tacoma region’s radio airwaves with deceptive ads hard-selling refinancing loans, featuring the voice of CEO Hayes Barnard promising the lowest rates, the most honest dealing, giving his personal guarantee.
However, a raft of fraud and deception charges followed. In 2008, the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions announced it was charging Paramount Equity Mortgage with deceptive lending practices and revoking its license.
Paramount stood accused of charging and collecting unearned fees, charging consumers to buy down interest rates without actually reducing the rate, failing to make required disclosures and making state and federally-required disclosures in a deceptive manner.
“Paramount failed to make proper disclosures in almost every loan we reviewed,” said Deb Bortner, director of DFI’s Division of Consumer Services. “Washington [state] has many licensed mortgage brokers who comply with the law. In today’s market, we simply do not need a mortgage broker engaged in deceptive conduct doing business in this state.”
The state’s charges also singled out Hayes Barnard for “engaging in a deceptive advertising campaign.”
As is so often the case, there’s far too little reported specifics on the actual nature of the fraud and deception. Sometimes you have to look in the comments sections on real estate or legal blogs from the affected region. Like this comment left on a marketing blog posting calling out Paramount Equity’s “lies”:
“I apologize if this is maybe a little off topic. I refinanced with Paramount back in 2004. Come 2009, my loan adjusted and I was left with no choice but to walk away with my 3 kids and stay at home wife. I had to rely on credit cards the last couple of years, even charging a couple mortgage payments.
“We ended up filing ch. 7 and we are now renting and have ZERO (if not worse) credit. Today (Sept. 27, 2011) an auditor came to my door and gave me some info and verified other info regarding B-of-A filing a PMI [private mortgage insurance] claim. Sorry so long winded….
“One of the docs he showed me was of my stated income which was double … DOUBLE my income at the time. I NEVER would put myself into such a situation and lied. I honestly believe the number was changed and it was burried [sic] in an inch of docs I had to sign and I just didn’t see it.
“I’m not claiming complete innocence, because after all, I DID sign everything and agreed to the loan (which I didn’t know was a negative amortization loan. Hell, I didn’t even know what that meant). Now, we’re stable, but my financial future and creditworthiness is screwed. I barely got a $500 limit credit card at 17%.
“Do I have any type of recourse here? I’m not frivolous, but I am at a loss. In fact … I LOST everything. Thanks in advance.”
These sorts of stories can be found everywhere, and they repeat themselves over and over. And what’s most galling of all is that these plundering crooks preyed on those most vulnerable — military families suffering from the chaos of war, minorities, low-income people — to generate their fast riches, backed with government guarantees.
Getting Off Easy
For all the swindling and destruction, including the “unconscionable” exploding loans Paramount Equity foisted on Sgt. Bales’s wife while he was off fighting in Iraq, the state of Washington settled in 2009 with what can only be described as a wrist-massage: A fine of a mere $392,000, no admission of guilt.
Paramount even got to keep its license to operate. This, despite the incredible admission in the signed consent that “Paramount admits that during the relevant time period, Paramount did not maintain books and records.”
This is what a lopsided class war looks like: The financial fraudsters, the One Percenters, fleece the unsophisticated locals like 19th century Europeans plundering far-away aborigines.
One victim of Paramount commented bitterly on the settlement:
“We have not one, but TWO ugly loans which are breaking us from good ol’ Paramount Equity Mortgage. …. The citizens who signed these toxic documents are suffering EVERY DAY and losing their homes because Matt and Hayes need to make their yacht payment.
“Our financial lives, that took 30 years to build, have been crushed because of the deception that occurred in their office (where no employee appeared to be over 40 years of age) I remember asking at the closing table, ‘Does anyone have gray hair in this building??!!’ It was unnerving. The parking lot looked like a BMW Sales Lot. …
“Soon, I intend to stop crying about our mortgages, as I have been doing over the last THREE YEARS… And Washington State Department of Financial Institutions: SHAME ON YOU. Shame on you.”
Two “ugly loans” from Paramount Equity are what broke Kathilyn and Robert Bales.
The end result: Hayes Barnard and Paramount Equity Capital are doing better than ever. In 2009, Hayes Barnard was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Roseville Chamber of Commerce, the wealthy Sacramento suburb where Paramount Equity Mortgage is headquartered. In 2010, the Sacramento Business Journal honored him as one of Sacramento’s “40 under 40” leaders.
Hayes Barnard (l), American Hero
The big payoff came last year, when one of the world’s largest infomercial firms, Guthy-Renker, bought a “significant equity position” in Hayes Barnard’s company. You might know Guthy-Renker as the company that makes all those annoying Tony Robbins infomercials and Susan Lucci skincare infomercials.
Guthy-Renker also owns an equity stake in RealtyTrac, the leading foreclosure intelligence source. That’s good news for Hayes Barnard, because it means he’ll be able to wet his beak on the aftermath of the subprime plunder by getting first dibs on the best foreclosure deals. It’s a win-win for the One Percent.
In this degenerate 21st Century version of America, Hayes Barnard exemplifies everything that the current system rewards. In the anti-meritocracy we live in, the sociopaths and crooks are the “winners.” Being a “winner” means you get quoted adoringly in a Sacramento Business Journal Q&A, spouting out the blackest of unintentional black humor:
“As a younger professional, what is the biggest challenge you face?
“As a young professional, the biggest challenge I face is finding the right balance between raising my three children all under 3 years old, being a supporting husband and leading my team as a CEO of three companies. … Achieving true success is to give, give, give and help as many people as you can while leading for your family, employees and community.”
That’s how the class war “winners” rub it in on the rest of us — especially their victims. How can you function after reading such self-serving drivel, particularly if you’re one of the victims?
As for the “losers” in this class war: Sgt. Robert Bales’s wife and children are ruined. They have no home; they only own debts to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, debts owed for life to the Hayes Barnards of this country. The “winner” — the swindler — is a community hero.
As for Sgt. Bales – whom the Army accuses of “snapping” for no good reason, accusing him of being a drunk, or of mental weakness, incapable of handling his marriage or the stress of combat – he might even be put to death. He now sits in Fort Leavenworth military prison, charged with the murder of 17 Afghan civilians.
The way the One Percenter “winners” see this story, it’s all proof that the system is working perfectly.
As the National Journal reported, “Nearly all of National Journal’s National Security Insiders agree that the military justice system can conduct a fair trial for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.”
Would you like more Class Warfare? Read “The Brutal Life of One L. Goh” and “The One-Percent’s Doctrine For the Rest of Us: We Are Not Human Beings, But Livestock Whose Meat They Extract As Rent” by Mark Ames.
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
Click the cover & buy the book!
Read more: afghanistan, banksters, Class War, foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, Going Postal, iraq, massacre, oligarchy, paramount equity mortgage, sgt. bales, surge, Mark Ames, Class Warfare
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87 Comments
Add your own1. ArtificerSerges | April 16th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Thanks for this. As infuriating as it is to read, these connections need to keep being made.
2. Greg L | April 16th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Mark – what was the effect on Bales’ finances of $1.3 million assessed against Bales by FINRA in 2003 for his “fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorized trading and unsuitable investments” while a stock broker? Just looking at his finances (mass murder, and also Paramount Equity’s many crimes, aside): does the fraud committed against Bales match dollar-wise the fraud he has admitted he committed against his own clients the Liebschners? Bales seems to have been a gung-ho boilerroom soldier in the boom-times war, before he was literally a soldier killing women & children in Afghanistan.
Now, notice how I don’t address anything in this article but rather, troll-like, try to change the framing of this story back to the Pentagon narrative. Pretty clever of me, ain’t it? Yeah, we do this stuff a lot in the comments sections, pays pretty well. Have a nice day!
3. Patrick | April 16th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Someone who knows how to write proper in proper Wikipedia style needs to make some improvements to Paramount Equity’s page.
4. casino implosion | April 16th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Sgt. Bales had the right idea: shoot some bastards. He just shot the wrong folks.
5. Rambo | April 16th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
“Sgt. Bales had the right idea: shoot some bastard. He just shot the wrong folk.”
Fixed that for you.
6. Mason C | April 16th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
“Out-fucking-standing! I will fact check you all until you die. I’ll fact check you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk!” This is the story absent from the Seattle media, whose reporting on Joint Base Lewis McChord disasters is tepid at best.
But there’s a little good news. Three days ago Bales’ lawyer told him to opt out of the ‘sanity review.’ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017977242_bales14m.html
7. John Figler | April 16th, 2012 at 4:17 pm
For those not familiar with the USA pay system it would be instructive to know how it’s that a serving soldier deployed overseas can’t use his pay, plus his deployment+combat pay bonuses (tax free, IIRC), to fullfil his financial obligations back home.
I mean, I fully agree that they are probably continually swindled as military types have been since the first campfollower decided to follow the steps of Artajerjes’ armies, but… can’t they send the money back to mommy so she has not to cope alone with the mortage loan?
Because you see what I’m trying to do here is blame the housing fraud and predatory behavior on the victims and to help support the banksters, because, well shit, that’s my job. I wish someone would kill me for doing this sordid work but since you won’t, I’ll just keep trolling these articles and bashing people on behalf of my PR boss.
8. Roving Blade | April 16th, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Didn’t Bales work for a financial firm before enlisting? I seem to recall reading something about how he defrauded retirees out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And here’s the thing–I believe anything that the Pentagon spins the media. So if they’ve put out this smear, I’m going to ignore the rest of the story and just focus on the financial fraud allegations that I know nothing about, because that’s what really interests me the most here. As for what was described here, went right through me like reality through a PR troll.
9. Herman | April 16th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Every-time i come here I get more and more angry and depressed.
10. outstanding | April 16th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
The war mongering oligarchs take perverse pleasure in ass raping the actual military, despite the omnipresent culture of nationalistic sloganeering. The defense budget inflates to obscene levels, but only a tiny, dwindling fraction of that (less than 2%) trickles through to the grunts who risk life and limb; most of it is pissed away on orwellian war-gadgets like the flying death robots, and good old fashioned corruption. While the pentagon fucks them, the fraud-banks fleece them. Double penetration!
11. ArtificerSerges | April 16th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
@9: I’d rather be angry and depressed, but knowledgeable, than happy thanks to ignorance. Besides, as silly and unjustified as it is, somehow I feel like things can still change for the better.
“As for the “losers” in this class war: Sgt. Roger Bales’s wife and children are ruined. They have no home; they only own debts to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, debts owed for life to the Hayes Barnards of this country. The “winner” — the swindler — is a community hero.”
They probably won’t, of course.
@10: Don’t even get me started. It’s a bit old, but if you’re in the mood for more rage on that topic, just read “The Pentagon Wars”. Or the POGO site, or CDI’s two books on acquisition reform.
But hey, gotta have that F-35. You know, the cheap one.
12. donB | April 16th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
Is there one of the 50 states where white collar fraudsters don’t maraud with impunity? There’s gotta be one.
13. andy | April 16th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Yep. Bales and his family were stupid enough to trust the State and the System – and they got fucked.
Here’s the smallest violin in the world, playing just for the family of a professional killer who volunteered to go to a foreign country and murder people for money! That he murdered just a few too many people even for the US Army to stomach doesn’t make it okay.
Not that this was the point of the article–in fact, the point of your article is all about oligarchy and how the 1% are plundering and destroying lives everywhere, and being celebrated for it. But you see, I don’t want to acknowledge that either like the guys above, because, well, let’s be honest–we all work for the same PR outfit. Our job is to come here and deflect other readers from being outraged over the housing fraud theft. You wouldn’t believe how much money has poured into our firm to troll sites so that all your anger is directed everywhere but at the bankers and the super-rich. So, did I do a good job here or what?!
14. John Drinkwater | April 16th, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Great work, Mark. It’s sickening. But I’m waiting for the ‘death by student loan’ rampages. I’ve never had a mortgage and probably never will — they seem to have so much going for them — so I have a hard time identifying with these people.
Student loans, on other hand…I had a private student loan for about $20K and it’s now been passed along to about the 4th or 5th collections agency. They harass me, and I harass them back, and we’ve been playing this cat and mouse game for about 6 years now. I’m just wondering what the hell is going to happen. I finally told them recently that I just don’t have the money to pay them. Sorry. Now leave me the fuck alone. But what comes next?
15. Jedi Mind Trick | April 16th, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Shit. That could of been any one of the guys I knew in the Army. One guy came back from Iraq to find an empty house and divorce papers, oh, and a empty bank account.
Apparently the whore spent his money on her new man. He didn’t shoot her, which makes him a better man than me.
16. Diablo | April 16th, 2012 at 7:38 pm
I was in from 2000-2006. Drive around any military town and there are countless pay day loan places. Every car lot and mortgage company has a sign out that says something like “E-1 and above instant credit approval”.
The reason is that as a federal employee, all they have to do is make one phone call and your wages get garnished. I even had my garnished by a company I didn’t do business with and it took forever to get that fixed.
As an E-5, I used to fight with my immediate command over the fact that they refused to do needed training on personal finance. For a lot of us enlisted, the military is the first time they have a paying job. If I sat down with our records, easily 90% of our personnel problems started off with bad debt getting out of control for these kids.
Then again, for the military, there is a huge incentive to hold onto to people. Indentured servitude is basically systematically used in a lot of different hob classifications. Most of the nukes I knew that stayed in were eyeballs deep in debt and couldn’t afford to get out.
17. Dimitri Ratz | April 16th, 2012 at 10:05 pm
It’s good to know that at least some of that money trickles down to working women at Columbia while Hillary Ramthem Clinton gets her threesome on with McCain and Saudi King Abdolala. Although some would say she was just kicking back with a beer this time, and mostly just watched. Even here the agent detail was trying to stiff the girls like those horse teethed imbred British royalty trying to always get out of paying for chandelier cleaning. Yes you queen of England! Endorsement for business McCain’s red Arab spring filled ass.
18. buthead | April 16th, 2012 at 10:40 pm
make yasha show us his scabez and tell us about the time you got arrested in/around victorville.
19. Steve Patriot | April 16th, 2012 at 11:18 pm
I have no sympathy for the capricious baboons who, often proudly, terrorize innocent human beings for Lockheed Martin, Israeli, and Enron plunder.
Fucking the rats, with the acerbic fulmination that only you, the great Mark Ames, can muster. For this you deserve…praise.
I troll will rescind my use of the thesaurus and will stop this dumbshit Huffintonian foraging of anti-sympathy for the greatest bootlickers of all: ourbravefightingmenandwomen (TM)
20. mama | April 16th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Sad times when the army eats its own heroes.
21. John Malta Gault | April 16th, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Liberals hate the military almost as much as they love nanny state that allows them not to work.
I served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Desert storm. And let me tell you, these shitholes are full of Arabs that WOULD destroy America if they were given the choice. When we where patrolling the streets to protect them from potential terrorist attacks, a woman pulled out a gun.
Acting quickly, we shot her on site. One American life to me, is one loss to much. She was blinded by brainwashing of fear, hatred, and cowardice. I am glad I defended America from her fanaticism.
I tell you,These sub-human savages…my favorite little story is when we investigating a house for potential threats, when out of no where, some crazy bitch (I think she owned the house)startied firing on our position.
It gets better, her husband joined a minute after. We had already silenced the crazy hag.
Shows the pure evil that blinded them of a true and noble country that wanted to defend them. What where they fighting us for exactly? Who were they defending? We took their kids huddling in a corner. They were screaming as we did. Poor things! Their parents actions of aggression scared them for life.
It’s kinda funny, I was attacked by more women than men. Here women just bitch about inequality and contraceptives because they are to lazy to get a good education. Don’t they know what would happen to them if we where to leave? They’d be kept in-doors and beaten for Allah from the forces of Islam.
And you…you liberal monsters defend these same actions of lazy deadbeats who run out money from hardworking people like me to pay off their houses.
Should I give up MY home so THEY can live in it? Because a bank that ENSURED you could live in that home wants their fair share? I was taught to….work…to solve my problems.
Shame on all of you who disgrace the courageous men and women who have died so you could spew your filthy hatred for innocents.
Anyway, remember….
We are at war here!
We are at WAR that will never end!
But that DOESN’T mean we don’t FIGHT.
22. TD | April 17th, 2012 at 12:11 am
It will be HILARIOUS when, one day, the military men grow a brain and get sick and tired of being useful idiots for the 1%. It’ll be like the freaking Yellow Turban Rebellion, up in here! I can’t wait!
23. The First Strelnikov | April 17th, 2012 at 12:39 am
@14 A lot of those people kill themselves, especially the people who went through grad school. As I see it, the student loan fiasco is going to end shortly, say in the next decade or sooner, because it’s so huge (one trillion dollars right now.) The bubble will burst, a lot of schools will go under (most of them the private, for-profit shitholes like Oikos College), and it the end the debt will have to be written off in a mass student bankruptcy.
I like how the article mentions the Bank of America house grabs – those scummy fucks stole homes that they had no mortgage origination papers for, places that had been paid for in cash. And after they steal them they can’t find owners for them, so they rot. Then the stripper gangs come along and rip out the wiring and the plumbing, and a formally useful home is a wreck. Fuck BoA.
24. comapimp | April 17th, 2012 at 1:46 am
When I was coming home from work one night, I saw a foreclosure notice taped to the communal mailbox. A month later, a security guard was killed while doing his job at the local wal-mart. A couple of days later, I am awakened with, “this is the police! You are surrounded!”, followed by a boom. Come to find out they raided that very same house. The owner was an employee at the very same local wal-mart. I guess she decided to enlist “help” (this would explain the multiple gunshots I heard a few weeks prior). After the bust, the house say vacant for a *long* time until it received some vinyl siding and lots of cosmetic upgrades on the inside. It was recently sold by “FairPlay realty”. Suckers probably don’t even know the rotting timbers were just covered up or about the holes the county mounties dug in the back yard, let alone the history of the place.
Welcome to Tacoma. Where the aroma is money.
25. Lavrentij "Anarchy99" Lemko, Edmund Dorkey, and Gustavo Millebrand | April 17th, 2012 at 5:18 am
Dear eXholes,
Here’s an oldie, but a goodie: concern over ‘securitized student loan debt’ ala subprime AAA-rate loans to students at Oikos U.
Coming to a 7-11 near you! Muahahahahaha
— Lavrentij “Anarchy99” Lemko, Edmund Dorkey, and Gustavo Millebrand, Turks & Caicos Islands
26. Lavrentij "Anarchy99" Lemko, Edmund Dorkey, and Gustavo Millebrand | April 17th, 2012 at 5:19 am
Forgot the link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/idUSN2723050420070828
27. mean | April 17th, 2012 at 6:02 am
Interesting, the attempt to demonize this embarrassing soldier as a boiler room crook, but those guys are exactly like the troops, helpless lumpenproles who have to do what they’re told to live. They don’t recruit these ‘advisors’ for their brains. Even the brand-name firms like desperate losers. I used to torment these guys when they cold-called. They are utterly defenseless in the world, just like their victims. So Bales’ financial-fraud exploits are one more piece of evidence that Bales was the perfect soldier, universally subordinate, incapable of insubordination.
28. G.G. Allin | April 17th, 2012 at 7:00 am
Thanks so much for writing this piece, Ames. Although it’s infuriating to an unspeakable degree, it’s also highly illuminating of our culture.
29. John Figler | April 17th, 2012 at 7:28 am
I serve the banking interests. Like the Pentagon and the banksters, I want you all to focus on the easiest thing of all and focus on what a bad man Bales was. I will not post a comment here that has anything to do with the predatory financial fraud that the banks unleashed on this population while suckering and distracting us with wars overseas, because that’s the sort of worthless fucking tool that I am. You can tell a troll by the emphasis. ‘Scuse me while I get on my knees and eat my bank-funded PR firm manager’s ass out again.
30. Trevor | April 17th, 2012 at 7:46 am
The AEC is in rare form today. You guys may actually be making a difference if you’re attracting so many professional trolls.
31. Rambo | April 17th, 2012 at 7:48 am
@21 You’re fussing about liberals, but aren’t greedy assholes generally just greedy assholes no matter what political stripe they show off?
Very few billionaires are liberals.
Also, we don’t HAVE to be at war forever. If those Muslims are so fucking crazy, why should we spend billions to have people like you get blown up over there to keep them safe?
32. Rambo | April 17th, 2012 at 7:54 am
Ah mistake, I’m sure there’s tons of liberal billionaires.
But billionaires generally vote with their wallets, not their hearts. They did NOT become billionaires by being nice, generous, friendly fun people, despite what Ayn Rand enthusiasts might delusionally think.
Just because some billionaire might be pro-gay marriage doesn’t mean he’d lift a pinky to avoid defrauding 100,000 homeowners illegally.
33. haha | April 17th, 2012 at 8:03 am
this ruled!
34. Steve Patriot | April 17th, 2012 at 9:08 am
It’s far easier to be use a random word looked up in a thesaurus than to be Chris Kyle an Bradley Manning.
The ‘saurus can say to me what to say. It have the power to change things, the weaponry.
Once again, your peerless detective work gives me refuge in this world of deceitful obsequiousness.
Please don’t mistake a bit of spirited vivacity, gradually absorbed from prolonged exposure to writers like Uncle Dolan, for verbose superficiality. I meant no disrespect.
Sgt. Bales is different from Harris and Klebold in that he “chooses” to be an enforcer because my thesaurus says so. He also partook as a small fish in the same scheming profligacy and was scammed himself like a fluttering dupe that he was, so he’s no victim.
Just the recipient of poetic justice, I am. Thank you oh AEC.
35. Fissile | April 17th, 2012 at 9:32 am
I understand the point you’re trying to make here, and you couldn’t have chosen a better poster boy than Bales. Thank you for your wisdom.
Despite all the blather about “citizen soldiers” and “patriotic duty”, the US has a long history of ass-raping the poor, the disenfranchised, the ignorant and the defective as regards rank and file military service. From colonial times to the Civil War, draftees from wealthy families were allowed to pay for substitutes…usually off the boat immigrants. From WWI to the 1970’s the wealthy and connected could avoid dangerous military service…or avoid service all together….through deferments, and questionable claims of physical infirmity.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, the US has been on the “volunteer” system…aka the poverty draft. Wanna see just how the US military uses up America’s “surplus youth”? Go read one of the numerous articles Fred Reed has produced on the subject.
Fact is, and always was, that unless you’re part of the officer corps, the US military is generally a bad deal for the chumps who sign up.
Stay the fuck away from the US military.
36. Anonymous Coward | April 17th, 2012 at 9:43 am
There’s been a lot of censoring of “trolls” here and I understand why, since this site is normally trolled like a motherfucker, but is there any evidence that he wasn’t a boiler room bottom tool who was used by banks and then scammed by them in turn in relation to the Pentagon’s claims? I know that wouldn’t hurt the article’s thrust, like all these trolls are trying to insinuate because they are Wall Street-military-industrial bootlickers, but if the guy snapped in part because he was on three tours and his life back home ruined, it wouldn’t be entirely unheard of. A douchebag says what?
37. Rambo | April 17th, 2012 at 10:38 am
If he was a boiler room guy, shouldn’t he have had more money?
No offense but military dudes aren’t usually these college-educated, money-savy financial wizards. They’re usually young and new to the world, easy enough for Uncle Sam to brainwash and send somewhere to die for the ungrateful Arabs.
38. John Drinkwater | April 17th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Even if he was a ‘boiler room’ guy, that again just shows how sad our country is. People are desperate. He failed as a financial guy, went broke, owed money and joined the military as a last resort. It worked for him for awhile, apparently, until he got pushed too far. In any case, he was probably not the greatest guy in the world, but he’s still the victim here.
39. Steve Patriot | April 17th, 2012 at 11:42 am
@ 36
….
“Wall Street-military-industrial bootlickers”
And you’d like to say that Sgt bales profession was more honorable than that of a gutless comment monkey like myself? Why I nevah!
40. Yep | April 17th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Pure Disaster Capitalism template: 1) create the crisis; 2) exploit it by buying when the crisis devalues the assets of others.
As for service members, “Duty, Honor, Country” equals “No bargaining position”. They’re taking what they’re giving, just like in the private sector. Of course it would be different if there was a viable better-paid private sector, but Disaster Capitalism has eaten that away.
41. Urda | April 17th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
I
42. Urda | April 17th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I don’t think our society would have evolved as far as it did,without a higher power guiding it at one point.
I don’t think there is likely to be periods of common decency, nor is there a long term future for the kind of society we live in.Not the kind it wants anyway.
I do have a serious problem with radical Atheists who try and solve society’s problems or someone who believes in God and isn’t effectively communicating with him.
Ultimately the system will most likely spare SSGT Bates’s life,not because of a sob story,because otherwise they will be putting soldiers to death left and right for actions in combat.Forces on the ground would not be able to return fire or fight if they thought they’d be put to death for doing the wrong thing.
To end the war on terror by sentencing some of its victims,those who volunteered to serve,to execution would never do as far as America was concerned.
43. Steve Patriot | April 17th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
You’re not juxtaposing American wage slavery with boorish mercenary blood-lust, are you?
Tell me…Please tell me that The Exiled doesn’t subscribe to the folly of solider worship.
Support the troops, not the war? Is that a maxim you adhere to when it comes to American colonization? You’re supposed to be the anti-thesis to the American left’s sheepish facade of temperate “reasonableness”.
When these murderous retards are called in to defend `Murca from Occupy Wall-Street activists, starving families, and rioters after Israel starts World War III- resulting in 8$ gas- will you be defending their honorable profession?
How can someone be so brilliant in their condemnation of police state atrocities, but in the same breath,weep for the most egregious pawns of the bankers?
You can no longer skewer bootlickers, for you will be one if you defend the military industrial complex’s grizzly fingers.
There’s nothing honorable about killing what you’re told to kill, hating what your told to hate, unquestioningly.
Oh, and the fact that I’m completely misrepresenting your story here by pretending to read into it a defense of the war and empire and all that? Yeah, that’s how you can tell that I’m a troll. We’re all over comments sections on this story, and we all say the same thing. It’s a classic PR trick you see where you try to reframe what the story is about to protect your client. Most of this was generated by TrollPro 3.0 so it was stock stuff, but my marketing boss is all psyched about the way that I pretended to be indignant and wrote that you are now the biggest defender of the military industrial complex. The bankers who pay my PR company for me to do this will be so pleased!
44. TG | April 17th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
@37
Boiler room guys usually spend the money before it hits their pockets. These aren’t Ivy League Goldman Sachs associates. They’re usually working class kids who knew a guy who knew a guy who got them the job, but who don’t have enough of an education to know that they should be investing at least part of those big sales commissions instead of blowing it all on coke and overpriced champagne at the local strip club.
Also, the boiler-room sales culture of brainless youthful machismo and chaos addiction translates very well to the military. Bales was likely an NCO because he knew how to manage kids like that.
Bales’ CV is almost tailor-made for the American casino economy: from failed “anyone can be rich” penny-ante stockbroker to stop-lossed cannon fodder in an oilmen’s war to a mark for the mortgage grifters and sleazy outfits like BofA.
45. John Drinkwater | April 17th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
I forgot to add that he probably only took the ‘boiler room’ job because he was too stupid to do anything else, including go to college. Again, it’s not his fault he was born a meathead who was best known as a mediocre second stringer on his high school football. Those boiler room jobs were one of the only opportunities for idiots to make money, so he can hardly be blamed for signing up. The problem lies with the sick society that allows boiler room racket jobs to become appealing in the first place. Why not offer six figure salaries to social workers instead? You don’t need to be bright to be a social worker and, what’s more, you might actually contribute to the good of humankind with your work. If the priorities of our society were not so fucked up, Bales wouldn’t have been driven into dangerous career paths like the financial services racket and the US military.
46. andy | April 17th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
I really, really don’t want people to feel sorry for Americans who were robbed and plundered by banks, and I really really don’t want people to link the war in Afghanistan to free-market banksters, because I work for banksters. Any advice on how I can protect the banksters from what you’re doing by exposing this all as one giant war on the people? I’m still trying to pretend that you’re a pro-war militarist, but even I’m not convinced of that. And my boss here at the PR agency is all over my ass to figure something out.
47. Rambo | April 17th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
@46 After years of bullshit, and having terrorists kill/maim his buddies over and over again in a war he never wanted to return to, I guess he simply snapped.
If the army’s volunteer then why the fuck did they drag him back there? Is it volunteer in, “you can join up, but once you’re here your ass belongs to us.”
I hate how the military is “volunteer only.” You get a lot of fanatical Republicans that worship Limbaugh and George Bush in there, and it makes it incredibly easy to lie to them nonstop. The smarter people know to stay the fuck away from the military and the idiot crusades of W. and Obama.
A draft would bring in smarter people, and there wouldn’t be as many fuckwit families back home watching Fox News nonstop while demonizing Michael Moore as a Nazi and gushing about, “we’re given em Democracy Murica style, fuck yeah!” The whole system is set it to have both the absolute poorest and desperate and the most politically/intellectually ignorant serve as cannon fodder and be to stupid, or desperate, to protest against the idiotic orders they’re given. (note- not saying the poor are all stupid/dumb politically, just that their desperation makes them easy to control. It’s the fuckwitted rednecks signing up for 20 consecutive tours that are the real idiots in this)
@43 Go eat a dick, you Fox Newd moron! Thank god for comments censors, you get rid of the assclowns before they even arrive!
48. Zhu Bajie | April 17th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“he was probably not the greatest guy in the world, but he’s still the victim here.”
No, Drinkwater, the people he murdered in their beds are the victims. If he showed no mercy, they deserve no mercy.
49. John Drinkwater | April 17th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Well, okay, yeah. The main victims are the murdered civilians in Afghanistan. I thought that went without saying. But I’d argue Bales is also a victim of our destructive system.
50. remo | April 17th, 2012 at 7:10 pm
This is *exactly* what needs to happen. A sherriff’s deputy is dead, good. I only wish he’d been able to take out a few more. If the very real threat of death were to surface for the mindless zombies with badges maybe just maybe they’d start rethinking the notion of continuing to support a police state so as not to threaten their pensions. Killing innocents and brutalizing civilians isn’t fun when they shoot back.
51. wengler | April 17th, 2012 at 9:23 pm
An interesting read. Typically the oligarchy need some sort of paramilitary unit to enforce their edicts. It appears that local police departments all across the country are fulfilling that role.
It may be that the most important step is to find some way to elect some people that won’t follow the orders of the oligarchy. Here in Chicago awhile ago the sheriff decided that he wasn’t going to do foreclosures anymore. I don’t know if that policy is still in effect, but in most places the sheriff is still an elected position.
52. John Figler | April 17th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
Trying to make me feel sorry for a chum that won’t hesitate to put a bullet through your brains if ordered to do so?
Not that this is what this piece is about–it’s about the oligarchy predating on everyone, including their hired killers. But I can’t deal with that.
Jesus, I want to add at least 120 to the 20 I already donated.
i am a cum bucket…
53. CensusLouie | April 17th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Is #21 supposed to be a parody or the real thing?
Poe’s Law strikes again.
54. Krokodile | April 17th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Hayes Bernard is a feudal overlord for his minions. Mainstream America favors and adores its overlords. It is the only approval an overlord needs to prosper from medieval fees. I learnt that much and put a to stop to being meat on the plate of scumbag sumbitches like H.B by expatriating! Now every waking hour is a bliss when I recall that H.B types are not around gobble meat off my body.
55. dominic | April 17th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
and here i was thinking all about Mark Ames
56. Margo Adler | April 18th, 2012 at 2:48 am
Wow, this is a great article. I appreciate the effort that went into researching this.
I wish more journalism was like this.
Tangentially, I fucking hate Bank of America so much it makes my hair bleed. Banks are revolting, corrupt institutions and they ought to be abolished. What the fuck have they ever done for anyone besides themselves?
P.S. I love the comments editor policy on this website.
57. dustbunny | April 18th, 2012 at 3:47 am
For lack of a better place to put this, here’s a neat article that you guys might enjoy:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/03/simple-math-can-save-cities-bankruptcy/1629/
58. Zhu Bajie | April 18th, 2012 at 4:33 am
Drinkwater, if you must feel sorry for an American, feel sorry for Bales’ wife and child. Bales is not likely to get the bullet he deserves. Probably he’ll spend a couple years in jail, then get out and be given financial rewards by conserva-racist admirers. The Lt. Calley treatment.
59. Zhu Bajie | April 18th, 2012 at 4:41 am
It’d be fun if Goh and Bales were to be cell-mates for life, but it won’t happen. 🙁
60. dominic | April 18th, 2012 at 8:11 am
Ames did it ever occur to you that its a shitload of fun to watch you fuck with idiots who think they’re getting at you somehow? Long live the AEC! Oh, and I’m not angry or frustrated at all, nosiree, this isn’t bothering me a lick as you improve my retarded comments.
61. Harry | April 18th, 2012 at 8:35 am
I see these articles as cautionary tales; that is, don’t fuck around with bad loans, and make good choices. This is what this website is good for.
What are the chances of an article that is about what a hapless American shouldn’t do? For instance, joining the infantry at a fairly old age, such as Bales’s decision, is silly. Here is just some things that I’ve learned in the past few days:
1. Don’t join the infantry
2. Don’t go to an occupy protest in LA
3. Don’t take out bad loans
4. Stay away from libertarians
Of course the only reason I only learned that is because I’m a complete fucking retard. Now, if I wasn’t a complete fucking retard, what I really would have learned was:
1. Do protest with Occupy, don’t be a pussy tool, and be aware of how fucking evil the police state will be when protecting corporate power, and how it treats US citizens in jails and prisons, not just Occupy protesters but everyone, even children. Care about more than the prisoners in Guantanamo.
2. Don’t join the infantry
3. Beware of predatory loans you might think were done properly or you might think you even knew what was in them, because the banksters lie, defraud, cheat and steal and get away with everything and drive people to suicide and murder while they make off with everything. As the top figures in the Seattle mortgage industry are quoted saying, those loans were liars loans, they were criminal fraudulent loans designed to blow up on their victims’ faces
4. Spit on libertarians because they’re the scumbags hired by the 1% to defend “free markets” and banksters and they’re the ones who attack victims of mortgage fraud and finance fraud
62. Steve Patriot | April 18th, 2012 at 9:15 am
I acknowledged that the main idea communicated was the staggering sadism of America’s ruling plutocracy. Several times, I lauded Mark Ames for his erudite research, air tight reporting, and damning accusations.
Not once was the main idea lost to me.
Merely, I also noticed:
“Before being deployed to Afghanistan last year, he and his wife had been assured that the Army wouldn’t force Sgt. Bales, a highly-decorated hero who’d already sacrificed his physical well being and his family’s financial health, back into combat.”
He sacrificed nothing. At least in this excerpt, you’re attempting employing the ethos argumentation; trying to appeal to my empathy. There is no empathy, Sgt Bale’s CHOOSEN occupation is to buttress the Orwellian contradiction of “protection” for the aforementioned plutocrats.
My interpretation was passion driven angst- angst that can only be harbored by being an Exiled aficionado, or “comment monkey”.
@ 47 Do you have any idea how quickly I would be silenced on Murdoch’s propaganda if I were to say what I’ve typed here?
Outside of a sort menacing pleasure, a way of reminding myself just what we must confront, I _NEVER_ watch network news.
Instead, I elect to harness, in some delectably enlightening exasperation, the unlimited potential of the underground Alternative media (Al-Jazeera, RT, LewRockwell, The Exiled, Max Blumenthal, WhoWhatWhy,Mondo Weiss, Naked Capitalism Etc.). My dream is to somehow utilize all of these streams of information to eviscerate the The public’s ignorance of their ideas is what drives me to action.
Really, now that the proprietor of the publication thinks me a repugnant crony for callous Let me tell ya, having one of your heroes hate you really stings.
Amending my admittedly brash tone earlier is quixotic, perhaps. But if I lose the Exiled comments section, I have a precious part of my life taken away from me. For my purpose was forged in here, and similar reservoirs of dissent.
63. Rambo | April 18th, 2012 at 11:15 am
@62 Okay, you sound smart enough. Just don’t fall for the “they’re insulting the troops! The troops!” bullshit that the Right-Wing propagates.
Anyway, it sounds like Hayes Bernard is the person most at fault here- if he’d been honest and decent, maybe the guy wouldn’t have snapped. Why don’t mass-shooters ever get the guy at top? It’s because they just snap- they don’t take much time to think things over, I mean, mass-killing isn’t logically executed. (and when it is, like Cho, it can be devastating, and Cho would have gotten double/triple if his earlier murders that day hadn’t alerted all the cops in town. Of course, Cho was pretty nutso by the time he did it, just look at his tape)
Hayes Bernard should be turned over to the Taliban and his possessions handed over to all his victims as far as I’m concerned.
64. Sylocat | April 18th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
So, what’s the reasoning behind why the other soldiers and helicopter pilot(s) participated in the massacre?
Not that I don’t feel for Sgt. Bales, it’s just that (according to the victims’ families and witnesses, and the fact that I have brain cells) he wasn’t the only one doing the slaughtering. Did the others have reasons for “snapping” as well?
65. Zhu Bajie | April 18th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
@64 Sylocat, “Life is cheap in Asia”. You can be sure that only a fraction of the killers and rapists get caught.
66. Zhu Bajie | April 18th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
@62, you might try listening to Xtn fundie preachers, just to learn where much of our domestic and foreign policy stupidity comes from. Brother R. G. Stair is the craziest and most entertaining, but there are loads of competitors.
67. Sylocat | April 18th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
@65: Uh, yeah, I’m aware of that. But we just got a mini-biography of one of them.
I mean, look, if they were coordinated enough to charter a helicopter and all go in together, they should have been organized enough to wait until the next break between tours and then go storm Hayes Barnard’s office instead. If they had done that, I’d be publicly-condemning-but-secretly-cheering just like all of you.
But hey, what do I know?
68. Joe | April 18th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Please delete my prior comment. I was angry and do not intend it to be taken seriously.
69. WALRUS PUSSY | April 18th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
if i post a picture of my yeast dick will yasha in turn post pix of his scabez
is that how it works??
70. dominic | April 18th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
well played my friend, well played…my boss will tell me to come back sooner or later and will be looking forward to some old school AEC schoolin’…well played though. ‘naw mean?
71. Zhu Bajie | April 19th, 2012 at 12:40 am
@67 Sylocat, somehow people persuade themselves that it’s different when they are over-seas, killing people, screwing whores, etc. However, a certain number of the Weatherman terrorists of the early ’70s were Viet Nam vets. Probably the Red Brigades in Germany/Italy had done military training.
72. Zhu Bajie | April 19th, 2012 at 12:43 am
You know, it’s not as if these kinds of rapists/murderers go totally unmarked by the things they do in Vietnam or Iraq. Calley has been known to complain about nightmares about his massacre. I don’t feel sorry for him. The people he killed don’t get to have nightmares. But he’s not going unpunished. I hope it’s the same for others.
73. John Figler | April 19th, 2012 at 6:14 am
PR strategy #41: Pretend that “this is nothing new.” My boss told me to pretend that there’s nothing new in this article. But who am I kidding? Wish someone would put me out of my misery.
74. ALIVE | April 19th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
The moment you inflict pain on something, someone, and it doesn’t matter who you are, it is going to affect you. And only in a negative way. Whether you are saving the world or murdering it, whether it’s for evil or good, in the end, you are only killing yourself. Your conscience, your spirit, your soul, your happiness, your eternal peace, your life………NOW..TURN IT AROUND…..& Think about the one/s you inflicted the pain upon….your wife & children need to see what you were doing when you were alledgedly saving the world. Can you live with yourself, if you still know who you are? If I did what you did, I would put myself out of my misery and give the victims some relief and justice. Make sure you take ya mates with you….
75. YEAST MAN | April 19th, 2012 at 5:45 pm
@74 fucking hippie shut the fuck up and go pound some bongos while i drill your pansy ass with my peeling yeast dick.
76. Scott Lindsay | April 19th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
It is amazing how they shit on those who are helping to spread imperialism so they can do it to them in the future.Come on guys you join the military so these rich dicks and there wimpy son’s can continue to throw your families into the streets and turn your country into a police state.And when you get back home some of you will join the police and where riot gear so you can defend the same assholes who threw your family and you out of your homes and stole your pension and now want to suspend the constitution that protected your rights.What you need is a leader someone inthe military that can convince his fellow soldiers that it is they that have committed treason by not defending the constitution and sease government and arrest those that we know are guilty of treason and put America back in the hands of those that live and die by the constitution.
77. super390 | April 19th, 2012 at 9:10 pm
This reminds me of a gangster movie in which the loyal henchman contracts tuberculosis and then finds that the feudal duty he assumed his mob boss owed him simply doesn’t exist, that henchmen are as disposable as their victims. Of course, that was a Toshiro Mifune movie, so he got revenge on his boss, not on a bunch of uninvolved peasants.
So instead of this tiresome spin game of defining Bales as the opposite pole of Baynard or as equally bad as Baynard, we can see they’re both mobsters, but only one was a lackey – and therefore not as different from the rest of us lackeys as a boss is.
78. Sly Cooder | April 20th, 2012 at 12:38 am
Baaaaaadass reporting, dude. Just the right connections made, with just the right amount of research, to nullify most of the bullshit fluff that runs rampant in the mainstream media.
Nicely done! Rock on and always check your six! The one percenters can get away with anything…
79. Derek | April 21st, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Mark — You switch back and forth between Roger Bales and Robert Bales. You might want to fix that.
80. crs | April 21st, 2012 at 11:20 pm
“a certain number of the Weatherman terrorists of the early ’70s were Viet Nam vets.”
oh really, which ones, cus they certainly seemed like little more than privileged cocksuckers waging war (incompetently) on their own society to me.
81. Oelsen | April 23rd, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Why do they even sign such a contract? 10% mortage? What?!
82. HAHAHAURFUCKED | April 24th, 2012 at 5:26 am
When may we expect the Bales/Brevik compare and contrast, Exilites?
83. jimmy | April 24th, 2012 at 10:20 am
To me the irony is that the media does such a good job of twisting Occupy Wall Street into a bunch of dirty hippies that some of these same people suffering economically are the first to call them just slackers. These foreclosures are exactly what OWS is trying to do something about, but that message never gets through. People wind up attacking OWS against their own interest. Here is a sample of the OWS interviews the media never runs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxnpDPV9hJs
84. Jim | April 29th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
It would be a damn shame if Hayes slipped in a parking lot and suffered a catastrophic head injury.
85. Susan L’Engle | May 6th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Bales was defrauded by and a defrauder through the US financial system. He was victimized by and victimized through the US Army.
I guess these days Willy Loman ends up as the patsy in the massacre of Afghan kids instead of crashing his car for insurance money.
And the US media tells us how nice a man he is.
86. 370seo | March 2nd, 2013 at 12:58 am
I’m stunned after saw this post…The features that and i’m waiting for your next post. Keep going.
87. JoshuaMiller | November 10th, 2016 at 7:52 am
Great Post!
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