Florida

Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens?  At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women.  Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), and yet despite all of their hard work they still find themselves mired in poverty.  One of the big reasons for this is that we have created two classes of workers in the United States. 

Update: AP confirms Zimmerman not seriously injured.

George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the 2013 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, has, according to WESH Orlando, been shot in Orlando, Florida.  The shooting involved two men and happened on Lake Mary Boulevard, police said. Officers at the scene said it appeared Zimmerman suffered a minor gunshot wound, Bracknell said. “He walked normally into the ambulance, so he wasn’t being helped or nothing,” said witness Ricardo Berrare.

Fed-created bubbles are inevitably going to implode, because they have no relation to economic reality whatsoever.  And when they implode, millions of Americans are going to be financially wiped out. Just like David and Jackie Siegel, “America’s time-share king”, America just keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again - we simply can’t help ourselves. And in the end, we will all pay a great, great price for our utter foolishness.

There's never been a better time to be a home flipper. Not only are average returns at all-time highs (you can double your money in Baltimore), you can even obtain cheap financing from Wall Street as opposed to dealing with pesky local banks. Better still, there's a very good chance you won't have to deal with annoying aspiring homeowners because according to RealtyTrac, the percentage of flipped homes sold to other "investors" is at a four-year high.

The consequences and patterns of war, whether by one nation against another or by a government against the citizenry, rarely change. However, the methods of war have evolved vastly in modern times. Wars by elites against populations are often so subtle that many people might not even recognize that they are under attack until it is too late. Any defense the American people might muster against elitist dismantling of constitutional liberties would inevitably turn to "insurgency". So using CFR member Boot’s views on counterinsurgency as a guideline, here is how the elites will most likely wage open war on those within the American population who have the will to fight back.

This is what “justice” looks like in the Oligarch States of America. If you’re a pleb who gets caught having consensual sex on the beach, you’re immediately convicted and face up to 15 years in the gulag. Meanwhile, if you’re a banking executive responsible for crashing the global economy, you’re rewarded with trillions in taxpayer bailouts and backstops and given free reign to continue your crime spree.

"What investors need to know today is that they are currently priced just as high as they were back then! The problem is they once again want their cake and to eat it, too. Despite paying an extremely high price for stocks today they also expect a high rate of return. A few recent polls show investors expecting to get 10% per year from their equity investments right now. Some are even expecting to generate twice that much and there’s just no chance it’s going to happen."

While it is entirely likely that "economic bulls" will get a bounce in Q2 and Q3 due to pent-up demand from the previous two-quarters, the strength and sustainability of that bounce will be critically important. After all, in just a few short months, the cold breath of winter will once again be upon us.

The Baltimore riots may have calmed down but their aftermath remains, and nowhere is it more tangible than what is taking place in Orioles Park right now.

Seven years ago, the U.S. Army War College issued a report calling on the military to be prepared should they need to put down civil unrest within the country. Summarizing the report, investigative journalist Chris Hedges declared, “The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,’ which could be provoked by ‘unforeseen economic collapse,’ ‘purposeful domestic resistance,’ ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order.’ The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’” At what point will all of the government’s carefully drawn plans for dealing with civil unrest, “homegrown” terrorism and targeting pre-crime become a unified blueprint for locking down the nation?

"The EU and US need to hear the pleas coming from the southern European countries, as well as those of the refugees. The humanitarian catastrophe has reached large scale, with profound and irreversible consequences. Greece is paying a disproportionately high price, although Greece played no role in triggering this catastrophe. The EU and the US have the moral obligation, which is also consistent with their long-term interests, to take the necessary steps to put an end to the suffering of those in war zones, while at the same time preventing Greece’s collapse under the mounting pressure of refugees."

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.” - John Salter

Authorities have located one of the gold bars stolen last month in what was the eleventh-largest gold heist in history. Police now suspect the robbery may have been an inside job.

Last week, we documented the mysterious case of WalMart’s move to shutter multiple geographically distinct locations across the US for “plumbing issues.” Once we dug a bit deeper into the history of the affected stores we noticed that one store in particular — the Pico Rivera, CA location — has been at the forefront of wage and working condition protests for the better part of three years. Now, as NY Times reports, "a claim set to be filed on Monday by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union with the National Labor Relations Board says that the closings were in retaliation for a history of labor activism at one of the shuttered stores, in Pico Rivera, Calif."

While there are still three months until Operation Jade Helm officially opens, various documented reports of substantial national guard drills and troop exercises are starting to trickle in early. As Paul Joseph Watson notes, the first documented proof of National Guard drills comes from Ontario, California where National Guard troops can be seen patrolling residential streets and practicing traffic control. In the video troops, followed by a humvee, are seen marching close to an elementary school and single family homes.